greatest work, and the paradigm of modern Italian language. The Penguin Companion to European Literature notes that 'the book's real greatness lies in its delineation of character...in the heroine, Lucia, in Padre Cristoforo, the Capuchin friar, and the saintly cardinal (Borromeo) of Milan, he has created three living examples of that pure and wholehearted Christianity which is his ideal. But his psychological penetration extends also to those who fall short of this standard, whether through weakness or perversity, and the novel is rich in pictures of ordinary men and women, seen with a delightful irony and disenchantment which always stops short of cynicism, and which provides a perfect balance for the evangelical fervour of his ideal'. In 1822, Manzoni published his second tragedy, Adelchi, turning on the overthrow by Charlemagne of the Lombard domination in Italy, and containing many veiled allusions to the existing Austrian rule. With these works Manzoni's literary career was practically closed. But he laboriously revised The Betrothed in Tuscan-Italian, and in 1840 republished it in that form, with a historical essay, Storia della colonna infame, on details of the 17th-century plague in Milan so important in the novel. He also wrote a small treatise on the Italian language. Politics and economics Manzoni favored the Italian unification and was even a member of the Italian Senate. Before and after his embracing an austere Catholicism upon marrying Henriett Blondel, Manzoni's politics can be broadly described as liberal. Since his French trip, Manzoni's liberalism included a profound understanding of economics. He was well acquainted with authors such as Jean-Baptiste Say and Adam Smith and left numerous notes on the economic treatises and essays he was reading. His understanding of economics came to surface in his grand historical novel The Betrothed, particularly in Chapter 12, where he deals with the famine in Lombardy. Economist and President of the Italian Republic Luigi Einaudi praised the chapter and the whole of The Betrothed as "one of the best treatises on political economy ever written”. Economic historian Deirdre N. McCloskey likewise described it as "a lecture in Economics 101”. Family, death and legacy The death of Manzoni's wife in 1833 was preceded and followed by those of several of his children, and of his mother. In the mid-1830s he attended the "Salotto Maffei", a salon in Milan hosted by Clara Maffei, and in 1837 he married again, to Teresa Borri, widow of Count