Funny / The Betrothed

• Don Abbondio's attempt at using Techno Babble to get out of marrying Renzo and Lucia while Renzo, who doesn't buy it for even a moment, grows angrier and angrier.
  • Meta: the fact Renzo's angry "Are you kidding me?! Enough with your latinorum!" ended up naming the technobabble concept in Italian.
  • The payback: a few chapters later Tonio, a guy who owes him money, visits Don Abbondio with his brother... And then, out of nowhere, Renzo and Lucia appears and spring a surprise marriage on him. Or at least try, as while Renzo manages to say his part Don Abbondio throws a carpet on Lucia's head and runs.
  • Don Abbondio's excuse to not marry Renzo and Lucia until they're forced to flee: he has a headache.
  • In the final chapter, Renzo and Lucia finally return home and go to Don Abbondio to get him to celebrate the marriage... And he still refuses with various excuses, including that Renzo is currently a wanted criminal and saying his name out loud in public would cause immense trouble... And Renzo flat-out tells him that Don Rodrigo died in the plague and he saw him on his deathbed.
    • Still, Don Abbondio refuses, because after all Renzo remains a wanted criminal even if Don Rodrigo is supposedly dead... Then Don Rodrigo's heir arrives in town and takes over his palace, at which point Don Abbondio "remembers" there's been an amnesty and Renzo isn't wanted anymore.
  • In all his appearances, the fact nobody buys his excuses.
• Don Ferrante's monologue about contagion being impossible and the plague being caused by an unlucky astral conjunction... And the immediate follow up:
  "he took no precaution against the plague; the plague got him; he went to bed, to die, like a hero of Metastasio, taking it out on the stars."