Death was not like waiting for someone. If they were late or stood you up, you would probably know why.
Perhaps only death-row prisoners and critically ill patients learned the exact date of their death from judges and doctors.
Choosing death yourself at least gave you time to prepare mentally, while being passively met with death caught people completely off guard and made it hard to accept. Death was beyond our control; it could reduce so many plans in life to nothing and turn all our efforts to dust in an instant.
Archbishop Visconti of Milan had a vast estate in Lomellina, south of Milan, but he had left no will when he died.
Cicognara had mentioned that when he privately met Bonaparte in Paris, there was a man named Smanchini who, together with thirty-nine other Patriots, had signed a petition in the newspapers, hoping the First Consul would put an end to the Austrians' trampling of the Treaty of Campo Formio.
After the Battle of Marengo, Smanchini returned to Italy and became a member of the Democratic Party. For a time, he served as Director General of Justice and Police in the Cisalpine Republic, but he espoused radicalism and held an attitude toward Catholicism nearly identical to France's. He regarded the inheritance left by Archbishop Visconti as "church property." Although church property had no longer been permitted to be confiscated or purchased after 1801, he still intended to join with others to purchase that vast tract of land.
Smanchini had now been excluded from government and administrative posts, yet he remained a member of the legislature and was among the top vote-getters in the Upper Po Department.
Archbishop Visconti cared for the faithful and called them the most useful and beloved part of human society. Before Napoleon came to