(1958)

Characters
Prince Don Fabrizio Corbera	Prince is 45 years old at the start of the novel and is married to Princess Maria Stella, with whom he has seven children. The son of a German princess, he has an authoritarian and morally rigid streak and is more inclined to abstract thought than to pragmatism. His main hobby, for instance, is astronomy; he has even discovered two small planets. The Prince also prefers other solitary pursuits like hunting. Both these hobbies--focused on the stars and the ancient Sicilian wilderness, respectively--allow the Prince to maintain the illusion that his world is stable.
Tancredi Falconeri	Tancredi, the Prince of Falconeri, is the Prince of Salina's nephew. He's the son of the Prince's sister and a spendthrift father who died when Tancredi was 14. Tancredi is now the Prince's ward, and the Prince loves him like a son, even wishing that Tancredi could be his heir. Tancredi has a lively and fun-loving personality marked by occasional seriousness. By the time of the Prince's death in 1888, Tancredi has built a successful political career. After Tancredi's own death, Concetta learns that Tancredi always loved her.
Father Pirrone	Father Pirrone is a Jesuit priest, the Salina family chaplain, and the Prince's friend. He disapproves of the new liberal politics that are becoming popular in Sicily--especially because he believes that the Italian State will seize the Catholic Church's properties, thus disrupting the Church's traditional role as benefactor to Sicily's poor. Father Pirrone is portrayed as unfailingly faithful to the Salinas, as well as a sincere and devout Catholic. Father Pirrone comes from a humble peasant village, and his outsider perspective gives him unique insight into the character of the noble class. He believes that no matter what happens politically, the nobility will always renew itself in different forms, because nobility has more to do with attitude than blood.
Concetta Salina	Concetta is the Prince and Princess's second-oldest daughter and the Prince's favorite of the girls. She is King Ferdinand's goddaughter. Concetta has a submissive attitude toward her father but is also capable of great stubbornness. She is in love with her cousin, Tancredi. After the revolution, however, she is offended by Tancredi's coarseness and heartbroken when he falls for Angelica instead. After the Prince arranges Tancredi's marriage to Angelica, Concetta spends the rest of her life nursing a grudge against Tancredi and her father. In old age, Concetta, unmarried, inherits the Salina villa along with Caterina and Carolina. Her prideful, authoritarian air is the only surviving trace of the Salina legacy, as the Prince had always predicted. When Tancredi's old friend Tassoni tells her that Tancredi always loved her, this marks her realization that her Salina pride has been her undoing.

Contents


I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCE
II. DONNAFUGATA
III. THE TROUBLES OF DON FABRIZIO
IV. LOVE AT DONNAFUGATA
V. FATHER PIRRONE PAYS A VISIT
VI. A BALL
VII. DEATH OF A PRINCE
VIII. RELICS




Historical Note



When this book opens the Bourbon state of Naples and
Sicily, called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was about
to end. King Ferdinand II ("Bomba ") had just died;
and the whole Italian peninsula would^soon be one state
for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Risorgimento, as this movement for unification
came to be known, had been gathering strength since the
occupation of the north by the Austrians after the
Napoleonic Wars, and had already come to a head onc^
in 1848. Leadership had now fallen mainly to Piedmont,
the so-called Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled from Turin by
Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, with Cavour as his prime
minister.

Early in May 1860 the popular hero Garibaldi, acting
against Cavour's wishes, sailed from near Genoa with a
thousand volunteers for Sicily, to win the island from the
Bourbons. The Redshirts, or "Garibaldmi," landed at
Marsala, defeated the Bourbon troops at Calatafimi, and
within* three weeks had occupied the capital, Palermo.
Garibaldi, hailed as "Dictator " of Sicily, gathered more
volunteers, crossed to the mainland, swept up the coast
and entered Naples in triumph. That autumn the Bourbon
armies were defeated on the Volturno, thc^ Piedmontese
besieged the last Bourbon king, Francis II, in Gaeta, and
Garibaldi handed over southern Italy to King Victor
Emmanuel; he then withdrew to private life.

Plebiscites were held; every state in the peninsula
agreed to join the new united kingdom, except the Papal
States, which w<ft-e occupied, for reasons of internal French
politics, by troops of Napoleon III. In 1862 Garibaldi
tried to force this issue and march on Rome. But on the
slopes of Aspromonte in Calabria hisf men were routed and
he himself wounded by Piedmontese troops.

This action by Italian government forces ended the
revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento, which culnlinated
officially in the declaration of Rome as capital of Italy
in 1870.




I. Introduction to the Prince


　　　　　　MAY, 1860


"Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.''



The daily recital of the Rosary was over. For half an
hour the steady voice of the Prince had recalled the
Glorious and the Sorrowful Mysteries; for half an hour
other voices had interwoven a lilting hum from which,
now and again, would chime some unlikely word; love,
virginity, death; and during that hum the whole aspect
of the rococo drawing-room seemed to change; even
the parrots spreading iridescent wings over the silken
walls appeared abashed; even the Magdalen between
the two windows looked a penitent and not just a hand-
some blonde lost in some dubious daydream as she usually
was.

Now, as the voices fell silent, everything dropped back
into its' usual order or disorder. Bendico, the Great Dane,
fussed at being shut out, came barking through the door
by which the servants had left. The women rose slowly to
their feet, their oscillating skirts as they withdrew baring
bit by bit the naked figures from mythology painted all
over the milky depths of the tiles. Only an Andromeda
remained covered by the soutane of Father Pirrone, still
deep in extra prayer, and it was some time before she
could sight the silvery Perseus swooping down to her aid
and her kiss.

The divinities frescoed on the ceiling awoke. The troops
of Tritons and Dryads, hurtling across from hill and
sea amid clouds of cyclamen pink towards a transfigured
Conca d'Oro and bent on glorifying the House of Salina,
seemed suddenly so overwhelmed with exaltation as to
discard the most elementary rules of perspective; mean-
while the major Gods and Goddesses, the Princes Imong
Gods, thunderous Jove and frowning Mars and languid
Venus, had already preceded the mob of minor deities
and were amiably supporting the blue armorial shield of
the Leopard. They knew that for the next twenty-three
'and a half hours they would be lords of the villa once
again. On the walls the monkeys went back to pulling faces
at the cockatoos.

Beneath this Palermitan Olympus the mortals of the
Salina family were also dropping speedily from mystic
spheres. The girls resettled the folds in their dresses,
exchanged blue-eyed glances and snatches of school-girl
slang; for over a month, ever since the "riots " of the
Fourth of April, they had been home for safety's sake from
their convent, and regretting the canopied dormitories
and collective, cosiness of the Holy Redeemer. The boys
were already scuffling with each'other for possession of
a medal of San Francesco di Paola; the eldest, the heir,
the young Duke Paolo, longing to smoke and afraid of
doing so in his parents' presence, was squeezing
through his pocket the braided straw of his cigar-case.
His gaunt face was veiled in brooding melancholy; it
had been a bad day; Guiscard, his Irish sorrel, had seemed
off form, and Fanny had apparently been unable (or unwill-
ing) to send him her usual lilac-tinted billet-doux. Of what
avail then, to him, was the Incarnation of his Saviour }
Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her
rosary brusquely into her jet-fringed bag, while her fine
crazy eyes glanced round at her slaves of children and
her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body
yearned vainly for loving dominion.

Meanwhile he himself, the Prince, had risen to his feet;
the sudden movement of his huge frame made the floor
tremble, and a glint of pride flashed in his light-blue eyes
at this fleeting confirmation of his lordship over both
humans and their works.

Now he was settling the huge scarlet missal on the chair
which had been in front of him during his recitation
of the Rosary, putting back, the handkerchief on which
he had been kneeling, and a touch of irritation clouded his
brow as his eye fell on a tiny coffee stain which had had
the presumption, since that morning, to fleck the vast white
expanse of his waistcoat.

Not that he was fat; just very large and very strong;
in houses inhabited by common mortals his head would
touch the lowest rosette on the chandeliers; his fingers
could twist a ducat coin as if it were mere paper; and
there was constant coming and going between Villa Salina
and a silversmith's for the straightening of forks and spoons
which, in some fit of controlled rage at table, he had coiled
into a hoop. But those fingers could also stroke and handle
with the most exquisite delicacy, as his wife Maria Stella
knew only too well; and up in his private observatory at
the top of the house the gleaming screws, caps and studs
of the telescopes, lenses and "comet-finders " would
answer to his lightest touch.

The rays of the westering sun, still high on that May
afternoon, lit up the Prince's rosy hue and honey-coloured
skin; these betrayed the German origin of his mother,
the Princess Carolina, whose haughtiness had frozen the
easy-going court of the Two Sicilies thirty years before.
But in his blood also fermented other German strains
particularly disturbing to a Sicilian aristocrat in the year
1860, however attractive his fair skin and hair amid all
that olive and black; an authoritarian temperament, a
certain rigidity of morals, and a propensity for abstract
ideas; these, in the relaxing atmosphere of Palermo soc-
iety, had changed respectively into capricious arrogance,
recurring moral scruples and contempt for his own relatives
and friends, all of whom seemed to him mere driftwood
in the languid meandering stream of Sicilian pragmatism.

In a family which for centuries had been incapable even
of adding up their own expenditure and subtracting their
own debts he was the first (and last) to have a genuine
bent for mathematics; this he had applied to astronomy, and
t)y his work gained a certain official recognition and a
great deal of personal pleasure. In his mind, now, pride
and mathematical analysis were so linked as to give him an
illusion that the stars obeyed his calculations too (as, in
fact, they seemed to be doing) and that the two small
planets which he had discovered (Salina and Speedy he
had called them, after his main estate and a shooting-dog
he had been particularly fond of) would spread the fame
of his family throughout the empty spaces between Mars
and Jupiter, thus transforming the frescoes in the villa
from the adulatory to the prophetic.

Between the pride and intellectuality of his mother and
the sensuality and irresponsibility of his father, poor
Prince Fabrizio lived in perpetual discontent under his
Jove-like frown, watching the ruin of his own class and his
own inheritance without ever making, still less wanting to
make, any move towards saving it.

That half hour between Rosary and dinner was one of
the least irritating moments of his day, and for hours
beforehand he would savour its rather uncertain calm.

With a wildly excited Bendico bounding ahead of him
he went down the short flight of steps into the garden.
Enclosed between three walls and a side of the house its
seclusion gave it the air of a cemetery, accentuated by the
parallel little mounds bounding the irrigation canals and
looking like the graves of very tall, very thin giants.
Plants were growing in thick disorder on the reddish clay;
flowers sprouted in all directions: and the myrtle hedges
seemed put there to prevent movement rather than guide it.
At the end a statue of Flora speckled with yellow-black
lichen exhibited her centuries-old charms with an air of
resignation; on each side were benches holding quilted
cushions, also of grey marble; and in a corner the gold
of an acacia tree introduced a sudden note of gaiety. Every
sod seemed to exude a yearning for beauty soon muted by
languor.

But the garden, hemmed and almost squashed between these
barriers, was exhaling scents that were cloying, fleshy
and slightly putrid, like the aromatic liquids distilled from
the relics of certain saints; the carnations superimposed
their pungence on the formal fragrance of roses and the
oily emanations of magnolias drooping in corners; and
somewhere beneath it all was a faint smell of mint mingling
with a nursery whiff of acacia and a jammy one of myrtle;
from a grove beyond the wall came an erotic waft of early
orange-blossom.

It was a garden for the blind: a constant offence to the
eyes, a pleasure strong if somewhat crude to the nose.
The Paul Neyron roses, whose cuttings he had himself bought
in Paris, had degenerated; first stimulated and then en-
feebled by the strong if languid pull of Sicilian earth,
burnt by apocalyptic Julys, they had changed into objects
like flesh-coloured cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense
almost indecent scent which no French horticulturist
would have dared hope for. The Prince put one under his
nose and seemed to be snifiing the thigh of a dancer from
the Opera. Bendico, to whom it was also proffered, drew
back in disgust and hurried off in search of healthier
sensations amid dead lizards and manure.

But the heavy scents of the garden brought on a gloomy
train of thought for the Prince: "It smells all right here
now; but a month ago . . ."

He remembered the nausea diffused throughout the en-
tire villa by certain sweetish odours before their cause
was traced: the corpse of a young soldier of the Fifth
Regiment of Sharpshooters who had been wounded in the
skirmish with the rebels at San Lorenzo and come up there
to die, all alone, under a lemon tree. They had found him
lying face downwards in the thick clover, his face covered
in blood and vomit, crawling with ants, his nails dug
into the soil; a pile of purplish intestines had formed a
puddle under his bandoleer. Russo the agent had dis-
covered this object, turned it over, covered its face with
his red handkerchief, thrust the guts back into the gaping
stomach with some twigs, and then covered the wound
with the blue flaps of the cloak; spitting continuously
with disgust, meanwhile, not right on, but very near the
body. And all this with meticulous care. "Those swine
stink even when they're dead." It had been the only
epitaph to that derelict death.

After bemused fellow-soldiers had taken the body away
(and yes, dragged it along by the shoulders to a cart
so that the puppet's stuffing fell out again), a De
Profundis for the soul of the unknown youth was added
to the evening Rosary; and now that the conscience of
the ladies in the house seemed placated, the subject
was never mentioned again.

The Prince went and scratched a little lichen off the
feet of the Flora and then began to stroll up and down;
the lowering sun threw immense shadow of him over the
grave-like flowerbeds.

No, the dead man had not been mentioned again; and
anyway soldiers presumably become soldiers for exactly
that, to die in defence of their king. But the image of that
gutted corpse often recurred, as if asking to be given peace
in the only possible way the Prince could give it; by
justifying that last agony on grounds of general necessity.
And then around would rise other even less attractive
ghosts. Dying for somebody or for something, that was
perfectly normal, of course: but the person dying should
know, or, at least feel sure, that someone knows for whom
or for what he is dying; the disfigured face was asking
just that; and that was where the haze began.

"He died for the King, of course, my dear Fabrizio,
obviously," would have been the answer of his brother-in-
law Mklvica had the Prince asked him, and Malvica was
always the chosen spokesman of most of their friends.

"For the King, who stands for order, contnuity, decency,
honour, right; for the King, who is sole defender of
the Church, sole bulwark against the dispersal of property,
the 'Sect's ' eventual aim." Fine words, these, pointing
to all that lay dearest and deepest in the Prince's heart.
But there was, even so, something that didn't quite ring
true. The King, all right. He knew the King jvell, or rather
the one who had just died; the present one ^as only . a
seminarist dressed up as a general. And the old King had
really not been worth much. "But you're not reasoning,
my dear Fabrizio," Mklvica would reply, "one particular
sovereign may not be up to it, yet the idea of monarchy
is still the same."

That was true, too; but kings who personify an idea should
not, cannot, fall below a certain level for generations;
if they do, my dear brother-in-law, the idea suffers too.

He was sitting on a bench, inertly watching the deva-
station wrought by Bendico in the flowerbeds; every
now and again the dog would turn innocent eyes towards
him as if asking for praise at labour done: fourteen
carnations broken off, half a hedge torn apart, an irri-
gation channel blocked. How human! "Good, Bendico,
come here." And the animal hurried up and put its earthy
nostrils into his hand, anxious to show it had forgiven
this silly interruption of a fine job of work.

Those audiences! All those audiences granted him by
King Ferdinand at Caserta, at Capodimonte, at Portici,
Naples, anywhere at all.

Beside the chamberlain on duty, chatting as he
guided with a cocked hat under an arm and the latest
Neapolitan slang on his lips, they would move through
innumerable rooms of superb architecture and revolting
decor (just like the Bourbon monarchy itself), plunge into
dirty passages and up ill-kept stairs, and finally emerge
into an ante-chamber filled with waiting people; closed
faces of police spies, avid faces of petitioners. The
chamberlain apologised, pushed through this mob, and
led him towards another ante-chamber reserved for mem-
bers of the Court; a little blue and silver room of the
period of Charle? III. After a short wait a lackey tapped
at the door and they were admitted into the August
Presence.

The private study was small and consciously simple; on
the white-washed walls hung a portrait of King Francis I
and one, with an acid ill-tempered expression, of the reign-
ing Queen; above the mantelpiece was a Madonna by Andrea
del Sarto looking astounded at finding herself in the
company of coloured lithographs representing obscure
Neapolitan saints and sanctuaries; on a side table stood
a wax statuette of the Child Jesus with a votive light before
it; and the modest desk was heaped with papers, white,
yellow and blue; the whole administration of the kingdom
here attained its final phase, that of signature by His
Majesty (D.G.).

Behind this paper barricade was the King. He was already
standing so as not to be seen getting up; the King with
his pallid heavy face between fairish side-whiskers, with
his rough cloth military jacket under which burst a purple
cataract of trousers. He gave a step forward with his
right hand out and bent for the hand-kiss which he would
then refuse.

"Well, Salina, blessings on you!" His Neapolitan accent
was far stronger than the chamberlain's.

"I must beg Your Majesty to excuse me for not wearing
court dress; I am only just passing through Naples;
but I did not wish to forgo paying my respects to
Your Revered Person."

"Nonsense, Salina, nonsense: you, know you're
always at home here at Ca'serta.

"At home, of course," he repeated, sitting down behind
the desk and waiting a second before indicating to his guest
to sit down too.

"And how are the little girls" The Prince realised that
now was the moment to produce a play on words both
salacious and edifying.

"Little girls. Your Majesty? At my age and under the
sacred bonds of matrimony? "

The King's mouth' laughed as his hands primly settled
the papers before him. "Those I'd never let myself refer
to, Salina. I was asking about your little daughters, your
little princesses. Concetta, now, that dear godchild of
ours, she must be getting quite big, isn't she, almost
grown up.^ "

From family he passed to science "Salina, you're an
honour not only to yourself but to the whole kingdom.
A fine thing, science, unless it takes to attacking religion."
After this, however, the mask of the Friend was put aside,
and in its place assumed that of the Severe Sovereign.
"Tell me, Salina, what do they think of Castelcicala down
in Sicily?"

Salina had never heard a good word for the Viceroy of
Sicily from either Royalists or Liberals, but not wanting
to let a friend down he parried and kept to generalities.
"A great gentleman, a true hero, maybe a little old for the
.fatigues of viceroyalty . . ."

The King's face darkened; Salina was refusing to act
the spy. So Salina was no use to him. Leaning both hands
on his desk he prepared the dismissal: " I've so much
work! the whole Kingdom rests on these shoulders of
mine." Now for a bit of sweetening: out of the drawer
came the friendly mask again. " When you pass through
Naples next, Salina, come and show your Concetta to the
Queen. She's too young to be presented, I know, but
there's nothing against our arranging a little dinner for
her, is there? Sweets to the sweet, as they say. Well,
Salina, 'bye and be good! "

On one occasion, though, the dismissal had not been so
amiable. The Prince had made his second bow while back-
ing out ‘when the King called after him, " Hey, Salina,
listen. They tell me you've some odd friends in Palermo.
That nephew of yours. Falconer! . . . Why don't you
knock some sense into him? "

"But, Your Majesty, Tancredi thinks of nothing but
women and cards."

The King lost patience; "Take care, Salina, take care.
You're responsible, remember, you're his guardian. Tell
him to look after that neck of his. You may withdraw."

Repassing now through the sumptuously second-rate rooms
on his way to sign ‘the Queen's book, he felt suddenly
discouraged. That plebeian cordiality had depressed him
as much as the police grins. Lucky those who could
interpret such familiarity as friendship, such threats as
royal might. He could not. And as be exchanged gossip
with the impeccable chamberlain he was asking himself
what was destined to succeed this monarchy which bore
the marks of death upon its face. The Piedmontese, the
so-called Galantuomo who was getting himself so talked of
from that little out-of-the-way capital of his? Wouldn't
things be just the same? Just Torinese instead of Nea-
politan dialect; that's all.

He had reached the book. He signed: Fabrizio Corbera,
Prince of Salina.

Or maybe the Republic of Don Peppino Mazzini?
"No thanks. I'd just be plain Signor Corbera."

And the long jog back to Naples did not soothe him. Nor
even the thought of an appointment with Cora Danolo.

This being the case, then, what should he do? Just
cling to the status quo and avoid leaps in the dark?
Then he would have to put up with more rattle of firing-
squads like that which had resounded a short time before
through the squalid square in Palermo; and what use were
they, anyway? " One never achieves anything by going
bangl bangl Does one, Bendico? "

"Ding! Ding! Ding!" rang the bell for dinner. Bendico
rushed ahead with mouth watering in anticipation.

"Just like a Piedmontese! "thought Salina as he moved
back up the steps.

Dinner at Villa Salina was served with the slightly
shabby grandeur then customary in the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies. The number of those taking part (fourteen
in all, with the master and mistress of the house, children,
governesses and tutors) was itself enough to give the
dining-table an imposing air. Covered with a fine but
mended lace cloth, it glittered under a powerful oil-lamp
hung precariously under the Murano chandelier. Daylight
was still streaming through the windows, but the white
figures in painted bas-relief against the dark backgrounds
of the door-mantels were already lost in shadow. The silver
was massive and the glass splendid, bearing on smooth
medallions amid cut Bohemian ware the initials F.D.
^Ferdinandus dedii) in memory of royal munificence; but
the plates, each signed by an illustrious artist, were mere
survivors of many a scullion's massacre and originated from
different services. The biggest, from Capodimonte with
a wide almond-green border engraved with little gilt
anchors, were reserved for the Prince, who liked everything
round him to be on his own scale except his wife.

When he entered the dining-room the whole party was al-
ready assembled, only the Princess sitting, the rest stand-
ing behind their chairs. Opposite his own chair, flanked
by a pile of plates, swelled the silver flanks of the enor-
mous soup tureen with its cover surmounted by a prancing
Leopard. The Prince ladled out the minestra himself, a
pleasant chore, symbol of his proud duties as paterfamilias.
That evening, though, there came a sound that had not been
heard for some time, a threatening tinkle of the ladle
against a side of the tureen; sign of great though still
controlled anger, one of the most terrifying sounds in the
world, as one of his sons used to call it even forty years
later. The Prince had noticed that the sixteen-year-old
Francesco Paolo was not in his place. The lad entered at
once ("Excuse me, Papa ") and sat down. He was not
reproved, but Father Pirrone, whose duties were more or
less those of sheep dog, bent his head and muttered a
prayer. The bomb did not explode, but the gust from its
passage had swept the table and ruined the dinner all the
same. As they ate in silence the Prince's blue eyes, narrowed
behind half-closed lids, stared at his children one by one
and numbed them with fear.

But, "A fine family," he was thinking. The girls
plump, glowing, with gay little dimples, and between
forehead and nose that frown which was the hereditary
mark of the Salina; the males slim but wiry, wearing an
expression of fashionable melancholy as they wielded knives
and forks with subdued violence. One of them had been
away for two years: Giovanni, the second son, the most
loved, the most difficult. One fine day he had vanished
from home and there had been no news of him for two
months. Then a cold but respectful letter arrived from
London with apologies for any anxiety he had caused,
reassurances about his health, and the strange statement
that he preferred a modest life as clerk in a coal depot
to a pampered (read: "fettered ") existence in the ease of
Palermo. Often a twinge of anxiety for the errant youth
in that foggy and heretical city would prick the Prince's
heart and torture him. His face grew darker than ever.

It grew so dark that the Princess, sitting next to him,
put out her childlike hand and stroked, the powerful paw
reposing on the tablecloth. A thoughtless gesture, which
loosed a whole chain of reactions in him; irritation at being
pitied, then a surge of sensuality, not however directed
towards her who had aroused it. Into the Prince's mind
flashed a picture of Mariannina with her head deep in a
pillow. He raised a dry voice: "Domenico," he said to a
lackey, "go and tell Don Antonio to harness the bays in
the brougham; I'll be going down to Palermo immediately
after dinner." A glance into his wife's eyes, which had gone
glassy, made him regret his order: 'but as it was quite
out of the question to withdraw instructions already
given, he persevered and even added a jeer to his cruelty;
"Father Pirrone", you will come with me; we'll be back
by eleven; you can spend a couple of hours with your
Jesuit friends."

There could obviously be no valid reason for visiting
Palermo at night in those disordered times, except some
low love-adventure; and taking the family chaplain as
companion was sheer offensive arrogance. So at least
Father Pirrone felt, and was offended, though of course
he acquiesced.

The last medlar had scarcely been eaten when the carriage
wheels were heard crunching under the porch; in the hall,
as a lackey handed the Prince his top hat and the Jesuit his
tricorne, the Princess, now on the verge of tears, made a
last attempt to hold him — "vain as ever: "But Fabrizio,
in times like these . . . with the streets full of soldiers,
of hooligans . . . why, anything might happen."

"Nonsense," he snapped, "Nonsense, Stella; what could
happen? Everyone knows me; there aren't many men as tall
in Palermo. I'll see you later." And he placed a hurried
kiss on her still unfurrowed brow which was level with
his chin. But, whether the smell of the Princess's
skin had called up tender memories, or whether the peni-
tential steps of Father Pirrone behind him evoked pious
warnings, on reaching the carriage door he very nearly
did countermand the trip. At that moment, just as he was
opening his mouth to order the carriage back to the stables,
a loud shriek of "Fabrizio, my Fabrizio! " followed by a
scream, reached him from the window above. The Princess
was having one of her fits of hysteria. "Drive on," said
he to the coachman on the box holding a whip diagonally
across his paunch. "Drive on, down to Palermo and leave
Father at the Jesuit house," and he banged the carriage
door before the lackey could shut it.

It was not dark yet and the road meandered on, very
white, deep between high walls. As they came out of the
Salina property they passed on the left the half-ruined
Falconeri villa, owned by Tancredi, his nephew and ward.
A spendthrift father, married to the Prince's sister, had
squandered his whole fortune and then died. It had been
one of those total ruins which included even the gold
braid on the lackey's liveries, and when the widow died
the King had conferred the guardianship of her son, then
aged fourteen, on his uncle Salina. The lad, scarcely
known before, had become very dear to the irascible
Prince, who perceived in him a riotous zest for life and
a frivolous temperament contradicted by sudden serious
moods. Though the Prince never admitted it to himself,
he would have preferred the lad as his heir to that booby
Paolo. Now, at twenty-one, Tancredi wgs enjoying life
on the money which his uncle never grudged him, even
from his own pocket. "I wonder what the silly boy is up
to now?" thought the Prince as they drove past Villa
Falconeri, whose huge bougainvillaea cascaded over the
gates like swags of episcopal silk, lending a deceptive air
of gaiety to the dark.

"What is he up to now?" For King Ferdinand, in speaking
of the young man's undesirable acquaintances, had been
wrong to mention the matter but right in his facts. Swept
up in a circle of gamblers and so-called "light" ladies,
all dominated by his slim charm, Tancredi had actually
got to the point of sympathising with the "Sect" and get-
ting in touch with the secret National Committee; maybe he
drew money from them as well as from the Royal coffers.
It had taken the Prince a great deal of labour and trouble,
visits to a sceptical Castelcicala and ifh over-polite Manis-
calco, to prevent the youth getting into real trouble after
the 4th of April "riots." That hadn't been too good;
on the other hand Tancredi could never do wrong in
his uncle's eyes: so the real fault lay with the times,
these confused times in which a young man of good
family wasn't even free to play a game of faro without
involving himself with compromising acquaintanceships.
Bad times.

"Bad times. Your Excellency." The voice of Father Pir-
rone sounded like an echo of his thoughts. Squeezed into
a corner of the brougham, hemmed in by the massive Prince,
subject to that same Prince's bullying, the Jesuit was
suffering in body and conscience, and, being a man of parts
himself was now transposing his own ephemeral discomfort
into the perennial realms of history. "Look, Excellency,"
and he pointed to the mountain heights around the Conca
d'Oro still visible in the last dusk. On their slopes and
peaks glimmered dozens of flickering lights, bonfires lit
every night by the rebel bands, silent threats to the city
of palaces and convents. They looked like lights that burn
in sick rooms during the final nights.

"I can see. Father, I can see," and it occurred to him
that perhaps Tancredi was beside one of those ill-omened
fires, his aristocratic hands stoking on twigs being burnt
to damage just such hands as his. "A fine guardian I am,
with my ward up to any nonsense that passes through his
head."

The road was now beginning to slope gently downhill
and Palermo could be seen very close, plunged in complete
darkness, its low shuttered houses weighed down by the
huge edifices of convents and monasteries. There were
dozens of these, all vast, often grouped in twos or threes,
for women and for men, for rich and poor, nobles and
plebeians, for Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Capuchins,
Carmelites, Liguorians, Augustinians . . . Squat domes
in flabby curves like breasts emptied of milk rose higher
here and there; but it was the religious houses which gave
the city its grimness and its character, its sedateness and also
the sense of death which not even the vibrant Sicilian light
could ever manage to disperse. And at that hour, at night,
they were despots of the scene. It was against them really
that the bonfires were lit on the hills, stoked by men who
were themselves very like those living in the monasteries
below, as fanatical, as self-absorbed, as avid for power or
rather for the idleness which was, for them, the purpose
power.

This was what the Prince was thinking as the bays trotted
down the slope; thoughts in contrast to his real self,
caused by anxiety about Tancredi and by the sensual urge
which turned him against the restrictions embodied by
religious houses.

Now the road was crossing orange groves in flower, and
the nuptial scent of the blossoms absorbed the rest as
a full moon does a landscape; the smell of sweating horses,
the smell of leather from the carriage upholstery, the smell
of Prince and the smell of Jesuit, were all cancelled out
by that Islamic perfume evoking houris and fleshly joys
beyond the grave.

It even touched Father Pirrone. "How lovely this would
be, Excellency, if . . ."

"If there weren't so many Jesuits," thought the Prince,
his delicious anticipations interrupted by the priest's voice.

At once he regretted this rudeness of thought, and his big
hand tapped his old friend's tricorne.

Where the suburbs began, at Villa Airoldi, the carriage
was stopped by a patrol. Voices from Apulia, voices from
Naples, called a halt, bayonets glittered under a wavering
lantern; but a sergeant soon recognised the Prince sitting
there with his top hat on his knees. "Excuse us. Excellency,
pass on." And a soldier was even told to get up on ^o the
box so that the carriage would have no more trouble at
other block posts. The loaded carriage moved on more
slowly, round Villa Ranchibile, through Torrerosse and
the gardens of Villafranca, and entered the city by Porta
Maqueda. Outside the Cafffe Romeres at the Quattro Canti
di Campagna officers from units on guard were sitting
laughing and eating huge ices. But that was the only sign
of life in the entire city; the deserted streets echoed only
to the rhythmic march of pickets on their rounds, passing
with white bandoliers crossed over their chests. On each
side were continuous monastery walls, the Monastery of the
Mountain, of the Stigmata, of the Cross-Bearers, of the
Theatines, massive, black as pitch, immersed in a sleep
that seemed likd the end of all things.

"I'll fetch you in a couple of hours. Father. Pray well."

And poor Pirrone knocked confusedly at the door of the
Jesuit house as the brougham wheeled off down a side
street.

Leaving the carriage at his palace, the Prince set off for
his destination on foot. It was a short walk, but through a
quarter of ill repute. Soldiers in full equipment, who had
obviously just slipped away from the patrols bivouacked
in the squares, were issuing with shining eyes from little
houses on whose balconies pots of basil explained their
ease of entry. Sinister looking youths in wide trousers were
quarrelling in the guttural grunts Sicilians use in anger.

In the distance echoed shots from nervous sentries. Once
past this district his route skirted the Gala; in the old
fishing port decaying boats bobbed up and down, desolate
as mangy dogs.

"I'm a sinner, I know, doubly a sinner, by Divine Law
and by Stella's human love. There's no doubt of that, and
to-morrow I'll go and confess to Father Pirrone." He smiled
to himself at the thought that it might be superfluous, so
certain must the Jesuit be of his sins of to-day. And then
a spirit of quibble came over him again. "I'm sinning, it's
true, but I'm sinning so as not to sin worse, to stop this
sensual nagging, to tear this thorn out of my flesh and a-
void worse trouble. That the Lord knows." Suddenly he was
swept by a gust of tenderness towards himself. "I'm just
a poor, weak creature," he thought as his heavy steps
crunched the dirty gravel. " I'm weak and without support.
Stella! oh, well, the Lord knows how much I've loved her*
but I was married at twenty. And now she's too bossy,
as well as too old." His moment of weakness passed. "But
I've still got my vigour; and how can I find satisfaction
with a woman who makes the sign of the Cross in bed
before every embrace and then at the critical moment just
cries, "Gesummaria!" When we married and she was
sixteen I found that rather exalting; but now . . . seven
children I've had with her, seven; and never once have
I seen her navel. Is that right?" Now he was almost
shouting, whipped by this odd anguish, "Is it right? I
ask you all! " And he turned to the portico of the Catena.
"Why, she's the real sinner!"

Comforted by this reassuring discovery he gave a firm
knock at Mariannina's door.

Two hours later he was in his brougham on the way
home with Father Pirrone beside him. The latter was
worried; his colleagues had been telling him about the
political situation which was, it seemed, much tenser than
it looked from the detached calm of Villa Salina. There was
fear of a landing by the Piedmontese in the south of the
island, near Sciacca; the authorities had noticed a silent
ferment among the people; at the first sign of weakening
control the city rabble would take lo looting and rape.
The Jesuit Fathers were thoroughly alarmed and three of
them, the oldest, had left for Naples by the afternoon
packet-boat, taking their archives with them. "May the
Lord protect us, and spare this holy Kingdom! "

The Prince scarcely listened. He was immersed in
sated ease tinged with disgust. Mariannina had looked at
him with her big opaque peasant's eyes, had refused him
nothing, and been humble and compliant in every way.
A kind of Bendico in a silk petticoat. In a moment of
particularly intense pleasure he had heard her exclaim
"My Prince!" He smiled again with satisfaction at the
thought. Much better than "mon chat " or "mon singe
blond" produced in equivalent moments by Sarah, the
Parisian slut he had frequented three years ago when the
Astronomical Congress gave him a gold medal at the
Sorbonne. Better than "mon chat", no doubt of that;
much better than "Gesummaria"\ no sacrilege at least.
A good girl, Mariannina; next time he visited he'd bring
her three lengths of crimson silk.

But how sad too: that manhandled, youthful flesh,
that resigned lubricity; and what about him, what was
he? A pig, just a pig! Suddenly there occurred to him
a verse read by chance in a Paris bookshop while glancing
at a volume by someone whose name he had forgotten,
one of those poets the French incubate and forget next
week. He could see once more the lemon-yellow pile of
unsold copies, the page, an uneven page, and heard again
the verses ending a jumble of a poem:

. . . donnez-moi la force et le courage
de contempler mon coeur et mon corps
sans dego&t.

And as Father Pirrone went worrying on about a person
called La Farina a#d another called Crispi, the Prince
dozed off into a kind of tense euphoria, lulled by the trot-
ting of the bays on whose plump flanks quivered the light
from the carriage lamps. He woke up at the turning by Villa
Falconer!. "Oh, he's a fine one too, tending bonfires
that'll destroy him!"

In the matrimonial bedroom, glancing at poor Stella with
her hair well tucked into her nightcap, sighing as she
slept in the great brass bed, he felt touched. "Seven
children she's given me and she's been mine alone." A
faint whiff of valerian drifted through the room, last
vestige of her crisis of hysterics. "Poor little Stella,"
he murmured pityingly as he climbed into bed. The hours
passed and he could not sleep; some powerful hand was
stirring three fires smouldering in his mind; of Mariannina's
caresses, of those French verses, of the autos-da-fe on the
hills.

Towards dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to
make the sign of the Cross.

Next morning the sun lit on a refreshed Prince. He had
taken his coffee and was shaving in front of the mirror
in a red and black flowered dressing-gown. Bendico was
leaning a heavy head on one of his slippers. As he shaved
his right cheek he noticed in the mirror a face behind
his own, the face of a young man, thin and etegant with a
shy, quizzical look. He did not turn round and went on
shaving. "Well, Tancredi, where were you last night?"

" Good morning, Nuncle. Where was I? Oh, just out with
friends. An innocent night. Not like a certain person
I know who went down to Palermo for some fun! "

The Prince concentrated on shaving the difficult bit
between lips and chin. His nephew's slightly nasal voice
had such a youthful zest that it was impossible to be angry;
but he might allow himself a touch of surprise. He turned
and with his towel under his chin looked his nephew up
and down. The young man was in shooting kit, a long
tight jacket, high leggings. "And who was this person,
may I ask? "

"Yourself, Nuncle, yourself. I saw you with my own
eyes, at the Villa Airoldi block-post, as you were talking
to the sergeant. A fine thing at your age! And a priest
with you, too! You old playboy! "

Really this was a little too insolent. Tancredi thought
he could allow himself anything. Dark blue eyes, the eyes
of his mother, his own eyes, gazed laughingly at him
through half-closed lids. The Prince was offended; the
boy didn't know where to stop; but he could not bring
himself to reprove him: and anyway he was quite right.
"Why are you dressed up like that, though? What's on?
A fancy-dress ball in the morning? "

The youth turned serious; his triangular face assumed
an unexpectedjy manly look. "I'm leaving, Uncle, leaving
in an hour. I came to say good-bye."

Poor Salina felt his heart tighten. "A duel?" "A
big duel, uncle. A duel with little King Francis. I'm
going into the hills at Ficuzza; don't tell a soul, particularly
Paolo. Great things are in the offing and I don't want to
stay at home. And anyway I'd be arrested at once if I did."

The Prince had one of his visions: a savage guerrilla
skirmish, shots in the woods, and Tancredi, his Tancredi,
lying on the ground with his guts hanging out like that
poor soldier. "You're mad, my boy, to go with those
people! They're all in the mafia, all trouble-makers. A
Falconeri should be with us, for the King."

The eyes began smiling again. "For the King, yes,
of course. But which King? " The lad had one of those
sudden serious moods which made him so mysterious and
so endearing. "Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they'll
foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they
are, things will have to change. D'you understand?" Rather
moved, he embraced his uncle. " Well, good-bye, for now.
I'll be back with the tricolour." The rhetoric of those
friends of his had touched Tancredi a little too; and yet,
no, there was a tone in that nasal voice which undercut
the emphasis.

What a boy! Talking rubbish and contradicting it
at the same time. And all that Paolo of his was probably
thinking of at that moment was Guiscard's digestion! This
was his real son! The Prince jumped up, pulled the towel
from his neck and rummaged in a drawer. "Tancredi,
Tancredi, wait! " He ran after his nephew, slipped a roll
of gold pieces into his pocket, and squeezed his shoulder.

The other laughed. "You're subsidising the Revolu-
tion now! Thank you, Nuncle, see you soon; and my
respects to my aunt." And off he rushed down the stairs.

Bendico was called from following hjp friend with joyous
barks through the Villa, the Prince's shave was over,
his face washed. The valet came to help him into shoes
and clothes? "The tricolour! Tricolour indeed! They fill
their mouths with these words, the scamps. What does
that ugly geometric sign, that aping of the French mean,
compared to our white banner with its golden lily in the
middle? What hope can those clashing colours bring 'em? "
It was now the moment for the monumental black satin
cravat to be wound round his neck: a difficult operation
during which political worries were best suspended. One
turn, two turns, three turns. The big delicate hands
smoothed out the folds, settled the overlaps, pinned into
the silk the little head of Medusa with ruby eyes. "A
clean waistcoat. Can't you see this one's dirty?" The
valet stood up on tiptoe to help him into a frockcoat of
brown cloth; he proffered a handkerchief with three drops
of bergamot. Keys, watch and chain, money, the Prince
put in a pocket himself. Then he glanced in a mirror;
no doubt about if, he was still a fine-looking man. "Old
play-boy indeed! A bad joke, that one of Tancredi's! I'd
like to see him at my age, all skin and bone as he is! "

His vigorous steps made the windows tinkle in the
rooms he crossed. The house was calm, luminous, ornate;
above all it was his own. On his way downstairs he suddenly
understood that remark of Tancredi "if we want things
to stay as they are . . ." Tancredi would go a long way:
Jie'd always thought so.

The estate office was still empty, lit silently by the
sun through closed shutters. Although the scene of more
frivolity than anywhere else in the villa, its appearance
was of calm austerity. On white-washed walls, reflected in
wax-polished tiles, hung enormous pictures representing
the various Salina estates; there, in bright colours con-
trasting with the gold and black frame, was Salina, the
island of the twin mountains, surrounded by a sea of
white-flecked waves on which pranced beflagged galleons;
Querceta, its low houses grouped round the rustic church
on which were converging groups of bluish-coloured
pilgrims; Ragattisi tucked under mountain gorges: Argi-
vocale, tiny*' in contrast to the vast plains of corn dotted
with hard-working peasants; Donnafugata with its baroque
palace, goal of coaches in scarlet and green and gilt,
loaded with women, wine and violins; and many others,
all protected by a taut reassuring sky and by the Leopard
grinning between long whiskers. Each picture was festive
— each trying to show the enlightened empire, like wine,
of the House of Salina. Ingenuous masterpieces of rustic
art from the previous century; useless though at showing
boundaries, or detaiflng areas or tenancies; such things
remained obscure. The wealth of centuries had been
transrnuted into ornament, luxury, pleasure; no more;
the abolition of feudal rights had swept away duties as well
as privileges; wealth, like an old wine, had let the dregs
of greed, even of care, and prudence fall to the bottom of
the barrel, leaving only verve and colour. And thus,
eventually it cancelled itself out; this wealth which had
achieved its object was composed now only of essential
oils — and like essential oils it soon evaporated. Already
some of the estates which looked so gay in those pictures
had taken wing, leaving behind only bright-coloured*
paintings and names. Others seemed like those September
swallows which though still present are grouped stridently
on the trees, ready for departure. But there were so many;
it seemed they could never end.

In spite of this the sensation felt by the Prince on
entering his own office was, as always, an unpleasant one.
In the centre of the room towered a huge desk, with dozens
of drawers, niches, sockets, hollows and folding shelves;
its mass of yellow wood and black inlay was carved and
decorated like a stage set, full of unexpected, uneven
surfaces, of secret drawers which no one knew now how
to work except thieves. It was covered with papers and,
although the Prince had taken care that most of these
referred to the starry regions of astronomy, there were
quite enough of others to fill his princely heart with dis-
may. Suddenly he was reminded of King Ferdinand's desk at
Caserta, also covered with papers needing decisions by which
the King illuded himself .to be influencing the course of
fate, actually flowing on its own in another valley.

Salina thought of a medicine recently discovered in the
United States of America which could prevent suffering
even during the most serious operations and produce
serenity amid disaster. Morphia wsfs the name given to
this crude substitute for the stoicism of the ancients and
for Christian fortitude. With the late King, poor man,
phantom administration had taken the place of morphia;
he, Salina, had a more refined recipe: astronomy. And
thrusting away the memory of lost Ragattisi and precarious
Argivocoli, he plunged into reading the latest number of
the 'Journal des Savants. "Les dernieres observations de
Observatoire de Greenwich presentent un interit tout
particulier . . ."

But he was soon exiled from these stellar realms. In
•came Don Ciccio Ferrara, the accountant. He was a
scraggy little man who hid the deluded and rapacious
mind of a Liberal behind reassuring spectacles and
immaculate cravats. That morning he looked brisker than
usual; obviously the same news which had depressed
Father Pirrone had acted as a tonic on him. "Sad times.
Excellency," he said after the usual ritual greetings; "Big
troubles ahead, but after a bit of bother and a shot or two
things will turn out for the best: then glorious new days
will dawn for this Sicily of ours; if it weren't that so many
fine lads are sure to get killed, we should be really pleased."

The Prince grunted and expressed no opinion. "Don
Ciccio," he said then, "the Querceta rents need looking
into: we haven't had a thing from them for two years."

"The books are ready. Your Excellency." It was the
magic phrase. "I only have to write to Don Angela
Maza to send out collectors: I will prepare the letter
for your signature this very day."

He went to turn over the huge registers. In them, with
two years delay, were inscribed in minute writing all
the Salina accounts, except for the really important ones.
When he was alone again the Prince waited a little before
soaring back through the clouds. He felt irritated not
so much by the events themselves as by the stupidity of
Don Ciccio, whom he sensed at once to represent the class
which would now be gaining power. "What the fellow
says is the very contrary of the truth. Regretting the fine
lads who're sure to die! there'll be very few of those, if
I'm any judge of the two adversaries; not a single casualty
more than is strictly necessary for a victory bulletin, whe-
ther compiled at Naples or Turin. But he does believe in
'glorious new days for this Sicily of ours ' as he puts
it; these have been promised us on every single one of the
thousand invasions we've had, by Nicias onwards, and
they've never come. And why should they come, anyway?
What will happen next? Oh, well. Just negotiations
punctuated by a little harmless shooting, then all will be
the same though all will be changed." Into his mind
had come Tancredi's ambiguous words, which he now found
himself really understanding. Reassured, he ceased turning
over the pages of the scientific review and looked up at
the scorched slopes of Monte Pellegrino, scarred like the
face of misery by eternal ravines.

Soon afterwards appeared Russo, whom the Prince
found the most significant of his dependants. Clever,
dressed rather smartly in a striped velvet jacket, with greedy
eyes below a remorseless forehead, the Prince found him
a perfect specimen of a class on its way up. He was
obsequious too, and even sincerely friendly in a way, for
his cheating was done in the certainty of exercising a right.
"I can imagine how Your Excellency must be worried by
Signorino Tancredi's departure; but he won't be away
long I'm sure, and all will end well." Again the Prince
found himself facing one of the enigmas of Sicily; in this
secret island, where houses are barred and peasants refuse
to admit they even know the way to their own village in
clear view on a hillock within a few minutes' walk, here,
in spite of the ostentatious show of mystery, reserve is a
myth.

He signed to Russo to sit down and stared him in the
eyes. "Pietro, let's talk to each other man to man. You're
involved in all this too, aren't you? " No, came the answer,
not actually; he had a family and such risks were for young
men like Signorino Tancredi. "I'd never hide anything
from Your Excellency, who's like a father to me." (Yet
three years before he had hidden in his cellar three hundred
baskets of lemons belonging to the Prince, and he knew that
the Prince knew.) " But I must say that my heart is with
them, those bold lads." He got up to let in Bendico, who
was making the door shake under his friendly impetus.
Then he sat down again. " Your Excellency knows we
can't stand any more; searches, questions, nagging about
every little thing, a police-spy at every corner of the street;
an honest man can't even look after his own affairs. After-
wards, though, we'll have liberty, security, lighter taxes,
ease, trade. Everything will be better; the only ones to
lose will be the priests. But the Lord protects poor folk
like me, not them."

The Prince smiled. He knew that he, Russo was at
that moment trying through intermediaries to buy the
estate of Argivocoli. "There will be a day or two of
shooting and trouble, but Villa Salina will be safe as a
rock; Youf Excellency is our father, I have many friends
here. The Piedmontese will come cap in hand to pay Your
Excellencies their respects. And then you are also the
uncle, the guardian of Don Tancredi 1 "

The Prince felt humiliated, reduced to the rank of one
protected by Russo's friends; his only merit, as far as he
could see, was being uncle to that urchin Tancredi. "In
a week's time I'll find my life's only safe because I keep
Bendico." He squeezed one of the dog's ears so hard that
the poor creature whined, honoured doubtless but in pain.

Shortly afterwards a remark of Russo's relieved the
Prince. "Everything will be better, believe me. Excellency.
Honest and able men will have a chance to get ahead, that's
all. The rest will be as it was before." All that these people,
these petty little local Liberals wanted, was to find ways
of making more money themselves. No more. The
swallows would take wing a little sooner, that was all.
Anyway there were still plenty in the nest.

"You may be right. Who knows? " Now he had penetrated
all the hidden meanings; the enigmatic words of Tan-
credi, the rhetorical ones of Ferrara, the false but
revealing ones of Russo, had yielded their reassuring
secret. Much would happen, but all would be play-acting;
a noisy, romantic play with a few spots of blood on the
comic costumes. This was a country of arrangements, with
none of that frenzy of the French; and anyway, had anything
really serious happened in France, except for June of '48?
He felt like saying to Russo, but his innate courtesy held
him back, "I understand now; you don't want to destroy
us, who are your 'fathers.' You just want to take our
places. Gently, nicely, putting a few thousand ducats in
your pockets meanwhile. And what then? Your nephew,
my dear Russo, will sincerely believe himself a baron;
maybe you, because of your name will become descendant
of a grand duke of Muscovy instead of some red-skinned
peasant, which is what that name of yours means. And
long before that your daughter will have married one of us,
perhaps Tancredi himself, with his blue eyes and his willowy
hands. She's good-looking, anyway, and once she's learned
to wash . . . For all will be the same, just as it is now:
except for an imperceptible change round of classes. My
Court Chamberlain's gilt keys, my cherry-coloured cordon
of St. Januarius will stay in a drawer and end up in some
glass case of Paolo's son. But the Galina will remain the
Salina; they may even get some compensation or other;
a seat in the Sardinian Senate, that pink ribbon ^of the
Order of St. .Maurice. Both have tassels, after all."

He got up. "Pietro, talk to your friends, will you?
There are a lot of girls here. They mustn't be alarmed."

"I felt that. Excellency, and have already spoken of
it — Villa Salina will be quiet as a convent," and he smiled
with amiable irony.

Don Fabrizio went out followed by Bendico; he wanted
to go up and see Father Pirrone, but the dog's yearning look
forced him out into the garden; for Bendico had thrilling
memories of the fine work he'd put in the night before,
and wanted to finish it off like a good artist. The garden
was even more odorous than the day before, and under the
morning sun the gold of the acacia tree clashed less. "What
about our King and Queen, though, what about them?
And what about the principle of legitimacy?" The thought
disturbed him a moment, he could not avoid it. For a sec-
ond he felt like Mklvica. Those Ferdinands, those Fran-
cises that had been so despised, seemed for a moment like
elder brothers, trusting, just, affectionate, true kings.
But the defence forces of his inner calm always on the
alert in the Prince were already hurrying to his aid,
with the musketry of law, the artillery of history. " What
about France? Isn't Napoleon III illegitimate? And aren't
the French quite happy under that enlightened Emperor,
who will surely lead them to the highest of destinies?
Anyway, let's face it. Was our Charles III so definitely
within his right? Was his Battle of Bitonto so unlike that
of Bisacquino or Corleone or any of these battles in which
the Piedmontese are now sweeping our troops before them?
One of those battles fought so that all should remain as
it was? And anyway, even Jupiter was not legitimate
King of Olympus."

At this, of course, Jupiter's coup d'etat against Saturn
was bound to bring his mind back to the stars.

Leaving Bendico panting from his own dynamism, he
climbed the stairs again, crossed rooms in which his
daughters sat chatting to friends from the Holy Redeemer
(at his passage the silken skirts rustled as the girls rose),
went up a long ladder and came into the bright blue light
of the observatory. Father Pirrone, with the serene air
of a priest who has said Mass and drunk black coffee
with Monreale biscuits, was sitting immersed in algebraical
formulae. The two telescopes and three lenses were lying
there quietly, dazed by the sun, with black pads over the
eyepieces, like well-trained animals who knew their meal
was only given them at night.

The sight of the Prince drew the priest from his
calculations and reminded him of his humiliation of the
night before. He got up, and then, as he bowed politely,
found himself saying, "Is Your Excellency coming to
confession? " The Prince, whose sleep that night and
conversations that morning had driven the episode of the
previous night from his mind, looked amazed. "Confession?
It's not Saturday." Then he remembered and smiled,
"Really, Father, there wouldn't even be need, would there?
You know it all already."

This insistence on his enforced complicity irritated the
Jesuit. " Excellency, the efficacy of confession not only
consists in telling our sins, but in being sorry for them.
And until you do so and show me you do so, you will
remain in mortal sin, whether I know what your sins are
or not."He blew a meticulous whiff at a bit of fluff on
his sleeve and plunged back into his abstractions.

Such was the calm produced in the Prince's mind by the
political discoveries of that morning that he did nothing
but smile at what would at other times have seemed to
him gross impertinence. He opened one of the windows
of the little tower. The countryside spread below in all
its beauty. Under the leaven of the strong sun everything
seemed weightless; the sea in the background was a dash
of pure colour, the mountains which had seemed so alarm-
ingly full of hidden men during the night now looked
like masses of vapour on the point of dissolving, and grim
Palermo itself lay crouching quietly around its monasteries
like a flock of sheep around their shepherds. Even the
foreign warships anchored in the harbour in case of trouble
spread no sense of fear in the majestic calm. The sun,
still far from its blazing zenith on that morning of the 13th
of May, was showing itself the true ruler of Sicily; the
crude brash sun, the drugging sun, which annulled every
will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled in
violence and arbitrary dreams.

"It'll take, any number of Victor Emmanuels to change
this magic potion for ever being poured out for us.''

Father Pirrone had got up, settled his sash and moved
towards the Prince with a hand out. "Excellency', I was
too brusque. Let me not trespass on your kindness, but do
please listen and come to confession.''

The ice was broken. And the Prince could tell Father
Pirrone of his own political intuitions. But the Jesuit
was far from sharing his relief and even became acid again.
"Briefly, then, you nobles will come to an agreement with
the Liberals, and yes, even with the Masons, at our expense,
at the expense of the Church. Then, of course, our property,
which is the patrimony of the poor, will be seized and
carved up among the most brazen of their leaders; and who
will then feed all the destitute sustained and guided by
the Church to-day? " The Prince was silent. "How will
those desperate masses be placated? I'll tell you at once.
Excellency. They will be flung first a portion, then another
portion and eventually all the rest of your estates. And so
God will have done His justice, even by means of the
Masons. Our Lord healed the blind in body; but what will
be the fate of the blind in spirit?"

The unhappy priest was breathing hard; sincere horror
at the foreseen dispersal of Church property was linked with
regret at his having lost control of himself again, with fear
of offending the Prince, whom he genuinely liked and whose
blustering rages as well as disinterested kindness he knew
well. So he sat down warily, glancing every now and again
at Don Fabrizio, who had taken up a little brush and was
cleaning the knobs of a telescope, apparently absorbed.
A little later he got up and cleaned his hands thoroughly
with a rag; his face was quite expressionless, his light eyes
seemed intent only on finding any remaining stain of oil
in the cuticles of his nails. Down below, around the villa,
all was luminous and grandiose silence, emphasised rather
than disturbed by the distant barking of Bendico baiting
the gardener's dog on the manure heap, and by the dull
rhythmic beat from the kitchen of a cook's knife chopping
meat for the next meal. The sun had absorbed the turbu-
lence of men as well as the harshness of earth. The Prince
moved towards the priest's table, sat down and began
drawing pointed little Bourbon lilies with a carefully
sharpened pencil which the Jesuit had left behind in
his anger. He looked serious but so serene that Father
Pirrone no longer felt on tenterhooks.

"We're not blind, my dear Father, we're just human
beings. We live in a changing reality to which we try to
adapt ourselves like seaweed bending under the pressure of
water. Holy Church has been granted an explicit promise
of immortality; we, as a social class, have not. Any pal-
liative which may give us another hundred years of life
is like eternity to us. We may worry about our children and
perhaps our grandchildren; but beyond what we can hope
to stroke with these hands of ours we have no obligations.
I cannot worry myself about what will happen to any
possible descendants in the year 1960. The Church, yes.
She must worry for She is destined not to die. Solace is
implicit in Her desperation. Don't you think that if now
or in the future She could save herself by sacrificing us
She wouldn't do so?. Of course She would, and be right! "

Father Pirrone was so pleased at not having offended
the Prince that he did not take offence either. Of course
that word "desperation" applied to the Church was quite
inadmissible, but long habit as confessor had made him
capable of appreciating Don Fabrizio's disillusioned mood.
He must not let the other triumph, though. "Now, Excel-
lency, you have a couple of sins to confess to me on
Saturday; one of the flesh yesterday, one of the spirit
to-day. Remember!"

Both soothed, they began discussing a report which they
would soon be sending to a foreign observatory, at Arcetri.
Supported, guided, it seemed, by calculations which were
invisible at that hour yet ever present, the stars cleft
the ether in those exact trajectories of theirs. The
comets would be appearing as usual, punctual to the minute,
in sight of whoever was observing them. They were not
messengers of catastrophe as Stella thought; on the
contrary, their appearance at the time foreseen was a
triumph of the human mind's capacity to project itself and
to participate in the sublime routine of the skies. "Let's
leave the Bendicos down there running after rustic prey,
and the cooks' knives chopping the flesh of innocent beasts.
Above this observatoy the bluster of the one and the blood
on the other merge into tranquil harmony. The real prob-
lem is how to go on living this life of the spirit in its
most sublimated moments, those moments that are most like
death."

So reasoned the Prince, forgetting his own recurrent
whims, his own cavortings of the night before. During
those moments of abstraction he seemed more intimately
absolved, in the sense of being linked anew with the
universe, than by any blessing of Father Pirrone. For
half an hour that morning the gods of the ceilings and
the monkeys on the walls were again put to silence. But
in the drawing-room no one noticed.

When the bell for luncheon called them downstairs,
both had regained their serenity, due to understanding
the political scene and to setting that understanding
aside. An atmosphere of unusual relaxation had spread
over the house. The midday meal was the. chief one of the
day, and went, God be thanked, quite smoothly. This in
spite of one of the ringlets framing the face of the twenty-
year-old Carolina, the eldest daughter, dropping into her
soup plate because apparently of an ill-secured pin. Another
day the incident might have had dreadful consequences,
but now it only heightened the gaiety; and when her
brother, sitting next to her, took the lock of hair and pinned
it on his neckerchief where it hung like a scapular, even
the Prince allowed himself a smile. Tancredi's departure,
destination and reasons were now known to all, and everyone
talked of them, except Paolo who went on eating in silence.

No one was really worrying about him, in fact, but the
Prince, who showed no signs of the anxiety he still felt
deep down, and Concetta who was the only one with a shadow
on her pretty forehead. "The girl must have her eye on
the young scamp. They'd make a fine couple. But I fear
Tancredi will have to aim higher, 8y which of course I
mean lower."

To-day, as political calm had cleared the mists generally
veiling it, the Prince's fundamental good nature showed on
the surface. To reassure his daughter he began explaining
what useless muskets the royal army had; the barrels of
those enormous pieces had no rifling, he said, so bullets
coming from them would have very little penetration;
technical comments thought up on the spur of the moment,
understood by few and convincing none but consoling all,
including Concetta, as they managed to transform war into
a neat little diagram of fire-trajectories from the very
squalid chaos that it really was.

At the end of the meal appeared a rum jelly. This was
the Prince's favourite pudding, and the Princess had been
careful to order it early that morning in gratitude for
favours granted. It was rather threatening at first sight,
shaped like a tower with bastions and battlements and
smooth slippery walls impossible to scale, garrisoned by
red and green cherries and pistachio nuts; but into its
transparent and quivering flanks a spoon plunged with
astounding ease. By the time the amber-coloured fortress
reached Francesco Paolo, the sixteen-year-old son who was
served last, it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks
of wobbly rubble. Exhilarated by the aroma of rum and the
delicate flavour of the multi-coloured garrison, the Prince
enjoyed watching the rapid demolishing of the fortress
beneath the assault of his family's appetite. One of his
glasses was still half-full of Marsala. He raised it, glanced
round the family, gazed for a second into Concetta's blue
eyes, then said: "To the health of our Tancredi." He
drained his wine in a single gulp. The initials F.D., which
before had stood out clearly on the golden colour of the
full glass, were no longer visible.

In the estate office, to which he returned after luncheon,
the sunlight was oblique, and the pictures of his estates,
now skadowed, sent no messages of reproof. "Blessings
on Your Excellency," muttered Pastorello and Lo Nigro,
the two tenants of Ragattisi who had brought the portion
of their rent they paid in kind. They were standing very
straight with stunned-looking eyes in faces carefully shaven
and burnt dark by sun. They gave out a smell of flocks
and herds. The Prince talked to them cordially in his
very stylised dialect, inquired about their families, the state
of their livestock, the outlook for the crops. Then he
asked, "Have you brought anything? " And when the
two answered yes, that it was in the room next door, the
Prince felt a twinge of shame as he realised that the interview
was a repetition of his own audiences with King Ferdinand.
"Wait five minutes and Ferrara will give you the receipts."
He put into their hands a couple of ducats each, worth
more, probably, than what they had brought. "Drink my
health, will you? " and then went and looked at their
produce: on the ground were four cacciacovallo cheeses,
of twelve rounds, each weighing ten kilos; he gave them a
careless glance; he loathed that particular cheese; there
were six baby lambs, the last of the year's litter, with their
heads lolling pathetically above the big gash through which
their life-blood had flowed a few hours before. Their bellies
had been slashed open too, and iridescent intestines hung
out. "May his soul rest in peace," he thought, remember-
ing the gutted soldier of a month before. Four pairs of
chickens tied by the claws were twisting in terror under
the restless shout of Bendico. "Another example of
pointless alarm," he thought, "the dog is no danger to
them at all; he wouldn't even touch one of their bones as
it would give him a belly-ache."

All this blood and panic revolted him, however.

"Pastorello, take the chickens into the coop, will you, as
there's no need of them in the larder; and another time take
the baby lambs straight into the kitchen, will you; they
make a mess here. And you, Lo Nigro, go and tell Salvatore
to come and clean up and take away the cheeses. And open
the window to let out the smell."

Then Ferrara came and made out the receipts.

When the Prince went upstairs again, he found Paolo,
his heir, the Duke of Querceta, waiting for him in his study
on the red sofa where he proposed to take his siesta. The
youth had screwed up all his courage to talk to him. Short,
slim, olive-skinned, he seemed older than the Prince
himself. "I wanted to ask you, papa, how we're to behave
with Tancredi when we next meet him."

The Prince understood at once and felt a twinge of
annoyance, " What d'you mean? Has anything changed? "

"But, papa, you can't possibly approve; he's gone to
join those swine who're making trouble all over Sicily;
things like that just aren't done."

Personal jealousy, a bigot's resentment of his agnostic
cousin, a dullard's at the other's zest, had taken political
guise. The Prince was so indignant that he did not even
ask his son to sit down. " Better to make a fool of oneself
than spend all day staring at horses' dung! I'm even fonder
of Tancredi than I was before. And anyway what he's doing
isn't as silly as all that. If in the future you're able
to go on putting Duke of Querceta on your cards, and if
you inherit any money when I'm gone, you will owe it to
Tancredi and to others like him. Out with you now, and
don't mention the subject to me again! I'm the only one
who gives orders here." Then he became kindlier and
substituted irony for anger. "Be off now, son, as I want
to have a snooze. Go and talk politics with Guiscard, you'll
understand each other."

And as a shaken Paolo closed the door behind him, the
Prince took off his frock-coat and boots, made the sofa
creak under his weight and slid calmly off to sleep.

When he awoke his valet came in with a newspaper and
a letter on a tray. They had been sent up from Palermo
by his brother-in-law Miilvica, brought by a mounted groom
a short while before. Still a little dazed from his after-
noon nap, the Prince opened the letter. " My dear Fabrizio,
I am writing to you in a state of utter collapse. Such
dreadful news in the paper. The Piedmontese have landed.
We are all lost. To-night I and my whole family will take
refuge on a British man-o'-war. You will want to do the
same, I am sure; if you wish I can reserve a berth or two
for you. May God save our beloved King! As always,
Ciccio."

He folded up the letter, put it in his pocket and began
laughing out loud. That ass Mklvica! He'd always been
a rabbit. Not understanding a thing, and now panic-struck.
Abandohing his palace to the mercy of servants; this time
he'd really find it empty on his return. "That reminds
me, Paolo must go and stay down at Palermo; a house
empty at a moment like this means a house lost. I'll tell
him at dinner."

He opened the newspaper. " On the nth of May an act of
flagrant piracy culminated in the landing of armed men
at Marsala. The latest reports say that the band numbers
about eight hundred, and is commanded by Garibaldi. When
these brigands set foot on land they were very careful
to avoid any encounter with the royal troops, and moved
off, as far as can be ascertained, in the direction of
Castelvetrano, threatening peaceful citizens and spreading
rapine and devastation, etc., etc. . . ."

The name of Garibaldi disturbed him a little. That
adventurer all hair and beard was a pure Mazzinian. He
had caused a lot of trouble already. "But if that Galantuomo
King of his has let him come down here it means they're
sure of him. They'll curb him! "

Reassured, he combed his hair and had his shoes and
frock-coat put on again. He thrust the newspaper into a
drawer. It was almost time for Rosary, but the drawing-
room was still empty.. He sat down on a sofa, and as he
waited noticed how the Vulcan on the ceiling was rather
like the lithographs of Garibaldi he had seen in Turin.
He smiled. "Cuckold! "

The family was gathering. Silken skirts rustled. The
youngest were still joking together. Behind the door could
be heard the usual echo of controversy between servants
and Bendico determined to take part.

A ray of sunshine full of dust specks lit up the malicious
monkeys.

He knelt down. "Salve Regina. Mater misericordiae."




II. Donnafugata


　　　　　　August, 1860




"The trees! The trees! "

This shout from the leading carriage could just be
heard along the following four almost invisible in clouds
of white dust; and at every window perspiring faces
expressed tired satisfaction.

The trees were only three, in truth, and eucalyptus at
that, scruffiest of Mother Nature's children. But they
were also the first seen by the Salina family since leaving
Bisacquino at six that morning. It was now eleven, and
for the last five hours all they had set eyes on were bare
hillsides flaming yellow under the sun. Trots over level
ground had alternated briefly with long slow trudges
uphill and then careful shuffles down; both trudge and
trot merging, anyway, into the constant jingle of harness
bells, imperceptible now to the dazed senses except as
sound equivalent of the blazing landscape. They had passed
through crazed-looking villages washed in palest blue;
crossed dry beds of torrents over fantastic bridges; skirted
sheer precipices which no sage and broom could temper.
Never a tree, never a drop of water; just sun and dust.
Inside the carriages, tight shut against that sun and dust,
the temperature must have been well over 120 degrees.
Those desiccated trees yearning away under bleached sky
bore many a message; that they were now within a couple
of hours from their journey's end; that they were entering
the family estates; that they could lunch, and perhaps
even wash their faces in the verminous waters of the
well.

Ten minutes later they reached the farm buildings of
Rampinzeri; a huge pile, only used one month in the year
by labourers, mules and cattle gathered there for the harvest.
Over the great solid yet staved-in door a stone Leopard
pranced in spite of legs broken off by flung stones; next
to the main farm building a deep well, watched over by
those eucalyptuses, mutely offered various services: as
swimming pool, drinking trough, prison or cemetery. It
slaked thirst, spread typhus, guarded the kidnapped and
hid the corpses both of animals and men till they were
reduced to the smoothest of anonymous skeletons.

The whole Salina family alighted from their various
carriages. The Prince, cheered by the thought of soon reach-
ing his beloved Donnafugata, the Princesss irritated and
yet inert, part restored, however, by her husband's serenity;
tired girls; boys excited by novelty and untamed by the heat;
Mademoiselle Dombreuil, the French governess, utterly
exhausted, remembering years spent in Algeria with the
family of Marshal Bugeaud, moaning "Mon Dieu, mon
Dieu, c'est fire qu'en Afnquel " and mopping at her turned-
up nose; Father Pirrone, whose breviary-reading had
lulled him into a sleep which had shortened the whole
trip and made him the spryest of the party; a maid and
two lackeys, city folk worried by the unusual aspect of the
countryside; and Bendico, who had rushed out of the last
carriage and was baying at the funereal suggestions of rooks
swirling low in the light.

All were white with dust to the eyebrows, lips or pig-
tails; whitish puffs arose around those who had reached
the stopping-place and were dusting each other down.

Amid this dirt Tancredi's elegant spruceness stood
out all the more. He had travelled on horseback and,
reaching the farm half an hour before the carriages, had
time to shake off dust, brush up and change his white
cravat. While drawing some water from that well of many
uses he had glanced for a second into the mirror of the
bucket and found himself in good order, with the black
patch over his right eye now more reminiscent than pro-
tective of a wound received three months before in the
fighting at Palermo; with that other dark blue eye which
seemed to have assumed the task of expressing enough sly
gaiety for its mate in temporary eclipse; and with, above
his cravat, a scarlet thread alluding discreetly to the red
shirt he had once worn. He helped the Princess to alight,
dusted the Prince's top hat with his sleeve, distributed
sweets to his girl cousins and quips to the boys, half
genuflected to the Jesuit, returned the passionate hugs of
Bendico, consoled Mademoiselle Dombreuil, laughed at all,
enchanted all.

The coachmen were walking the horses slowly round
to freshen them up before watering, the lackeys laying
tablecloths out on straw left over from the threshing,
in the oblong of shade from the building. Luncheon began
near the accommodating well. All round quiverec^ the funereal
countryside, yellow with stubble, black with burnt patches;
the lament of cicadas filled the sky. It was like a death-
rattle from parched Sicily at the end of August vainly
awaiting rain.

An hour later they were all on the road again, refreshed.
Although the horses were tired and going slower \han ever,
the last part of the journey seemed short; the landscape,
no longer unknown, had lost its more sinister aspects.
They began recognising places they knew well, and goals
of past excursions and picnics in other years — ^the Dragonara
ravine, the Misilbesi cross-roads; soon they would reach
the shrine of Our Lady of Graces, turning-point of their
longest walks from Donnafugata. The Princess had dozed
off, the Prince, alone with her in the wide carriage, was
beaming.

Never had he been so glad to be going to spend three
months at Donnafugata as he was now, in that late August
of 1860. Not only because at Donnafugata he loved the
house, the people, the sense of feudal ownership still
surviving there, but also because, unlike other times,
he felt no regret for his peaceful evenings in the ob-
servatory, his occasional visits to Mariannina. The
truth was he had found the spectacle offered by Palermo
in the last three months rather nauseating. He would
have liked to have had the fun of being the only one
to understand the situation and accept that red-shirted
"bogey-man " Garibaldi; but he had to admit that second-
sight was not a Salina monopoly. Everyone in Palermo
seemed pleased; everyone except a mere handful of grum-
blers: his brother-in-law Mklvica, who had got himself
arrested by Garibaldi's police and spent ten days in pri-
son; his son Paolo, just as discontented but slightly
more prudent, and now left behind at Palermo deep in some
silly plot or other. Everyone else was making a great
show of joy; wearing tricolour cockades on lapels,
marching about in processions from morning till night,
and above all talking, haranguing, declaiming; and if in
the very first days of the occupation all this was given
some sense of purpose by the acclamations greeting the
few wounded passing through the main streets and by the
shrieks of Bourbon police "rats " being tortured in the
side alleys, now that the wounded had recovered and the
surviving "rats " enrolled in the new police this hubbub,
inevitable though he realised it to be, began to seem
pointless and petty.

But he had to admit that all this was a mere surface
manifestation of ill-breeding; the fundamentals of the
situation, economic and social, were satisfactory, just as
he had foreseen. Don ^*ietro Russo had kept his promises
and not a shot had been heard near Villa Salina; and though
a whole service of Chinese porcelain had been stolen from
the palace in Palermo, that was merely due to the idiocy
of Paolo, who had had it packed into a couple of cases which
he had then left out in the palace courtyard during the
shelling; a positive invitation for the packers themselves
to cart it off.

The "Piedmontese " (as the Prince continued to call
them for reassurance, just as othejs called them "Gari-
baldini " in exaltation or "Garibadeschi " in vilification)
had paid a call at the house, if not precisely cap in hand
he had been told, at least with a hand at the visors of those
red caps of theirs, as floppy and faded as those of any
Bourbon officer.

About the 20th of June, announced twenty-four hours
beforehand by Tancredi, appeared a general in a red tunic
with black froggings. He was followed by an aide-de-camp
and asked most politely for admission in order to admire
the frescoes on the ceilings. In he was ushered without ado,
as there had been sufficient warning to clear from one of
the drawing-rooms a portrait of King Ferdinand II in
full court dress and substitute for it a neutral Pool of Beth-
saida\ an operation combining advantages political and
aesthetic.

The general was a quick-witted Tuscan of about thirty,
talkative and inclined to show off; he had been well
behaved and agreeable, had treated the Prince with all
proper respect and even called him "Excellency,"in utter
contradiction to one of the Dictator's first decrees;
the aide-de-camp, a new recruit of nineteen, was a Milanese
count, who fascinated the girls with his glittering boots
and his slurred T's. With them came Tancredi, promoted,
or rather created, captain on the field of battle; a little
drawn from the pain of his wound, he stood there red-shirted
and irresistible, showing an easy intimacy with the victors,
an intimacy demonstrated by a mutual use of the familiar
/«, lavished with childish fervour by the two officers
from the mainland and returned in kind by Tancredi,
though with a faint nasal twang that to the Prince seemed
full of muted irony. While greeting them from heights
of imperturbable courtesy, the Prince had in fact been
much amused and quite reassured. So much so that three
days later the two "Piedmontese" had been invited to
dinner; Carolina then had made a fine sight at the
piano accompanying the singing of the general, who had
risked, in homage to Sicily, Bellini's "Vi ravviso, o luoghi
ament " with Tancredi demurely turning over the pages of
the score as if false notes didn't exist. The young Milanese
count, meanwhile, was leaning over a sofa, chatting away
about orange blossom to Concetta and revealing to her the
existence -of a writer she had never heard of, Aleardo
Aleardi; she. was pretending to listen though worrying
really about the look of her cousin, whom the candle-
light on the piano made even more languid than he was
in reality.

It had been an idyllic evening and was followed by oth-
ers equally cordial; during one of these the general was
asked to try and obtain an exemption from the order ex-
pelling J*esuits for Father Pirrone, described as very aged
and very ill; the general, who had taken a liking to the
good priest, pretended to believe in his wretched state and
agreed; he talked to political friends, pulled a string
or two, and Father Pirrone stayed. Which went to confirm
the Prince more than ever in the accuracy of his predict-
ions.

The general was also most helpful about the complicated
permits necessary in those troubled times for anyone wanting
to move from place fo place; and it was largely due to him
that the Salina family was able to enjoy its annual sojourn
in the country in that year of revolution. The young captain
asked for a month's leave and set off with his uncle and
aunt. Even apart from permits, the preparations for the Salina
family's journey had been lengthy and complicated. Cryptic
negotiations had to be conducted in the agent's office with
"persons of influence " from Girgenti, negotiations ending
in smiles, handclasps and the tinkle of coin. Thus a second
and more useful permit had been obtained; though this was
no novelty. Piles of luggage and food had to be collected
too, and cooks and servants sent on three days ahead; then
there was one of the smaller telescopes to be packed and
Paolo persuaded to stay behind in Palermo. After this
they were able to move off; the general and the little
lieutenant came to wish them all godspeed and bring them
flowers; and as the carriages moved off from Villa Salina
two scarlet-covered arms continued to wave for a long time;
at a carriage window appeared the Prince'^ black top hat,
but the little hand in black lace mittens which the young
count had hoped to see remained in Concetta's lap.

The journey had lasted more than three days and had been
quite appalling. The roads, the famous Sicilian roads
which had lost the vice-royalty of Sicily to the Prince of
Satriano, were no more than tracks, all ruts and dust. The
first night at Marineo, at the home of a notary and friend,
had been more or less bearable, but the second at a little
inn at Prizzi had been torture, with three of them to a bed,
besieged by repellent local fauna. The third was at Bis-
acquino; no bugs there but to make up for that the Prince
had found thirteen flies in his glass of granita, while a
strong smell of excrement drifted in from the street and
the privy next door, and all this had caused him most
unpleasant dreams; waking at very early dawn amid all that
sweat and stink he had found himself comparing this
ghastly journey with his own life, which had first moved
over smiling level ground, then clambered up rocky moun-
tains, slid over threatening passes, to emerge eventually
into a landscape of interminable undulations, all the same
colour, all bare as despair. These early morning fantasies
were the very worst that could happen to a man of middle
age; and although the Prince knew that they would vanish
with the day's activities he suffered acutely all the same,
as he was used enough to them by now to realise that deep
inside him they left a sediment of sorrow which, accumulat-
ing day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his
death.

With the rising of the sun those monsters had gone back
to their lairs in his unconscious; nearby now was Don-
nafugata and his palace, with its many-jetted fountains,
its memories of, saintly forebears, the sense it gave him of
everlasting childhood. Even the people there were pleasant,
simple and deyoted. At this point a thought occurred: would
they be just as devoted as before, after recent events?
"We'll soon see."

Now at last they were nearly there. Tancredi's mis-
chievous face appeared at the carriage window-sill. "Uncle,
Aunt, get ready, in five minutes we'll be there." Tancredi
was too tactful to precede the Prince into the town. He
slowed his hbrse to a walk and proceeded in silence beside
the leading carriage.

Beyond the short bridge leading into the town were wait-
ing the authorities, surrounded by a few dozen peasants.
As the carriages moved on to the bridge the municipal
band struck up with frenzied enthusiasm Not siatno zingarelle
from "Traviata," the first odd and endearing greeting by
Donnafugata to its Prince in recent years; after this at a
warning by sopie urcUin on the look-out the bells of the
Mother Church and of the Convent of the Holy Ghost
filled the air with festive sound.

"Thanks be to God, everything seems as usual," thought
the Prince as he climbed out of his carriage. There
was Don Calogero Sedara, the mayor, with a tricolour sash
bright and new as his job tight around his waist; Monsignor
Trottolino, the arch-priest, with his big red face; Don
Ciccio Ginestra, the notary, all braid and feathers, dressed
up as captain of the National Guard; there was Don Toto
Giambono, the doctor, and there was little Nunzia Giarritta,
who offered the Princess a rather messy bunch of flowers, ,
picked half an hour before in the palace gardens. There
was Ciccio Tumeo, the Cathedral organist, who was not
strictly speaking of sufficient standing to be there with the
authorities but had come along all the same as friend and
hunting companion of the Prince, and had had the excellent
notion of bringing along with him, for the Prince's pleasure,
his pointer bitch Teresina, with two little^ brown spots
above its eyes; a daring rewarded with a special smile from
Don Fabrizio.

The latter was in high good humour and sincerely amiable;
he and his wife had alighted to express their thanks,
and against the tempestuous music of Verdi and the crash-
ing of bells embraced the mayor and shook hands with all
the others. The crowd of peasants stood there silent, but
their motionless eyes emitted a curiosity that was in no
way hostile, for the poor of Donnafugata really did have a
certain affection for their tolerant lord who so often forgot
to ask for their little rents of kind or money; also, used
as they were to seeing the bewhiskered Leopard on the
palace facade, on the Church front, above the fountains,
on the majolica tiles in their houses, they were glad to set
eyes now on the real animal in nankeen trousers, distributing
friendly shakes of the paw to all, his features amiably
wreathed in feline smiles. "Yes, indeed; everything is the
same as before, better, in fact, than before." Tancredi,
too, was the object of great curiosity; though everyone
had known him for a long time, now he seemed to them
transfigured; no longer did they see him as a mere un-
conventional youth, but as an aristocratic liberal, companion
of Rosolino Pilo, wounded hero of the battle of Palermo.
He was swimming in this noisy admiration like a fish in
water; these rustic admirers were really rather fun; he
talked to them in dialect, joked, laughed at himself and
his wounds; but when he said "General Garibaldi" his
voice dropped an octave and he put on the rapt look of
a choir-boy before the Monstrance; then to Don Calogero
Sedara, of whom he had vaguely heard as being active
during the period of the liberation, he said in booming
tones, "Ah, Don Calogero, Crispi said lots of nice things
to me about you." After which he gave his arm to his
cousin Concptta and moved off, leaving everyone abuzz.

The carriages, with servants, children and Bendico went
on to the palace; but according to ancient usage, before
the others set foot in their home they had to hear a Te Deum
in the Cathedral. This was anyway only a few paces off,
and they moved there in procession, the new arrivals dusty
but imposing, the authorities gleaming but humble. Ahead
walked Don Ciccio Ginestra, the prestige of his uniform
cleaving a path; he was followed by the Prince giving
an arm to the Princess, and looking like a sated and
pacified lion; behind them came Tancredi with on his right
Concetta, who found this walk towards a church beside her
cousin most upsetting and conducive to weepiness: a state
of mind in no way alleviated by the dutiful young man's
strong pressure on her arm, though its only purpose, alas,
was to save her from potholes and ruts. The others followed
in disorder. The organist had rushed off so as to have time
to deposit Teresina at home and be back at his resonant
post at the moment of entry into the church. The bells
were clanging away ceaselessly, and on the walls of the
houses the slogans of "Viva Garibaldi," "Viva King
Vittorio," "Death to the Bourbon King," scrawled by an
inexpert brush two months before were fading away
as if wanting to merge back into the walls. Squibs were
exploding all round as they moved the steps, and as the
little procession entered the church Don Ciccio Tumeo,
who had arrived panting but in time, broke impetuously
into the strains of Verdi's Amami Alfredo.

The nave was packed with curious idlers between its
squat columns of red marble; the Salina family sat in the
choir, and during the short ceremony Don Fabrizio got
up and made an impressive bow to the crowd; meanwhile
the Princess was on the verge of swooning from heat and
exhaustion; Tancredi, pretending to brush away flies,
grazed more than once Concetta's blonde head. All was in
order and after a short address by Monsignor Trottolino,
they all genuflected to the altar, turned towards the doors
and issued into the sun-dazed square.

At the bottom of the steps the authorities took their
leave, and the Princess, acting under instructions whispered
to her during the ceremony, invited the mayor, the arch-
priest and the notary to dine that same evening. The arch-
priest was a bachelor by profession and the notary one by
vocation, so that for them the question of consorts did not
arise; the invitation to the mayor was rather languidly
extended to his wife; she was some peasant woman, of
great beauty, but considered by her own husband as quite
unpresentable in public for a number of reasons; thus
no one was surprised at his saying that she was indisposed;
but great was the amazement when he added, "If Your
Excellencies will allow I'll bring along my daughter
Angelica, who's been talking for the past month of nothing
but her longing to be presented to you now that she's grown
up." Consent was, of course, given; and the Prince, who
had seen Tumeo peering at him from behind the others'
shoulders, called out to him, "You come too, of course,
Don Ciccio, and bring Teresina." And he added, turning
to the others, "And after dinner, at nine o'clock, we shall
be happy to see all our friends." For a long time Donna-
fugata commented on these last words. And the Prince,
who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very
much changed himself; for never before would he have
issued so cordial an invitation: and from that moment,
invisibly, began the decline of his prestige.

The Salina palace was next door to the Mother Church.
Its short facade with seven windows on the square gave
no hint of its vast size, which extended three hundred yards
back; the buildings were of different styles, but all har-
moniously grouped round three great courtyards ending in
a large garden. At the main entrance in the square the
travellers were subjected to new demonstrations of welcome.
Don Onofrio Rotolo, the family's local steward, took no
part in the official greetings at the entry of the town.
Educated under the rigid rule of the Princess Carolina, he
considered the "vulgus " as non-existent and the Prince
as resident abroad until the moment when he crossed the
threshold of his own palace. So there he stood, exactly
two steps outside the gates; very small, very old, very
bearded, with a much younger and plumper wife standing
beside him, flanked by lackeys and eight keepers with
golden Leopards on their caps and in their hands eight
shot-guns of uncertain damaging power. "I am happy to
welcome Your Excellencies to your home. And I beg to
hand back the palace in the exact state in which it was left
to me."

Don Onofrio Rotolo was one of the rare persons held
in esteem by the Prince, and perhaps the only one who had
never cheated him. His honesty bordered on mania, and spec-
tacular tales were told of it, such as the glass of rosolio
wine once left half-full by the Princess at the moment of
departure, and found a year later in exactly the same place
with its contents evaporated and reduced to a state of sugary
rubber, but untouched. "For it is an infinitesimal part
of the Prince's patrimony and must not be dispersed."

After a proper exchange of greetings with Don Onofrio and
Donna Maria the Princess, who was on her feet still only
by sheer strength of will, went straight to bed, the girls
and Tancredi hurried off to the tepid shade of the gardens,
while the Prince and his steward went on a tour of the main
apartments. Everything was in perfect order; the pictures
were clear of dust in their heavy frames, the old gilt bind-
ings emitted discreet gleams, the high sun made the grey
marbles glitter round the doorposts. Everything was in
the state it had been for the last fifty years. Away from the
noisy turbine of civil dissent Don Fabrizio felt refreshed,
full of serene confidence, and glanced almost tenderly at
Don Onofrio trotting along beside him. "Don Onofrio,
you're like one of those djinns standing guard over treasure,
really you are; we owe you a great debt of gratitude." In
an earlier year the sentiment might have been the same but
the words themselves would never have come to his lips;

Don Onofrio looked at him in gratitude and surprise:
"My duty, Your Excellency, it's just my duty," and to
hide his emotion he scratched the back of his ear with the
long nail on the little finger of his left hand.

After this the steward was put to the torture of tea.
Don Fabrizio had two cups brought, fand with death in his
heart Don Onofrio had to swallow one. After this he began
to recount the chronicles of Donnafugata: he had renewed
the lease for the Aquila land two weeks before, on rather
worse terms; he had had to meet heavy expenses for the
repairs of the roof in the guest wing; but in the safe, at
His Excellency's disposal, was the sum of three thousand
two hundred and seventy-five ounces of gold, after paying
all expenses, taxes and his own salary.

Then came the private news, all of which turned round
the great novelty of the year; the rapid rise to fortune of
Pon Calogero Sedara; six months ago a mortgage arranged
by the latter with Baron Tumino had fallen in, and he had
gained possession of the estate; thus by the loan of a
thousand ounces of gold he now owned a property which
yielded five hundred ounces a year; in April Don Calogero
had also been able to buy, for practically nothing, a certain
piece of land which contained a vein of much sought-after
stone that he intended to exploit; he had also made some
very profitable sales of grain at the period of confusion and
famine after the landings. The voice of Don Onofrio
filled with rancour. I've totted it up roughly ‘on my
fingers: Don Calogero's income will very shortly be equal
to that of Your Excellency's here at Donnafugata." With
riches had also grown political influence. He had become
head of the liberals in the town and also in the districts
round; when the elections were held he was sure to be
returned as deputy to Turin. "And what airs they give
themselves; not he, who is far too shrewd to do that, but
his daughter who's just got back from, college in Florence
and goes around town in a crinoline with velvet ribbons
hanging from her hat."

The Prince was silent; the daughter, yes, that must be
the Angelica who would be coming to dinner to-night;
he was curious to see this dressed-up shepherdess; it was
not true that nothing had changed: Don Calogero was as
rich as he was! But deep down he had foreseen such things;
they were the price to be paid.

Don Onofrio was disturbed by his master's silence, and
imagined he had put the Prince out by telling him petty
local gossip.

"Excellency, I ordered a bath to be prepared for you,
it should be ready by now." Don Fabrizio suddenly realised
that he was tired; it was almost three o'clock, and he had
been up and about for nine hours under that torrid sun
and after that ghastly night. He felt his body covered in
dust to the remotest creases. " Thank you, Don Onofrio,
for thinking of it; and for everything else. We shall meet
to-night at dinner."

He went up the internal staircase, passed through the
tapestry hall, through the blue, the yellow drawing-rooms;
lowered blinds filtered the light; in his study the Boulle
clock ticked away discreetly. "What peace, my God, what
peace!" He entered the bathroom: small, whitewashed, with
a rcfiigh tiled floor and a hole in the middle to let the
water out. The bath itself was a kind of oval trough, vast,
of enamelled iron, yellow outside and grey in, propped on
four heavy wooden feet. Hanging on a nail was a dress-
ing-gown; fresh linen was laid out on a rush chair; it
still showed creases from packing. Beside the bath lay a
big piece of pink soap, a brush, a knotted handkerchief
containing salts which would emit a sweet scent when
soaked, and a huge sponge, one of those sent by the Salina
agent. Through the unshaded window beat the savage sun.

He clapped his hands; two lackeys entered, each holding
a pair of pails, one of cold, the other of boiling water;
they went to and fro a number of times; the trough filled
up; he tried the temperature with jfhand; it was all right.
He ordered the servants out, undressed, got in. Under his
huge bulk the water brimmed over a little. He soaped
himself, rubbed himself; the warmth did him good,
relaxed him. He was almost dozing off when he heard a
knock at the door; Mimi, his valet, entered timidly.
"Father Pirrone is asking to see Your Excellency at once.
He is waiting outside for Your Excellency to leave the
bathroom." The Prince was surprised; if there had been
some accident he had^better know at once. "No, no, let
him come in now."

Don Fabrizio was alarmed by this haste of Father Pir-
rone; and partly from this and partly from respect for
the priestly habit, he hurried to leave the bath expecting
to get into his dressing-gown before the Jesuit entered; but
he did not succeed; and Father Pirrone came in at the very
moment when, no longer veiled by soapy water, he was
emerging quite naked, like the Farnese Hercules, and
steaming as, well, while water flowed in streams from
neck, arms, stomach, and legs like the Rhone, the Rhine,
the Danube and the Adige crossing and watering Alpine
ranges. The sight of the Prince in a state of nature was
quite new to Father Pirrone; the Sacrament of Penance
had accustomed him to naked souls, but he was far less used
to naked bodies; and he, who would not have blinked an
eyelid at hearing the confession, say, of an incestuous
intrigue, found himself flustered by this innocent but vast
expanse of naked flesh. He stuttered an excuse and made
to back out; but Don Fabrizio, annoyed at not having had
time to cover himself, naturally turned his irritation against
the priest. "Now, Father, don't be silly; hand me that
towel, will you, and help me to dry, if you don't mind."
Then suddenly he remembered a discussion they had once
had and went on: "And take my advice. Father, have a bath
yourself." Satisfied af being able to give advice on hygiene
to one who so often gave it to him on morals, he felt soothed.
With the upper part of the towel in his hands at last he
began drying his hair, whiskers and neck, while with the
lower end the humiliated Father Pirrone rubbed his feet.

When the peak and slopes of the mountain were dry, the
Prince said, "Now take a seat. Father, and tell me why
you're in such a hurry to talk to me." And as the Jesuit
sat down he began some more intimate moppings on his
own.

"Well, Excellency, I've been given a most delicate
commission. One who is very dear to you indeed has
opened her heart to me and charged me to tell you of her
feelings, trusting, perhaps wrongly, that the consideration
with which I am honoured . . ." Father Pirrone hesitated
and hovered from phrase to phrase.

Don Fabrizio lost patience. "Well come on. Father,
who is it? The Princess? " And his raised arm seemed to
be threatening: in fact he was drying an armpit.

"The Princess is tired; she's asleep and I have not
seen her. No, it is the Signorina Concetta." Pause. "She
is in love." A man of forty-five can consider himself
still young till the moment comes when he realises that
he has children old enough to fall in love. The Prince
felt old age come over him in one blow; he forgot the huge
distances still tramped out shooting, the Gesummaria he
could still evoke from his wife, his freshness now at the
end of a long and arduous journey. Suddenly he saw himself
as a white-haired old man walking beside herds of grand-
children on billy-goats in the public gardens of Villa
Giulia.

"Why ever did the silly girl go and tell you such a
thing? Why not come to me? " He did not even ask who
the man was: there was no need to.

"Your Excellency hides his fatherly heart almost too well
under the mask of authority. It's quite understandable
that the poor girl should be frightened of you and so fall
back on the family chaplain."

Don Fabrizio slipped on his long drawers and snorted;
he foresaw long interviews, tears, endless bother. The
silly girl was spoiling his first day at Donnafugata with
her fancies.

"I know. Father, I know. Here no one really understands
me. It's my. misfortune." He was sitting now on a stool
with the fuzz of fair hair on his chest dotted with
pearly drops of water. Rivulets were snaking over the
tiles, and the room was full of the milky smell of bran
and the almond smell of soap. "Well, what should I say,
in your opinion? "

The Jesuit was sweating in the heat of the little room,
and now that his message had been delivered would have
liked to go but he was held back by a feeling of responsi-
bility. "The wish to found a Christian family is most a-
greeable to the eyes of the Church. The presence of Our
Lord at the marriage of Cana . . ."

" Let's keep to the point, shall we? I wish to talk about
this marriage, not about marriage in general. Has Don
Tancredi made any definite proposal, by any chance, and
if so, when? "

For five years Father Pirrone had tried to teach the boy
Latin; for seven years he had put up with his quips and
pranks; like everyone else he had felt his charm. But
Tancredi's recent political attitudes had offended him;
his old affection was struggling now with a new rancour.
He did not know what to say. "Well, not a real proposal,
exactly, no. But the Signorina Concetta is quite certain:
his attentions, his glances, his remarks, have all become
more and more open and frequent and quite convinced the
dear creature; she is sure that she is loved; but, being an
obedient and respectful daughter, she wishes me to find out
from you what her answer is to be if a proposal does come.
She thinks it imminent."

The Prince felt a little reassured; however did a chit of
a girl like that think she had acquired enough experience
to be able to judge so surely the behaviour of a young man,
particularly of a young man like Tancredi? Perhaps it
was just imagination, one of those "golden dreams "
which convulse the pillows of schsolgirls? The danger
might not be so near.

Danger. The word resounded so clearly in his mind that
he gave a start of surprise. Danger. But danger for
whom? He had a great affection for Concetta; he liked
her perpetual submission, the placidity with which she
yielded to the slightest hint of a paternal wish; a submission
and placidity, incidentally, which he rather overvalued. His
natural tendency to avoid any threat to his own calm had
made him miss the steely glint which crossed her eyes when
the whims she was obeying were really too vexing. Yes,
the Prince was very fond of this daughter of his. But he
was even fonder of his nephew. Conquered for ever by the
youth's affectionate chaff he had begun during the last
few months to admire his intelligence too; that quick
adaptability, that worldly penetration, that innate arti-
stic subtlety with which he could use the demagogic terms
then in fashion while hinting to initiates that for him,
the Prince of Falconeri, it was only a momentary pastime;
all this amused Don Fabrizio, and in people of his character
and standing the fact of being amused makes up four-fifths
of affection. Tancredi, he considered, had a great future;
he could be the standard-bearer of a counter-attack which
the nobility, under changed trappings, could launch against
the new social state. To do this he lacked but one thing;
money; this Tancredi did not have, none at all. And to
get on in politics, now that a name counted less, would
need a lot of money; money to buy votes, money to do
the electors favours, money for a dazzling style of living.
Style of living . . . And would Concetta, with all those
passive virtues of hers, be capable of helping an ambitious
and brilliant husband to climb the slippery slopes of the
new society? Timid, reserved, bashful as she was? Wouldn't
she always remain just the pretty schoolgirl she was now, a
leaden weight on hes husband's feet?

"Can you see Concetta, Father, as ambassadress in
Vienna or Petersburg? "

The question took Father Pirrone quite unawares.
"What has that to do with it.? I don't understand."

Don Fabrizio did not bother to explain; he plunged
back into his silent thoughts. Money? Concetta would
have a dowry, of course. But the Salina fortune would
have to be divided into seven parts, unequal at that, in
which the girls' would be the smallest. Well, then.?
Tancredi needed much more; Maria Santa Pau, for instance,
with four estates already hers and all those uncles, priests
and misers; or one of the Sutfera girls, so ugly but so rich.
Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.
He knew what love was . . . Anyway, Tancredi would
always find women falling for him like ripe pears.

Suddenly he felt cold. The water on him had evaporated
and the skin of his arms was icy. The ends of his fingers
were crinkling. Oh, dear, what a lot of bothersome talk
it would all mean. That must be avoided . . . "Now I have
to go and dress, Father. Tell Concetta, will you, that
I am not in the least annoyed, but that we'll talk about
all this later when we're quite sure it's not all just
the fancy of a romantic girl. Au revoir. Father."

He got up and passed into the dressing-room. From the
Mother Church next door rang a lugubrious funeral knell.
Someone had died at Donnafiigata, some tired body unable
to withstand the deep gloom of Sicilian summer had lacked
stamina to await the rains. "Lucky person," thought the
Prince, as he rubbed lotion on his whiskers. "Lucky
person, with no worries now about daughters, dowries and
political careers." This ephemeral identification with an
unknown corpse was enough to calm him. "While there's
death there's hope," he thought; then he saw the absurd
side of letting himself get into such a state of depression
because one of his daughters wanted to marry. " Ce sont
leurs affaires, afrhs tout"he thought in French, as he did
when his cogitations were becoming embarrassing. He
settled in an arm-chair and dropped off into a doze.

An hour later he awoke refreshed and went down into
the garden. The sun was already low and its rays, no longer
overwhelming, were lighting amiably on the araucarias,
the pines, the lusty plane-trees which were the glory of
the place. From the end of the main alley, sloping gently
down between high laurel hedges framing anonymous busts
of broken-nosed goddesses, could be heard the gentle driz-
zle of spray falling into the fountain of the Amphitrites.
He moved swiftly towards it, eager to see it again. The
waters came spurting in minute jets, blown from shells
of Tritons and Naiads, from noses of marine monsters,
spattering and pattering on greenish verges, bouncing and
bubbling, wavering and quivering, dissolving into laughing
little gurgles; from the whole fountain, the tepid water,
the stones covered with velvety moss, emanated a promise
of pleasure that would never turn to pain. Perched on an
islet in the middle of the round basin, modelled by a crude
but sensual sculptor, a vigorous smiling Neptune was
embracing a willing Amphitrite; her navel, wet with spray
and gleaming in the sun, would be the nest, shortly, for
hidden kisses in subaqueous shade. Don Fabrizio paused,
gazed, remembered, regretted. He stood there a long
while.

"Uncle, come and look at the foreign peaches. They've
turned out fine. And leave these indecencies which are not
for men of your age."

Tancredi's affectionate mocking voice called him from
his voluptuous torpor. He had not heard the boy come;
he was like a cat. For the first time he felt a touch of
rancour prick him at the sight of Tancredi; this fop with
the pinched-in waist under his dark blue suit had been the
cause of those sour thoughts of his about death two hours
ago. Then he realised that it was not rancour, just disguis-
ed alarm: he was afraid the other would talk to him about
Concetta. But his nephew's approach and tone was not that
of one preparing to make amorous confidences to a man like
himself. Don Fabrizio grew calm again; his nephew was look-
ing at him with the affectionate irony which youth accords
to age. " They can allow themselves to be a bit nice to
us, as they're so sure to be free of us the day of our
funerals." He went with Tancredi to look at the foreign
peaches." The grafting with German cuttings, made two
years ago, had succeeded perfectly; there was not much
fruit, a dozen or so, on the two grafted trees, but it
was big, velvety, luscious-looking; yellowish, with a
faint flush of rosy pink on the cheeks, like those of
Chinese girls. The Prince gave them a gentle squeeze
with his delicate fleshy fingers. "They seem quite ripe.
A pity there are too few for to-night. But we'll get
them picked to-morrow and see what they're like."

"There! that's how I like you, uncle; like this, in the
part of agricela plus — appreciating in anticipation the
fruits of your own labours; and not as I found you a
short while ago, gazing at all thak shameless naked flesh."

"And yet, Tancredi, these peaches are also products of
love, of coupling."

"Of course, but legal love, blessed by you as their
master, and by Nino the gardener as notary. Considered,
fruitful love. As for those," he went on, pointing at the
fountain whose shimmer could just be discerned through
a veil of plane trees, "d'you really think they've been
before a priest?"

The conversation was taking a dangerous turn and Don
Fabrizio hastily changed its direction. As they moved
back up towards the house Tancredi began telling what he
had heard of the love-life of Donnafugata: Menica, the
daughter of Saverio the keeper, had let herself be put
with child by her young man; the marriage would be rushed
on now. Calicchio had just avoided being shot by an
angry husband.

"But how d'you know such things? "

"I know. Uncle, I know. They tell me everything;
they know I'll sympathise."

When they reached the top of the steps, which rose from
the garden to the palace with gentle turns and long land-
ings, they could see the dusky horizon beyond the trees;
over towards the sea huge, inky clouds were climbing up the
sky. Perhaps the anger of God was satiated and the annual
curse over Sicily nearly over At that moment those clouds
loaded with relief were being stared at by thousands of
other eyes, sensed in the womb of the earth by billions of
seeds.

"Let's hope the summer is over and that the rains are
finally here," said Don Fabrizio; and with these words
the haughty noble to whom rain would only be a per-
sonal nuisance showed himself a brother to his roughest
peasants.

The Prince had always taken care that the first dinner at
Donnafugata should bear the stamp of solemnity: children
under fifteen were excluded from table, French wines
were served, there was punch alia Romatta before the roast;
and the flunkeys were in powder and knee-breeches. There
was only one unusual detail; he did not put on evening dress,
so as not to embarrass his guests who would, obviously,
not possess any. That evening, in the "Leopold " drawing-
room, as it was called, the Salina family were awaiting the
last of their guests, from under lace-covered shades the
oil-lamps spread circles of yellow light; the vast equestrian
portraits of past Salinas seemed but imposing symbols,
vague as their memories. Don Onofrio had already arrived
with his wife, and so had the arch-priest who, with his light
mantle folded back on his shoulders in sign of gala, was
telling the Princess about tiffs at the College of Mary.
Don Ciccio, the organist, had also arrived (Teresina had
already been tied to the leg of a scullery table) and
was recalling with the Prince their fantastic bags in the
Dragonara ravines. All was placid and normal when Fran-
cesco Paolo, the sixteen-year-old son, burst into the room
and announced: "Papa, Don Calogero is just coming up
the stairs. In tails!"

Tancredi, intent on fascinating the wife of Don Onofrio,
realised the importance of the news a second before the
others. But when he heard that fatal word he could not
contain himself and burst into convulsive laughter. No
laugh, though, came from the Prince on whom, one might
almost say, this news had more effect than the bulletin
about Garibaldi's landing at Marsala. That had been an
event not only foreseen but also distant and invisible.
Now, with his sensibility to presages and symbols, he saw
revolution in that white tie and two black tails moving
at this moment up the stairs of his own home. Not only was
he, the Prince, no longer the major landowner in Donna-
fugata, but he now found himself forced to receive, when
in afternoon dress himself, a guest appearing in evening
clothes.

His distress was great; it still lasted as he moved
mechanically towards the door to receive his guest. When
he saw him, however, his agonies were somewhat eased.
Though perfectly adequate as a political demonstration it
was obvious that, as tailoring, Don Calogero's tailcoat
was a disastrous failure. The stuff was excellent, the
style modern, but the cut quite appalling. The Word from
London had been most inadequately made flesh by a tailor
from Girgenti to whom Don Calogero had gone in his ten-
acious avarice. The wings of his cravat pointed straight
to heaven in mute supplication, his huge collar was shape-
less, and, what is more, it is our painful but necessary
duty to add that the mayor's feet were shod in buttoned
boots.

Don Calogero advanced towards the Princess with a hand
outstretched and still gloved. "My daughter begs you to
excuse her; she was not quite ready. Your Excellency
knows how females are on these occasions," he added, ex-
pressing in his near dialect terms a thought of Parisian
levity, "but she'll be here in a second; it's only a
step from our place, as you know."

The second lasted five minutes; then the door opened
and in came Angelica. The first impression was of dazed
surprise. The Salina family all stood there with breath
taken away; Tancredi could even feel the veins pulsing in
his temples. Under the first shock from her beauty the
men were incapable of noticing or analysing its defects,
which were numerous; there were to be many for ever in-
capable of this critical appraisal. She was tall and well-
made, on an ample scale; her skin looked as if it had .the
flavour of fresh cream which it resembled, her childlike
mouth that of strawberries. Under a mass of raven hair,
curling in gentle waves, her green eyes gleamed motionless
as those of statues, and like them a little cruel. She was
moving slowly, making her wide white skirt rotate around
her, and emanating from her whole person the invincible
calm of a woman sure of her own beauty. Only many
months later was it known that at the moment of that
victorious entry of hers she had been on the point of
fainting from nerves.

She took no notice of the Prince hurrying towards her,
she passed by Tancredi grinning at her in a daydream;
before the Princess's arm-chair she bent her superb waist
in a slight bow, and this form of homage, unusual in Sicily,
gave her for an instant the fascination of exoticism as well
as that of local, beauty.

"Angelica, my dear, it's so long since I've seen you.
You've changed a lot; not for the worse!" The Princess
could not believe her own eyes; she remembered the rather
ugly and uncared-for thirteen-year-old girl of four years
ago and could not make her tally with this voluptuous
maiden before her. The Prince had no memories to reor-
ganise; he only had forecasts to overturn; the blow
to his pride dealt by the father's tail-coat was now
repeated by the daughter's looks; but this time it was not
a matter of black stuff but of milky white skin; and well-
cut, yes, very well indeed! Old war horse that he was,
the bugle-call of feminine beauty found him ready and he
turned to the girl with the tone of gracious respect which
he would have used to the Duchess of Bovino or the Prin-
cess of Lampedusa; "How lucky we are, Signorina Angelica,
to have gathered such a lovely flower in our home; and
I hope that we shall have the pleasure of seeing you here
often."

"Thank you. Prince; I see that you are as kind to me
as you have always been to my dear father." The voice was
pretty, low-pitched, a little too careful perhaps; Florentine
schooling had cancelled the sagging Girgenti accent; the
only Sicilian characteristic still in her speech was the harsh
consonants, which anyway toned in well with her clear but
emphatic type of beauty. In Florence she had also been
taught to drop the "Excellency."

About Tancredi there seems little to be said; after
being introduced by Don Calogero, after manoeuvring the
searchlight of his blue eyes, after just managing to resist
implanting a kiss on Angelica's hand, he had resumed
his chat with the Signora Rotolo without taking in a word
that the good lady said. Father Pirrone, in a dark corner,
was deep in meditation over Holy Scripture, which that
night appeared only in the guise of Delilahs, Judiths and
Esthers.

The central doors of the drawing-room wfre flung open
and the butler declaimed mysterious sounds announcing
that dinner was read}: Prann' pronn\" The heterogeneous
group moved towards the dining-room.

The Prince was too experienced to offer Sicilian guests,
in a town of the interior, a dinner beginning with soup,
and he infringed the rules of haute cuisine all the more
readily as he disliked it himself. But rumours of the
barbaric foreign usage of serving an insipid liquid as first
course had reached the citizens of Donnafugata too insis-
tently for them not to quiver with a slight residue of alarm
at the start of a solemn dinner like this. So when three
lackeys in green, gold and powder entered, each holding
a great silver dish containing a towering macaroni pie,
only four of the twenty at table avoided showing pleased
surprise; the Prince and Princess from fore-knowledge,
Angelica from affectation and Concetta from lack of
appetite. All the others (including Tancredi, I regret to
say), showed their relief in varying ways, from the fluty
and ecstatic grunts of the notary to the sharp squeak of
Francesco Paolo. But a threatening circular stare from the
host soon stifled these improper demonstrations.

Good manners apart, though, the aspect of those
monumental dishes of macaroni was worthy of the quivers
of admiration they evoked. The burnished gold of the
crusts, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon they exuded,
were but preludes to the delights released from the interior
when the knife broke the crust; first came a smoke laden
with aromas, then chicken livers, hard boiled eggs, sliced
ham, chicken and truffles in masses of piping hot, glistening
macaroni, to which the meat juice gave an exquisite hue
of suede.

The beginning of the meal, as happens in the provinces,
was quiet. Thje arch-priest made the sign of the Cross
and plunged in head first without a word. The organist
absorbed the succulent dish with closed eyes; he was
grateful to the Creator that his ability to shoot hare and
woodcock could bring him ecstatic pleasures like this, and
the thought came to him that he and Teresina could exist
for a month on the cost of one of these dishes; Angelica,
the lovely Angelica, forgot her Tuscan affectations and
part of her good manners and devoured her food with the
appetite of her seventeen years and the vigour given by
grasping her fork half-way up the handle. Tancredi, in
an attempt to link gallantry with greed, tried to imagine
himself tasting, in the aromatic forkfuls, the kisses of his
neighbour Angelica, but he realised at once that the
experiment was disgusting and suspended it, with a mental
reserve about reviving this fantasy with the pudding; the
Prince, although rapt in the contemplation of Angelica
sitting opposite him, was the only one at table able to
notice that the demi-glace was overfilled, and made a mental
note to tell the cook so next day; the others ate without
thinking of anything, and without realising that the food
seemed so delicious because sensuality was circulating in
the house.

All were calm and contented. All except Concetta.
She had of course embraced and kissed Angelica, told her
not to use the formal third person and insisted on the
familiar tu of their infancy, but under her pale blue
bodice her heart was being torn to shreds; the violent
Salina blood came surging up in her, and beneath a smooth
forehead she found herself brooding over day-dreams of
poisoning. Tancredi was sitting between her and Angelica
and distributing, with the slightly forced air of one who
feels in the wrong, his glances, compliments and jokes
equally between both neighbours; but Concetta had an
intuition, an animal intuition of the current of desire
flowing from her cousin towards the intruder, and the little
frown between her nose and forehead deepened; she wanted
to kill as much as she wanted to die. But being a woman
she snatched at details; Angelica's little finger in the air
when her hand held her glass; a reddish mole on the skin
of her neck; an attempt, half repressed, to remove with a
finger a shred of food stuck in her very white teeth; she
noticed even more sharply a certain coarseness of spirit;
and to these details, which were really quite insignificant
as they were cauterised by sensual fascination, she clung as
trustingly and desperately as a falling builder's boy snatches
at a leaden gutter; she hoped that Tancredi would notice
too and be revolted by these obvious traces of ill-breeding.
But Tancredi had already noticed them, and, alas I with
no result. He was letting himself be drawn along by
the physical stimulus of a beautiful woman to his fiery
youth, and also by the (as-it-were) numerical excitement
aroused by a rich girl in the mind of a man ambitious and
poor.

At the end of dinner the conversation became general;
Don Calogero told in bad Italian but with knowing insight
some inside stories about the conquest of the province
by Garibaldi: the notary told the Princess of a little house
he was having built "out of town "; Angelica, excited by
light, food, Chablis and the obvious admiration she was
arousing in every man around the table, asked Tancredi to
describe some episodes of the "glorious battle " for
Palermo. She had put an elbow on the table and was
leaning her cheek on her hand. Her face was flushed and
she was perilously attractive to behold; the arabesque
made by her forearm, elbow, finger and hanging white
glove seemed' exquisite to Tancredi and repulsive to
Concetta. The young man, while continuing to admire,
was describing the campaign as if it had all been quite light
and unimportant; the night march on Gibilrossa, the scene
between Bixio and La Masa, the assault on Porta di Termini.
"It was the greatest fun, signorina. Our biggest laugh
was on the night of the 28th of May. The general needed
a look-out post at the top of the convent at Origlione; we
knocked, banged, cursed, knocked again: no one opened;
it was an enclosed convent. Then Tassoni, Aldrighetti,
I and one or two others tried to break down the door with
our rifle butts. Nothing doing. We ran to fetch a beam
from* '-shelled house nearby and finally, with a hellish din,
the door gave way. We went in; not a soul in sight, but
from a corner of the passage we heard desperate screams;
a group of nuns had taken refuge in the chapel and were
all crouching round the altar; I wonder what they feared
at the hands of those dozen excited young men! They
looked absurd, old and ugly in their black habits, with
starting eyes, ready and prepared for . . . martyrdom.
They were whining like bitches. Tassoni, who's a card,
shouted: 'Nothing doing, sisters, we've other things to
think of; but we'll be back when you've some novices.'
And we all laughed fit to burst. Then we left them there,
their tongues hanging out, to go and shoot at Royalists
from the terraces above. Ten minutes later I was wounded."

Angelica laughed, still leaning on her elbow, and showed
all her pointed teeth. The joke seemed most piquant to her;
that hint of rape perturbed her; her lovely throat quivered.
"What fine lads you must have beenl How I wish I'd
been with you! " Tancredi seemed transformed; the
excitement of the story, the thrill of memory, mingling
with the agitation produced by the girl's air of sensuality,
changed him for an instant from the gentle youth he was
in reality into a brutal and licentious soldier.

"Had you been there, signorina, we'd have had no need
to wait for novices."

Angelica had heard a lot of coarse talk at home; but
this was the first time (and not the last) when she found
herself the object of a sexual double meaning; the novelty
of it pleased her, her laughter went up a tone, became
strident.

At that moment everyone rose from the table; Tancredi
bent to gather up the feather fan dropped by Angelica; as
he rose to his feet he saw Concetta with face aflame and
two little tears in the corners of her lids. "Tancredi, one
tells nasty tales like that to a confessor, not to young ladies
at table; or at least when I'm there." And she turned her
back on him.

Before going to bed Don Fabrizio paused a moment on
the little balcony of his dressing-room. The shadowed
garden lay sunk in sleep beneath; in the inert air the trees
seemed like fused lead; from the overhanging bell-tower
came an elfin hoot of owls. The sky was clear of clouds;
those which had greeted the dusk had moved away, maybe
towards places less sinful, condemned by divine wrath to
lesser penalties. The stars looked turbid and their rays
scarcely penetrated the pall of sultry air.

The soul of the Prince yearned out towards them,
towards the intangible, the unreachable, which gives joy
without being able to ask for anything in return; like
many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy
reaches, a pure intellect armed with a note-book for
calculations; difficult calculations, but ones which would
always work out. They're the only really genuine, the
only really decent people," thought he in his worldly
formulae, who worries about dowries for the Pleiads, a
political career for Sirius, matrimonial joys for Vega?"
It had been a bad day; he realised it now, not only from a
pressure at the top of his stomach, but from the stars too;
instead of seeing them disposed in their usual groupings
every time he raised his eyes he noticed a single diagram
up there; two stars above, the eyes; one beneath, the tip
of a chin; a mocking symbol of a triangular face which his
mind projected into the constellations when it was disturbed.
Don Calogero's tail-coat, Concetta's love, Tancredi's blatant
infatuation, his own cowardice; even the threatening beauty
of that girl Angelica; bad things; rubble preceding an
avalanche. And Tancredi! The lad was right, agreed, and
he would help him too; but Don Fabrizio could not deny
that he found him a tiny bit ignoble. And he himself was
like Tancredi. "Enough of that now, let's sleep on it."

Bendico in the shadow rubbed a big head against his
knee; "You see; you, Bendico, are a bit like them, like
the stars; happily incomprehensible, incapable of produc-
ing anxiety." He raised the dog's head, which was almost
invisible in the darkness. "And then with those eyes of
yours at the same level as your nose, with your lack of chin,
that head can't possibly evoke malignant spectres in the
sky."

Centuries old tradition required that the day following
their arrival the Salina family should visit the Convent of
the Holy Ghost to pray at the tomb of Blessed Corbfera,
forebear of the Prince and foundress^ of the convent, who
had endowed it, there lived a holy life and there died a
holy death.

The Convent of the Holy Ghost had a rigid rule of
enclosure and entry was severely forbidden to men. That
was why the Prince particularly enjoyed visiting it, for
he, as direct descendant of the foundress, was not ex-
cluded: and of this privilege, shared only with the King
of Naples, he was both jealous and childishly proud.

This faculty of canonical intrusion was the chief, but
not the only reason, for his liking The Convent of the
Holy Ghost. Everything about the place pleased him,
beginning with the humble simplicity of the parlour, with
its raftered ceiling centred on the Leopard, its double
gratings for interviews, a little wooden wheel for passing
messages in and out, and a heavy door whose threshold
he and the King were the only men in the whole world
allowed to cross. He liked the look of the nuns with
their wide wimples of purest white linen in tiny pleats
gleaming against the rough black robes; he was edified
at hearing for the hundredth time the Mother Abbess de-
scribe the Blessed One's ingenuous miracles; at her showing
the corner of the dank garden where the saintly nun had
suspended in the air a huge stone which the Devil, irritated
by her austerity, had flung at her; he was astounded at the
sight of the two famous and indecipherable letters framed
on the wall of a cell, one to the Devil from Blessed Corbfera
to convert him to virtue, and the other the Devil's reply,
expressing, it seems, his regret at not being able to comply
with her request: the Prince liked the macaroons which
the nuns made up from an ancient recipe, he liked listen-
ing to the Office chanted in choir, and he was even quite
happy to pay over to the community a not inconsiderable
portion of his own income, in accordance with the act of
foundation.

So that morning there were only happy people in the
two carriages moving towards the convent just outside the
town. In the first was the Prince, the Princess and their
daughters Carolina and Concetta; in the second his daughter
Caterina, Tancredi and Father Pirrone, both the latter of
whom, of course, would stay extra muros and wait in the
parlour duriiig the visit, consoled by macaroons from
the wooden wheel. Concetta looked serene, though a little
absent-minded, and the Prince did his best to hope that
yesterday's fancies had all blown over.

Entry into an enclosed convent is never a quick matter,
even for one possessing the most sacred of rights. Nuns like
to show a certain reluctance, formal maybe but prolonged,
which gives more flavour to however certain an admission;
and, although the visit had been announced beforehand,
there was a considerable wait in the parlour. Towards the
end of this Tancredi unexpectedly asked the Prince,
"Uncle, can't you get me in too.? After all I'm half a
Salina; and I've never been here before."

Though pleased at heart by the request, the Prince
shook his head decisively. "But, my boy, you know only
I and no other man can enter here." It was not easy,
however, to put Tancredi off. "Excuse me, Nuncle; the
rule says: The Prince of Salina may enter together with two
gentlemen of his suite if the Abbess so permits. I read it
again yesterday. I'll be the gentleman in your suite, I'll
be your squire. I'll be whatever you like. Do ask the Abbess,
please." He was speaking with unusual warmth; perhaps
he wanted a certain person there to forget his ill-considered
chatter of the night before. The Prince was flattered. "If
you're so keen on it, dear boy. I'll see . . ." But Concetta
turned to her cousin with her sweetest smile: "Tancredi,
as we passed we saw a beam of wood on the ground in
front of Ginestra's house. Go and fetch it, it'll get you in
all the quicker." Tancredi's blue eyes clouded and his
face went red as a poppy, either from shame or anger.
He tried to say something to the surprised Prince, but
Concetta interrupted again, acidly now, and without a
smile: " Let him be, father, he's only joking; he's been
in one convent already, that ought to be enough for him;
it's not right for him to enter this one of ours." With a
grinding of drawn bolts the door opened. Into the stuffy
parlour entered the freshness of the cloister ^together with
the murmur of assembled nuns. It was too late to ask
questions, and Tancredi was left behind to walk up and
down in Front of the convent under the blazing sky.

The visit to the Holy Ghost was a great success. Don
Fabrizio, from love of quiet, had refrained from asking
Concetta the meaning of her words; doubtless just one of
the usual tiffs between cousins; anyway the coolness between
the two young people kept off bother, confabulations and
decisions, so it had been welcome. On fhese premises the
tomb of Blessed Corb^ra was venerated with due respect
by all, the nuns' watery coffee drunk with tolerance and
the pink and greenish macaroons crunched with satisfaction;
the Princess inspected the wardrobe, Concetta talked to the
nuns with her usual withdrawn kindliness and he, the Prince,
left on the refectory table the ten ounces of gold that
he offered the convent every time he came. It was true
that at the door Father Pirrone was found alone; but as
he said that Tancredi had suddenly remembered an urgent
letter and gone off on foot, no one took much notice.

On returning to the palace the Prince went up to the
library, which was in the middle of the facade under the
clock and lightning conductor. From the great balcony,
closed against the heat, could be seen the square of Donna-
fugata, vast, shaded, by dusty plane trees. Opposite were
some house fronts of exuberant local design, rustic mon-
strosities in soap-stone, weathered by the years, uphold-
ing amid twists and curves balconies that were too small;
other houses, among them that of Don Calogero Sedira,
hid behind prim Empire fronts.

Don Fabrizio walked up and down the immense room;
every now and again he paused and glanced out at the
square; on one of the benches donated by himself to
the commune three old men were roasting in the sun;
four mules stood tethered to a tree; a dozen or so
urchins were chasing each other, shouting and brandish-
ing wooden swords. Under the blazing mid-summer sun the
view could not have been more typical. On one of his
crossings past the window, however, his eye was drawn
to a figure that was obviously from the city — slim, erect,
well-dressed. He screwed up his eyes. It was Tancredi;
he recognised him, although already some way off, by the
sloping shoulders and slim-fitting waist of his frock coat.
He had changed his clothes; he was no longer in brown as
at the convent, but in Prussian blue, "my seduction col-
our " as he himself called it. In one hand he held a cane
with an enamel handle (doubtless the one bearing the
Unicorn of the Falconeri and their motto Semper puris)
and he was walking with cat-like tread, as if taking care
not to get his shoes dusty. Ten paces behind him followed a
lackey carrying a tasselled box containing a dozen yellow
peaches with pink cheeks. He sidestepped a sword-waving
urchin, carefully avoided a urinating mule, and reached
the Sedira's door.




III. The Troubles of Don Fabrizio



　　　　　　OCTOBER, 1860



The rains had come, the rains had gone, and the sun
was back on its throne like an absolute monarch kept
off for a week by his subjects' barricades, and now
reigning once again, choleric but under constitutional
restraint. The heat braced without burning, the light
domineered but let colours live; from the soil sprouted
cautious clover and mint, and on faces diffident hopes.

Don Fabrizio, with his dogs Teresina and Arguto and
his retainer Don Ciccio Tumeo, would spend long hours
out shooting, from dawn till afternoon. The effort was out
of all proportion to the results, for the most expert shot
finds difficulty in hitting a target which is scarcely ever
there, and it was rarely that the Prince was able to
take even a brace of pheasants home to the larder, or Don
Ciccio to slap on his kitchen table a wild ‘rabbit —
promoted, ipso facto as usual in Sicily, to the rank of
hare.

A big bag would anyway have been a secondary pleasure
for the Prince; the joy of those days out shooting lay
elsewhere, subdivided in many tiny episodes. It began with
shaving in a room still dark, by candlelight that projected
every gesture emphatically over the painted architecture
on the ceiling; it was whetted by crossing sleeping drawing-
rooms, by glimpses in the flickering light of tables with
playing cards lying in disorder amid chips and empty
glasses, and catching sight among them of a Jack of Spades
waving a manly greeting: by passing through the motionless
garden under a grey light in which the earliest birds were
twisting and turning to shake the dew off their feathers;
by gliding through the ivy-hung wicket gate: by escaping,
in fact. And then in the street, blamelessly innocent still
in the early light, he would find Don Ciccio smiling into
his yellowed moustaches and swearing affectionately at the
dogs; these, as they waited, were flexing their muscles
under velvety fur. Venus still glimmered, like a peeled
grape, damp and transparent, but one could already hear the
rumble of the solar chariot climbing the last slope below
the horizon; soon they would meet the first flocks moving
towards them torpidly as tides, guided by stones thrown
by leather-breeched shepherds; the wool looked soft
and rosy in the early sun: then there would be obscure
quarrels of precedence to be settled between sheep dogs
and punctilious pointers, after which deafening interval
they turned up a slope and found themselves in the im-
memorial silence of pastoral Sicily. All at once they were
far from everything in space and still more in time. Donna-
fugata with its palace and its new rich was only a mile or
two away, but seemed a dim memory like those landscapes
sometimes glimpsed at the distant end of a railway tunnel;
its troubles and splendours appeared even more insignificant
than if they belonged to the past, for compared to this
remote unchangeable landscape they seemed part of the
future, made not of stone and flesh but of the substance of
some dream of things to come, extracts from a utopia
thought up by a rustic Plato and apt to change in a second
into quite different forms or even not to exist at all;
deprived thus of that charge of energy which everything
in the past continues to possess, they could no longer be
a worry.

Yes, Don Fabrizio had certainly had his worries those
last two months; they had come from all directions, like
ants making for a dead lizard. Some had crawled from
crevices of the political situation; some been flung on him
by other people's passions; and some (these had the sharpest
bite) had sprung up within himself, from his irrational
reactions, that is, to politics and the whims of others
("whims " was his name when irritated for what in calm
he called "passions "). He would review these worries
every day, manoeuvre them, set them in column or extend
them in open order on the parade ground of his own con-
science, hoping to ‘find in their evolutions a sense of
finality that could reassure him; and not succeeding. In
former years there had been far fewer bothers, and anyway
his stay at Donnafugata had always been a period of rest;
his worries used to drop their rifles, disperse into the
crags of the valleys and settle down there quietly, so in-
tent on munching bread and cheese that their warlike uniforms
were forgotten and they could be mistaken for inoffensive
peasants. This year, though, they had all stayed on parade
in a body, like mutinous troops shouting and brandishing
weapons, arousing in his home the dismay of a colonel who
has given the order "Fall out " only to find his battalion
standing there in closer and more threatening order than
ever.

The arrival had been all right, with bands, fireworks,
bells, gipsy song and Te Deum; but afterwards! The
bourgeois revolution climbing his stairs in Don Calogero's
tail-coat, Angelica's beauty putting the shy grace of
his Concetta in the shade, Tancredi rushing at the
inevitable changes and even able to deck out his realistic
motives with sensual infatuation; the scruples and decep-
tions of the Plebiscite; the endless little subterfuges he
had to submit to, he, the Leopard, who for years had swept
away difficulties with a wave of his paw.

Tancredi had been gone for more than a month and was
now at Caserta bivouacking in the apartments of his
King; from there every now and again he sent Don Fabri-
zio letters which the latter read with alternate frowns
and smiles, then put away in the remotest drawer of his desk.
He had never written to Concetta, though he did not forget
to send her a greeting with his usual affectionate slyness;
once he even wrote: "I kiss the hands of all the little
Leopardesses and particularly Concetta's," phrases censored
by paternal prudence when the letter was read out to the
assembled family. Angelica was now visiting them almost
daily, more seductive than ever, accompanied by heir father
or some old witch of a maid: officially these visits were
made to her friends the girls, but in fact their climax
obviously came at the moment when she asked with apparent
indifference, "And what news of the Prince?" "Prince"
in Angelica's mouth did not, alas, mean him, Don Fabrizio,
but the little Garibaldino captain; and this provoked a
strange sensation in Salina, woven from the crude cotton of
sensual jealousy to silken pleasure at his dear Tancredi's
success; a sensation, when all was said and done, that
was somewhat disagreeable. It was always he who answered
this question; he would give a carefully considered
account of what he knew, taking care, however, to present
a well-arranged little bouquet of news from which his
cautious tweezers had extracted both thorns (descriptions
of many a jaunt to Naples, allusions to the lovely legs of
Aurora Schwarzwald, dancer at the San Carlo) and pre-
mature buds ("send news of the Signorina Angelica " —
"In Ferdinand IPs study I found a Madonna by Andrea
del Sarto which reminded me of the Signorina Sedara").
So he would put together an insipid picture of Tancredi
which bore very little resemblance to the original, but did
at least prevent anyone saying that he himself was acting
either as spoil-sport or pimp. These verbal precautions
corresponded to his own feelings about Tancredi's con-
sidered passion, but he found them tiresome too; anyway
they were only one sample of all the guile in language and
behaviour he had been forced to adopt for some time; he
thought with regret of the year before when he could say
whatever went through his head, in the certainty that any
silly remark would be treated as words from the Gospel
and any unconsidered comment as princely carelessness.
And now that he had begun regretting the past, he would
find himself, in moments of worst humour, slithering quite
a way down that perilous slope; once, as he was putting
sugar in a cup of tea which Angelica was holding out to
him, he realised that he was envying the chances open to
a Fabrizio Salina and Tancredi Falconeri of three centuries
before, who would have rid themselves of urges to bed
down with the Angelicas of their day without ever going
before a priest or giving a thought to the dowries of such
local girls (which were anyway then non-existent), and never
have needed to keep uncles on tenterhooks about saying or
suppressing appropriate remarks. The impulse of atavistic
lust (which was not really all lust, but partly sensuality
stemming from laziness) stung the civilised gentleman
nearing fifty so sharply that it made him blush; somewhere,
at infinite removes, he had been touched by scruples which
he chose to call Rousseauesque, and felt deeply ashamed;
which could also go to show how deep was his revulsion
from the social circumstances in which he was so inextricably
involved.

The sensation of finding himself a prisoner in a situation
evolving more rapidly than foreseen was particularly acute
that morning. The flight before, in fact, the stage coach
bearing the irregular and scanty mail to Donnafugata in
its canary-yellow box had brought a letter from Tancredi.

This proclaimed its importance even before reading,
written as it was on sumptuous sheets of gleaming paper
and in a harmonious script scrupulously tracing full strokes
down and thin strokes up. It was obviously the "clean
copy " of any number of disordered drafts. In it the Prince
was not addressed by the name of "Nuncle " which had
become dear to him; the wily youth had thought of a
formula, "dear Uncle Fabrizio," which had a number of
merits; of putting off any suspicion of connivance, by
claiming from the very first line the importance of what
was to follow, allowing the letter to be shown to anyone
and also that of providing a link with ancient pre-Christian
beliefs which attributed a binding power to the exact in-
vocation of a name.

"Dear Uncle Fabrizio," therefore, was informed that
his "most affectionate and devoted nephew " had for the
last three months been a prey to the most violent love,
and that neither " the risks of war" (read: walks in the
park of Caserta) nor "the many attractions of a great
city " (read: the charms of the dancer Schwarzwald) had
been able even for an instant to drive from his mind and
heart the image of the Signorina Angelica Sedara (here a
long procession of adjectives to exalt the beauty, grace,
virtue and intellect of his beloved); then, in neat hiero-
glyphics of ink and sentiment, the letter went on to say
that Tancredi had felt so conscious of his own unworthiness
that he had tried to suffocate his ardour ("long but vain
have been the hours during which, amid the clamour of
Naples or the austere company of my comrades-in-arms,
I have tried to repress my feelings "). But now love had
overcome his reserve, and he was begging his dearly beloved
uncle to deign to request Signorifta Angelica's "most
esteemed father " for her hand, in his name and on his
behalf. "You know, uncle, that all I can offer to the object
of my affections is my love, my name, and my sword."
After this phrase, in connection with which it should not
be forgotten that romanticism was then at high noon,
Tancredi went on to long considerations of the expediency,
nay the necessity of unions between families such as the
Falconeri and the Sedara (once he even dared write "The
House of Sedara ") being encouraged in order to bring
new blood into old families, and also to level out classes,
one of the aims of the current political movement in Italy.
This was the only part of the letter that Don Fabrizio read
with any pleasure; and not just because it confirmed his
own previsions and crowned him with the laurels of a pro-
phet, but also (it would be harsh to say "above all") because
the style, with, its hints of subdued irony, magically evoked
his nephew's face; the jesting nasal tone, the sparkling
sly blue eyes, the mockingly polite smile. And when he
realised that this little Jacobin sally was written out on
exactly one single sheet of paper so that if he wanted he
could let others read the letter while subtracting this
revolutionary chapter, his admiration for Tancredi's tact
knew no bounds. After a brief resume of recent operations
and an expression of the conviction that within a year they
would be in Rome, "predestined capital of the new Italy,"
he thanked his uncle for the care and affection given him
in the past, and ending by excusing himself for daring to
confide him with this charge "on which my future happiness
depends." Then came greetings (for Don Fabrizio only).

A first reading of this extraordinary composition made
Don Fabrizio's head spin: once again he noted how as-
toundingly fast all this had gone; put in modern terms
he could be said to be in the state of mind of someone to-
day who thinks he has boarded one of the old planes which
potter between Palermo and Naples, and suddenly finds
himself shut inside a Super Jet and realises he would be at
his destination almost before there was time to make the
sign of the Cross. Then the second affectionate layer of
his nature came to the top, and he rejoiced at this decision
of Tancredi which would assure him an ephemeral carnal
satisfaction and a perennial financial peace. He paused,
then for a moment, to note the youth's extraordinary
self-confidence in presuming his own wish already accepted
by Angelica; but all these thoughts were swept away even-
tually by a sense of humiliation at being forced to deal
with Don Calogero about a subject so intimate, and also
of vexation at having to conduct delicate negotiations next
day, with the use, what was more, of precaution and cunning
alien to his own, presumably leonine, nature.

Don Fabrizio only revealed the contents of this letter
to his wife when they were lying in bed under the pale-blue
glow from the glass-hooded oil-lamp. Maria Stella did not
say a word at first, just made a series of signs of the
Cross; then she remarked that she should have crossed herself
with her left hand and not her right; after this supreme
expression of amazement she loosed the thunderbolts of
her eloquence. Sitting up in bed, her fingers rumpled the
sheet while her words furrowed the lunar atmosphere of
the enclosed room like angry scarlet torches: "I'd so
hoped he would marry Concetta! He's a traitor, like all
liberals of his kind; first he betrayed his King, now he
betrays us! He, with that double-face of his, those honey-
ed words and poisoned actions! That's what happens when
one lets people into one's home who aren't of our own
blood! " Here she let loose her cavalry charge in family
scenes — "I always said so, but no one would listen to me.
I never could endure that fop! You just lost your head
about him! " In reality the Princess too had been subject
to Tancredi's charm, and she still loved him; but the pleasure
of shouting "I told you so " being the strongest any human
being can enjoy, all truths and all feelings were swept along
in its wake. "And now he has even had the impertinence
to ask you, his uncle and Prince of Salina, father of the
very girl he has deceived, to carry his squalid message to
that slut's rascally father! You mustn't do it, Fabrizio,
you mustn't do it, you shan't do it, you mustn't do it! "
Her voice went up in tone, her body began to stiffen,
Don Fabrizio, still lying on his back, gave a sideways
glance to assure himself that the valerian was on the night
table. The bottle was there with a silver spoon across the
stopper; in the glaucous half darkness of the room they
shone like a reassuring beacon built to withstand storms
of hysteria. For a moment he thought of getting out of
bed and fetching them; but he compromised by just sitting
up too; thus he reacquired a position of prestige. "Now,
Stella, my dear, don't be silly. You don't know what you
are saying. Angelica is not a slut. She may become one,
but for the moment she's a girl just like any other, prettier
than others, and she simply wants to make a good marriage;
she may even be a little in love with Tancredi, like everyone
else. She'll have money, most of which was ours; but it's now
well, almost too well, taken care of by Don Calogero; and
Tancredi has great need of that; he's a gentleman, he's
ambitious, he's a perfect sieve with money. As for Concetta
he never actually said a word to her; in fact, it's she who's
treated him badly ever since we got to Donnafugata. And
he's not a traitor; he follows the times, that's all, in his
politics and in his private life; and anyway he's a very
lovable lad, you know that as much as I do, Stella my dear."
Five huge fingers stroked the top of her tiny head. She
was sobbing now; having been sensible enough to drink a
sip of water, the fire of her rage had muted to self-pity.
Don Fabrizio began to hope that he would not have to get
out of the warm bed, face a barefoot crossing of the chilly
room. Then to ensure his future peace he pretended to be
angry: "And I'll have no shouting in my own house, in
my own room, in my own bed! None of this 'You do
this' and ‘You won't do that': I decide; I'd already
decided long before it ever crossed your mind! That's
enough now!"

The hater of shouting was himself bawling with all the
breath in his great chest. Thinking he had a table in
front of him, he banged a great fist on his own knee,
hurt himself and calmed down too.

The Princess, alarmed, was now whining in a low voice
like a frightened puppy.

"Now, let's sleep. To-morrow I'm going out shooting
and have to get up early. Enough! What's decided is
decided. Good night, Stella, my dear." He kissed his wife
first on her forehead and then on her lips. He lay down
again and turned towards the wall. The shadow of his
recumbent form was projected on the silken walls like
the silhouette of a mountain range on a blue horizon.

Stella lay back too, and as her right leg grazed the left
leg of the Prince, she felt consoled and proud at having
for a husband a man so vital and so proud. What did
Tancredi matter ... or even Concetta . . ..?

For the moment such tight-rope balancing was suspended,
along with all other thought, in the archaic and aromatic
countryside — if it could be called that — where he
went shooting every morning. The term "countryside"
implies soil transformed by labour; but the scrub clinging
to the slopes was still in the very same state of scented
tangle in which it had been found b'y Phoenicians, Dorians
and lonians when they disembarked in Sicily, that America
of antiquity. Don Fabrizio and Tumeo climbed up and
down, slipped and were scratched by thorns, just as an
Archedamos or Philostrates must have got tired and
scratched twenty-five centuries before. They saw the same
objects, their clothes were soaked with just as sticky a
sweat, the same indifferent breeze blew steadily from the
sea, moving myrtles and broom, spreading a smell of thyme.
The dogs' sudden pauses for thought, their tension waiting
for prey, was the very same as when Artemis was invoked
for the chase. Reduced to these basic elements, its face
washed clear of worries, life took on a tolerable aspect.
That morning, shortly before reaching the top of the hill,
Arguto and Teresina began the hieratic dance of dogs
who have scented prey; stretching, stiffening, prudently
raising paws, repressing barks; a few minutes later a tiny
beige-coloured backside slid through the grass and two
almost simultaneous shots ended the silent wait; at the
Prince's feet Arguto placed an animal in its death throes.

It was a wild rabbit; its dun-coloured coat had not been
able to save it. Horrible wounds lacerated snout and chest.
Don Fabrizio found himself stared at by big black eyes
soon overlaid by a glaucous veil; they were looking at
him with no reproval, but full of tortured amazement at the
whole ordering of things; the velvety ears were already
cold, the vigorous paws contracting in rhythm, still-living
symbol of useless flight; the animal had died tortured by
anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape
when it was already caught, just like so many human beings.
While sympathetic fingers were still stroking that poor
snout, the animal gave a last quiver and died; Don Fabrizio
and Don Ciccio had had their bit of fun, the former not only
the pleasure of killing but also the comfort of compassion.

When the hunters reached the top of the hill, there among
the tamarisks and scattered cork-trees appeared the real
Sicily again, the one compared to which baroque towns and
orange groves are mere trifles: aridly undulating to the
horizon in hillock after hillock, comfortless and irrational,
with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently
in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified
at the instant when a change of wind had flung the waves
into a frenzy. Donnafugata lay huddled and hidden in an
anonymous fold of the ground, and not a living soul was
to be seen; the only signs of the passage of man were
scraggy rows of vines. Beyond the hills on one side was
the indigo smudge of the sea, more mineral and barren,
even, than the land. The slight breeze moved over all, un-
iversalising the smell of dung, carrion and sage, cancelling,
suppressing, reordering each thing in its careless passage;
it dried up the little drops of blood which ^were the only
residue of the rabbit, far away it ruffled the locks of Gar-
ibaldi, and further still flung dust in the eyes of Neapoli-
tan soldiers hurriedly reinforcing the battlements of Gaeta,
deluded by a hope as vain as the rabbit's frenzied flight.
The Prince and the organist rested under the circumscribed
shadow of cork-trees; they drank tepid wine from wooden
bottles with a roast chicken from Don Fabrizio's haversack,
ate little cakes called muffoletti dusted with raw flour
which Don Ciccio had brought with him, and local grapes
so ugly to look at and so good to eat; with hunks of bread
they satisfied the hungry dogs standing there in front of
them, impassive as bailiffs bent on getting debts paid.
Under that monarchic sun Don Fabrizio and Don Ciccio were
dozing off.

But though a shot had killed the rabbit, though the
bored rifles of General Cialdini were now dismaying the
Bourbon troops at Gaeta, though the midday heat was
making men doze off, nothing could stop the ants. Attract-
ed by a few chewed grape skins spat out by Don Ciccio,
along they rushed in close order, morale high at the chance
of annexing this bit of garbage soaked with an organist's
saliva. Up they came full of confidence, disordered but
resolute; groups of three or four would stop now and a-
gain for a chat, exalting, perhaps, the ancient glories
and future prosperity of ant hill Number Two under cork-
tree Number Four on the top of Mount Morco; then once
again they would take up their march with the others
towards a buoyant future; the gleaming backs of those
imperialists seemed to quiver with enthusiasm, while
from their ranks no doubt rose the notes of an anthem.

By some association of ideas which it would be inoppor-
tune to pursue, the activity of these insects prevented
the Prince from sleeping and reminded him of the days
of the Plebiscite about Unification through which he had
lived shortly before at Donnafugata itself. Apart from a
sense of amazement those days had left him many an enigma
to solve; now, in sight of nature which, except for ants,
obviously had no such bothers, he might perhaps find a
solution for one of them. The dogs were sleeping stretch-
ed and crouched like figures in relief, the little rabbit
hanging head down from a branch was swinging out diag-
onally under the constant surge of wind, but Tumeo,
with the help of his pipe, still managed to keep his
eyes open.

"And you, Don Ciccio, how did you vote on the
twenty-first? "

The poor man started; taken by surprise at a moment
when he was outside the stockade of precautions in which
like each of his fellow townsmen he usually moved, he
hesitated, not knowing what to reply.

The Prince mistook for alarm what was really only sur-
prise, and felt irritated. "Well, what are you afraid of?
There's no one here but us, the wind and the dogs."

The list of reassuring witnesses was not really happily
chosen; wind is a gossip by definition, the Prince was half
Sicilian. Only the dogs were absolutely trustworthy and
that only because they lacked articulate speech. But Don
Ciccio had now recovered; his peasant astuteness had
suggested the right reply — nothing at all. "Excuse me.
Excellency, but there's no point in your question. You
know that everyone in Donnafugata voted 'yes.'"

Don Fabrizio did know this; and that was why this
reply merely changed a small enigma into an enigma of
history. Before the voting many had come to him for
advice; all of them had been exhorted, sincerely, to vote
"yes." Don Fabrizio, in fact, could not see what else
there was to do: whether treating it as a fait accompli or
as an act merely theatrical and banal, whether taking it as
historical necessity or considering the trouble these humble
folk might get into if their negative attitude jyere known.
He had noticed, though, that not all had been convinced
by his words; into play had come the abstract Machia-
vellianism of Sicilians, which so often induced these people,
with all their generosity, to erect complex barricades on the
most fragile of foundations. Like clinics adept at treatment
based on fundamentally false analyses of blood and urine
which they are too lazy to rectify, the Sicilians (of that
time) ended by killing off the patient, that is themselves,
by a niggling and hair-splitting rarely connected with any
real understanding of the problems involved, and even less
of their interlocutors. Some who had spent their lives under
the aegis of the Leopard felt it impossible for a Prince of
Salina to vote in favour of the Revolution (as the recent
changes were still called in those remote parts), and they
interpreted his advice as ironical, intended to effect a
result in practice opposite to his words. These pilgrims
(and they were the best) had come out of his study winking
at each other — as far as their respect for him would allow —
proud at having penetrated the meaning of the princely
words, and rubbing their hands in self-congratulation at
their own perspicacity just when this was most completely
in eclipse.

Others, on the other hand, after having listened to him,
went off looking sad and convinced that he was a turncoat
or opportunist, more than ever determined to take no
notice of what he said but to follow instead the age-old
proverb about preferring a known evil to an untried good.
These were reluctant to ratify the new national reality for
personal reasons too; either from religious faith, or from
having received favours from the former regime and not
being sharp enough to insert themselves into the new one,
or finally because during the upsets of the liberation period
they had lost a few capons and sacks of beans, and been
cuckolded either by Garibaldini volunteers or Bourbon
levies. He had, in fact, the disagreeable but distinct
impression that about fifteen of them would vote "no," a
tiny minority certainly, but noticeable in the small electorate
of Donnafugata. Taking into consideration that the people
who came to him represented the flower of the inhabitants,
and that there must also be some unconvinced among the
hundreds of electors who had not dreamt of setting foot
inside the palace, the Prince had calculated that Donna-
fugata's compact affirmative would be varied by about
forty negative votes.

The day of the Plebiscite was windy and grey, and tired
groups of youths had been seen going through the streets
of the town with bits of paper covered with "yes " stuck
in the ribbons of their hats. Amid waste paper and refuse
swirled by the wind they sang a few verses of La Bella Gi-
gugin transformed irfto a kind of Arab wail, a fate to which
any gay tune sung in Sicily is bound to succumb. There
had also been seen two or three "foreigners " (that is from
Girgenti) installed in Zzu Menico's tavern, where they
were declaiming about the "magnificent and progressive
future " of a renovated Sicily united to resurgent Italy.
A few peasants were standing listening, mutely, stunned by
overwork or starved by unemployment. These cleared their
throats and spat continuously, but kept silent; so silent
that it must have been then (as Don Fabrizio said after-
wards) that the "foreigners " decided to rely more on
Mathematics than on Rhetoric.

The Prince went to vote about four in the afternoon,
flanked on the right by Father Pirrone, on the left by
Don Onofrio Rotolo; frowning and fair-skinned, he proceed-
ed slowly towards the Town Hall, frequently putting up a
hand to protect his eyes lest the breeze loaded with all
the filth collected on its way should bring on the conjun-
ctivitis to which he was subject; and he remarked to Father
Pirrone that though the air would have been like a putrid
pool without the wind, yet health-giving gusts did seem
to drag up a lot of dirt with them. He was wearing the
same black frock coat in which two years before he had gone
to pay his respects at Caserta to poor King Ferdinand, who
had been lucky enough to die in time to avoid this day of
dirty wind when the seal would be set on his own incapacity.
But had it really been incapacity.? One might as well say
that a person succumbing to typhus dies of incapacity. He
remembered the King busy putting up dykes against the
floods of useless documents: and suddenly he realised how
much unconscious appeal to pity there was in those unat-
tractive features. Such thoughts were disagreeable, as
are all those that make us understand things too late, and
the Prince's face went solemn and dark as if he were follow-
ing an invisible funeral car. Only Ihe violent impact of
his feet on loose stones in the street showed his internal
conflict. It is superfluous to mention that the ribbon on his
top hat was innocent of any piece of paper; but in the eyes
of those who knew him a "yes " and a "no " alternated
on the glistening felt.

On reaching a little room in the Town Hall used as
the voting booth he was surprised to see all the members
of the committee get up as his great height filled the door-
way; a few peasants who had arrived before were put
aside, and so without having to wait Don Fabrizio handed
lys "yes " into the patriotic hands of Don Calogero Sedara.
Father Pirrone, though, did not vote at all, as he had been
careful not to get himself listed as resident in the town.
Don 'Nofrio, obeying the express desires of the Prince,
gave his own monosyllabic opinion about the complicated
Italian question; a masterpiece of concision carried through
with the good grace of a child drinking castor oil. After
which all were invited for "a little glass " upstairs in the
Mayor's study; but Father Pirrone and Don 'Nofrio put
forward good reasons, one of abstinence, the other of
stomach-ache, and remained below. Don Fabrizio had to
face the party alone.

Behind the Mayor's writing desk gleamed a brand
new portrait of Garibaldi and (already) one of King
Victor Emmanuel hung, luckily to the right; the
first handsome, the second ugly; both, however, made
brethren by prodigious growths of hair which nearly
hid their faces altogether. On a small low table was a plate
with some ancient biscuits covered with fly droppings and
a dozen little squat glasses brimming with rosolio wine:
four red, four green, four white, the last in the centre:
an ingenious symbol of the new national flag which tempered
the Prince's remorse with a smile. He chose the white
liquor for himself, presumably because the least indigestible
and not, as some thought, in tardy homage to the Bourbon
standard. Anyway, all three varieties of rosolio were equally
sugary, sticky and revolting. His host had the good taste not
to give toasts. But, as Don Calogero said, great joys are
silent. Don Fabrizio was shown a letter from the authorities
of Girgenti announcing to the industrious citizens of
Donnafugata the concession of 2,000 lire towards sewage,
a work which would be completed before the end of
1911 so the Mayor assured them, stumbling into one of
those lapsus whose mechanism Freud was to explain many
decades later; and the meeting broke up. •

Before dusk the three or four easy girls of Donnafugata
(there were some there too, not grouped but each hard at
work on her own) appeared in the square with tricolour
ribbons in their manes as protest against the exclusion of
women from the vote; the poor creatures were jeered at
even by the most advanced liberals and forced back to
their lairs. This did not prevent the Giornale di Trinacria
telling the people of Palermo four days later that at
Donnafugata "some gentle representatives of the fair sex
wished to show their faith in the new and brilliant destinies
of their beloved Country, and demonstrated in the main
square amid general acclamation from the patriotic popu-
lation."

After this the electoral booths were closed and the
scrutators got to work; late that night the shutters on the
balcony of the Town Hall were flung open and Don Calogero
appeared with a tricolour sash over his middle, flanked by
two ushers with lighted candelabra which the wind snuffed
at once. To the invisible crowd in the shadows below he
announced that the Plebiscite at Donnafugata had had the
following results;

Voters 515; Voting, 512; Yes, No, zero.

From the dark end of the square rose applause and
hurrahs; on her little balcony Angelica, with her funereal
maid, clapped lovely rapacious hands; speeches were made;
adjectives loaded with superlatives and double consonants
reverberated and echoed in the dark from one wall to
another; amid thundering of fireworks messages were sent
off to the King (the new one) and to the General; a tricolour
rocket or two climbed up from the village into the blackness
towards the starless sky. By eight o'clock all was over, and
nothing remained except darkness as on any other night,
always.

On the top of Monte Morco all was clear now, in bright
light; but the gloom of that night still lay stagnant deep
in Don Fabrizio's heart. His discomfort had become more
irksome, if vaguer; it had no connection at all with the great
matters of which the Plebiscite marked the start of a
solution: the major interests of the Kingdom (of the Two
Sicilies) and olhis own class, his personal privileges had come
through all these events battered but still lively. In the
circumstances he could not well expect more. No, his
discomfort was not of a political nature and must have deeper
roots somewhere in one of those reasons which we call
irrational because they are buried under layers of self-
ignorance. Italy was born on that sullen night at Donna-
fugata, born right there, in that forgotten little town, just
as much as in the sloth of Palermo or the clamour of Naples;
but an evil fairy, of unknown name, must have been present;
anyway Italy was born and one could only hope that she
would live on in this form; any other would be worse.
Agreed. And yet this persistent disquiet of his must
mean something; during that too brief announcement
of figures, just as during those too emphatic speeches,
he had a feeling that something, someone, had died,
God only knew in what back-alley, in what corner of the
popular conscience.

The cool air had dispersed Don Ciccio's somnolence,
the massive grandeur of the Prince dispelled his fears;
all that remained afloat now on the surface of his
conscience was resentment, useless of course but not
ignoble. He stood up, spoke in dialect and gesticulated,
a pathetic puppet who in some absurd way was right.

"I, Excellency, voted 'no.' 'No,' a hundred times
'no.' I know what you told me: necessity, unity,
expediency. You may be right; I know nothing of politics.
Such things I leave to others. But Ciccio Tumeo is honest,
poor though he may be, with his trousers in holes " (and
he slapped the carefully mended patches in his shooting
breeches) "and I don't forget favours done me! Those
swine in the Town Hall just swallowed up my opinion,
chewed it and then spat it out transformed as they wanted.
I said black and they made me say white! The one time
when I could say what I thought that bloodsucker Sedara
went and annulled it, behaved as if I'd never existed,
as if I never meant a thing, me, Francesco Tumeo La Manna
son of Leonardo, organist of the Mother Church at Don-
nafugata, a better man than he is! To think I'd even dedi-
cated to him a Mazurka composed by me at the birth of
that. . . " (he bit his lips to rein himself in) "that
mincing daughter of his! "

At this point calm descended on Don Fabrizio, who
had finally solved the enigma; now he knew who had been
killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other places, in the
course of that night of dirty wind: a new-born babe: good
faith; just the very child who should have been cared for
most, whose strengthening would have justified all the silly
vandalisms. Don Ciccio's negative vote, fifty similar votes
at Donnafugata, a hundred thousand "no's " in the whole
Kingdom, would have had no effect on the result, have
made it, in fact, if anything more significant; and this
maiming of souls would have been avoided. Six months
before they used to hear a rough despotic voice saying:
"Do what I say or you're for it! " Now there was already
an impression of such a threat being replaced by a
money-lender's soapy tones: "But you signed it yourself,
didn't you? Can't you see? It's quite clear. You must do
as we say, for here are the I.O.U's; your will is identical
with mine."

Don Ciccio was still thundering on: "For you nobles
it's different. You can be ungrateful about an extra estate,
but we must be grateful for a bit of bread. It's different
again for profiteers like Sedara with whom cheating is a law
of nature. Small folk like us have to take things as they
come. You kqow, Excellency, that my father, God rest his
soul, was gamekeeper at the royal shoot of Sant' Onofrio
back in Ferdinand IV's time, when the English were here.?
It was a hard life, but the green royal livery and the silver
plaque conferred authority. Queen Isabella, the Spaniard,
was Duchess of Calabria then, and it was she who had me
study, made me what I am now, organist of the Mother
Church, honoured by your Excellency's kindness; when
my mother sent off a petition to Court in our years of
greatest need, back came five gold ounces, sure as death,
for they were fond of us there in Naples, they knew we
were decent folk and faithful subjects; when the King
came he used to clap my father on the shoulder. 'Don
Liona, he said, ‘I wish we'd more like you, devoted to
the throne and to my Person.' Then the officer in
attendance used to hand out gold coin. Alms, they call it
now, that truly royal generosity; and they call it that so
as not to give any themselves; but it was a just reward for
loyalty. And if those holy Kings and lovely Queens are
looking down at us from heaven to-day, what'ld they
say.? ‘The son of Don Leonardo Tumeo betrayed us! '
Luckily the truth is known in Paradise! Yes, Excellency,
I know, people like you have told me, such things from
royalty mean nothing, they're just part of the job. That
may be true, in fact is true. But we got those five gold
ounces, that's a fact, and they helped us through the winter.
And now that I could repay the debt my ‘no' becomes a
'yes'! I used to be a ‘faithful subject,' now I'm a
filthy pro-Bourbon.' A fig for those Savoys, I say! "

Don Fabrizio had always liked Don Ciccio, partly
because of the compassion inspired in him by all who
from youth had thought of themselves as dedicated to the
Arts, and in old age, realising they had no talent, still
carried on the same activity at lower levels, pocketing
withered dreams; and he was also touched by the dignity
of his poverty. But now he also felt a kind of admiration
for him, and deep down at the very bottom of his proud
conscience a voice was asking if Don Ciccio had not perhaps
behaved more nobly than the Prince of Salina. And the
Sedara, all the various Sedara, from the petty one who
violated arithmetic at Donnafugata to the major ones at
Palermo and Turin, had they not committed a crime by
choking such consciences? Don Fabrizio could not know
it then, but a great deal of the slackness and acquiescence
for which the people of the South were to be criticised
during the next decade, was due to the stupid annulment
of the first expression of liberty ever offered them.

Don Ciccio had said his say. And now his genuine but
rarely shown side of "austere man of principle" was
taken over by one much more frequent and no less genuine,
that of snob. For Tumeo belonged to the zoological species
of "passive snob," one unjustly reviled, particularly to-
day. Of course the word "snob " was unknown in the Sicily
of 1860; but just as tuberculosis existed before Koch, so
in that remote era there were people for whom to obey,
imitate and above all avoid distressing those whom they
considered of higher social rank than themselves was the
supreme law of life; snobbery, in fact, is the opposite of
envy. At that time a man of this type went under various
names; he was called "devoted," "warm-hearted," "faith-
ful"; and life was happy for him since a nobleman's
most fugitive smile was enough to flood an entire day with
sun; and as he appeared under such affectionate names,
fthe restorative graces were more frequent than they are
to-day. Now Don Ciccio's frankly snobbish nature made
him fear causing Don Fabrizio distress, and he searched
diligently round for ways to disperse any frowns he might
be causing on the Prince's Olympian brow; the best means
to hand was suggesting they should start shooting again;
and so they did. Surprised in their afternoon naps a few
wretched woodcock and another rabbit fell under the
marksmen's fire, particularly accurate and careful that day
as both Salina and Tumeo were identifying those innocent
creatures with Don Calogero Sedara. But the shots, the
flying feathers, the shreds of skin glittering for an in-
stant in the sun, were not enough to soothe the Prince
that day; as the hours passed and return to Donnafugata
drew near he felt more and more oppressed, bothered,
humiliated at the thought of the imminent conversation
with the plebeian Mayor, and his having called in his
heart those woodcock and the rabbit "Don Calogero " had
been no use after all; though he had already decided to
swallow the horrid toad he still felt a need for more
information about his adversary, or rather, for a sounding
out of public opinion about the step he was about to take.
So for the second time that day Don Ciccio was surprised
by a sudden point-blAnk question.

"Listen, Don Ciccio; you see so many people, what
do they really think of Don Calogero at Donnafugata? "

Tumeo, in truth, felt he had already shown his opinion
of the Mayor quite clearly; and he was just about to say
so when into his mind came rumours he had heard about
Tancredi making up to Angelica: and he was suddenly
overwhelmed with regret at having let himself be drawn into
expressing downright judgments which must certainly
be anathema to the Prince if what he assumed was true;
in another part of his mind, meanwhile, he was con-
gratulating himself at not having said anything posi-
tive against Angelica; and the faint ache which he still
felt in his right forefinger had the effect of a soothing
balsam.

"After all, Excellency, Don Calogero Sedara is no worse
than lots of others who have come up in the last few
months." The homage was moderate but enough to allow
Don Fabrizio to insist, "You see, Don Ciccio, I'm most
interested to know the truth about Don Calogero and his
family."

"The truth. Excellency, is that Don Calogero is very
rich, and very influential too; that he's a miser (when his
daughter was at college he and his wife used to eat a
fried egg between them), but knows how to spend when he
has to; and as every coin spent in the world must end in
someone's pocket he now finds many people dependant on
him; when he's a friend he really is a friend, one must
say that for him: he lets his land on very harsh terms and
the peasants kill themselves to pay, but a month ago he
lent fifty gold ounces to Pasquale Tripi who had helped
him at the time of the landings: without interest, too,
which is the greatest miracle ever known since Santa
Rosalia stopped the plague at Palermo. He's clever as
the devil, too; Your Excellency shohld have seen him last
April or May; up and down the whole district he went
like a bat; by trap, horse, mule, foot, in rain or sun; and
wherever he passed secret groups were formed, to prepare
the way for those that were to come. He's a scourge of
God, Excellency, a scourge of God. And we haven't seen
the beginning of Don Calogero's career. In a few months
he'll be Deputy in the Turin Parliament; in a few years,
when church property is put up for sale, he'll pay next to
nothing for the estates of Marca and Fondachello and
become the biggest lalidowner in the province; that's Don
Calogero, Excellency, the new man: a pity he has to be
like that, though."

Don Fabrizio remembered a conversation with Father Pir-
rone some months before in the sunlit observatory. What
the Jesuit had predicted had come to pass. But wasn't
it perhaps good tactics to insert himself into the new
movement, make at least part use of it for a few members
of his own class? The worry of his imminent interview
with Don Calogero lessened.

"But the rest of his family, Don Ciccio, what are they
really like? "

"Excellency, no one has laid eyes on Don Calogero's
wife for years, except me. She only leaves the house to go
to early Mass, the five o'clock one, when it's empty.
There's no organ-playing at that hour; but once I got up
early just to see her. Donna Bastiana came in with her maid,
and as I was hiding behind a confessional I could not see
very much; but at the end of Mass the heat was too great
for the poor woman and she took off her black veil. Word
of honour, Excellency, she was lovely as the sun, one can't
blame Don Calogero, who's a beetle of a man, for wanting
to keep her away from others. But even in the best kept
houses secrets come out; servants talk; and it seems Donna
Bastiana is a kind of animal: she can't read or write or
tell the time by a clock, can scarcely talk; just a beaut-
iful mare, voluptuous and uncouth; she's incapable even of
affection for her own daughter! Good for bed and that's
all."

Don Ciccio, who, as protege of queens and follower of
princes, considered his own simple manners to be perfect,
smiled with pleasure. He had found a way of getting some
of his own back on the suppressor of his personality. "Any-
way," he went on, "one couldn't expect much else. You know
whose daughter Donna Bastiana is. Excellency " He turned,
rose on tiptoe, pointed to a distant group of huts which
looked as if they were slithering off the edge of the hill,
nailed there just by a wretched-looking bell-tower: a
crucified hamlet. "She's the daughter of one of your
peasants from Runci, Peppe Giunta he was called, so filthy
and so crude that everyone called him Peppe "Mmerda"
. . . excuse the word. Excellency." Satisfied, he twisted
one of Teresina's ears round a finger. "Two years after
Don Calogero had eloped with Bastiana they found him
dead on the path to Rampinzeri, with twelve bullets in his
back. Always lucky, is Don Calogero, for the old man was
getting above himself and demanding, they say."

Much of this was known to Don Fabrizio and had
already been balanced up in his mind; but the nickname
of Angelica's grandfather was new to him; it opened up a
profound historical perspective, and made him glimpse
other abysses compared to which Don Calogero himself
seemed a garden flowerbed. The Prince began to feel
the ground giving way under his feet; how ever could
Tancredi swallow this? And what about himself? He found
himself trying to work out the relationship between the
Prince of Salina, uncle of the bridegroom, and the grand-
father of the bride; he found none, there wasn't any.
Angelica was just Angelica, a flower of a girl, a rose merely
fertilised by her grandfather's nickname. Non olety he
repeated, non olet; in fact optime foeminam ac conturbernium
olet.

"You've mentioned everything, Don Ciccio, crude mothers
and faecal grandfathers, but not what interests me;
the Signorina Angelica."

The secret of Tancredi's matrimonial intentions,
although embryonic until a few hours before, would
certainly have been told then had it not luckily been
camouflaged. No doubt the young man's frequent visits
fo Don Calogero's home had been noticed, as also his
ecstatic smiles and little attentions, normal and insig-
niflcant in a city but symptoms of violent passion in
the eyes of virtuous folk at Donnafugata. The main
scandal had been the first; the old men cooking in the sun
and the children duelling in the dust had seen all, under-
stood all, and repeated all; and on the aphrodisiac and
seductive properties of those dozen peaches had been
consulted the most expert witches and abstruse treatises
on potions, chiefly that by Rutilio Benincasa, the Aristotle
of the rustic proletariat. Luckily there had come about
a phenomenon relatively frequent amongst Sicilians; malice
had masked truth; everyone had built up a puppet of a
libertine Tancredi fixing his lascivious desires on Angel-
ica; he was manceuvring to seduce her, that was all. The
thought of any possible marriage between a Prince of
Falconeri and a granddaughter of Peppe "Mmerda" did not
even cross the minds of these country folk, who thus
rendered to feudal families a homage equivalent to that
rendered by a blasphemer to God. Tancredi's departure
had cut short these fantasies and they were not mentioned
again. In this respect Tumeo had been like the others,
so he greeted the Prince's question with the amused air
assumed by older men when discoursing on the follies of
the young.

"As to the Signorina, Excellency, there's nothing to
say about her; she speaks for herself; her eyes, her skin,
her figure are all there to be seen and appreciated by any-
one. Don Tancredi has understood the language they speak,
I think; or shouldn't I suggest such a thing? She has all
the beauty of the mother with none of the grandfather's
stink of manure; and she's intelligent, too. You've seen
how those few years in Florence have transformed her
completely? A real lady she's become," went on Don Ciccio,
insensible to subtleties in such matters, "A complete lady!
When she returned from school and invited me home she
played my old mazurka; badly, but it was a delight to
watch her, those black locks, those eyes, those legs, that
breast . . . Uuh! No stink of manure there! Her sheets
must smell like paradise! "

The Prince gave a start of annoyance; so touchy is the
pride of class, even in a moment of decline, that these
orgiastic praises of the beauties of his future niece of-
fended him; how dared Don Ciccio express himself with such
lascivious lyricism about a future Princess of Falconeri? It
is true, of course, that the poor man knew nothing as yet;
he would have to be told all; but anyway the news would be
public in three hours. He decided at once and turned to
Tumeo a smile feline but friendly. "Calm yourself, my dear
Don Ciccio, calm yourself; at home I have a letter from
my nephew charging me to ask for Signorina Angelica's
hand in matrimony on his behalf; so from now on you will
talk of her with your usual respect. You are the first
to know the news, but for that privilege you must pay;
when we get back to the palace you'll be locked up with
Teresina in the gun-room; you'll have time to clean and
oil all the guns, and you will be set at liberty only
after Don Calogero's visit; I want nothing to leak out
before."

Taken by surprise like this, all Don Ciccio's snobberies
and precautions collapsed together like a group of skittles
hit in the middle. All that survived was age-old feeling.

"How foul. Excellency! A nephew of yours ought not to
marry the daughter of those who're your enemies, who
have stabbed you in the back! To try to seduce her, as I
thought, was an act of conquest; this is unconditional
surrender. It's the end of the Falconeri and of the Salina
too."

Having said this he bent his head and longed in anguish
for the earth to open under his feet. The Prince had gone
purple, even his ears, even the whites of his eyes seemed
flushed with blood. He clenched his fists and took a step
towards Don Ciccio. But he was a man of science, used,
after all, to seeing pros and cons; and anyway under that
leonine aspect he was a sceptic. He had put up with so
much that day already; the result of the Plebiscite, the
nickname of Angelica's grandfather, those bullets in the
back. And Tumeo was right; in him spoke clear tradition.
But the man was a fool: this marriage was not the end of
everything, but the beginning of everything. It was in the
very best of traditions.

His fists unclenched; the marks of his nails were impres-
sed on his palms. "Let's go home, Don Ciccio, there
are some things you can't understand. Now, you'll
remember what we agreed, won't you? "

And as they climbed down towards the road, it would have
been difficult to tell which of the two was Don Quixote
and which Sancho Panza.

When Don Calogero's arrival was announced at exactly
half-past four the Prince had not yet finished his toilet;
he sent a message aslcing the Mayor to wait a minute in
his study and went on placidly embellishing himself. He
plastered his hair with Lemo-liscio, Atkinson's 'Lime Juice
and Glycerine', a dense whitish lotion which arrived in
cases from London and whose name suffered the same ethnic
changes as songs: he rejected the black frock-coat and
chose instead a very pale lilac one which seemed more
in keeping with the presumably festive occasion; he dal-
lied a little longer to tweak out with pincers an impudent
fair hair which had succeeded in escaping that morning
in his hurried shave: he had Father Pirrone called; before
leaving the room he put on a table an extract from thft
Blaster fur Himmehforschung and on the turned back page
made the sign of the Cross, a gesture of devotion which in
Sicily has a non-religious meaning more frequently than is
believed. "•

As he crossed the two rooms preceding the study he
tried to imagine himself as an imposing leopard with smooth
scented skin preparing to tear a timid jackal to pieces;
but by one of those involuntary associations of ideas which
are the scourge of natures like his, he found flicking into
his memory one of those French historical pictures in
which Austrian marshals and generals, covered with plumes
and decorations, are filing in surrender past an ironical
Napoleon; they are more elegant, undoubtedly, but it is
the squat little man in the grey topcoat who is the victor;
and so, put out by these inopportune memories of Mantua
and Ulm, it was an irritated Leopard that entered the
study.

Don Calogero was standing there, very small, very badly
shaved; he would have looked like a jackal had it not been
for eyes glinting intelligence; but as this intelligence of
his had a material aim opposed to the abstract one to which
the Prince's was supposed to tend, this was taken as a sign
of slyness. Devoid of the instinct for choosing the right
clothes for the occasion which was innate in the Prince,
the Mayor had thought it proper to dress up almost in
mourning; he was nearly as black as Father Pirrone, but
while the latter was sitting in a corner with the marmoreally
abstract air of priests who wish to avoid influencing the
decisions of others, the Mayor's face expressed a sense of
avid expectancy almost painful to behold. They plunged
at once into the skirmish of insignificant words which
precede great verbal battles. But it was Don Calogero who
launched the main attack.

"Excellency," he asked, "have you had good news from
Don Tancredi " In little towns in those days the Mayor
was always able to examine the post unofficially and
maybe he had been warned by the unusually elegant
writing paper. The Prince, when this occurred to him,
began to feei annoyed.

"No, Don Calogero, no. My nephew's gone mad . . ."

But there exists a deity who is protector of princes. He
is called Good Manners. And he often intervenes to pre-
vent Leopards from unfortunate slips. But he has to be
paid heavy tribute. As Pallas intervened to curb the
intemperances of Odysseus, so Good Manners appeared to
Don Fabrizio and stopped him on the brink of the abyss;
but the Prince had to pay for his salvation by becoming
explicit for just once in his life. With perfect natural-
ness, without a second's hesitation, he ended the phrase;
. . mad with love for your daughter, Don Calogero.
So he wrote to me yesterday."

The Mayor preserved a surprising equanimity. He gave
a slight smile and began examining the ribbon on his
hat; Father Pirrone's eyes were turned to the ceiling
as if he were a master mason charged with judging its
solidity. The Prince was put out; that silence on both
their parts even deprfved him of the petty satisfaction
of arousing surprise. So it was with relief that he real-
ised Don Calogero was about to speak.

"I knew it, Excellency, I knew it. They were seen to
kiss on Tuesday, 25th of September, the day before Don
Tancredi's departure. In your garden, near the fountain.
Laurel hedges aren't always as thick as people think.
For a month I've been waiting for your nephew to make
some move, and I'd just been thinking now of coming to
ask Your Excellency about his intentions."

Don Fabrizio felt assailed by numbers of stinging hor-
nets. First, as is proper to every man not yet decrepit,
that of carnal jealousy. So Tancredi had tasted that
flavour of strawberries and cream which would always
be unknown to him! Then came a sense of social humilia-
tion at finding himself an accused instead of a bearer of
good news. Third, personal vexation, that of one who
thought he had everything in his control and then finds
much has been happening without his knowledge. "Don
Calogero, let's not change the cards we have on the table.
Remember, it was I who called you. I wished to tell
you of a letter from my nephew which arrived yesterday.
In it he declares his passion for your daughter, a passion
of whose intensity I . . ." (Here the Prince hesitated a
moment, because lies are sometimes difficult to tell before
gimlet eyes like the Mayor's) ". . . I was completely
ignorant till now; and at the end of it he charges me to
ask you for Signorina Angelica's hand."

Don Calogero went on smiling impassively; Father Pirrone
had transformed himself from architectural expert into
Moslem sage, and with four fingers of his right hand
crossed in four fingers of his left was rotating his thumbs
around each other, turning and changing their direction
with a great display of choreographic fantasy. The silence
lasted a long time; the Prince lost patience. "Now, Don
Calogero, it is I who am waiting for you to declare your
intentions."

The Mayor's eyes had been fixed on the orange fringe
of the Prince's arm-chair; for an instant he covered them
with his right hand, then raised them; now they looked
candid, brimming with amazed surprise, as if that action
had really changed them.

"Excuse me. Prince " (by the sudden omission of "Excel-
lency " Don Fabrizio knew that all was happily consum-
mated) "but Joy and surprise had taken my words away.
I'm a modern parent, though, and can give no definite
answer until I have questioned the angel who is the
consolation of our home. But I also know how to exercise
a father's sacred rights. All that happens in Angelica's
heart and mind is known to me, and I think I can say that
Don Tancredi's affection, which honours us all, is sincerely
returned."

Don Fabrizio was overcome with sincere emotion; the
toad had been swallowed; the chewed head and gizzards
were going down his throat; he still had to crunch up the
claws, but that was nothing compared to the rest; the
worst was over. With this sense of liberation he began to
feel his affection for Tancredi coming to the fore again,
and thought of those narrow blue eyes of his glittering as
they read the happy reply; he imagined, or recalled rather,
the first months of a love match with the frenzies and
acrobatics of the senses approved and encouraged by all
the hierarchies of angels, benevolent though surely sur-
prised. And he foresaw Tancredi's security of life later on,
his chances for developing talents whose wings would have
been clipped by lack of money.

The nobleman rose to his feet, took a step towards the
surprised Don Calogero, raised him from his arm-chair,
clasped him to his breast; the Mayor's short legs were
suspended in the air. For a moment that room in a remote
Sicilian province looked like a Japanese print of a huge
violet iris with a hairy fly hanging from a petal. When Don
Calogero touched the floor again, Don Fabrizio thought,
"This won't do, I really must give him a pair of English
razors."

Father Pirrone switched off the turbine of his thumbs;
he got up and squeezed the Prince's hand. "Excellency,
I evoke the protection of God on this marriage; your joy
has become mine." To Don Calogero he extended the tips
of his fingers without a word. Then with a knuckle he
tapped the barometer hanging on the wall: it was falling;
bad weather ahead. He sat down and opened his breviary.

"Don Calogero," said the Prince, "the love of these two
young people is the basis, the only foundation of their
future happiness. We all know that. But we men of a cer-
tain age, men of experience, we have to think of other
things too. There is no point in my telling you how
illustrious is the family of Falconer!; it came to Sicily
with Charles of Anjou, flourished under the Aragonese, and
Spanish, Bourbon kings (if I may name them in your pres-
ence) and I am sure that it will also prosper under the
new dynasty from the mainland (may God preserve it)." (It
was impossible to tell how much the Prince was being ir-
onic or how much just mistaken.) " They were Peers of the
Realm, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Santiago, and when
they have a fancy to be Knights of Malta they need only
raise a finger and Via Condotti cooks up a diploma for
them at a moment's notice, like buns, so far at least."
(This perfidious insinuation was entirely lost on Don
Calogero, who was quite ignorant of the statutes of the
Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem.) " I am sure
that your daughter will decorate the ancient trunk of the
Falconeri by her rare beauty, and emulate in her virtues
those of the saintly Princesses of the line, the last of
whom, my sister, God rest her soul, will certainly bless
the bride and bride-groom from Heaven." Don Fabrizio felt
moved again, remembering his dear Giulia, whose wasted life
had been a perpetual sacrifice to the frenzied extrava-
gances of Tancredi's father. "As for the boy, you know
him; and if you did not, I am here to guarantee him in ev-
ery possible way. There is endless good in him, and it is
not only I who say it. Isn't that true. Father Pirrone? "

The excellent Jesuit, dragged from his reading, found
hijnself suddenly facing an unpleasant dilemma. He had
been Tancredi's confessor and he knew quite a number of
his little failings: none of them very serious, of course,
but such as to detract quite a good deal from the endless
goodness of which the Prince had spoken; and all of them
such (he almost felt like saying) as to guarantee the firm-
est marital infidelity. This, of course, could not actual-
ly be said both for sacramental reasons and from worldly
convention. On the other hand he liked Tancredi, and though
he disapproved of the wedding with all his heart he would
never say a word which could either impede it or in any
way cloud its course. He took refuge in Prudence, most
tractable of the cardinal virtues. "The fund of goodness
in our dear Tancredi is great indeed, Don Calogero, and,
sustained by Divine Grace and by the earthly virtues
of Signorina Angelica, he might become, one day, an
excellent Christian husband." The prophecy, risky but
prudently conditional, passed muster.

"But, Don Calogero," went on the Prince, chewing on the
last gristly bits of toad, "if it is pointless to tell you
of the antiquity of the Falconeri, it is unfortunately also
pointless, since you already know it, to tell you that my
nephew's economic circumstances are not equal to the
greatness of his name. Don Tancredi's father, my brother-
in-law Ferdinando, was not what is called a provident
parent; his magnificent scale of life, and the irrespon-
sibility of his administrators, have gravely shaken the
patrimony of my dear nephew and former ward; the great
estates around Mazzara, the pistachio woods of Ravanusa,
the mulberry plantations of Oliveri, the palace in Paler-
mo, all, all have gone; that you know, Don Calogero.'

Don Calogero did indeed know that; it had been the
greatest migration of swallows in living memory: a thought
which still brought terror, though ifot prudence, to the
entire Sicilian nobility, while it was a font of delight
for all the Sedara. "During the period of my guardianship
all I succeeded in saving was the villa, the one near my own,
by juridical quibbles and also thanks to a sacrifice or two
on my own part which I made joyfully, both in memory
of my sainted sister Giulia and because of my own affection
for the dear lad. It's a fine villa; the staircase was designed
by Marvuglia, the drawing-rooms frescoed by Serenario;
but at the moment the room in best repair can scarcely
be used as a stall for goats.'

The last shreds of toad had been nastier than he had
expected; but they had gone down too, in the end. Now
he had only to wash out his mouth with some phrase
which was pleasant as well as sincere. "But, Don Calogero,
the results of all these disasters, of all this heart-burning,
has been Tancredi. There are certain things people like
us know; and maybe it is impossible to obtain the dis-
tinction, the delicacy, the fascination of a boy like him
without his ancestors having romped through half a dozen
fortunes. At least so it is in Sicily; it!s a kind of law of
nature, like those which regulate earthquakes and drought."

He paused a moment as a lackey came in bearing two light-
ed lamps on a tray. As they were being set in place the
Prince made a silence vibrant with heartfelt pleasure reign
in the study. " Tancredi is no ordinary boy, Don Calogero,"
he went on, "He is far more than merely gentlemanly and
elegant; though he has not studied much, he knows about
the important things; men, women, the feel and sense of
the times. He is ambitious and rightly so; he will go far;
and your Angelica, Don Calogero, will be lucky to mount
the ladder with him. Also, in Tancredi's company one may
have moments of irritation, but never of boredom; and
that means a great 'deal."

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Mayor appre-
ciated the worldly subtleties of this part of the Prince's
speech; on the whole it just confirmed him in his convic-
tion of Tancredi's shrewdness and opportunism; and what he
needed at home was a man astute and able, no more. He
thought himself, he felt himself to be the equal of anyone;
and he was even rather sorry to notice in his daughter a
genuine affection for the handsome youth.

"Prince, I all these things I knew, and others too. And
they don't matter to me at all." He wrapped himself round
once more in a cloak of sentimentality. " Love, Excellency,
love is all, as I know myself." And he may have been
sincere, poor man, if his probable definition of love were
admitted. "But I'm a man of the world and I want to
put my cards on the table too. There's no point in talking
about my daughter's qualities: she's the blood in my heart,
the liver in my guts: I've no one else to leave what I have,
and what's mine is hers. But it's only right that the young
people should know what they can count on at once. In the
marriage contract I will assign to my daughter the estate
of Settesoli, of 644 salmi, that is 1010 hectares as they
want us to call them nowadays, all corn, first-class land,
airy and cool; and 180 salmi of olive groves and vineyards
at Gibidolce; and on the wedding day I will hand over to
the bridegroom twenty linen sacks each containing 10,000
ounces of gold. I'll only have a stick or two left myself,"
he added, knowing well he would not and not wanting to
be believed, "but a daughter's a daughter. And with that
they can do up all the staircases by Marruggia and all the
ceilings by Sorcionario that exist. Angelica must be prop-
erly housed."

Ignorant vulgarity exuded from his every pore; even
so the two listeners were astounded; Don Fabrizio needed
all his self-control not to show surprise; Tancredi's coup
was far bigger than he had ever imagined. A sensation of
revulsion came over him again, but Angelica's beauty,
the bridegroom's grace, still managed to veil in poetry the
crudeness of the contract. Father Pirrone did let his tongue
cluck on his palate; then, annoyed at having shown his
own amazement, he tried to rhyme the improvident sound
by making his chair and shoes squeak and by crackling the
leaves of his breviary but failed completely; fhe impression
remained.

Luckily an impromptu remark from Don Lalogero, the
only one in the conversation, got both of them out of the
embarrassment. "Prince," he said, "I know that what
I am about to say will have no effect on you who descend
from the loves of the Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice;
but the Sedara are noble too; till I came along we've
been an unlucky lot, buried in the provinces and undis-
tinguished, but I have the documents in order, and one
day it will be known that your nephew has married the
Baronessina Sedara del Biscotto; a title granted by His
Majesty Ferdinand IV for work on the port of Mazzara.
I have put the papers through; there's only one link
missing."

A hundred years ago this business of a missing link,
of getting such papers "through " was an important
element in the lives of many Sicilians, causing alternating
exaltation and depression to thousands of respectable or
not so respectable people; but this subject is too important
to be treated fleetingly, and we will content ourselves with
saying that Don Calogero's heraldic impromptu gave the
Prince the incomparable artistic satisfaction of seeing a type
realised in all its details, and that the depressed laugh he
gave ended in a sweetish taste of nausea.

After this the conversation drifted off into a number of
aimless ruts; Don 'Fabrizio remembered Tumeo shut up
in the darkness of the gun-room; for the nth time in his
life he deplored the length of country calls and ended by
wrapping himself in hostile silence. Don Calogero under-
stood, promised to return next morning with Angelica's
undoubted consent, and said good-bye. He was accom-
panied through two of the drawing-rooms, embraced again,
and began descending the stairs while the Prince, towering
above him, watched getting smaller and smaller this little
conglomeration of astuteness, ill-cut clothes, money and
ignorance who was now to become almost part of his
family.

Holding a candle in his hand he then went to free
Tumeo, who was sitting resignedly in the dark smoking his
pipe. " I'm sorry, Don Ciccio, but you'll understand, I
had to do it."

"I do understand. Excellency, I do indeed. Did every-
thing go off all right?"

"Perfectly, couldn't be better." Tumeo mouthed some con-
gratulations, put the leash back on the collar of Teresina,
sleeping exhausted by the hunt, and picked up the dead
rabbit.

"Take those woodcock of mine too, won't you? They're
not enough for us all, anyway. Good-bye, Don Ciccio,
come and see us soon. And excuse everything." A powerful
clap on the shoulder served as sign of reconciliation and
a reminder of power; the last faithful retainer of the
House of Salina went off to his own poor rooms.

When the Prince returned to his study he found that
Father Pirrone had slipped away to avoid discussions.
And he went towards his wife's room to tell her all that
had happened. The sound of his vigorous rapid steps
announced his arrival ten yards ahead. He crossed the
girls' sitting-room; Carolina and Caterina were winding
wool over their elbows, and as he passed got to their feet
and smiled; Mademoiselle Dombrdiil hurriedly took oflF
her spectacles and replied demurely to his greeting;
Concetta had her back to him; she was embroidering and,
not hearing her father's steps, did not even turn.




IV. Love at Donnafugata



　　　　NOVEMBER, 1860




AS MEETINGS due to the marriage contract became more
frequent, Don Fabrizio found an odd admiration growing
in him for Sedara's qualities. He became used to the
ill-shaven cheeks, the plebeian accent, the odd clothes and
the persistent odour of stale sweat, and he began to realise
the man's rare intelligence. Many problems that had
seemed insoluble to the Prince were resolved in a trice
by Don Calogero; free as he was from the shackles imposed
on many other men by honesty, decency and plain good
manners, he moved through the forest of life with the
confidence of an elephant which advances in a straight
line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs, without
even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the
crushed. Reared and tended in gentle vales lulled by
courteous breezes of "please," "I'd be so grateful,"
"how kind," the Prince, when talking to Don Calogero,
now found himself on an open heath swept by searing
winds, and although continuing in his heart to prefer
defiles in the hills, he could not help admiring this vital
surge which drew from the plane trees and cedars of
Donnafugata notes never heard before.

Bit by bit, almost without realising it, Don Fabrizio
told Don Calogero about his own affairs, which were
numerous, complex and little understood by himself; this
was not due to any defect of intelligence but to a kind of
contemptuous indifference about matters he considered
low, though deep down this attitude was really due to
laziness and the ease with which he had always got out
of difficulties by selling off a few more hundred of his
thousands of acres.

Don Calogero's advice, after listening to the Prince's
report and mentally setting it in order, was both
opportune and immediately effective; but the eventual
result of such advice, cruelly efficient in conception, and
feeble in application by the easy-going Don Fabrizio,
was that for years to come the Salina family were to
acquire a reputation for treating dependants harshly, a
reputation quite unjustified in reality but which helped
to destroy its prestige at Donnafugata and Querceta,
without in any way halting the collapse of the family
fortunes.

It is only fair to mention that more frequent contact
with the Prince had a certain effect on Sedara too. Until
that moment he had only met aristocrats on business of
buying and selling or through their very rare and long-
brooded invitations to parties, circumstances in which this
most singular of social classes does not show at its best.
During such meetings he had formed the opinion that the
aristocracy consisted entirely of sheep-like creatures, who
existed merely in order to give up their wool to his shears
and their names and incomprehensible prestige to his
daughter. But since getting to know Tancredi during the
period after Garibaldi's landing he had found himself
dealing, unexpectedly, with a young noble as cynical as
himself, capable of striking a sharp bargain between his
own smiles and titles and the attractions and fortunes of
others, while knowing how to dress up such "Sedara-ish "
actions with a grace and fascination which he, Don Calogero,
felt he did not himself possess, but which influenced him
without realising it and without his being able in any way
to discern its origins. When he got to know Don Fabrizio
better he found there again the pliability and incapacity
for self-defence that were characteristic of his imaginary
sheep-noble, but also a strength of attraction different in
tone, but similar in intensity, to young Falconeri's; he also
found a certain energy with a tendency towards abstraction,
a disposition to seek a shape for life from within himself
and not in what he could wrest from others. This abstract
energy made a deep impression on Don Calogero, although
with a direct impact not filtered through words as has been
attempted here; much of this fascination, he noticed, simply
came from good manners, and he realised how agreeable
can be a well-bred man, for at heart he is only someone who
eliminates the unpleasant aspects of so much of the human
condition and exercises a kind of profitable altruism (a
formula in which the usefulness of the adjective made him
tolerate the uselessness of the noun). Gradually Don
Calogero came to understand that a meal in common need
not necessarily be all munching and grease stains; that
a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog
fight; that to give precedence to a woman is a sign
of strength and not, as he had believed, of weakness;
that sometimes more can be obtained by saying "I
haven't explained myself well " than "I can't understand a
word"; and that the adoption of such tactics can result in
a greatly increased yield from meals, arguments, women
and questioners.

It would be rash to affirm that Don Calogero drew
an immediate profit from what he had learnt; he did try
to shave a little better and complain a little less about
waste of soap; but from that moment there began, for
him and his family, that process of continual refining
which in the course of three generations transforms innocent
peasants into defenceless gentry.


Angelica's first visit to the Salina family as a bride-to-be
was impeccably stage-managed. Her bearing was so perfect
that it might have teen suggested word for word by
Tancredi, but this was ruled out by the slow communications
of the period; one possible explanation was that he had
given her some suggestions even before their official
engagement: a risky hypothesis for one able to measure
the young prince's foresight but not entirely absurd.
Angelica arrived at six in the evening, dressed in pink and
white; her soft black tresses were shadowed by a big straw
hat of late summer on which bunches of artificial grapes
and gilt heads of corn discreetly evoked the vineyards of
Gibidolce and the granaries of Settesoli. She sloughed
off her father in the entrance hall; then with a swirl of wide
skirts floated lightly up the numerous steps of the inner
staircase and flung herself into the arms of Don Fabrizio;
on his whiskers she implanted two big kisses which were
returned with genuine affection; the Prince paused perhaps
just a second longer than necessary to breathe in the
scent of gardenia on adolescent cheeks. After this Angelica
blushed, took half a step back: "I'm so, so happy . . ."
then came close again, stood on tiptoe, and murmured
into his ear "Nuncle!"; a highly successful line, compar-
able in its perfect timing almost to Eisenstein's pram, and
which, explicit and secret as it was, set the Prince's simple
heart aflutter and yoked him to the lovely girl for ever.
Meanwhile Don Calogero was coming up the stairs, and said
how very sorry his wife was she could not be present but
the night before she had slipped at home and twisted her
left foot, which was most painful. "Her ankle's like a
melon, Prince." Don Fabrizio, exhilarated by the verbal
caress, and forewarned by Tumeo's revelations that his offer
would never be put to the proof, said that he would give
himself the pleasure of calling upon the Signora Sedara
at once, a suggestion which dismayed Don Calogero and
made him, in order to reject it, think up a second indisposi-
tion of his spouse's, this time a violent headache which
forced the poor woman to stay in the dark.

Meanwhile the Prince gave his arm to Angelica. They
crossed a number of dark salons, just lit enough by the
dim glimmer of oil lamps for them to see their way; but
at the end of the splendid perspective of rooms glittered the
"Leopold " drawing-room where the rest of the family
was gathered, and their procession through empty darkness
towards a light centre of intimacy had the rhythm of a
Masonic initiation!

The family was crowding round the door; the Princess
iiad withdrawn her own reservations before the wrath of
her husband, who had not so much rejected them as blasted
them to nullity; she kissed her lovely future niece again
and again and squeezed her to her bosom with such
energy that the girl found stamped on her skin the setting
of the famous Salina ruby necklace which Maria Stella had
insisted on wearing, though it was daylight, in sign of a
major celebration. The sixteen-year-old Francesco Paolo
was pleased at having this exceptional chance of kissing
Angelica too, under the impotently jealous eyes of his
father. Concetta was particularly affectionate; her joy was
so intense that the tears even came to her eyes. The other
sisters drew close around her with noisy gaiety just because
they were not moved. Even Father Pirrone, who in his
saintly way was not insensible to female fascination in
which he saw an undeniable proof of Divine Goodness,
felt all his own opposition melt away before the warmth
of her grace (with a small "g "); and he murmured to her:

"Veni, sponsa de Libano" (He had to check himself
to avoid other warmer verses rising to his memory).
Mademoiselle Dombreuil, as befits a governess, wept with
emotion, kneading the girl's plump shoulders in her
disappointed fingers and crying: "Angelica, Angelica,
pensons de la joie de Tancrede."Only Bendico, in contrast
to his usual sociability, crouched behind a console table
and growled away in the back of his throat until energetically
called to task by an indignant Francesco Paolo with still
quivering lips.

Lighted candles had been set on twenty-four of the
forty-eight branches of the chandelier, and each of these
candles, white and at the same time ardent, seemed like
a virgin in the throes of love; the twin-coloured Murano
flowers on their stem of curved glass located down, admired
the girl who entered, and gave her a fragile and iridescent
smile. The great fireplace was lit more in sign of joy than
to warm the tepid room, and the light of the flames quivered
on the floor, loosing intermittent gleams from the dull gold
of the furniture; it really did represent the domestic hearth,
symbol of home, and its brands were sparks of desire, its
embers ardours contained.

The Princess, who possessed to an eminent degree the
faculty of reducing emotions to a minimum common
denominator, began narrating sublime episodes from Tan-
credi's childhood; so insistent was she about these that it
really began to seem as if Angelica should consider herself
lucky to be marrying a man who had been so reasonable at
the age of six as to submit to necessary enemas without
a fuss, and bold at twelve as to have stolen a handful of
cherries. As this episode of banditry was being recalled,
Concetta burst out laughing. "That's a habit Tancredi
hasn't yet been able to rid himself of," she said, d'you
remember, papa, how a couple of months ago he took those
peaches we'd been so looking forward to?" Then she
suddenly looked dour, as if she were chairwoman of an
association for the owners of damaged orchards.

Don Fabrizio's voice quickly put such trifling in its
place: he talked of Tancredi as he now was, of the quick
attentive youth, always ready with- a remark which en-
raptured those who loved him and exasperated everyone
else; he told of Tancredi 's introduction to the Duchess
of Sansomething-or-other during a visit to Naples, and
how she had been so taken with him that she wanted him to
visit her morning, noon and night, whether she happened
to be in her drawing-room or her bed; all because, said
she, no one knew how to tell les petits riens like Tancredi;
and although Don Fabrizio hurriedly added that Tancredi
could have been no more than sixteen at the time and the
duchess over fifty, Angelica's eyes flashed, for she
had definite information about the habits of Palermitan
youths and strong intuitions about those of Neapolitan
duchesses.

Anyone deducing from this attitude of Angelica that
she loved Tancredi would have been mistaken; she had
too much pride and too much ambition to be capable of
that annihilation, however temporary, of one's own per-
sonality without which there is no love; apart from that
she was too young and inexperienced to be able as yet to
appreciate his genuine qualities, all subtle nuances: but al-
though she did not love him, she was in love with him, a
very different thing; his blue eyes, his affectionate teasing,
certain suddenly serious tones of his voice gave her, even
in memory, quite a definite turn, and just then her one
longing was to be held in those hands of his; once held
she would forget them and find a substitute, but for the
moment she yearned for him to grip her. So the revela-
tion of this possible love-affair (which was, in fact, non-
existent) gave her a twinge of that most absurd of tortures,
retrospective jealousy; a twinge soon dissipated, however,
by a cool appraisal of the advantages, erotic and other-
wise, of her marriage to Tancredi.

Don Fabrizio went on praising Tancredi. In his
affection he got to the point of talking about him as a kind
of Mirabeau. "He's begun early and well," said he, " and
will go far." Angelica's smooth forehead bowed in assent.
Actually she did not care at all about Tancredi's political
future; she was one of the many girls who consider public
events as part of a separate universe and could not even
imagine that a speech by Cavour might in time, through
thousands of minute links, influence her own life and
change it. She was thinking, "We've got the money and
that's enough for us; as to going far." Such youthful
simplicities she was to discard completely when years later
she became one of the most venomous string-pullers for
Parliament and Senate.

"And then, Angelica, you have no idea yet how amusing
Tancredi is! He knows everything, sees an unexpected
side everywhere. When one's with him and he's on form,
the world seems even funnier than it usually does, some-
times more serious, too." That Tancaedi'was amusing
Angelica already knew; that he was capable of revealing
new worlds she not only hoped but had some reason to
suspect ever since that 25th of September last, day of that
famous kiss, the only one officially noted, in the shelter of
that treacherous laurel hedge, for it had been something
much subtler and tastier, entirely different from the only
other sample in her experience, one given her over a year
before by a gardener's boy at Poggio Cajano. But Angelica
cared very little about the wit or even the intelligence of
her fiance, far less in any case than did sweet old Don
Fabrizio — really so sweet, though so "intellectual " too.

In Tancredi she saw her chance of gaining a fine position
in the noble world of Sicily, a world which to her was
full of marvels very different to those which it contained
in reality; and she also wanted him as a lively partner in
bed. If he was superior in spirit too, all the better; but
she on her part didn't bother much about that. There
was always amusement to be had. In any case those
were ideas for the future; for the moment, whether
witty or stupid, she would have liked to have had him there,
stroking at least her neck under the tresses as he had once
done.

"Oh God, oh God, how I wish he were with us now! "

The exclamation moved them all, both by its evident
sincerity and the ignorance that caused her to make it,
and brought that very successful first visit to an end. For
shortly afterwards Angelica and her father made their
farewells: preceded by a stable lad with a lighted lantern
the uncertain gold of whose gleams set alight the red
of fallen plane leaves, father and daughter returned to
their home, whose entrance had been forbidden to
Peppe "Mmerda," Angelica's grandfather, by bullets in
the kidneys.

Now that Don Fabrizio felt serene again, he had gone
back to his habit of'^evening reading. In autumn, after
the Rosary, as it was now too dark to go out, the family
would gather round the fire waiting for dinner, and the
Prince, standing up, would read out to his family extracts
from modern novels, exuding dignified benevolence from
every pore.

These were just the years when novels were helping to
form those literary myths which still dominate European
minds to-day; but in Sicily, partly because of its tradition-
al impermeability to anything new, partly because of the
general ignorance of any language whatsoever, partly also,
it must be said, because of a vexatious Bourbon censor-
ship working through the Customs, no one had heard of
Dickens, Eliot, Sand, Flaubert or even Dumas. A couple
of Balzac's volumes had, through various subterfuges, it
is true, reached the hands of Don Fabrizio, who had
appointed himself family censor; he had read them and then
lent them in disgust to a friend he didn't like, saying that
they were by a writer with a talent undoubtedly vigorous
but also wild and "obsessed " (to-day he would have said
monomaniac); a hurried judgment, obviously, but not with-
out a certain acuteness. The level of these readings was
therefore somewhat low, conditioned as it was by respect for
the girls' virginal shyness, the Princess's religious scruples
and the Prince's own sense of dignity, which would have
energetically rejected letting his united family hear any
"filth."

It was about the 10th of November and getting towards
the end of their stay at Donnafugata. The rain was pouring
down and a gale slapping gusts of rain angrily on the window
panes; in the distance could be heard a roll of thunder;
every now and again a few drops found their way down the
primitive Sicilian chimney, sizzled a moment on the fire and
dotted with black the glowing brands of olive wood. He
was reading Angiola Maria and that evening had just
reached the last few pages; the description of the heroine's
journey through the icy Lombard winter froze the Sicilian
hearts of the young ladies even in their warm arm-chairs.
All of a sudden there was a great scuttle in the room
next door, and in came Mimi the footman panting hard.
"Excellency," he cried, forgetting all his style. "Excel-
lency, Signorino Tancredi's arrived! He's in the courtyard
seeing his luggage unloaded. Think of it! Madonna, in
this weather! " And off he rushed.

Surprise swept Concetta into a time which no longer
corresponded with reality, and "Darling! " she exclaimed.
But the very sound of her own voice led her back to the
comfortless present and, of course, such a brusque change
from a secret warm climate to an open frozen one was most
painful; luckily the exclamation was submerged in the
general excitement and not heard.

Preceded by Don Fabrizio's long steps they all rushed
towards the stairs; the dark drawing-rooms were hurriedly
crossed; down they went; the great gate was flung wide
on to the outer stairs and the courtyard below; the wind
rushed in, making the canvases of the portraits quiver and
sweeping with it dampness and a smell of earth; against a
sky lit by flashes of lightning the trees in the garden swayed
and rustled like torn silk. Don Fabrizio was just about to
pass through the front door, when on the top step outside
appeared a heavy shapeless mass; it was Tancredi wrapped
in the huge blue cloak of the Piedmontese Cavalry, so soaked
that he must have weighed a ton and looked quite black.
"Careful, Nuncle; don't touch me. I'm a sponge! " The
light of the lantern on the stairs showed a glimpse of his
face. He came in, undid the chain which held the cloak
at the collar and let fall the garment which flopped on the
floor with a squelch. .He smelt like a wet dog; for the
last three days he had not taken off his boots; but to Don
Fabrizio, embracing him, he was the lad more beloved
than his own sons, for Maria Stella a dear nephew basely
calumniated, for Father Pirrone the sheep always lost and
always found, for Concetta a dear ghost resembling her
lost love. Even Mademoiselle Dombreuil kissed him with
her mouth, so unused to caresses, and cried, poor girl,
"Tancrede, Tancrede, pensons d la joie d' Angelica"' so few
strings had her own bow, forced as she always was to echo
the joys of others. Bendico also found again its dear
comrade in play, one who knew better than anyone else
how to blow into a snout through a closed fist; but it
showed its ecstasy in its own doggy way by leaping
frenziedly round the room and taking no notice of its
beloved.

It was a moving moment, this grouping of the family
around the returned youth, all the dearer as he was not
really a member of it, all the happier as he was coming to
gather both love and a sense of perennial security; a moving
moment — but a long one too. When the first transports
were spent, Don Fabrizio noticed that on the threshold
were standing two other figures, also dripping and also
smiling. Tancredi noticed them too and began to laugh.
"Excuse me, all of you, but the excitement quite made me
forget. Aunt," he said, turning to the Princess, "I've
allowed myself to bring a dear friend. Count Carlo
Cavriaghi; anyway, you know him, he used often to come
up to the villa when he was with the general; and this other
is Lancer Moroni, my servant." The soldier smiled all
over his dull, honest face, and stood there at attention
while the water dripped from the cloth of his overcoat
down on to the floor. But the young count did not stand
at attention; taking off his soaking shapeless cap he kissed
the Princess's hand, smiled and dazzled the girls with his
little blond moustaches and his unsuppressible slurred "r."
"And to think they told me that it never rained down here!
Heavens, the last two days we might have been in the sea
itself." Then he became serious, "But, Falconeri, where
is the Signorina Angelica? You've dragged me all the way
here from Naples to show me her. I see many a beauty,
but not her." He turned to Don Fabrizio, "You know.
Prince, according to him she's the Queen of Sheba! Let's
go at once to worship this creature formosissina et
nigerrima. Come on, you stubborn oaf!"

By such talk he brought the language of the officers'
mess into the proud hall with its armoured and beribboned
ancestors; and everyone was amused. But Don Fabrizio
and Tancredi knew how things stood: they knew Don
Calogero, they knew his Beautiful Beast of a wife, the
incredible state of that rich man's home; things unknown
to candid Lombardy.

Don Fabrizio intervened. "Listen, Count; you thought
it never rained in Sicily and now you can see it's pouring.
We wouldn't like you to think there isn't pneumonia in
Sicily too, and then find yourself in bed with a high tempera-
ture. Mimi," he said to the footman, "Light the fire in
the Signorino Tancredi's room and in the green room of
the guest wing. Prepare the little room next door for the
Soldier. And you. Count, go and get thoroughly dry and
change your clothes. I'll send you up some punch and
biscuits. And dinner is at eight, in two hours." Cavriaghi
was too used to military service not to bow at once to the
voice of authority; he saluted and followed meekly behind
the footman. Behind him Moroni dragged along the
military boxes Jnd curved sabres in their green fiannel
wrappings^

Meanwhile Tancredi was writing, "Dearest Angelica,
I've come, and for you. I'm head over heels in love,
but also wet as a frog, filthy as a lost dog, and hungry
as a wolf. The very minute I've cleaned myself up and
consider myself worthy of appearing before the loveliest
creature in the world, I will hurry over to you; in two hours.
My respects to your dear parents. To you . . . nothing
for the moment." The text was submitted to the approval
of the Prince; the latter had always been an admirer of
Tancredi's epistolary style; he laughed, and approved in
full. Donna Bastiana would have plenty of time to catch
some other imaginary disease; and the note was at once
sent opposite.

Such was the general zest and jollity that a quarter of
an hour was enough for the two young men to dry, clean
up, change uniforms and meet once again in the "Leopold
Room " around the fire; there they drank tea and brandy
and let themselves be admired. At that period nothing
could have been less military than the families of the
Sicilian aristocracy; no Bourbon officers had ever been
seen in the drawing-rooms of Palermo, and the few
Garibaldini who had penetrated them gave more the
impression of picturesque scarecrows than real military
men. So those two young officers were in fact the first the
Salina girls had ever seen close to; in their double-breasted
uniforms, Tancredi's with the silver bdttons of the Lancers,
Carlo's with the gilt ones of the Bersaglieri, the first with^
high black velvet collar bordered with orange, the other
with crimson, they sat stretching towards the embers legs
encased in blue cloth and black cloth. On their sleeves
were the silver and gold stars amid twirls and dashes
and endless loops; a delight for girls used only to severe
frock-coats and funereal tail-coats. The edifying novel
lay upside down behind an arm-chair.

Don Fabrizio did not quite understand; he remembered
both the young men in lobster red and very carelessly
turned out. "But don't you Garibaldini wear red shirts
any longer?"

The two turned on him as if a snake had bitten them.
"Garibaldini, Garibaldini indeed. Uncle! We were once
and now that's over! Cavriaghi and I, thanks be to
God, are officers in the regular army of His Majesty, King
of Sardinia for another few months, and shortly to be of
Italy. When Garibaldi's army broke up we had the choice:
to go home or stay in the King's army. He and I and a lot
of others went into the real army. We couldn't stand that
rabble long, could we, Cavriaghi? "

"Heavens, what dreadful people! Good for ambushes
and looting, that's all! Now we're with decent fellows,
and we're proper officers! " And he plucked at his little
moustache with a grimace of adolescent disgust.

"We had to drop rank, you know, Nuncle. They didn't
seem to think much of our military experience. From
captain I've become lieutenant again, as you see! ' And
he showed the two stars on his shoulder straps. "He
from being lieutenant is now second lieutenant. But we're
as happy as if we'd got promotion. With these uniforms
we're now respected in quite another way.'

"I should think so,' interrupted Cavriaghi, "people
aren't afraid we'll steal their chickens.'

'"You should have seen what it was like from Palermo
here, when we stopped at post stations to change horses!
All we had to say was 'Urgent orders on His Majesty's
service ' and horses appeared like magic; and we'd show
them our orders, which were actually the bills of the
Naples hotel wrapped up and sealed! '

Having had their say on military changes, they passed
on to more general subjects. Concetta and Cavriaghi
had sat down together a little apart and the young count
showed her the present which he had brought her from
Naples: Aleardo Aleardi Canti magnificently bound for
the purpose. A princely crown was deeply incised in
the dark blue leather with her initials, C.C.S. beneath.
Below that again, in large, vaguely Gothic, lettering,
were the words Sempre sorda — For ever deaf.

Concetta was amused and laughed. "Why deaf, Count?'

The face of the young count flamed with boyish passion.
"Deaf, yes, deaf, Signorina, deaf to my sighs and deaf to
my groans! And blind, too, blind to the begging in my
eyes! If you only knew what I suffered when you left
Palermo to come here; not a wave, not a sign as the car-
riage vanished down the 'drive. And you expect me not to
call you deaf! 'Cruel is what I really should have
written."

His somewhat literary excitement was chilled by the
girl's reserve. "Count, you must be very tired afier your
long journey, your nerves are not quite in order: calm
yourself. Why not read me a nice poem? "

While the Bersagliere was reading out the gentle verses
in a voice charged with emotion and amid pauses full of
distress, Tancredi in front of the fireplace was taking
from his pocket a small blue satin box. "Here's the ring,
Nuncle, the ring I'm giving to Angelica; or rather the one
you must hand to her in my name." He pressed the clasp
and there was a dark sapphire cut in a clear octagon and
clustering close round it a multitude of tiny pure diamonds.
A slightly gloomy jewel, but in close harmony with the
funereal taste of the times, and one obviously worth the
two hundred gold ounces sent by Don Fabrizio. In reality
it had cost a good deal less; in those months of fleeing and
sacking, there were superb jewels to be picked up cheap
in Naples; from the difference in price had come a brooch,
a memento for Schwarzwald. Concetta and Cavriaghi were
also called to admire it, but did not move, as the young
count had already seen it and Concetta was putting off
that pleasure till later. The ring went from hand to
hand, was admired, praised, and Tancredi congratulated on
his good taste. Don Fabrizio asked, "But what about the
measurements; we'll have to send the ring to Girgenti to
have it cut to the right size." Tancredi's eyes glittered
with fun. "There's no need for that, Nuncle; the measure-
ment is exact; I'd taken it before." And Don Fabrizio
was silent; here, he recognised, was a master.

The little box had done the whole round of the fireplace
and come back to the hands of Tancredi when from behind
the door was heard a subdued "May 'I? " It was Angelica.
In the rush and excitement she had snatched up, to protect
her from the pouring rain, one of those huge peasants'
capes of rough cloth called scappolare. Wrapped in its
stiff dark blue folds her body looked very slim; under the
wet hood her green eyes looked anxious, bewildered, and
voluptuous.

The sight of her, and the contrast between the beauty
of her face and the rusticity of her clothes, was like a
whip-lash to Tancredi; he got up, ran to her without a
word and kissed her on the mouth. The box which he
held in his right hand tickled her bent neck. Then he pressed
the spring, took the ring, put it on her engagement finger;
the box dropped to the ground. "There, darling, that's
for you, from your Tancredi." Then irony broke in, "And
thank Nuncle for it, too." Then he embraced her again;
sensual anticipation made them both tremble; the room,
the bystanders, seemed very far away; and he felt as if
by those kisses he were taking possession of Sicily once
more, of fhe lovely faithless land which the Falconer
had lorded over for centuries and which now, after a vain
revolt, had surrendered to him again, as always to his
family, its carnal delights and golden crops.

As the result of this welcome arrival the family's
return to Palermo was put off and there followed two weeks
of enchantment. The gale which had accompanied the
journey of the two officers had been the last of a series.
After it came the resplendent St. Martin's summer which
is the real season of pleasure in Sicily; weather luminous
and blue, oasis of mildness in the harsh progression of the
seasons, inveigling and leading on the senses with its
sweetness, luring to secret nudities by its warmth. Not
that there was any erotic nudity at the palace of Donna-
fugata, just an air of excited sensuality all the sharper
for being carefully restrained. Eighty years before the
Salina palace had been a meeting place for those obscure
pleasures which appealed to the dying eighteenth century;
but the severe regency of the Princess Carolina, the neo-
religious fervour of the Restoration, the straightforward
sensuality of Don Fabrizio had eventually caused its
bizarre extravagances to be forgotten; the little powdered
demons had been put to flight; they still existed, of course,
but only as sleeping embryos, hibernating under piles of
dust in some attic of the vast building. The lovely Angelica's
entry into the palace had made them stir a little, as may by;
remembered; but it was the arrival of two young men in
love which really awoke the instincts lying dormant in the
house; and these now showed themselves everywhere, like
ants woken by the sun, no longer poisonous, but livelier
than ever. Even the architecture, the rococo decor itself,
evoked thoughts of fleshly curves and taut erect breasts;
and every opening door seemed like a curtain rustling
in a bed-alcove.

Cavriaghi was in love with Concetta; but boy that he
was, not only in appearance like Tancredi but deep within,
his love found expression in the easy rhymes of poets
such as Prati and Aleardi, and in dreaming of moonlight
elopements whose logical sequence he did not dare con-
template and which anyway Concetta's "deafness " obviated
from the start. Who can tell whether in the seclusion of that
green room of his he did not abandon himself to more
definite hopes? Certain it is that the love-scenery of that
autumn in Donnafugata his only contribution was the
sketching in of clouds and evanescent horizons and not
the creation of architectural masses. The two girls, Carolina
and Caterina, however, played their parts excellently in
the symphony of desires traversing the whole palace that
November and mingling with the murmur of the fountains,
the pawing of the horses in heat in the stables, and the
tenacious burrowing of nuptial nests by wood-worms in
the old furniture. The two girls were young and attractive,
and though with no particular loves of their own, found
themselves immersed in the currents emanating from the
others; often the kiss which Concetta denied to Cavriaghi,
the embrace from Angelica which left Tancredi unsatisfied
would reverberate around the girls and graze their un-
touched bodies; and they too would find themselves dream-
ing about locks of hair damp with sweat, about whimpers
of pleasure. Even poor Mademoiselle Dombreuil, by dint
of functioning as lightning conductor, was drawn into the
turbid and laughing vortex, as psychiatrists become infected
and succumb to the frenzies of their patients. When
after a day of hide and seek and moralising ambushes she
lay down on her lonely bed, her own withered breasts
would quiver as she muttered indiscriminate invocations to
Tancredi, to Carlo, to Fabrizio. . .

Centre and motor of this sensual agitation were, of
course, one couple, Tancredi and Angelica. Their certain
marriage, though not very close, extended its reassuring
shadow in anticipation on the parched soil of their mutual
desires. Difference of class made Don Calogero consider
their long periods alone together as quite normal with the
nobility, and made Princess Maria Stella think habitual
to those in the Sedara's rank of life the frequency of
Angelica's visits and a freedom of bearing which she would
certainly not have found proper in her own daughters.

And so Angelica's visits to the palace became more and more
frequent until they were almost constant, and she ended
by being only accompanied there formally by her father,
who would return at once to his office and the finding or
weaving of hidden plots, or by a maid who would vanish
into the servants' quarters to drink coffee and bore the
unlucky palace domestics.

Tancredi wanted to show Angelica the whole palace
with its inextricable complex of guest rooms, state rooms,
kitchens, chapels, theatres, picture galleries, odorous
saddling rooms, stables, stuffy conservatories, passages,
stairs, terraces and porticos, and particularly of a series of
abandoned and uninhabited apartments which had not been
used for many years and formed a mysterious and intricate
labyrinth of their own. Tancredi did not realise, or he
realised perfectly well, that he was drawing the girl into
the hidden centre of the sensual cyclone; and Angelica at
that time wanted whatever Tancredi did. Their wanderings
through the seemingly limitless building were interminable;
they would set off as if for some unknown land, and un-
known indeed it was because in many of those apartments
and corners not even Don Fabrizio had ever set foot — a
cause of great satisfaction to him, for he used to say
that a house of which one knew every room wasn't worth
living in.

The two lovers embarked for Cythera on a ship made of
dark and sunny rooms, of apartments sumptuous or squalid,
empty or crammed with remains of heterogeneous furniture.
They would set off accompanied by Cavriaghi or by
Mademoiselle Dombreuil, sometimes by both, (Father
Pirrone with the wisdom of his Order had always refused
to go); outer decency was saved. But in the palace of
Donnafugata it was not difficult to mislead anyone wanting
to follow; this just meant slipping into one of the very
long, narrow and tortuous passages, with grilled windows
which could not be passed without a sense of anguish,
turning through a gallery, up some handy stair, and the
two young people were far away, invisible, alone as if on
a desert island. All that remained to survey them was some
faded pastoral portrait created blind by the painter's in-
experience, or a shepherdess glancing down consentingly
from an obliterated fresco.

Cavriaghi, in any case, would soon tire, and when he found
his route leading through a room he knew or some staircase
down into the garden would slip off, both to please his
friend and to go and sigh over Concetta's ice-cold hands.
The governess would hang on longer, but not indefinitely;
for some time her unanswered calls could be heard fading
farther and farther Sway, "Tancrede, Angelica, ou etes-vous?"
Then silence would fall again, except for the scuffle of
rats in the ceilings above, or the rustle of some centuries-
old forgotten letter sent wandering by the wind over the
floor; excuses for pleasant frights, for the reassuring
contact of flesh to flesh. And with them always malicious
and tenacious, was Eros, drawing the young couple further
and further into a game full of risk and fun. Both of them
were still very near childhood, and they enjoyed the game
in itself, enjoyed being followed, being lost, being found
again; but when they reached each other their sharpened
senses would overwhelm them, and his five fingers entwining
in hers with that gesture dear to indecisive sensualists,
the gentle rub of fingertips on the pale veins of the back
of the hand, would shake up their whole being, prelude
more insinuating caresses.

Once she had hidden behind an enormous picture
propped on the floor; and for a short time Arturo Corbera
at the Siege of Antioch formed a protection for the girl's
hopeful anxiety; but when she was found, with her smile
veined in cobwebs and her hands veiled in dust, she was
clasped tight, and though she kept on saying again and
again, "No, Tancredi, no," her denial was in fact an
invitation, for all he was doing was to stare with his blue
eyes into her green ones. One luminous cold morning she
was trembling in a dress that was still summery; he
squeezed her to him, to warm her, on a sofa covered in
tattered silk: her scented breath moved the hair on his
forehead; they were moments ecstatic and painful, during
which desire became a torment, restraint upon it a delight.

The rooms in the abandoned apartments had neither a def-
inite layout nor a name; and like the explorers of the
New World they would baptise the rooms they crossed
with the names of their joint discoveries. A vast bedroom
in whose alcove stood the ghost of a bed adorned with a
baldecchino hung with skeleton oltrich feathers was
remembered afterwards as "the feather room "; a staircase?
with steps of smooth crumbling slate was called by Tancredi
"the staircase of the lucky slip." A number of times they
really did not know where they were; all this twisting and
turning, backing and following, pauses full of murmur-
ing contact, made them lose their way so that they had to
lean out of some paneless window to gather frbm an angle
of the courtyard or a view of the garden which wing of the
palace they were in. But sometimes they could not find
their way even so, as the window did not give on to one of
the great courts but on to some inner yard, anonymous
itself and never entered, marked only by the corpse of some
cat or the usual little heap of spaghetti and tomato sauce
vomited or flung there; and from another window they
would find themselves looking into the eyes of some
pensioned-off old maidservant. One afternoon inside a
cupboard they found four carillons, those music-boxes which
delighted the affected simplicity of the eighteenth century.

Three of these, buried in dust and cobwebs, remained mute;
but the last, which was more recent and shut tighter
into its dark wooden box, started up its cylinder of bristling
copper, and the little tongues of raised steel suddenly pro-
duced a delicate tune, all in clear silvery tones — the fa-
mous Carnival of Venice; they rhymed their kisses with those
notes of disillusioned gaiety, and when their embrace loose-
ned were surprised to notice that the notes had ceased
for some time and their action had left no other trace
than a memory of that ghostly music.

Once the surprise was of a different kind. In one of the
rooms in the old guest wing they noticed a door hidden by
a wardrobe; the centuries-old lock soon gave way to fing-
ers pleasantly entwined in forcing it: behind it a long
narrow staircase wound up in gentle curves of pink marble
steps. At the top was another door, open, and covered with
thick but tattered padding; then came a charming but odd
little apartment, of six small rooms gathered round a
medium-sized drawing-room, all, including the drawing-
room, with floors of whitest marble sloping away slightly
towards a small lateral gutter. On the low ceilings were
some very unusual reliefs in coloured stucco, luckily made
almost indecipherable by damp; on the walls hung big
surprised-looking mirrors, hung too low, one shattered by
a blow almost in the middle, and each fitted with contorted
rococo candle-brackets. The windows gave on to a segre-
gated courtyard, a kind of blind and deaf well, which let in a
grey light and had no other outlet. In every room and even in
the drawing-room were wide, too wide, sofas, showing nails
from which traces of silk had been torn away; spotty
arm-rests; on the fireplaces were delicate intricate little
marble intaglios, naked figures in paroxysm but mutilated
by some furious hammer. The damp had marked the walls
high up and also perhaps low down at a man's height,
where it had assumed strange shapes, odd thickness,
dark tints. Tancredi, disturbed, would not let Angelica
touch a cupboard in the drawing-room wall, and shut
it up himself. It was deep but empty except for a roll
of dirty stuff standing upright in a corner; inside was a
bundle of small whips, switches of bull's muscle, some
with silver handles, others wrapped half-way up in a
charming old silk, white with little blue stripes, on which
could be seen three rows of blackish marks; and metal
instruments for inexplicable purposes. Tancredi was afraid,
also of himself. "Let's go, my dear, there's nothing interest-
ing here." They shut the door carefully, went down the
stairs again in silence, and put the wardrobe back where
it was before; and all the rest of that day Tancredi's kisses
were very light as if given in a dream and in expiation.

After the Leopard, in fact, the whip seemed the most
frequent object at Donnafugata. The day after their
discovery of the enigmatic little apartment the two lovers
found another little whip. This was not actually in the
secret apartment but in the venerated one called the
Rooms of the Saint-Duke, where in the middle of the
seventeenth century a Salina had withdrawn as if into a
private monastery, there to do penance and prepare his own
journey towards Heaven. They were small low rooms, with
floors of humble brick, and white-washed walls, like those
of the poorest peasants. The last of these opened on to a
balcony which overlooked the yellow expanse of estate after
estate, all immersed in sad light. On one wall was a huge
crucifix, over life size; the head of the martyred God touched
the ceiling, the bleeding feet grazed the floor; the wound
in the ribs seemed like a mouth prevented by brutality
from pronouncing the words of ultimate salvation. Next
to the Divine Body there hung from a nail a lash with a
short handle, from which dangled six strips of now hardened
leather ending in six lumps of lead as big as walnuts.
This was the "discipline " of the Saint-Duke. In that
room Giuseppe Corbera Duke of Salina had scourged him-
self alone, in sight of his God and his estates, and it must
have seemed to him that the drops of his own blood were
about to rain down on the land and redeem it; in his holy ex-
altation it must have seemed that only through this expiatory
baptism could those estates really become his, blood of
his blood, flesh of his flesh, as the saying is. But now many
of them had gone for ever and a large number of those which
could be seen from up there belonged to others, to Don
Calogero even; to Don Calogero, thus to Angelica, thus
to his future son-in-law. This proof of blackmail through
beauty, parallel to that other blackmail through blood,
made Tancredi's head swim. Angelica was kneeling and
kissing the pierced feet of Christ. "There," said Tancredi,
"you're like that whip there, used for the same ends." He
showed her the whip; and since Angelica did not under-
stand and raised her smiling head, lovely but vacuous,
he bent down and as she knelt gave her a rough kiss which
made her moan, for it bruised her lip and rasped her palate.

So the pair of them spent those days in dreamy wander-
ings, in the discovery of hells redeemed by love, of forgotten
paradises profaned by love itself. The urge to put a stop
to the game and draw the prize became more and more
pressing for them both; in the end they searched no longer,
but went off absorbed into the remotest rooms, those from
which no cry could reach anyone from the outside world.
But there never would be a cry; only invocations and low
whimpers. There they would both lie, close but innocent,
pitying each other. The most dangerous places for them
were the rooms of the old guest wing; private, in good
order, each with its neat rolled-up mattress which would
spread out again at a mere touch of the hand. One day,
not Tancredi's mind which had no say in the matter, but
all his blood had decided to put an end to it; that morning
Angelica, like the beautiful bitch that she was, had said,
"I'm your novice," recalling to him with the clarity of
an invitation their first mutual onrush of desire;
and already the woman had surrendered and offered, already
the male was about to overwhelm the man, when the clang
of the church bell almost directly above their heads added
its own throb to the others; their interlaced mouths dis-
entangled for a smile. They came to themselves; and
next day Tancredi had to leave.

Those were the best days in the lives of Tancredi and
Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against
the inevitable background of sorrow. But of that they
were still unaware, in their pursuit of a future which
they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made
of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old
and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those
days with insistent regret; they had been days when
desire was always present because always overcome, when
many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual
urge, because restrained, had for one second been sub-
limated in renunciation, that is into real love. Those
days were the preparation for a marriage which, even
erotically, was no success; a preparation, however, in a way
sufficient to itself, exquisite and brief; like those melodies
which outlive the forgotten works they belong to and
hint in their delicate and veiled gaiety at themes which
later in the opera are to be developed without skill, and
fail.


When Angelica and Tancredi returned to the world of
the living from their exile in the universe of extinct vices,
forgotten virtues and, above all, perennial desire, they were
greeted with amiable irony. "How silly of you, children,
to get so dusty. What a state you're in, Tancredil "
would smile Don Fabrizio; and his nephew would go off
to get himself dusted down. Cavriaghi sat astride a chair,
conscientiously smoking a cheroot, looked at his friend
washing his face and collar, and snorted at seeing the
water turn black as coal. "I don't deny it, Falconeri; the
Signorina Angelica is the loveliest thing I've ever seen;
but that's not a justification: heavens, do restrain yourself
a bit; to-day you've been alone together three whole hours;
if you're so much in love then get married at once and don't
let people laugh at you. You should have seen the face
the father made to-day when he came out of his office and
found you were still sailing about in that ocean of rooms!
Brakes, my dear fellow, brakes, that's what you need!
You Sicilians have so few of 'em! "

He pontificated away, enjoying inflicting his wisdom
on his older comrade, on "deaf" Concetta's cousin. But
Tancredi, as he dried his hair, was furious; to be accused
of having no brakes, he who had enough to stop a train!
On the other hand the good Bersagliere was not entirely
in the wrong; appearances had to be thought of too; though
now he had gone moralist like this from envy it was obvious
that his courtship of Concetta was getting nowhere. And
then Angelica! That delicious taste of blood to-day when
he'd bitten the inside of her lip! That soft bending of hers
under his embrace! But it was true, there was no sense in
it all really." To-morrow we'll go and visit the church
with a full escort of Father Pirrone and Mademoiselle
Dombreuil! "

Angelica meanwhile was changing her dress in the girls'
room, "M.ais Angelica^ est-il Dieu possible de se mettre dans
un tel etat? " Mademoiselle Dombreuil was wailing in-
dignantly, as the lovely creature, in undervest and petticoats,
was washing her arms and neck. The cold water subdued
her excitement and she had to admit to herself that the
governess was right; was it worth getting so tired and so
dusty and making people smile? For what? Just to be
gazed in the eyes, to be stroked by those slender
fingers, little more . . . and her lip was still smarting.
"That's enough now. To-morrow we'll stay in the drawing-
room with the others." But next day those same eyes, those
same fingers would cast their spell again, and the two would
go back once more to their wild games of hide and seek.

The paradoxical result of all these separate but conver-
gent resolutions was that at dinner in the evening the pair
most in love were the calmest, reposing on their illusory
good intentions for next day; and they would muse
ironically on the love relationships of the others, however
minor. Concetta had disappointed Tancredi; when at
Naples he had felt a certain remorse about her and that was
why he had brought Cavriaghi along with him in the hope
the Milanese might replace him with his cousin. Pity also
played a part in his foresight; in a subtle but easy-going
way, astute as he was, he had seemed when he arrived
almost to be commiserating with her at his own abandon-
ment; and he pushed forward his friend. Nothing doing;
Concetta unravelled her little spool of schoolgirl gossip
and looked at the sentimental little count with icy eyes
behind which there seemed almost a certain contempt.
A silly girl, that; no good making any more efforts. What
more did she want, anyway? Cavriaghi was a handsome lad,
well set up, with a good name and flourishing dairy-farms
in Brianza; in fact he was one about whom could be used
that rather chilling term "a good match." Ah: so Concetta
wanted him, Tancredi, did she? He had wanted her too
once; she was less beautiful, much less rich than Angelica,
but she had something in her which the girl from Donna-
fugata would never possess. But life is a serious matter,
devil take it! Concetta must have realised that. Why had
she begun treating him so badly, then? Turning on him at
the Holy Ghost Convent; and so many times afterwards.
The Leopard, yes, the Leopard, of course; but there must
be limits even for that proud beast. "Brakes is what you
want, my dear cousin, brakes! You Sicilian girls have so
few of 'em! "

Angelica, though, in her heart agreed with Concetta;
Cavriaghi lacked pep; after loving Tancredi, to marry
Cavriaghi would be like a drink of water after a taste of this
Marsala in front of her. Concetta, of course, understood
that from her own experience. But those other two sillies,
Carolina and Caterina, were making fishes' eyes at Cavriaghi
and swooning away every time he went near them. Well,
then! With her owh lack of family scruples she just could
not understand why one of the two didn't try and nab the
little count from Concetta for herself. "Boys at that
age are like dogs; one only has to whistle and they
come straight away. Silly girls! With all those scruples and
taboos and pride, in the end they won't get anyone."

In the smoking-room, conversations between Tancredi
and Cavriaghi the only two smokers in the house and so
the only ^exiles, also assumed a certain tone. The little
count ended by confessing to his friend the failure of his
own amorous hopes. "She's too beautiful, too pure for me;
she doesn't love me; it was rash of me to hope; but I'll
leave here with a regret like a dagger in my heart. I've not
even dared to make a definite proposal. I feel that to her
I'm just a worm, and she's right. I must find myself a she-
worm to put up with me." And his nineteen years made
him laugh at his own discomfiture.

From the height of his own assured happiness Tancredi
tried to console him: "You see. I've known Concetta
all her life: she's the sweetest creature in the world; a
mirror of all the virtues; but she's a little too reserved,
too withdrawn, I'm afraid she has too high an opinion of
herself; and then she's Sicilian to the very marrow: she's
never left here; she might never feel at home in a place
where one has to arrange a week ahead for a plate of
macaroni! "

Tancredi's little joke, one of the earliest expressions of
national unity, managed to make Cavriaghi smile; pains
and sorrows did not stay with him long. "But I'd have
laid in cases of macaroni for her, of course! Anyway what's
done is done; I only hope your uncle and aunt, who've been
so sweet to me, won't take against me for having come and
thrust myself among you pointlessly." He was re-
assured quite sincerely, for Cavriaghi had made himself liked
by everyone except Concetta (and perhaps liked by Concetta
too, in a way) for the boisterous good humour which he
combined with the most plaintive sentimentality; then they
talked of something else, that is they talked of Angelica.

"You know, Falconeri, you are a lucky dog! To go and
find a jewel like Signorina Angelica in this pigsty (excuse
my calling it that, my dear fellow). What a beauty, good
God, what a beauty! Lucky rascal, leading her round for
hours in the remotest corners of this house as huge as our
own cathedral! And not only lovely, but clever and cultured
too; and good as well; one can see that in her eyes, in that
sweet innocence of hers."

Cavriaghi went on ecstatically about Angelica's goodness,
under Tancredi's amused glance. "The really good person
in all this is you yourself, Cavriaghi." The phrase slipped
unnoticed over that Milanese optimism. Then, "Listen,"
said the young count, "you'll be leaving in a few days;
don't you think it's time I was introduced to the mother of
the young baroness?"

This was the first time — and from a Lombard voice —
that Tancredi heard his future wife called by a title. For a
second he did not realise who the other was referring to.
Then the prince in him rebelled. "Baroness.? what d'you
mean, Cavriaghi? She's a dear, sweet creature whom I love
and that's quite enough."

That it really was "quite enough " was not actually true;
but Tancredi was perfectly sincere; with his atavistic habit
of great possessions it seemed to him that the estates of
Gibidolce and Settesoli, all those bags of gold, had been
his since the time of Charles of Anjou, always.

"I'm sorry but I don't think, you'll be able to meet
Angelica's mother; she's leaving to-morrow for a mud cure
at Sciacca; she's very ill, poor thing."

He stubbed the end of his cheroot in an ashtray.
"Let's go into the drawing-room, shall we? We've been
bears here for long enough."

One day about that time Don Fabrizio received a
letter from the Prefect of Girgenti, written in a style of
extreme courtesy, announcing the arrival at Donnafugata
of the Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo, Secretary
to the PrefecLura, who wanted to talk to him, the Prince,
about a subject very close to the Government's heart.
Surprised, Don Fabrizio sent off his son, Francesco Paolo,
to the post-station next day to receive the missus dominicus
and invite him to stay at the palace, an act both of hospitality
and of true compassion, consisting in not abandoning the
body of the Piedmontese to the thousands of little creatures
who would have tortured him in the cave-hostelry of Zzu
Menico.

The post coach arrived at dusk with an armed guard
on the box and a few glum faces inside. From it also
alighted Chevalley di Monterzuolo, recognisable at once
by his exhausted appearance and suspicious smile. He
had been in Sicily for a month, in the most strictly native
part of the island what was more, bounced there straight
from his little property near Montferrat. Timid and
congenitally bureaucratic, he found himself much out of
his element. His head had been stuffed with the tales of
brigands by which Sicilians love to test the nervous
resistance of new arrivals, and for a month he saw every
usher in his office as a murderer, and every wooden paper
cutter on his desk as a dagger; also the oil in the cooking
had upset his inside.

There he stood now, in the twilight, with his valise
of beige cloth, peering at the very unpromising aspect of
the street in the midst of which he had been dumped. The
inscription "Corso Vittorio Emmanuele," whose blue
letters on a white ground adorned the half-ruined house
opposite him, was not enough to convince him that he was
in a place which was, after all, part of his own nation; and
he did not dare to ask the way from any of the peasants
propped against the nearby walls like caryatids, in his
certainty of not being understood and his fear of an easy
knife-thrust in the guts, still dear to him however upset.

When Francesco Paolo came up and introduced himself
he screwed up his eyes at first as he thought he was done
for: but the fair-haired youth's calm honest air reassured
him a little, and when he realised that he was being invited
to stay at the Salina palace he was both surprised and
relieved. The journey in the dark to the palace was marked
by a constant exchange of Piedmontese and Sicilian
courtesies (the two most punctilious in Italy) in connection
with the valise, which in the end was carried by both
gentlemanly contenders, although it was very light.

On reaching the palace the bearded faces of the armed
keepers standing about in the first courtyard once more
disturbed the soul of Chevalley di Monterzuolo; while the
distant cordiality of the Prince's greeting, together with the
evident luxury of the rooms he glimpsed, flung him into
contrary worries. Member of one of those families of
the petty Piedmontese squirearchy which live in dignified
restraint on their own land, this was the first time he found
himself a guest at a great house, and this redoubled his
shyness; meanwhile the bloodthirsty anecdotes he had been
told at Girgenti, the staggeringly primitive aspect of
the town, the "bravos " (as he called them to himself)
encamped in the courtyard, filled him with terror; so
that he went down to dinner in the grip of contrasting
fears, at finding himself in an ambience above his normal
habits and at feeling an innocent traveller in a bandit's
lair.

At dinner he ate well for the first time since setting
foot on Sicilian shores, and the charm of the girls, the
austerity of Father Pirrone and the grand manner of Don
Fabrizio convinced him that the palace of Donnafugata
was not the antechamber of Capraro the bandit, and that
he would probably leave there alive. His greatest consolation
was the presence of Cavriaghi, who, he was told, had been
staying there for ten days and looked in excellent health
and also on excellent terms with that young Falconeri,
a friendship between a Sicilian and a Lombard which seemed
almost miraculous to him. At the end of dinner he went up
to Don Fabrizio and requested a private interview as he
wished to leave again next morning; but the Prince
clapped him on the shoulder and with a most Leopard-like
smile exclaimed, "Not at all, my dear Cavaliere, you're
in my home now and I'll hold you as hostage for as long as
I like; you won't leave to-morrow morning, and to be
quite sure of it I shall deprive myself of the pleasure of a
private talk with you until the afternoon." This phrase,
which would have terrified the excellent Secretary three
hours before, now rather cheered him. That evening
Angelica was not there, and so they played a hand of whist;
at a table with Don Fabrizio, Tancredi and Father Pirrone,
he won two rubbers and gained three lire and thirty-five
centimes; after which he withdrew to his own room,
enjoyed the cleanliness of the linen and fell into the trustful
sleep of the just.

Next morning Tancredi and Cavriaghi led him around
the garden, showed him the picture gallery and tapestry
collection. They also trotted him a little round the town;
under the honey-coloured sun of that November day it
seemed less sinister than it had the night before; he even
saw a smile here and there, and Chevalley di Monterzuolo
began to reassure himself about rustic Sicily. Tancredi
noticed this and was at once assailed by the singular island
itch to tell foreigners tales that were horrifying but un-
fortunately quite true. They were passing in front of a
jolly little palace whose facade was decorated with crude
stucco work.

"That, my dear Chevalley, is the family home of Baron
Miitolo; now it's closed and empty as the family live in
Girgenti since the baron's son was captured brigands
ten years ago."

The Piedmontese began to tremble. "Poor things,
I wonder how much they paid to free him."

"No, no, they didn't pay a thing; they were in financial
straits already and had no ready money, like everybody else
here. But they got the boy back all the same; by instalments,
though."

"What d'you mean Prince?"

"By instalments, I said, by instalments; bit by bit.
First arrived the index finger of his right hand. A week
later his left foot; and finally in a great big basket, under a
layer of figs (it was August) the head; it's eyes were staring
and there was congealed blood on the corner of the lips.
I didn't see it, I was a child then; but I'm told it wasn't
a very pretty sight. The basket was left on that very step
there, the second one up to the door, by an old woman with
a black shawl on her head; no one recognised her."

Chevalley's eyes went rigid with horror; he had already
heard the story before this, but seeing now in the sunshine
the very step on which the bizarre gift had been put was a
different matter. His bureaucratic mind came to his help.
"What an inept police those Bourbons had. Very soon,
when our carabinieri come along, they'll put an end to all
this."

"No doubt, Chevalley, no doubt."

Then they passed in front of the Civic Club, which
had its daily show of iron chairs and men in mourning
under the shade of the plane trees in the Square. Bows,
smiles. "Take a good look, Chevalley, impress the scene
on your memory; twice a year or so one of these gentlemen
here is left stone dead on his own little arm-chair; a rifle
shot in the uncertain light of dusk, and no one ever knows
who it was that shot him." Chevalley felt the need to lean
on Cavriaghi's arm so as to sense a little northern blood
near him.

Shortly afterwardy, at the top of a steep alley, through
multi-coloured festoons of drawers out to dry, they saw the
simple baroque front of a little church. "That's Santa
Ninfa. The parish priest was killed in there five years ago
as he was saying Mass."

"Horrors! Shooting in church!"

"Oh, no shooting, Chevalley. We are too good
Catholics for misbehaviour of that kind. They just put
poison in the communion wine; more discreet, more
liturgical, I might say. No one ever knew who did it; the
priest was a most excellent person; he had no enemies."

Like a man who wakes up in the night to see a skeleton
sitting at the foot of the bed in his own trousers, and saves
himself from panic by forcing himself to believe it's just
a joke by drunken friends, so Chevalley took refuge in the
idea that he was having his leg pulled. "Very amusing.
Prince, really entertaining; you should write novels, you
know; you tell these stories very well." But his voice was
trembling; Tancredi took pity on him, and although on
their way home they passed three or four places
which were all most evocative, he abstained from tell-
ing their tales, and talked about Bellini and Verdi, perennial
curative unctions for national wounds.

At four in the afternoon the Prince sent to tell Chevalley
that he was waiting for him in his study. This was a small
room with walls lined by glass cases containing grey
pheasants with pink claws, thought rare and found in past
shoots. One wall was ennobled by a high, narrow book-
case, crammed full of back numbers of mathematical
reviews. Above the great arm-chair meant for visitors hung
a constellation of family miniatures; Don Fabrizio's
father. Prince Paolo, heavy in face and sensual in lip as
a Moor, with the cordon of St. Januarius diagonally across
his black court uniform; Princess Carolina as a widow,
with her fair hair heaped into a towering dressing and
severe blue eyes; the Prince's sister, Giulia, Princess of
Falconeri, sitting on a bench in a garden, with the crimson
splodge of a small parasol laid on the ground to her right
and to her left the yellow splodge of Tancredi at three years
old offering her wild flowers (Don Fabrizio had thrust
this miniature into his pocket secretly while the bailiffs
were making their inventory for the sale at Villa Falconeri).

Beneath that was his eldest son, Paolo, in tight white leather
breeches, just about to mount an arrogant horse with a
curving neck and flashing eyes; then various unidentifiable
uncles and aunts, covered with jewels or pointing sorrow-
fully at the bust of some extinct dear one. But in the centre
of the constellation, acting as a kind of Polar star, shone a
bigger miniature; this was of Don Fabrizio himself at
the age of about twenty, with his very young wife leaning
her head on his shoulder in an act of complete loving
abandon. She was dark-haired, he rosy in the blue and
silver uniform of the Royal Guards, smiling with pleasure,
his face framed in his first and very fair long whiskers.

Chevalley, as soon as he sat down, began explaining the
mission with which he had been charged. "After the
happy annexation,, I mean after the glorious union of
Sicily and the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Turin Government
intends to nominate a number of illustrious Sicilians as
Senators of the Kingdom. The provincial authorities have
been charged with drawing up a list of personalities to be
proposed for the Central Government's examination, and
eventually for the royal nomination, and, of course, at
Girgenti your name was mentioned at once, Prince; a name
illustrious for its. antiquity, for the personal prestige of its
bearer, for scientific merit; and also for the dignified and
liberal attifude assumed during recent events." The little
speech had been prepared for some time; it had been even
the object of a number of pencil notes in a little book
which was now in the hip pocket of Chevalley's trousers.
But Don Fabrizio gave no sign of life; his eyes could only
just be glimpsed through his heavy lids. Motionless, the
great paw with its blondish hairs completely covered a
dome of St. Peter's in alabaster on the table.

Accustomed by now to the deafness of the loquacious
Sicilians whenever anything is suggested to them, Chevalley
did not let himself be discouraged. "Before sending the
list to Turin my superiors thought it proper to inform you
in person and see if this proposal met with your approval.
To ask for your assent, for which the Government much
hopes, has been the object of my mission here; a mission
which has also given me the honour and the pleasure of
getting to know you and your family, this magnificent
palace, and picturesque Donnafugata."

Flattery always slipped off the Prince like water off
leaves in fountains: it is one of the advantages enjoyed
by men who are at once both proud and used to being so.
"This fellow here seems to be under the impression he's
come to do me a great honour," he was thinking. "To
me, who am what I am, among other things a Peer of the
Kingdom of Sicily, which must be more or less the same as
a Senator. It's true that one must value gifts in relation to
those who offer them; when a peasant gives me his bit of
cheese he's making me a bigger present than the Prince of
Lascari when he invites me to dinner. That's obvious.
The difficulty is that the cheese is nauseating. So all
that remains is the heart's gratitude which can't be seen
and the nose wrinkled in disgust which can be seen only
too well."

Don Fabrizio's ideas about the Senate were very vague;
in spite of every effort his thoughts kept leading nim back
to the Roman Senate; to Senator Papirius breaking a staff
on the head of Gallus who had been rude to him, to the horse
Incitatus made a senator by Caligula, an honour which even
his son Paolo might have thought excessive. He was
irritated at finding recurring to him insistently a phrase
which was sometimes used by Father Pirrone: "Senatores
boni viri, senatus autem mala bestial." Nowadays there was
also an Imperial Senate in Paris, though that was only an
assembly of profiteers with big salaries. There was or had
been a senate in Palermo, too, though it had only been a
committee of civil administrators — ^what administrators!
Low work for a Salina. He decided to be frank. "But
Cavalier, do explain what being a senator means; the
newspapers under our last monarchy never allowed informa-
tion about the constitutional systems of other Italian states
to be printed, and a week's visit of mine to Turin some
years ago was not enough to enlighten me. What is it?
A simple title of honour? A kind of decoration, or are there
legislative, deliberative functions? "

The Piedmontese, representative of the only liberal
State in Italy, rose to the bait. "But, Prince, the Senate is
the High Chamber of the Kingdom! In it the flower of
Italy's politicians, picked by the wisdom of the Sovereign,
will examine, discuss, approve or disapprove the laws
proposed by the Government for the progress of the
country; it functions at the same time as spur and as brake;
it incites good actions and prevents bad ones. When you
have accepted a seat in it, you will represent Sicily on an
equality with the other elected deputies, you will make
us hear the voice of this lovely country which is only now
sighting the modern world, with so many wounds to heal,
so many just desires to be granted."

Chevalley would perhaps have continued for some time
in this tone if Bendico from behind the door had not asked
"the wisdom of his Sovereign " to admit him. Don
Fabrizio made as if to get to his feet and open the door,
but slowly enough to allow the Piedmontese time to open
it himself; Bendico meticulously sniffed around Chevalley's
trousers, after which, having decided this was a good man,
the dog lay down under the window and slept.

"Just listen to me, Chevalley, will you? If it were merely
a question of some honorific, of a simple title to put
on a visiting card, no more, I should be pleased to accept;
I feel that at this decisive moment for the future of the
Italian State it is the duty of us all to support it, and to
avoid any impression of disunity in the eyes of these
foreign States which are watching us with alarm or hope,
both of them unjustified, but which do at the moment
exist."

"Well, then. Prince, why not accept? "

"Be patient now, Chevalley, I'll explain in a moment;
we Sicilians have become accustomed, by a long, a very
long hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and
did not speak our language, to split hairs. If we had
not done so we'd never have coped with Byzantine tax
gatherers, with Berber Emirs, with Spanish Viceroys.
Now the bent is endemic, we're made like that. I said
'support,' I did not say 'participate.' In these last six
months since your Garibaldi set foot in Marsala, too many
things have been started without our being consulted for
you now to ask a member of the old governing class
to help develop them and carry them through. I do not
wish to discuss now if what was done was good or bad;
for my part I believe much of it to have been bad; but
I'd like to tell you at once what you'll only understand
after spending a year among us.

"In Sicily it doesn't matter about doing things well
or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is
simply that of 'doing ' at all. We are old, Chevalley, very
old. For over twenty-five centuries we've been bearing the
weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations, all from
outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could
call our own. We're as white as you are, Chevalley, and
as the Queen of England; and yet for two thousand five
hundred years we've been a colony. I don't say that in
complaint; it's our fault. But even so we're worn out and
exhausted."

Chevalley was disturbed now. "But that is all over, isn't
it? Now Sicily is no longer a conquered land, but a free
part of a free State."

"The intention is good, Chevalley, but it comes too
late; and I've already said that it is mainly our fault.
You talked to me a short while ago about a young Sicily
sighting the marvels of the modern world; for my part I see
instead a centenarian being dragged in a bath-chair round
the Great Exhibition in London, understanding nothing
and caring about nothing, whether it's the steel factories
of Sheffield or the cotton spinneries of Manchester, and
thinking of nothing but drowsing off again on beslobbered
pillows with a pot under the bed."

He was still talking slowly, but the hand around St.
Peter's had tightened; later the tiny cross surmounting the
dome was found snapped. "Sleep, my dear Chevalley,
sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate
anyone who tries to wake them, even in order to bring them
the most wonderful of gifts: I must say, between ourselves,
that I have strong doubts whether the new kingdom will have
many gifts for us in its luggage. All Sicilian self-expression,
even the most violent, is really wish-fulfilment; our sensual-
ity is a hankering' for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a
hankering for death; our languor, our exotic ices, a
hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death
again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to
scrutinise the enigmas of Nirvana. From that comes the
power among us of certain people, of those who are half
awake: that is the cause of the well-known time lag of
a century in our artistic and intellectual life; novelties
attract us only when they are dead, incapable of arousing
vital currents; from that comes the extraordinary
phenomenon of the constant formation of myths which
would be venerable if they were really ancient, but which
are really nothing but sinister attempts to plunge us back
into a past that attracts us only because it is dead."

Not all of this was understood by the good Chevalley;
and the last phrase he found particularly obscure; he had
seen the variously painted carts being drawn along by horses
covered with feathers, he had heard tell of the heroic
puppet theatres, but he too had thought they were genuine
old traditions. He said, "Aren't you exaggerating a little,
Prince? I myself have met emigrant Sicilians in Turin,
Crispi, for example, who seemed anything but asleep."

The Prince said irritably, "When there are so many of us
there are bound to be exceptions: in any event. I've
already mentioned some of us as half awake. As for this young
man Crispi, not I, certainly, but you perhaps may be able
to see if as an old man he doesn't fall back into our voluptuous
torpor; they all do. Anyway, I've explained myself badly;
I said Sicilians, I should have added Sicily, the atmosphere,
the climate, the landscape of Sicily. Those are the forces
which have formed our minds together with and perhaps
more than foreign dominations and disconnected invasions:
this landscape which knows no mean between sensuous
sag and hellish drought; which is never petty, never
ordinary, never relaxed, as should be •a Country made
for rational beings to live in; this country of ours in
which the inferno round Randazzo is a few miles from
the beauty of Taormina Bay; this tlimate which inflicts
us with six feverish months at a temperature of 104. Count
them, Chevalley, count them; May, June, July, August,
September, October; six times thirty days of sun sheer
down on our heads; this summer of ours which is as long
and glum as a Russian winter and against which we struggle
with less success. You don't know it yet, but fire could be
said to snow down on us as on the accursed cities of the
Bible. If a Sicilian worked hard in any of those months
he would expend energy enough for three. Then water is
either lacking altogether or has to be carried from so far
that every drop is paid for by a drop of sweat; and when
the rains come, they are always tempestuous and set dry
torrents to frenzy, drown beasts and men on the very spot
where two weeks before both had been dying of thirst.

"This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate,
this continual tension in everything, and even these monu-
ments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible
because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely
mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force
from every direction, who were at once obeyed, soon detested
and always misunderstood. Their only expressions were
works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we
understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere.
All these things hav6 formed our character, which is thus
conditioned by events outside our control as well as by
a terrifying insularity of mind."

The ideological inferno evoked in this little lecture
disturbed Chevalley even more than the bloodthirsty tales
of that morning. He tried to say something, but Don
Fabrizio was now too worked up to listen.

"I don'f deny that a few Sicilians may succeed in break-
ing the spell once off the island; but they would have
to leave it very young; by twenty it's too late; the crust is
formed; they will reinain convinced that their country is
basely calumniated like all other countries, that the civilised
norm is here, the oddities elsewhere. But do please excuse
me, Chevalley, I've let myself be led on and I've probably
bored you. You haven't come all this way to hear Ezekiel
deplore the misfortunes of Israel. Let us return to the
subject of our convprsation: I am most grateful to
the Government for having thought of me for the Senate
and I ask you to express my most sincere gratitude to them.

But I cannot accept. I am a member of the old ruling class,
inevitably compromised with the Bourbon regime, and bound
to it by chains of decency if not of affection. I belong to
an unlucky generation, swung between the old world and
the new, and I find myself ill at ease in both. And what is
more, as you must have realised by now, I am without
illusions; what would the Senate do with me, an inexper-
ienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception,
essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others?
We of our generation must draw aside and watch the
capers and somersaults of the young around this ornate
catafalque. Now you need young men, bright young men,
with minds asking 'how' rather than 'why,' and who are
good at masking, at blending I should say, their personal
interests with vague public ideals." He was silent, left
St. Peter's alone. Then he went "on: "May I give
you some advice to hand on to your superiors? "

"That goes without saying. Prince; it will certainly
be heard with every consideration; but I still venture to
hope that instead of advice you may give your consent."

"There is a name I should like to suggest for the
Senate: that of Calogero Sedara. He has more the qualities
to sit there than I have; his family, I am told, is an old
one or soon will be: he has more than what you call prestige,
he has power; he has outstanding practical merits instead
of scientific ones; his attitude during the May crisis was
not so much irreproachable as actively useful; as to
illusions, I don't think he has any more than I have, but
he's clever enough to know how to create them when needed.
He's the man for you. But you must be quick, as I've heard
that he intends to put up as candidate for the Chamber of
Deputies."

There had been much talk about Sedara at the Prefecture.
His activities both as mayor and private citizen were well
known. Chevalley gave a start; he was an honest man and
his esteem for the legislative chambers was paralleled by
the purity of his intentions; so he thought it best not to
say a word in reply; and he did well not to compromise
himself as, ten years later, Don Calogero did in fact gain
the Senate. But though honest, Chevalley was no fool;
he certainly lacked those quick wits which in Sicily usurp
the name of intelligence, but he could assess slowly and
firmly and also he had not the southern insensibility to the
distress of others. He understood Don Fabrizio's bitterness
and discomfort, he reviewed for an instant the misery,
the abjection, the black indifference of which he had been
witness for the last month. During the past few hours he
had envied the Salina opulence and grandeur, but now his
mind went back tenderly to his own little vineyard, his
Monterzuolo near Casale, ugly, mediocre, but serene and
alive. And he found himself pitying this prince without
hopes as much as the children without shoes, the malaria-
ridden women, the guilty victims whose names reached his
office every morning; all were equal fundamentally, all
were comrades in misfortune segregated in the same well.

He decided to make a last effort. As he got up his voice
was charged with emotion. "Prince, do you seriously
refuse to do all in your power to alleviate, to attempt to
remedy the state of physical squalor, of blind moral misery
in which this people of yours lies.? Climate can be
overcome, the memory of evil days cancelled, for the
Sicilians must want to improve; if honest men withdraw
the way will be open for those with no scruples and no
vision, for Sedara and his like; and then everything will
be as before for yet more centuries. Listen to your con-
science, Prince, and not to the proud truths that you have
spoken. Collaborate."

Don Fabrizio smiled at him, took him by the hand,
made him sit beside him on the sofa. "You're a gentleman,
Chevalley, and I consider it a privilege to have met you;
you are right in all you say; your only mistake was saying
the Sicilians must want to improve.' I'll tell you a
personal anecdote. Two or three days before Garibaldi
entered Palermo I was introduced to some British naval
officers from one of the warships then in harbour to keep
an eye on things. They had heard, I don't know how, that
I own a house down on the shore facing the sea, with a
terrace on its roof from which can be seen the whole circle
of hills around the city; they asked to visit this house of
mine and look at the landscape where Garibaldini were
said to be operating, as they could get no clear idea of it
from their ships. In fact Garibaldi was already at Gibilrossa.
They came to my house, I accompanied them up on to
the roof; they were simple youths in spite of their reddish
whiskers. They were ecstatic about the view, the light;
they confessed, though, that they had been horrified at
the squalor and filth of the streets around. I didn't explain
to them that one thing was derived from the other, as I
have tried to with you. Then one of them asked me what
those Italian volunteers were really coming to do in Sicily.
'They are coming to teach us good manners!' I replied in
English, 'But they won't succeed because we think we are
gods'

"I don't think they understood, •but they laughed and
went off. That is my answer to you too, my dear Chevalley;
the Sicilians never want to improve for the simple reason that
they think themselves perfect; their vanity is stronger
than their misery; every invasion by outsiders, whether so
by origin or, if Sicilian, by independence of spirit, upsets
their illusion of achieved perfection, risks disturbing their
satisfied waiting for nothing; having been trampled on
by a dozen different peoples, they think they have an
imperial past which gives them a right to a grand funeral.

"Do you really think, Chevalley, that you are the first
who has hoped to canalise Sicily into the flow of univer-
sal history? I wonder how many Moslem imams, how many
of King Roger's knights, how many Swabian scribes, how
many Angevin barons, how many jurists of the Most
Catholic King have conceived the same fine folly; and
how many Spanish viceroys too, how many of Charles Ill's
reforming functionaries! And who knows now what happened
to. them all! Sicily wanted to sleep in spite of their
invocations; for why should she listen to them if she
herself is rich, if she's wise, if she's civilised, if
she's honest, if she's admired and envied by all, if, in
a word, she is perfect?

"Now even people here are repeating what was written
by Proudhon and some German Jew whose name I can't
remember, that the bad state of things, here and elsewhere
is all due to feudalism; that it's my fault, as it were.
Maybe. But there's been feudalism everywhere, and foreign
invasions too, I don't believe that your ancestors, Chevalley,
or the English squires or the French seigneurs governed
Sicily any better than did the Salina. The results were
different. The reason for the difference must lie in this
sense of superiority that dazzles every Sicilian eye, and
which we ourselves call pride while in reality it's blindness.
For the moment, for a long time to come, there's nothing to
be done. I'm sorry; but I cannot lift a finger in politics.
It would only get bitten. These are things one can't say
to a Sicilian; and if you'd said them yourself, I too would
have objected.

"It's late, Chevalley; we must go and dress for dinner.
For a few hours I haw?, to act the part of a civilised man."

Chevalley left early next morning and Don Fabrizio,
who had arranged to go out shooting, was able to accompany
him to the post station. With them was Don Ciccio Tumeo,
carrying on his shoulders the double weight of two shot
guns, his and Don Fabrizio's, and within himself the bile of
his own trampled virtue.

In the livid light of five-thirty in the morning Donna-
fugata was deserted and seemed despairing. In front of
every house the refuse of squalid meals accumulated along
leprous walls; trembling dogs were routing about with a
greed that was always disappointed. An occasional door
was already open and the smell of sleep spread out into the
street; by glimmering wicks mothers scrutinised the lids
of their children for trachoma; almost all were in mourning
and many had been the wives of those carcasses one stumbles
over on the turns of mountain tracks. The men were
coming out gripping their hoes to look for someone who
might give them work, God willing; subdued silence
alternated with exasperated screams of hysterical voices;
away over towards the Convent of the Holy Ghost a tinny
dawn was beginning to tinge leaden clouds.

Chevalley thought: "This state of things won't last;
our lively new modern administration will change it all."
The Prince was depressed. "All this shouldn't last; but
it will, always; the human 'always ' of course^ a cen-
tury, two centuries . . . and after that it will be diffe-
rent, but worse. We were the Leopards and Lions; those who'll
take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole
lot of us. Leopards, jackals and sheep, we'll all go on
thinking ourselves the salt of the earth." They thanked
each other and said good-bye. Chevalley hoisted himself
up on the post-carriage, propped on four wheels the colour
of vomit. The horse, all hunger and sores, began its long
journey.

Day had just dawned: the little light that managed to
pass through quilted clouds was held up once more by the
immemorial filth on the windows. Chevalley was alone;
amid bumps and shakes he moistened the tip of his index
finger with saliva and cleaned a pane for the width of an
eye. He looked out; in front of him, under the ashen
light, the landscape lurched to and fro, irredeemable.




V. Father Pirrone Pays a Visit




　　　　FEBRUARY, l861




Father Pirrone's origins were rustic; he had been born
at San Cono, a tiny hamlet which is now, thanks to the
autobus, almost a satellite-star in the solar system of
Palermo, but a century ago belonged as it were to a
planetary system of its own, being four, or five cart-hours
from the Palermo sun.

The father of our Jesuit had been overseer of two
properties belonging to the Abbey of Sant' Eleuterio in
the territory of San Cono. An overseer's job was then
most perilous for the health both of soul and body, as it
necessitated odd acquaintanceships and the knowledge
of many a tale which might bring on ills that could suddenly
stretch the patient dead at the foot of some rustic wall,
with all those stories inside him lost irrevocably to idle
curiosity. But Don Gaetano, Father Pirrone's father, had
managed to avoid this occupational disease by rigorous
hygiene based on discretion and a careful use of preventive
remedies; and he had died peacefully of pneumonia one
Sunday in February when a soughing wind was stripping
the almond blossom. He left his widow and three children
(two girls and the priest) relatively well off; like the wise
man he was, he had managed to save up some of the
incredibly meagre salary paid by the Abbey, and at the
moment of his demise owned a few almond trees at the end
of the valley, a row or two of vines on the slopes, and some
stony pasturage farther up: all poor stuff, of course, but
enough to confer a certain weight amid the depressed
economy of San Cono. He was also owner of a small,
rigidly square house, blue outside and white in, four rooms
down and four up, at the very entrance of the village on the
Palermo road.

Father Pirrone had left this house at the age of sixteen,
when his successes at the parish school and the benevolence
of the mitred Abbot of Sant Eleuterio had set him on the
road towards the archiepiscopal seminary; but every few
years he had returned there, to bless the marriage of one
of his sisters or to give a (in the worldly sense) superfluous
absolution to the dying Don Gaetano, and he had come
back now, at the end of February 1861, for the fifteenth
anniversary of his father's death; on a day gusty and clear,
just like that other one.

Getting there had meant a five hours' shaking in a cart
with his feet dangling behind a horse's tail; but once he
had overcome his nausea at the patriotic pictures newly
painted on the cart panels, culminating in a rhetorical
presentation of a flame-coloured Garibaldi arm in arm with
an aquamarine, Santa Rosalia, they had been a pleasant
five hour The valley rising from Palermo to San Cono
mingles the lushness of the coast with the harshness of the
interior, and is swept by sudden gusts of cleansing wind
famous for being able to deviate the best-aimed bullets,
so that marksmen faced with these ballistic problems pre-
ferred to go elsewhere. Then the carter, who had known
the dead man well, launched out into lengthy reminiscences
of his merits, reminiscences which, although not always
adapted to a son's and a priest's ear, had flattered his
practised listener.

His arrival was greeted with happy tears. He embraced
and blessed his mother, whose deep widow's weeds set
off nicely her white hair and rosy hue; and greeted his
sisters and nephews, looking askance among the latter at
Carmelo, who had had the bad taste to put a tricolour
cockade on his cap on token of rejoicing. As soon as he
got into the house he was assailed as always by sweet
youthful memories. Nothing was changed, from the red
brick floor to the sparse furniture; the same light en-
tered the small narrow windows; Romeo, the dog, barking
briefly in a corner, was exactly like another hound, its
great-great-grandfather, his companion in violent play;
and from the kitchen arose the centuries-old aroma of
simmering stew of essence of tomatoes, onions and goat's
meat, for macaroni on festive occasions. Everything
expressed the serenity achieved by the dead man's labours.

Soon they moved off to church fon the commemorative
Mass. That day San Cono looked its best, basking almost
proudly in its exhibition of different manures. Sly goats
with dangling black udders and numbers of little Sicilian
piglets, dark and slim as minute colts, were running among
the people and up the steep tracks; and as Father Pirrone
had become a kind of local glory, many women, children
and even youths crowded round him to ask for his bene-
diction or remind him of old days.

After local gossip in the sacristy with the parish priest
and attendance at Mass he moved to the tombstone in a
side chapel; the women kissed the marble amid sobs, the
son prayed aloud in his archaic Latin; and when they
got home the macaroni was ready and much enjoyed by
Father Pirrone, whose palate had not been spoilt by the
culinary delicacies of Villa Salina.

Then towards evening his friends came to greet him
and met in his room. A three-branched bronze lantern
hung from the ceiling and spread a dim light from its
oil burners; in a corner was the bed with its vari-coloured
mattress and stifling pink and yellow quilt; another corner
of the room, the "barn", was divided off by high stiff
matting hiding honey-coloured corn taken weekly to the
mill for the family needs; on the walls hung pock-marked
engravings, St. Antony exhibiting the Divine Infant, St.
Lucia her gouged-out eyes, and St. Francis Xavier
haranguing crowds of plumed and naked Indians; outside,
in the starry dusk, the wind blew and in its way was the
only one to commemorate the dead. In the centre of the
room under the lamp was a big squat brazier surrounded
by a strip of polished wood on which people put their feet;
all around, on hemp chairs, sat the guests. There were
the parish priest, the two Schiro brothers, local land-
owners, and Don Pietrino the old herbalist; they came
looking glum and remained looking glum, because, while
the women were busy below, they sat talking of politics,
hoping to hear consoling news from Father Pirrone who
came from Palermo and must know a lot as he lived with
the "nobles." The desire for news had been appeased
and that for consolation disappointed, for their Jesuit
friend, partly from sincerity and partly also from tactics,
painted for them a very black future. The Bourbon tricolour
still hung over Gaeta but the blockade was tight and the
powder magazines in the fortress were being blown up
one by one, and nothing could be saved there now, except
honour: not much, that is; Russia was friendly but
distant, Napoleon III shifty and close, and of the risings
in Basilicata and Terra di Lavoro the Jesuit spoke little
because deep down he was rather ashamed of them. They
must, he told them, face up to the reality of this atheistic
and rapacious Italian state now in formation, to these laws
of expropriation, to conscription which would spread from
Piedmont all the way down here, like cholera. "You'll
see," was his not very original conclusion, "you'll see
they won't even leave us eyes to weep with."

These words were followed by the traditional chorus
of rustic complaints. The Schiro brothers and the herbalist
already felt the new fiscal grip; the former had had extra
contributions and additions here and there, the latter
an overwhelming shock; he had been called to the Town
Hall and told that if he didn't pay twenty lire every year
he wouldn't be allowed to sell his potions. "But I go and
gather the grasses, these holy herbs God made, with my
own hands in the mountains, rain or shine, on certain days
and nights of the year. I dry them in the sun which belongs
to everybody and I grind them up myself, with my own
grandfather's mortar. What have you people at the Town
Hall to do with it.? Why should I pay you twenty lire.?
Just for nothing like that.? "

The words came muffled from a toothless mouth, but his
eyes were dark with genuine rage. "Am I right or not.
Father.? You tell me! "

The Jesuit was fond of him; he remembered him as a
man already grown, in fact already bent from continual
wandering and stooping, when he himself had been a boy
throwing stones at the birds; and he was also grateful
because he knew that when the old man sold one of his
potions to women he always said they would be useless
without many a Hail Mary and Gloria. But he prudently
preferred to ignore what was in the potions, or the hopes
with which the clients asked for them.

"You're right, Don Pietrino, a hundred times right.
Why, of course! But if those people didn't take money off
you and other poor souls like you, how could they afford
to make war on the Pope and steal what's his?"

The conversation meandered on in the mild lamplight,
quivering as the wind penetrated the heavy shutters. Father
Pirrone expatiated on the future and the inevitable confisca-
tion of ecclesiastical property; good-bye then to the mild
rule of the Abbey in these parts: good-bye to the plates
of soup distributed in bad winters; and when the younger
Schiro had the imprudence to say that a few poor peasants
might perhaps get some land of their own, his voice froze
into sharp contempt. "You'll see, Don Antonino, you'll see.
The Mayor will buy everything up, pay the first instalments,
and then do just what he likes. It's already happened in
Piedmont! ''

They ended by going off scowling even more than
when they'd come, and with enough complaints to last two
months. The only one to stay was the herbalist, who would
not be going to bed that night as there was a new moon
and he had to gather rosemary on the Pietrazzi rocks; he
had brought a lantern with him and would be setting off
straight from there.

"But tell me. Father, you who live with the nobles,
what do they say about all these great doings? What does
the Prince of Salina say, so tall and quick-tempered and
proud ''

Father Pirrone had more than once asked himself this
question, and it was not an easy one to answer, particularly
as he had taken little notice or interpreted as exaggeration
what Don Fabrizio had told him one morning in the
Observatory nearly a year ago. He knew now, but could
find no way of translating it into comprehensible terms for
Don Pietrino who, though far from a fool, had more
understanding of the anti-catarrhal, laxative, and even
aphrodisiac properties of his herbs than of such abstractions.

"You see, Don Pietrino, the ‘nobles,' as you call
them, aren't so easy tq understand. They live in a world
of their own, of joys and troubles of their own: they have
a very strong collective memory, and so they're put out by
things which wouldn't matter at all to you and me, but
which to them seem vitally connected with their fortunes,
memories and hopes. Divine Providence has willed that
I should become a humble member of the most glorious
Order in an Eternal Church whose eventual victory has
been assured; you are at the other end of the scale, by
which I don't mean the lowest but the most different.
When you find a thick bush of marjoram or a well-filled
nest of Spanish flies (you look for those too, Don Pietrino,
I know) you are in direct communication with the natural
world which the Lord created with undifferentiated
possibilities of good and evil until man could exercise his
own free will on it; and when you're consulted by old
women and by pretty young girls, you are plunging back
into the dark abyss of centuries that preceded the light
from Grolgotha."

The old man looked at him in amazement; he had wanted
to know if the Prince of Salina was satisfied or not
with the latest changes, and the other was talking to
him about aphrodisiacs and light from Golgotha. "All
that reading's driven him off his head, poor man."

"But the 'nobles ' aren't like that; all they live by
has been handled by others. They find, us ecclesiastics
useful to reassure them about eternal life, just as you
herbalists are here to procure them soothing or stimulating
drinks. And by that I don't mean they're bad people;
quite the contrary. They're just different; perhaps they
appear so strange to us because they have reached a stage
towards which all those who are not saints are moving, that
of indifference to earthly goods through surfeit. Perhaps
it's because of that they take so little notice of things
that are of great importance to us; people on the mountains
don't worry about mosquitoes in the plains, nor do the
inhabitants of Egypt about umbrellas. Yet the former fear
landslides, the latter crocodiles, which are no worry to us.
For them new fears have appeared of which we're ignorant;
I've seen Don Fabrizio get quite testy, wise and serious
though he is, because of a badly ironed collar to his shirt;
and I know for certain that the Prince of Lkscari didn't sleep
for a whole night from rage because he was wrongly placed
at one of the Viceroy's dinners. Now don't you think that
a human being who is put out only by bad washing or
protocol must be happy, and thus superior "

Don Pietrino could understand nothing at all now:
all this was getting more and more nonsensical, what with
shirt collars and crocodiles. He was still upheld, though,
by a basis of good rustic commonsense. "But if that's
what they're like. Father, they'll all go to Hell."

"Why? Some will be lost, others saved, according to
how they've lived in that conditioned world of theirs.
Salina himself, for instance, might just scrape through; he
plays his own game decently, follows the rules, doesn't
cheat. God punishes those who voluntarily contravene the
Divine Laws which they know and turn voluntarily down
a bad road; one who goes his own way, so long as he doesn't
misbehave along it, is always all right. If you, Don Pietrino,
sold hemlock instead of mint, knowingly, you'd be for it;
but if you thought you'd picked the right one, old Zana
would die the noble death of Socrates and you'd go straight
to Heaven with a cassock and wings of purest white."

The death of Socrates was too much for the herbalist;
he had given up and was fast asleep. Father Pirrone
noticed this and was pleased, for now he would be able to
talk freely without fear of being misunderstood; and he felt
a need of talking, so as to fix into a pattern of phrases
some ideas obscurely milling in his head.

"And they do a lot of good, too. If you knew, for in-
stance, the families otherwise homeless that find shelter
in those palaces! And the owners ask for no return, not
even immunity from petty theft. They do it not from
ostentation but from a sort of obscure atavistic instinct
which prevents them doing anything else. Although it may not
seem so, they are in fact less selfish than many others;
the splendour of their homes, the pomp of their receptions,
have something impersonal about them, something not unlike
the grandeur of churches and of liturgy, something which
is in fact ad maiorem gentis gloriam and that redeems
a great deal: for every glass of champagne drunk by
themselves they offer fifty to others; when they treat
someone badly, as they do sometimes, it is not so much
their personality sinning as their class affirming itself.
Fata crescunt. For instance, Don Fabrizio has protected
and educated his nephew Tancredi and so saved a poor
orphan who would have otherwise bean lost. You say that
he did it because the young man is a noble too, and that
he wouldn't have lifted a finger for anyone else. That's
true, but why should he lift a finger if sincerely, in the deep
roots of his heart, he considers all 'others' to be botched
attempts, china figurines come misshapen from the potter's
hands and not worth putting to the test of fire.

"You, Don Pietrino, if you weren't asleep at this
moment, would be jumping up to tell me that the nobles
are wrong to have this contempt of others, and that all of us,
equally subject to the double slavery of love and death, are
equal before the Creator; and I would have to agree with
you. But I'd add that not only nobles are to be blamed
for despising others, since that is quite a general vice.
A university professor despises a parish schoolmaster even
if he doesn't show it, and since you're asleep I can tell you
without reticence that we clergy consider ourselves superior
to the laity, we Jesuits superior to the other clergy, just as
you herbalists despise tooth-pullers who in their turn deride
you. Doctors on the other hand jeer at both tooth-pullers
and herbalists, and are themselves treated as fools by their
patients who expect to be kept alive with hearts or livers
in a hopeless state; to magistrates lawyers are just bores
who try to deflect the course of the law, and on the other
hand literature is full of satires against the pomposity,
ignorance and often worse of those very judges. The only
people who also despise themselves are labourers; when
they've learnt to jeer at others the circle will be closed
and we'll start all over again.

"Have you ever thought, Don Pietrino, how many
names of jobs have become insults? From trooper and fish-
wife to reitre or pompier in French? People don't think of
the merits of troopers or fishwives; they just look at
their marginal defects and call them all rough and
profane; and as you can't hear me, I may tell you that I'm
perfectly aware of the exact current meaning of the word
'Jesuit.'

"Then these nobles put a good face on their own
disasters: I've seen one who'd decided to kill himself next
day, poor man, looking beaming and happy as a boy on the
eve of his first Communion; while if you, Don Pietrino,
had to drink one of your own herb drinks, you'd make
the village ring with your laments. Rage is gentlemanly;
complaint is not. I could give you a recipe, in fact: if you
meet a 'gentleman' who's querulous, look up his family
tree; you'll soon find a dead branch.

"It's a class difficult to suppress because it's in continual
renewal and because if needs be it can die well, that is it
can throw out a seed at the moment of death. Look at
France; they let themselves be massacred with elegance
there and now they're. back as before. I say as before,
because it is differences of attitude, not estates and feudal
rights, which make a noble.

"They tell me that in Paris nowadays there are Polish
counts who've been forced into exile and poverty by revolts
and despotism; they drive cabs, but frown so at their
middle-class customers that the poor things get into the
cab, without knowing why, as humbly as dogs in church.

"And I can tell you too, Don Pietrino, that if, as has
often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equiva-
lent one would be formed straight away with the same
qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on
blood any more, but possibly on . . . on, say, the length
of time lived in a place, or on greater knowledge of some
text considered sacred."

At this point his mother's steps were heard on the
wooden stairs; she laughed as she came in. "Who d'you
think you're talking to, son? Can't yqu see your friend's
fast asleep? ''

Father Pirrone looked a little abashed; he did not reply
but just said, "I'll go outside with him now. Poor man,
he's got to spend all night out in the cold.'' He took the
wick from the lantern and lit it from one of the ceiling
lamps, getting up on tiptoe and splashing his cassock with
oil; then he put it back and shut its little gate. Don
Pietrino was sailing in dreams; saliva was dribbling from a
lip and spreading over his collar. It took some ti|ne to wake
him up. "Excuse me. Father, but you were saying such
confusing things.'' They smiled, went downstairs, and
out. Night submerged the little house, the village, the
valley; the nearby mountains could just be seen, surly as
always; the wind had calmed but it was very cold; the
stars were glittering away, producing thousands of degrees
of heat which were not enough to warm one poor old man.
"Poor Don Pietrino! Would you like me to go and get
you another cloak? ''

"Thank you. I'm used to it. We'll meet to-morrow,
then you'll tell me what the Prince of Salina feels about
the Revolution."

"I can tell you that at once and in a few words; he says
there's been no revolution and that all will go on as it did
before."

"More fool he! Doesn't it seem a revolution to you
when the Mayor wants me to pay for the grass God created
and which I gather myself.? Or have you gone off your
head too? "

The light of the lantern went jerking off and eventually
vanished into shadows thick as felt.

Father Pirrone thought what a mess the world must
seem to one who knew neither mathematics nor theology.
"Oh, Lord, only Thy Omniscience could have devised so
many complication."

Another sample of these complications faced him next
morning. When he went down, ready to say Mass in the
parish church, he found his sister Sarina chopping onions
in the kitchen. The tears in her eyes seemed bigger than
her activity warranted.

"What is it, Sarina? Any trouble? Don't let it depress
you; the Lord afflicts and consoles."

His affectionate tone dissipated the remains of the poor
woman's reserve; she began sobbing loudly, with her face
on the greasy table-top. Among the sobs could always be
heard the same words, "Angelina, Angelina ... If
Vincenzino knew he'd kill them both . . . Angelina . . .
He'd kill them both!"

His hands thrust into his wide black sash, with only his
thumbs showing. Father Pirrone stood looking at her. It
wasn't difficult to understand; Angelina was Sarina's
adolescent daughter; Vincenzino, whose fury was so feared,
was her father and his brother-in-law; the only unknown
part of the equation was the name of the other person
involved, Angelina's presumed lover.

The Jesuit had seen her for the first time the day before
as a full-grown girl, after having left her a snivelling child
seven years before. She seemed about eighteen and was very
plain indeed, with the jutting mouth of so many peasant
girls around these parts, and frightened dog's eyes. He
had noticed her on his arrival and in his heart in fact made
rather uncharitable comparisons between her, plebeian as
the diminutive of her own name, and Angelica, sumptuous
as that name of hers from Ariosto, who had recently dis-
turbed the peace of the Salina household.

The trouble must be serious and here he was right in
the middle of it; he remembered what Don Fabrizio had
once said: every time one sees a relative one finds a thorn;
then he was sorry for having rememberad that. He extracted
his right thumb from his belt, took off his hat and clapped
his sister's quivering shoulder. "Come on now, Sarina,
don't do that! Luckily, I'm here. Crying's no use. Where
is Vincenzino " Vincenzino had gone off to Rimato to
see the Schiro's keeper. All the better; they could talk
things over without fear of surprise. Between sobs, sucked
tears and nose snuffling, out the whole squalid story came;
Angelina (or rather 'Ncilina) had let herself seduced;
the disaster had happened during St. Martin's Summer;
she used to go to meet her lover in Donna Nunziata's hay-
loft; now she'd been with child three months; in a panic
she had confessed all to her mother; soon her belly would
begin showing and Vincenzino would raise hell. "He'll
kill me too, he will, because I didn't tell him; he's what
they call 'a man of honour!'"

In fact with his low forehead, ornamental quiffs of hair
on the temples, lurching walk and perpetual swelling of the
right trouser pocket where he kept a knife, it was obvious
at once that Vincenzino was "a man of honour", one of
those violent cretins capable of any havoc.

Now Sarina was overcome by a new fit of sobbing,
stronger than the first because she'd been seized by re-
newed remorse for having been unworthy of her husband,
that mirror of chivalry.

"Sarina, Sarina, stop it now! Don't do that! The
young man must marry her, he will marry her. I'll go to
his home, talk to him and his family, everything will be all
right. Then Vincenzino will know only about the engage-
ment and his precious honour will remain intact. But I
must know who the man is. If you know, tell me."

His sister raised her head; her eyes now showed another
fear, no longer the animal one of the knife thrusts, but a
more restricted, keener one which the brother could not for
the moment place. .

"It was Santino Pirrone! Turi's son! And he did it
out of spite, spite against me, against our mother, against
our father's memory! I've never spoken to him, they all
said he was a good boy — but he's a swine, a true son of that
father of his. I remembered afterwards; I always used to
see him passing here in November with two friends and a
red geranium behind his ear. Red of hell, that was, red of
hell!"

The Jesuit took a chair and sat down next to the poor
woman. Obviously he would have to be late for Mass.
This was serious. Turi, the father of the seducer Santino,
was an uncle of his; the brother, in fact the elder brother,
of his dead father. Twenty years ago he had worked
together with the dead man in his job as overseer, just at
the moment of the latter's greatest and most meritorious
activity. Later the brothers had quarrelled, one of those
family quarrels we all know with deeply entangled roots,
impossible to cure because neither side speaks out clearly,
each having much to hide. The fact was that when the
dead man acquired the little almond grove, his brother
Turi had said that half of it really belonged to him because
half the money for it, or half the work, he had put in him-
self; but the deeds bore only the name of the dead Gaetano.
Turi stormed up and down the roads of San Cono foaming
at the mouth. The dead man's prestige was in danger,
friends came between and the worst was avoided ; the almond
grove remained Gaetano's property, but the gulf between
the two branches of the Pirrone family became unbridgeable;
Turi did not even go to his brother's funeral and was
referred to simply as the "swine," in his sister's house.
The Jesuit had been told of all this by letters dictated to
the parish priest, and had formed some ideas of his own
about it which he did not express from filial reverence.
The little almond grove now belonged to Sarina.

It was all quite obvious; no love or passion played any
part; just a dirty trick to revenge another dirty trick. But
it could be set right; the Jesuit thanked Providence for
having brought him to San Cono at that very time. "Listen,
Sarina, I'll settle all this in a couple of hours, but you've
got to help me; half of Chibbaro" (that was the almond
grove)"must go as 'Ncilina's dowry. Theres no other
way out of it; the silly girl has been the ruin of you."
And he thought how the Lord to bring about His justice
can even use bitches in heat.

Sarina lost her temper. "Half of Chibbaro! To that
swine, never! Better dead! "

"All right. Then after Mass I'll go and talk to
Vincenzino. Don't be afraid. I'll try and calm him down."
He put his hat back on his head and his hands into his
belt; and waited patiently, sure of himself.

Any edition of Vincenzino's furies, even though revised
and expurgated by a Jesuit priest, were always beyond
poor Sarina, who began weeping for the third time; gradu-
ally her sobs lessened and then stopped. She got up: "May
God's will be done; you fix it, it's beyond me. But our
lovely Chibbaro! All that sweat of our father's!"

Her tears were just about to start again, but the priest
had already gone.


After celebrating the Divine Sacrifice and accepting
coffee from the parish priest, the Jesuit went straight to
his Uncle Turi's home. He had never been there but knew
it was a shack at the very top of the village near Mastro
Ciccu the blacksmith's. He soon found it, and as there
were no windows and the door was open to let in a little
sun, he stopped on the threshold. In the darkness inside
he could see heaps of mules' harness, saddle-bags, sacks;
Don Turi earned his living as a mule driver, now helped by
his son.

"Dordzio!" called Father Pirrone. This was an
abbreviation of the form of Deo Gratias {agamus) used by
clerics asking permission to enter. An old man's voice
shouted, "Who is it?" and someone got up at the back
of the room and came towards the door. "It's your nephew.
Father Savecio Pirrone. I wanted to talk to you if I may."

It was not much of a surprise for Turi; a visit by
Father Pirrone or some representative must have been
expected for at least two months. Uncle Turi was a
vigorous, straight-backed old man baked through and
through by sun and hail, with the sinister furrows on his
face which troubles trace on people who are not good.

"Come in," he said without a smile. He stood aside
and even went grudgingly through the action of kissing
the priest's hand. Father Pirrone sat down on one of the
big wooden saddles. The place looked very wretched
indeed: two chickens were grubbing away in a corner and
everything smelt of manure, wet washing and evil poverty.

"Uncle, we've not met for years, but that's not all
my fault; I'm seldom at home, as you know, but you never
come near my mother, your sister-in-law; I'm sorry to
hear that."

"I'll never set foot in that house again. Just passing it
turns my stomach! Turi Pirrone never forgets an injury,
even after twenty years! "

"Oh, yes, of course, yes indeed. But here I am to-day
like the dove from Noah's Ark, to assure you that the flood
is over. I'm very glad to be here and I was- very happy
yesterday when they told me at home that your son Santino
is engaged to my niece Angelina; they are two fine young
people. I'm told, and their union will put an end to the
quarrel between our families which, if I may say so, has
always grieved me."

Turi's face expressed a surprise too obvious not to be
false. "If it weren't for your habit. Father, I'd say you
were lying. You must have been listening to tales from those
females of yours. Santino has never even mentioned
Angelina to me: he's far too good a son to go against his
father's wish."

The Jesuit admired the old man's astuteness, and the
smoothness of his lying.

"Apparently, Uncle, I've been misinformed; why, they
told me that you'd agreed on the dowry and would both be
coming to our place to-day to make it official. But the
nonsense these idle females talk! Even if it's not true,
though, it does show what's in those good hearts of theirs.
Well, uncle, there's no point in my staying here; I'm
going straight home to reprove my sister. Very pleased to
find you so well."

The old man's face was beginning to show a certain
greedy interest. "Wait, Father. Give us another laugh
with this gossip of yours; what dowry were the females
talking of? "

"Oh, I don't knowl I think I heard something about
half of Chibbarol 'Ncilina, they said, was very dear to
them and no sacrifice was too much to ensure peace in the
family!"

Don Turi stopped laughing. He got up, "Santino!"
he began bawling as loudly as if calling a recalcitrant mule.
And as no one came he shouted louder still, "Santino,
blood of the Madonna, where are you? " Then, when he
saw Father Pirrone quiver, he put a hand over his mouth
with a gesture unexpectedly servile.

Santino was seeing to the animals in the little yard.
He entered shyly with a whip in his hands. He was a
fine-looking lad of twenty-two, tall and slim like his father,
with eyes not yet embittered. He had seen the Jesuit
pass through the village the day before as had everyone else
and he recognised him at once. "This is Santino. And
this is your cousin Father Saverio Pirrone. You can thank
God the Reverend Father is here, or I'd have cut your ears
off. What's all this love-making without your own father
knowing? Children are born for their parents and not to
run after, skirts.,"

The young man looked ashamed, perhaps not from dis-
obedience but because of his father's past consent, and did
not know what to say; he got out of the difficulty by putting
his whip on the floor and going to kiss the priest's hand.
The latter showed his teeth in a smile and sketched a
benediction. "God bless you, my son, though I don't
think you deserve it."

The old man continued, "As your cousin here has gone
on begging me I've given my consent in the end. Why
didn't you tell me before, though? Now clean yourself up
and we'll go down to Angelina's now."

"A moment, Uncle, just a moment." It occurred to
Father Pirrone that he ought to say a word to the " man of
honour " who knew nothing as yet. "Back home they'll
be sure to want to get things ready; anyway they told me
they'd be expecting you at seven this evening. Come then,
and it'll be a pleasure to see you." And off he went, em-
braced by father and son.

When Father Pirrone got back to the little square house
he found his brother-in-law Vincenzino already home, so all
he could do to reassure his sister was wink at her from
behind her proud husband's back; but as they were both
Sicilians that was quite enough. Then he told his brother-in-
law that he wanted to talk to him, and the two went off
to the scraggy little pergola at the back. The swaying edge
of the Jesuit's cassock traced a kind of uncrossable mobile
frontier around him; the fat buttocks of the "man of
honour" waggled, perennial symbol of threatening pride.
Their conversation was actually quite different from what
the priest had foreseen. Once assured of the imminence
of 'Ncilina's marriage, the "man of honour " showed
complete indifference about what her behaviour had
been. But at the first mention of the proposed dowry
his eyes rolled, the veins in his temples swelled and the
lurch in his walk became more marked; from his mouth
came a gurgle of low obscene oaths and announcements of
murderous intentions; his hand, which had not made a
single gesture in defence of his daughter's honour, began
clutching the right pocket of his trousers to show that in
defence of his almond trees he was ready to spill the very
last drop of other people's blood.

Father Pirrone let the stream of abuse run out, merely
making quick signs of the Cross at the frequent curses;
of the gesture announcing a massacre he took no notice at
all. During a pause he put in: "Of course I want to
contribute to a general settlement too. You know the
private agreement ensuring me the ownership of whatever
was due to me from our father's estate } I'll send that back
to you from Palermo, torn up."

This balsam had an immediate effect. Vincenzino, intent
on computing the value of the anticipated inheritance,
was silent; and through the cold sunny air came the cracked
notes of a song which had suddenly burst from 'Ncilina
as she swept out her uncle's room.

In the afternoon Uncle Turi and Santino came to pay their
visit, quite spruced up and wearing very white shirts.
The engaged couple sat on chairs side by side and broke
out now and again into loud wordless giggles in each other's
faces. They were really pleased, she at "settling " herself
and having this big handsome male at her disposal, he at
following his father's advice and now owning not only half
an almond grove but a slave too. And no one now found
the red geranium he had put in his buttonhole to have any
connection with hell.

Two days later Father Pirrone left for Palermo. As he
jogged along he went over impressions that were not
entirely pieasant; that brutish love-affair come to fruition
in St. Martin's Summer, that wretched half almond grove
reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to
him the rustic poverty-struck equivalent of other events
recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incompre-
hensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted
them both round his little finger all the same.

At the Villa Salina he found the Prince in excellent
spirits. Don Fabrizio asked if he had enjoyed his four days
away and if he had remembered to give his mother his, the
Prince's, greetings. He knew her, in fact; she had stayed
at the villa six years before and pleased both the Prince and
Princess by her serene widowhood. The Jesuit had entirely
forgotten about the greetings and was silent; then he said
that his mother and sister had charged him with bearing
His Excellency their respects, which was a fib rather
than a lie. "Excellency," he added then, "I wanted to ask
you if you could give orders for me to have a carriage
to-morrow; I must go to the Archbishopric to ask for a
dispensation; a niece of mine has got engaged to her
cousin."

"Of course. Father Pirrone, of course, if you wish;
but I have to go down to Palermo myself the day after
to-morrow, you could come with me — or are you really in
such a rush? "




VI. A Ball




　　　　NOVEMBER, l862




The Princess Maria Stella climbed into the carriage, sat
down on the blue satin cushions and gathered around her
as many rustling folds of her dress as she could. Meanwhile
Concetta and Carelina were also getting in; they sat down
in front of her, their identical pink dresses exhaling a faint
scent of violets. Then a heavy foot on the running board
made the barouche heel over on its high springs; Don
Fabrizio was getting in too. The carriage was crammed;
waves of silk, hoops of three crinolines, billowed, clashed,
mingled almost to the height of their heads; beneath
was a tight press of footgear, the girls' silken slippers, the
Princess's russet ones, the Prince's patent leather pumps:
each suffered from the other's feet and could find nowhere
to put his own.

The mounting seeps were folded, the footman given his
orders. "To Palazzo Ponteleone." He got back on to the
box, the groom holding the horses' bridles moved aside,
the coachman gave an imperceptible click of his tongue,
and the barouche slid into motion.

They were going to a ball.

Palermo at the moment was passing through one of its
intermittent periods of social gaiety; there were balls
everywhere. After the coming of the Piedmontese, after
the Aspromonte affair, now that spectres of violence
and spoliation had fled, the few hundred people who
made up "the world " never tired of meeting each
other, always the same ones, to exchange congratulations
on still existing.

So frequent were the various and yet identical parties
that the Prince and Princess of Salina had moved to their
town palace for three weeks so as not to have to make the
long drive from San Lorenzo almost every night. The
ladies' dresses would arrive from Naples in long black
cases like coffins, and there would be an hysterical coming
and going of milliners, hairdressers and shoemakers; of
exasperated servants carrying excited notes to fitters.
The Ponteleone ball was to be one of the most important
of that short season; important for all concerned because
of the standing of the family, the splendour of the palace
and the number of guests; particularly important for the
Salinas who would be presenting to "society " Angelica,
their nephew's lovely bride-to-be. It was still only half-past
ten, rather early to appear at a ball if one is Prince of Salina,
whose arrival should be timed for when a fate is at its height.
But this time they had to be early if they wanted to be there
for the entry of the Sedara who were thg sort qf people
("they don't know yet, poor things") to take literally the
times on the gleaming invitation card. It had taken a good
deal of trouble to get one of those cards sent to them;
no one knew them, and the Princess Maria Stella had been
obliged to make a visit to Margherita Ponteleone ten days
before; all had gone smoothly, of course, but even so it had
been one of those little thorns that Tancredi's engage-
ment had inserted into the Leopard's delicate paws.

The short drive to Palazzo Ponteleone took them
through a tangle of dark alleys, and they went at walking
pace; Via Salina, Via Valverde, down the Bambinai slope,
so gay in daytime with its little shops of waxen figures,
so dreary by night. The horseshoes sounded muffled amid
the dark houses asleep or pretending to sleep.

The girls, incomprehensible beings for whom a ball is
fun and not a tedious worldly duty, were chatting away
gaily in low voices; the Princess Maria Stella felt her bag
to assure herself she'd brought her little bottle of sal
volatile; Don Fabrizio was enjoying in anticipation the ef-
fect of Angelica's beauty on all those who did not know her
and of Tancredi's luck on all those who knew him too well.
But a shadow lay across his contentment; what about Don
Calogero's tailcoat? Certainly not like the one worn
at Donnafugata; he had been put into the hands of Tancredi,
who had dragged him off to the best tailor and even been
present at fittings Officially the result had seemed to
satisfy him the other day; but in confidence he had said,
"The coat is the best we can do; Angelica's father lacks
chic." That was undeniable; but Tancredi had guaranteed
a perfect shave and decently polished shoes. That was
something.

Where the Bambinai slope comes out by the apse of
San Domenico the carriage stopped; there was a faint
tinkle and round the corner appeared a priest bearing a
ciborium with the Blessed Sacrament; behind, a young
acolyte held over him a white canopy embroidered in gold;
in front another bore a big lighted candle in his left hand and
in his right a little silver bell which he was shaking with
obvious enjoyment. These were the Last Sacraments; in
one of those barred houses someone was in a death agony.
Don Fabrizio got out and knelt on the pavement, the ladies
made the sign of the Cross, the tinkling faded into the alleys
tumbling down towards San Giacomo, and the barouche,
with its occupants given a salutary warning, set off again
towards its destination, now close by.

They arrived, they alighted in the portico; the coach
vanished into the immensity of the courtyard, whence came
the sound of pawing horses and the gleams of equipages
arrived before.


The great stairs were of rough material but superb
proportions; from every step country plants spread rustic
scents; on the landing between flights the amaranthine
liveries of two footmen, motionless under their powder,
set a note of bright colour in the pearly grey surroundings.
From two high little grated windows came a gurgle of
laughter and childish murmurs; the small Ponteleone
grandchildren, excluded from the party, were looking on,
making fun of the guests. The ladies smoothed down
silken folds; Don Fabrizio, gibus under an arm, was head
and shoulders above them, although ‘a step behind. At
the door of the first drawing-room they met their host and
hostess; he, Don Diego, white-haired and paunchy, saved
from looking plebeian only by his caustic eyes, she, Donna
Margherita, with, between coruscating tiara and triple
row of emeralds, the hooked features of an old priest.

"You've come early! All the better! But don't worry,
your guests haven't appeared yet." A new thorn pierced
the sensitive fingertips of the Leopard. Tancfedi's here
already too." There in the opposite corner of thfe drawing-
room was standing their nephew, black and slim as an adder,
surrounded by three or four young men whom he was making
roar with laughter at little tales that were quite certainly
indecent; but his eyes, restless as ever, were fixed on the
entrance door. Dancing had already begun and through
three, four, five ante-chambers came notes of an orch-
estra from the ballroom.

"We're also expecting Colonei Pallavicino, who did so
well at Aspromonte."

This phrase from the Prince of Ponteleone was not as
simple as it sounded. On the surface it was a remark
without political meaning, mere praise for the tact, the
delicacy, the respect, the tenderness almost with which
the Colonel had got a bullet fired into General Garibaldi's
foot; and for the accompaniment too, the bowing, kneeling
and hand-kissing of the wounded Hero lying under a
chestnut tree on a Calabrian hillside, smiling from emotion
and not from irony as he might well have done (for
Garibaldi, alas, lacked a sense of humour).

At an intermediate stage of the princely psyche the
phrase had a technical meaning and was intended to praise
the Colonel for having made the proper dispositions and
carried out successfully against the same adversary what
Landi had so unaccountably failed to do at Calatafimi.
At heart, though, 5onteleone thought that the Colonel
"did so well " by managing to stop, defeat, wound
and capture Garibaldi, in so doing saving the com-
promise so laboriously achieved between the old state of
things and the new.

Evoked, created almost by the approving words and
still more approving thoughts, the Colonel now appeared
at the top of the stairs. He was moving amid a tinkle of
epaulettes, chains and spurs in his well-padded, double-
breasted uniform, a plumed hat under his arm and his left
wrist propped on a curved sabre. He was a man of the world
with graceful manners, well-versed, as all Europe knew by
now, in hand-kissings dense with meaning; every lady
whose fingers were brushed by his perfumed moustaches
that night was able to re-evoke from first-hand knowledge
the historical incident so highly praised in the popular
press.

After sustaining the shower of praise poured over him
by the Ponteleone, after shaking the two fingers held out
to him by Don Fabrizio, Pallavicino merged into the scented
froth of a group of ladies. His consciously virile features
emerged above snowy white shoulders, and an occasional
phrase came over. "I sobbed, countess, sobbed like a
child or "He looked fine and calm as an archangel."
The male sentimentality enchanted ladies reassured already
by the musketry of his Bersaglieri.

'Angelica and Don Calogero were late, and the Salina
family were thinking of plunging into the other rooms
when Tancredi was seen to detach himself from his little
group and move like a dart towards the entrance: the
expected pair had arrived. Above the ordered swirl of
her pink crinoline Angelica's white shoulders merged into
strong soft arms; her head looked small and proud
on its smooth youthful neck adorned with intentionally
modest pearls. And when from the opening of her long
kid glove she drew a hand which though not small was
perfectly shaped, on it was seen glittering the Neapolitan
sapphire.

In her wake came Don Calogero, a rat escorting a
rose: though his clothes had no elegance this time they
were at least decent. His only mistake was wearing in his
buttonhole the Cross of the Order of the Crowrn of Italy
recently conferred on him; but this soon va?iished^nto one
of the secret pockets in Tancredi's tailcoat.

Her fiance had already taught Angelica to be impassive,
that fundamental of distinction ("You can be expansive
and noisy only with me, my dear; with all others you
must be the future Princess of Falconeri, superior to many,
equal to all."), and so she greeted her hostess with a
totally unspontaneous but highly successful mixture of
virginal modesty, neo-aristocratic hauteur and youthful
grace.

The Palermitans are Italians after all, and so par-
ticularly responsive to the appeal of beauty and the
prestige of money; apart from which Tancredi, however
attractive, being also notoriously penniless, was considered
an undesirable match (mistakenly, as was seen afterwards
when too late); and so he was more appreciated by married
women than by marriageable girls. This merging of merits
and demerits now had the effect of Angelica being received
with unexpected warmth. One or two young men might well
have regretted not having dug up for themselves so lovely
an amphora brimming with coin: but Donnafugata was a fief
of Don Fabrizio's, and if he had found that treasure
there and then passed it to his beloved Tancredi, one could
no more be jealous of that than of his finding a sulphur
mine on his land; it was his property, there was nothing
to be said.

But even this transient resentment melted before the
rays of those eyes. At one moment there was quite a press
of young men wanting to be introduced and to ask for a
dance; to each one of them Angelica dispensed a smile
from her strawberry lips, to each she showed her card in
which every polka, mazurka and waltz was followed by
the possessive signature; Falconeri. There was also a
general attempt by young ladies to get on familiar terms;
and after^an hour Angelica found herself quite at her ease
among people who had not the slightest idea of her mother's
crudity or her father's rascality.

Her bearing did not contradict itself for an instant;
never was she seen wandering about alone with head in the
clouds, never did her arms move from her body, never was
her voice raised above the murmur (quite high anyway) of the
other ladies. For Tancredi had told her the day before,
"Now darling, we (and so you too now) are more attached to
our houses and furniture than we are to anything else;
and nothing offends us more than carelessness about those;
so look at everything and praise everything; anyway
Palazzo Ponteleone is worth it; but as you're not just a girl
from the provinces whom everything surprises, always put
a little reserve into your praise; admire, but always compare
with some arch-type seen before and known to be out-
standing." The long visits to the palace at Donnafugata had
taught Angelica a great deal, so that evening she admired
every tapestry, but said that the ones in Palazzo Pitti
had a finer border; she praised a Madonna by Dolci but
remembered that the Grand Duke's had a more expressive
melancholy; even of the slice of tart brought her by an
attentive young gentleman she said that it was excellent,
almost as good as that of "Monsu Gaston," the Salina chef.
And as Monsu Gaston was positively the Raphael of cooks,
and the tapestries of Palazzo Pitti the Monsu Gaston of
hangings, no one could complain, in fact everyone was
flattered by the comparison; and so from that evening
she began to acquire the reputation of a polite but inflexible
art expert which was to accompany her quite unwarrantably
throughout her long life.

While Angelica reaped laurels, Maria Stella gossiped
on a sofa with two old friends, and Concetta and
Carolina froze with their shyness the youngest partners,
Don Fabrizio was wandering round the rooms he kissed
the hands of ladies he met, clapped on the shoulder men
he wanted to greet, but could feel ill-humour creeping
slowly over him. First of all he didn't like the house; the
Ponteleone hadn't done it up for seventy years, it was
still the same as in the time of Queen Maria Carolina,
and he, who considered himself to have modern tastes, was
indignant. "Good God, with Diego's income it wouldn't
take long to sweep away all these consoles, all these over-
decorated mirrors! Then order some decent rosewood
and plush furniture, and so live in comfort himself and
stop making his guests go round catacombs like these,
I'll tell him so in the end," But he never told Diego, for
these opinions only stemmed from his mood and his tendency
to contradiction; they were soon forgotten and he himself
never changed a thing either at San Lorenzo or Donnafugata.
Meanwhile, however, they served to increase his disquiet.

The women at the ball did not please him either. Two
or three among the older ones had been his mistresses,
and seeing them now, grown heavy with years and child-
bearing, it was an effort to imagine them as they were
twenty years, before, and he was annoyed at the thought of
having thrown away his best years in chasing (and catching)
such slatterns. The younger women weren't up to much
either, except for one or two: the youthful Duchess of
Palma, whose grey eyes and gentle reserve he admired,
Tutu Lascari also, with whom, had he been younger, he
might well have found himself in unique and exquisite
harmony. But the others ... it was a good thing that
Angelica had emerged from the shades of Donnafugata
to show these Palermitans what a really lovely woman was
like.

There was something to be said for his strictures;
what with the frequent marriages between cousins in recent
years due to sexual lethargy and territorial calculations,
with the dearth of proteins and overabundance of starch
in the food, with the total lack of fresh air and movement,
the drawing-rooms were now filled with a mob of girls
incredibly short, unsuitably dark, unbearably giggly. They
were sitting around in huddles, letting out an occasional
hoot at an alarmed young man, and destined, apparently, to
act only as background to three or four lovely creatures such
as the fair-haired Maria Palma, and the exquisite Eleonora
Giardinelli, who glided by like swans over a frog-filled pool.

The more of them he saw the more put out he felt;
his mind, conditioned by long periods of solitude and
abstract thought, at one moment, as he was passing through
a long gallery where a numerous colony of these creatures
had gathered on the central pouf, got into a kind of hallucina-
tion; he felt like a keeper in a zoo looking after some
hundred female monkeys; any moment he expected to
see them clamber up the chandeliers and hang there by their
tails, swinging to and fro, showing off their behinds and
loosing a stream of nuts, shrieks and grins at pacific visitors
below.

A religious evocation, oddly enough, drew him away
from this zoologic vision. For from the group of crino-
lined monkeys rose a monotonous, continuous sacred
cry. "Maria! Maria!" the poor creatures were per-
petually exclaiming. "Maria, what a lovely house! "
"Maria, what a handsome man Colonel Pallavicino is! "
"Maria, how my feet are aching!" "Maria, I'm so hungry!
When does the supper-room open? " The name of the
Virgin, invoked by that virginal choir, echoed throughout
the gallery and changed the monkeys back into women,
for the ouistiti of the Brazilian forests had not yet, as
far as he knew, been converted to Catholicism.

Slightly nauseated, the Prince passed into the room
next door, where were encamped the rival and hostile tribe
of men; the younger were off dancing and those now there
were only the older ones, all of them his friends. He sat
down a little among them; there, instead of the name of the
Queen of Heaven being taken in vain, the air was turgid
with commonplaces. Among these men Don Fabrizio was
considered an "eccentric"; his interest in mathematics
was taken almost as sinful perversion, and had he not
been actually Prince of Salina and known as an excellent
horseman, indefatigable shot and tireless womaniser, his
parallaxes and telescopes might have exposed him to the
risk of outlawry. Even so they did not say much to him,
for his cold blue eyes, glimpsed under the heavy lids, put
would-be talkers off, and he often found himself isolated,
not, as he thought, from respect, but from fear.

He got up; his melancholy had now changed to black
gloom. He had been wrong to come to this ball; Stella,
Angelica, his daughters, could easily have coped with
it alone, and he at this moment would have been happily
ensconced in his study next to the terrace in Villa Salina,
listening to the tinkling of the fountain and trying to
catch comets by their tails. "Anyway, I'm here now; it
would be rude to leave. Let's go and have a look at the
dancing."


The ballroom was all golden; smooth on cornices,
thick on door-frames, and repeated in a pale almost
silvery damask-like design on door panels and on the
shutters which covered and annulled the windows,
conferring on the room the look of some superb jewel-case
shut off from an unworthy world. It was not the flashy
gilding which decorators slap on nowadays, but a faded
gold, pale as the hair of nordic children, determinedly
hiding its value under a muted use of precious material
intended to let beauty be seen and cost forgotten. Here and
there on the panels were knots of rococo flowers in a colour
so faint as to seem just an ephemeral pink reflected from
the chandeliers.

That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade,
made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff
in a doorway: this eminently patrician room reminded him
of country things; the chromatic scale was the same as
that of the vast wheat fields around Donnafugata, rapt,
begging for pity from the tyrannous sun; in this room, too,
as on his estates in mid-August, the harvest had been
gathered long ago and stacked elsewhere, leaving, as
here now, a sole reminder in the colour of burnt up useless
stubble. The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed
to him but a stylisation of the incessant winds harping their
own sorrows on those parched surfaces, to-day, yesterday,
to-morrow, for ever and for ever. The crowd of dancers
among whom he could count so many near to him in blood
if not in heart, began to seem unreal, made of the raw
material of lapsed memories, more labile even than that of
disturbing dreams. From the ceiling the gods, reclining
on gilded couches, gazed down smiling and inexorable as
a summer sky. They thought themselves eternal; but a
bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn., was to prove the
contrary in 1943.

"Fine, Prince, fine! They don't do things like this
nowadays, with gold leaf at its present price! " Sedkra
was standing beside him; his quick eyes were moving over
the room, insensible to its charm, intent on its monetary
value.

Quite suddenly Don Fabrizio felt a loathing for
him; to the rise of this man and a hundred others
like him, to their obscure intrigues and their tenacious
greed and avarice, was due the sense of death looming
darkly over these palaces; it was because of him and
his colleagues, their rancour and sense of inferiority,
that the black clothes of the men dancing reminded
Don Fabrizio of crows veering to and fro above lost
valleys in search of putrid prey. He felt like giving a
sharp reply and telling him to get out of his way. But he
couldn't; the man was a guest, he was the father of that
dear girl Angelica; and maybe, too, he was just as
unhappy as others.

"Fine, Don Calogero, fine. But our young couple's
the finest of all." Tancredi and Angelica were passing in
front of them at that moment, his gloved right hand on her
waist, their outspread arms interlaced, their eyes gazing
into each other's. The black of his tailcoat, the pink of her
interweaving dress, looked like some unusual jewel. They
were the most moving sight there, two young people in love
dancing together, blind to each other's defects, deaf to the
warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course
of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor,
unknowing actors set to play the parts of Juliet and
Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb
and poison were already in the script. Neither was good,
each self-interested, turgid with secret aims; yet there
was something sweet and touching about them both;
those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were
obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was
murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual
clasp of those bodies destined to die.

The two young people drew away, other couples
passed, less handsome, just as moving, each submerged in
their passing blindness. Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw;
his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral
beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them
between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms.
How could one inveigh against those sure to die? It would
be as vile as those fish-vendors insulting the condemned
in the Piazza Del Mercato sixty years before. Even the
female monkeys on the poufs, even those old baboons of
friends were poor wretches, condemned and touching as
the cattle lowing through city streets at night on their
way to the slaughter-house; to the ears of each of them
would one day come that tinkle he had heard three hours
before behind San Domenico. Nothing could be decently
hated except eternity.

And then these people filling the rooms, all these faded
women, all these stupid men, these two vainglorious sexes
were part of his blood, part of himself; only they could
really understand him, only with them could he be at ease.
"I may be more intelligent. I'm certainly more cultivated
than they are, but I come from the same stock, with them I
must make common cause."

He noticed Don Calogero talking to Giovanni Finale
about a possible rise in the price of cheese and how in the
hope of this beatific event his eyes had gone liquid and
gentle. Don Fabrizio could slip away without remorse.

Till that moment accumulated irritation had given him
energy; now with relaxed nerves weariness overcame him;
it was already two o'clock. He looked round for a place
where he could sit down quietly, far from men, beloved
and brothers, all right in their way, but always tiresome.
He soon found it; the library, small, silent, lit and empty.
He sat down, then got up to drink some water which he
found on a side table. "Only water is really good," he
thought like a true Sicilian; and did not dry the drops
left on his lips. He sat down again; he liked the library
and soon felt at his ease there; it did not oppose his taking
possession for it was impersonal as are rooms little used;
Poniteleone was not a type to waste his time in there. He
began looking at a picture opposite him, a good copy of
Greuze's Death of the Just Man; the old man was expiring
on his bed amid welters of clean linen, surrounded by
afflicted grandsons, and by granddaughters raising arms
towards the ceiling. The girls were pretty, and provoking:
and the disorder of their clothes suggested sex more than
sorrow; they, it was obvious at once, were the real subject
of the picture. Even so Don Fabrizio was surprised for
a second at Diego always having this melancholy scene
before his eyes; then he reassured himself by thinking
that the other probably entered that room only once or twice
a year.

Immediately afterwards he asked himself if his own
death would be like that; probably it would, apart from the
sheets being less impeccable (he knew that the sheets of
those in their death agony are always dirty with spittle,
ejections, medicine marks . . .) and it was to be hoped
that Concetta, Carolina and his other women folk would
be more decently clad. But the same, more or less. As
always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as
that of others disturbed him: was it perhaps because,
when all was said and done, his own death would in the first
place mean that of the whole world?

From this he went on to think that he must see to
repairing the tomb of his ancestors at the Capuchins. A
pity corpses could not be hung up by the neck in the crypt
and watched slowly mummifying; he'd look magnificent
on that wall, tall and big as he was, terrifying girls by
the set smile on his sandpaper face, by his long, long
white nankeen trousers. But no, they'd dress him up in party
clothes, perhaps in this very evening coat he was wearing
now. . . .

The door opened. "Nuncle, you're looking wonderful
this evening. Black suits you perfectly. But what are you
looking at? Are you paying court to death?"

Tancredi was arm in arm with Angelica; both of them
were still under the sensual influence of the dance, and were
tired. Angelica sat down and asked Tancredi for a handker-
chief to mop her brow; Don Fabrizio gave her his. The
two young people looked at the picture with complete lack
of interest. For both of them death was purely an intellectual
concept, a facet of knowledge as it were and no more, not
an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones.
Death, oh, yes, it existed of course, but was something
that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don
Fabrizio that it was ignorance of this supreme consolation
that made the young feel sorrows much more sharply than
the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit.

"Prince," said Angelica, "we'd heard you were here;
we came to have a little rest, but also to ask you something.
I hope you won't refuse it." Her eyes were full of sly
laughter, her hand was resting on Don Fabrizio's sleeve.
"I wanted to ask you to dance the next mazurka with me.
Do say yes, now, don't be naughty; we all know you used
to be a great dancer." The Prince was very pleased and
felt suddenly quite spry. The Capuchins' crypt indeed!
His hairy cheeks quivered with pleasure. The idea of the
mazurka rather alarmed him, though; that military dance,
all heel-banging and turns, was not for his joints. To kneel
before Angelica would be a pleasure, but what if he found it
difficult to get up afterwards?

"Thank you, my dear girl: you're making me feel young
again. I'll be happy to obey you; but not the mazurka;
grant me the first waltz."

"You see, Tancredi, how good Nuncle is? No nonsense
about him, like you. You know. Prince, he didn't want
mff to ask you; he's jealous."

Tancredi laughed. "When one has such a smart good-
looking uncle one's quite right to be jealous. Anyway
this time I won't oppose it." They all three smiled, and
Don Fabrizio could not make out if they had thought up
this suggestion to please him or to mock him. It didn't
matter; they were dear creatures all the same.

As she was going out Angelica slid a finger over the
cover of an arm-chair. "Pretty, these; a good colour,
but those at your home. Prince . . ." The ship was taking
its usual course.

Tancredi intervened. "That's enough, Angelica. . We
both love you quite apart from your knowledge of furniture.
Leave the chairs alone and come and dance."

As he was going into the ballroom, Don Fabrizio saw
that Sedara was still talking to Giovanni Finale. He heard
market terms; they were comparing the prices of wheat.
The Prince foresaw an invitation soon to Margarossa, the
estate which was ruining Finale by his agricultural
experiments.

Angelica and Don Fabrizio made a magnificent couple.
The Prince's huge feet moved with surprising delicacy
and never were his partner's satin slippers in danger of
being grazed. His great paw held her waist with vigorous
firmness, his chin leant on the black waves of her hair;
from Angelica's bust rose a delicate scent of bouquet a la
Marechale, and above all an aroma of young smooth skin.
A phrase of Tumeo came back to him: "Her sheets must
smell like paradise." A crude, vulgar phrase, but accurate.
Lucky Tancredi . . .

She talked. Her natural vanity was as appeased as her
tenacious ambition. "I'm so happy, Nuncle. Everyone's
been so kind, so sweet. Tancredi's an angel; and you're
an angel, too. I owe all this to you, Nuncle; even Tancredi.
For if you hadn't agreed, I don't know what would have
happened."

"I've nothing do with it, my dear; all this is due to
yourself alone."

It was true; no Tancredi could ever have resisted that
beauty united to that income. He would have married
her whatever happened. A twinge crossed his heart: the
thought of Concetta's haughty yet defeated eyes. But that
was a brief little pain; at every twirl a year fell from his
shoulders; soon he felt back at the age of twenty, when in
that very same ballroom he had danced with Stella before
he knew disappointment, boredom and the rest. For a
second, that night, death seemed to him once more
"something that happens to others."

So absorbed was he in memories which dovetailed so
well with his present feelings that he did not notice how all
of a sudden he and Angelica were dancing alone. Instigated,
perhaps, by Tancredi, the other couples had stopped and
were watching; the two Ponteleone were there too, looking
touched; they were old and perhaps understood. Stella
was old too, but she was gazing on dully from beneath a
doorway. When the band stopped there was nearly a round
of applause; but Fabrizio had too leonine an air for anyone
to risk such an impropriety.

When the waltz was over Angelica suggested that
Don Fabrizio should come and take supper at her and
Tancredi's table. He would have much liked to, but at
that moment the memories of his own youth were too
vivid for him not to realise how tiresome supper with an
old uncle would have been then, with Stella only a yard
or so away. Lovers want to be alone, or at least with
strangers; never with older people, worst of all with re-
lations.

"Thank you, Angelica, but I'm not hungry. I'll take
something standing up. Go with Tancredi, don't worry
about me."

He waited a moment for the two young people to draw
away, then he too went into the supper room. A long,
narrow table was set at the end, lit by the famous twelve
silver-gilt candelabra given to Diego's grandfather by the
Court of Madrid at the end of his embassy in Spain; on
tall pedestals of gleaming metal six alternating figures of
athletes and women held above their heads silver-gilt shafts
crowned by the flames of twelve candles. The sculptor had
hinted skilfully at the serene ease of the men and the graceful
effort of the girls in upholding the disproportionate weight.
Twelve pieces of first-class quality ... "I wonder how
much land they're worth," that wretch Sedara would have
said. Don Fabrizio remembered Diego, showing him one
day the cases for each of those candles, vast green
morocco affairs with the tripartite shield of Ponteleone and
the entwined initials of the donors stamped on the sides
in gold.

Beneath the candelabra, beneath the five-tiers bearing
towards the distant ceiling pyramids of home-made cakes
that were never touched, spread the monotonous opulence
of buffets at big balls: coraline lobsters boiled alive, waxy
chaud-froids of veal, steely-tinted fish immersed in sauce,
turkeys gilded by the ovens' heat, rosy foie-gras under
gelatine armour, boned woodcocks reclining on amber toast
decorated with their own chopped guts, and a dozen other
cruel, coloured delights. At the end of the table two
monumental silver tureens held limpid soup, the colour
of burnt amber. To prepare this supper the cooks must
have sweated away in the vast kitchens from the night
before.

"Dear me, what an amount! Donna Margherita knows
how to do things well. But it's not for me! "

Scorning the table of drinks, glittering with crystal
and silver on the right, he moved left towards that of the
sweetmeats. Huge blond babas, Mont Blancs snowy with
whipped cream, cakes speckled with white almonds and
green pistachio nuts, hillocks of chocolate-covered pastry,
brown and rich as the top soil of the Catanian plain from
which, in fact, through many a twist and turn they had
come, pink ices, champagne ices, coffee ices, all parfaits
and falling apart with squelch at a knife cleft, a melody
in major of crystallised cherries, acid notes of yellow pine-
apple, and those cakes called "Triumphs of Gluttony,"
filled with green pistachio paste, and shameless "Virgin's
cakes " shaped like breasts. Don Fabrizio asked for some of
these, and as he held them on his plate looked like a pro-
fane caricature of Saint Agatha. "Why ever didn't the Holy
Office forbid these puddings when it had the chance? Saint
Agatha's sliced-off breasts sold by convents, devoured
at dances! Well! Well!"

Round the room smelling of vanilla, wine, chypre,
wandered Don Fabrizio looking for a place. Tancredi
saw him from his table and clapped a hand on a chair to
show there was room there; next to him was Angelica,
peering at the back of a silver dish to see if her hair was
in place. Don Fabrizio shook his head in smiling refusal.
He went on looking; from a table he heard the satisfied
voice of Pallavicino, "The most moving moment of my
life. By him was an empty place. What a bore the man
was! Wouldn't it be better, after all, to listen to Angelica's
refreshing if forced cordiality, to Tancredi's dry wit? No:
better bore oneself than bore others.

With a word of apology he sat down next to the Colonel,
who got up as he arrived — a small sop to Salina pride. As
he savoured the subtle mixture of blancmange, pistachio
and cinnamon in the puddings he had chosen. Dog Fabrizio
began conversing with Pallavicino and realised that, beyond
those sugary phrases meant perhap only for ladies, the
man was anything but a fool. He too was a "gentleman,"
and the fundamental scepticism of his class, smothered
usually by the impetuous Bersaglieri flames on his lapel,
came peering out again now that he found himself in
surroundings like those into which he was born, away from
the inevitable rhetoric of barracks and admirers.

"Now the Left wants to string me up because last
August I ordered my men to open fire on the General.

But can you tell me, Prince, what else I could have done
in view of the written orders I was carrying? I must
confess though, when at Aspromonte I found myself facing
that mob of a hundred men or so, some looking like out-
and-out fanatics, others like professional agitators, I was
pleased that my instructions coincided so with my own
feelings. If I hadn't given orders to fire those peopje
would have hacked us to pieces, my soldiers and me; that
wouldn't have mattered much, of course. But in the end
it would have meant French and Austrian intervention,
and that would have had endless repercussions, including
the collapse of this Italian Kingdom of ours which has got
itself put together in some miraculous way, quite how I
can't for the life of me understand. And I can tell you
another thing in confidence: those musket shots of ours
were a particular help to . . . Garibaldi himself! They
freed him from the rabble hanging round him, all those
creatures like Zambianchi who were making use of him for
ends that may have been generous but were certainly inept,
with the Tuileries or Palazzo Farnese behind them. Very
different types those were to the ones who landed with him
at Marsala, who did believe, the best of them, that Italy
could be created by repeating 1848. And he knows that,
the General does, for when I was making him the genu-
flection that has caused so much comment, he shook my
hand with a warmth that must surely be unusual towards
a man who's just fired a bullet into one's foot a few minutes
before. And d'you know what he said to me in a low voice,
he who was the one really decent person on the whole
wretched mountainside? 'Thank you. Colonel.' Thank
you for what, I ask you? For laming him for life? Obviously
not; but for having brought home to him so clearly the
bluster, the cowardice, worse maybe, of those followers of
his."

"Forgive me saying so, Colonel, but don't you think
all the hand-kissing, cap-doffing and compliments went
a little far? "

"No, frankly. For they were all genuine acts of respect.
You should have seen him, that poor great man, stretched
out under a chestnut tree, suffering in body and still more
in mind. A sad sight! He showed himself plainly as what
he's always been, a child, in spite of beard and wrinkles,
a simple adventurous little boy; it was difficult for me
not to feel moved at having had to shoot at him. Why
shouldn't I, anyway? Usually I kiss only ladies' hands;
on that occasion, Prince, I was kissing a hand for the
salvation of the Kingdom, also a lady to whom we soldiers
owe homage."

A footman passed; Don Fabrizio fold him to bring a
slice of Mont Blanc and a glass of champagne. "And you.
Colonel, aren't you taking anything? "

"Nothing to eat, thank you. Perhaps I'll drink a glass
of champagne too."

Then he went on, obviously not able to take his mind
off a memory which, consisting as it did of a little shooting
and a lot of skill, was exactly the sort that attracts men of
hs type. "The General's men, as my Bersaglieri disarmed
them, were cursing away, and d'you know who at? At
him, the only one of them who'd actually paid in his own
person. Foul, but natural really; they saw that childlike
yet big personality, the only one capable of covering up
their obscure intrigues slipping out of their grasp. And even
if my own courtesies were superfluous. I'd be pleased even
so at having done them; we in Italy can never go too far
with sentiment and hand-kissing; they're the most effective
political arguments we have."

He drank the wine brought him, but that seemed to
increase his bitterness even more. "Have you been on
the mainland since the Kingdom was founded? You're
lucky. It's not a pretty sight. Never have we been so
disunited as since we've been reunited. Turin doesn't want
to cease being a capital. Milan finds our administration
inferior to the Austrians', Florence is afraid the works of
art there will be carried off, Naples is moaning about the
industries she's lost, and here, here in Sicily, some huge
irrational disaster is growing up . . . For the moment,
due partly to your humble servant, no one mentions red
shirts any more; but they'll be back again. When they've
vanished, others of different colours will come; and then
red ones once again. And how will it end? There's Italy's
Lucky Star, they say. But you know better than me.
Prince, that even fixed stars are so only in appearance."
Perhaps he was a little tipsy, making such prophecies. But
at such disquieting prospects Don Fabrizio felt his heart
contract.

The ball went on for a long time still, until six in the
morning; all were exhausted and wishing they had been
in bed for at least three hours; but to leave early was like
proclaiming the party a failure and offending the host
and hostess who had taken such a lot of trouble, poor
dears.

The ladies' faces were livid, their dresses crushed, their
breaths heavy. "Maria! How tired I am! Maria! How
sleepy! " Above their disordered cravats the faces of the
men were yellow and lined, their mouths stained with bitter
saliva. Their visits to a disordered little room near the
band alcove became more frequent; in it were disposed a
row of twenty vast vats; by that time nearly all were
brimful, some spilling over. Sensing that the dance was
nearing its end, the sleepy servants were no longer changing
the candles in chandeliers, and the short stubs diffused a
different, smoky, ill-omened light. In the empty supper
room were only dirty plates, glasses with dregs of wine
which the servants, glancing around, would hurriedly
drain; through the cracks in the shutters filtered a
plebeian light of dawn.

The party was crumbling away and around Donna
Margherita there was already a group saying good-bye.
^Heavenly! A dream! Like the old days! " Tancredi
was hard, put to wake Don Calogero who, with head flung
back, had gone off to sleep on an arm-chair apart; his
trousers were rucked up to his knees and above his silken
socks showed the ends of his drawers, a most rustic sight.
Colonel Pallavicino was yawning too, declaring, though,
to whoever wished to listen, that he was not going home
and would move straight from Palazzp Ponteleone to his
headquarters; such in fact was the iron tradition followed
by officers invited to a ball.

When the family had settled into its carriage (the dew
had made the cushions damp) Don Fabrizio said that he
would walk home; a little fresh air would do him good,
he had a slight headache. The truth is that he wanted to
draw a little comfort from gazing at the stars. There were
still one or two up there, at the zenith. As always, seeing
them revived him; they were distant, they were omnipotent
and at the same time they were docile to his calculations;
just the contrary to humans, always too near, so weak and
yet so quarrelsome.

There was already a little movement in the streets,
a cart or two with rubbish heaped four times the height of
the tiny grey donkey dragging it along. A long open wagon
came by stacked with bulls killed shortly before at the
slaughter-house, already quartered and exhibiting their
intimate mechanism with the shamelessness of death. At
intervals a big thick red drop fell on to the paving-stones.
At the cross-roads he glimpsed the sky to the west,
above the sea. There was Venus, wrapped in her turban
of autumn mist. She was always faithful, always waiting for
Don Fabrizio on his early morning outings, at Donnafugata
before a shoot, now after a ball.

Don Fabrizio sighed. When would she decide to give
him an appointment less ephemeral, far from stumps and
blood, in her own region of perennial certitude?




VII. Death of a Prince




　　　　JULY, 1885




Don Fabrizio had always known that sensation. For a
dozen years or so he had been feeling as if the vital fluid,
the faculty of existing, life itself in fact and perhaps even
the will to go on living, were ebbing out of him slowly
but steadily, as grains of sand cluster and then line up one
by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of
an hour-glass. In some moments of intense activity or
concentration this sense of continual loss would vanish,
to reappear impassively in brief instants of silence or
introspection; just as a constant buzzing in the ears or
ticking of a pendulum superimpose themselves when all
else is silent, assuring us of always being there, watchful,
even when we do not hear them.

With the slightest effort of attention he used to notice
at all other times too, the rustling of the grains of sand as
they slid lightly away, the instants of time escaping from
his mind and leaving him for ever. But this sensation was
not, at first, linked to any physical discomfort. On the
contrary this imperceptible loss of vitality was itself the
proof, the condition so to say, of a sense of living; and for
him, accustomed to scrutinising limitless outer space and
to probing vast inner abysses, the sensation was in no way
disagreeable; this continuous whittling away of his person-
ality seemed linked to a vague presage of the rebuilding
elsewhere of a personality (thanks be to God) less conscious
and yet broader. Those tiny grains of sand were not lost;
they were vanishing, but accumulating elsewhere to cement
some more lasting pile. Though "pile," he had reflected,
was not the exact word, for it suggested, weight; nor was
"grain of sand " either for that matter. They were more
like the tiny particles of watery vapour exhaled from a
narrow pond, mounting then into the sky to great clouds,
light and free.

Sometimes he was surprised that the vital reservoir
could still contain anything at all after all those years of
loss. " Not even were it big as a Pyramid ..." On other
occasions, more frequent, he had felt a kind of pride at
being the only one to notice this continual escape, while
no one around him seemed to sense it in the same way;
and this had made him feel a certain contempt for others, as
an old soldier despises a conscript who deludes himself that
sizzling bullets are just harmless flies. Such things are
never confessed, no one knows why, but left for others
to sense; and no one around him had ever sensed them
at all, none of his daughters with their dreams of a world
beyond the tomb identical with this life, all complete with
judges, cooks and convents; not even Stella who, though
devoured by the canker of diabetes, had still clung pitiably
to this vale of tears.

Perhaps only Tancredi had understood for an instant,
when he had said with that subdued irony of his, "You,
Nuncle, are courting death." Now the courtship was ended;
the lovely lady had said a definite "yes" to an elopement,
to a reserved compartment on the train.

For this was different now, quite different. Sitting in
an arm-chair, his long legs wrapped in a blanket, on the
balcony of the Hotel Trinacria, he felt life flowing from him
in great pressing waves with a spiritual roar like that of
the Rhine Falls. It was noon on a Monday at the end
of July, and away in front of him spread the sea of
Palermo, compact, oily, inert, improbably motionless,
crouching like a dog trying to make itself invisible at its
master's threats; but up there the static perpendicular sun
was straddling it and lashing at it pitilessly. The silence
was absolute. Under the high, high light Don Fabrizio
heard no other sound but that inner one of the life gush-
ing from him.

He had arrived that morning, a few hours before, from
Naples, where he had gone to consult a specialist. Professor
Semmola. Accompanied by his forty-year-old daughter,
Concetta, and his grandson Fabrizietto, he had had a dreary
journey, slow as a funeral procession. The bustle of the
port of departure and that of arrival at Naples, the acrid
smell of the cabin, the incessant clamor of that paranoiac
city, had exasperated him with the querulous exasperation
which tires and prostrates the very weak while arousing an
equivalent exasperation in good folk with years of life
ahead. He had insisted on returning by land; a sudden
decision which the doctor had tried to oppose: but he had
been adamant, and so overwhelming was the shadow of his
prestige still that he had had his way.

The result was that he had been forced to spend thirty-
six hours cooped up in a scorching hot box, suffocated
by the smoke of tunnels repetitive as feverish dreams,
blinded by the sun in open patches stark as sad realities,
humiliated by the innumerable squalid services he had to
ask of his alarmed grandson. They crossed evil-looking
landscapes, accursed mountain ranges, torpid malarial
plains, those landscapes of Calabria and Basilicata which
seemed barbarous to him while they were actually just like
those of Sicily. The railway linehad not yet been com-
pleted; in its last tract it made a wide detour through
lunar deserts called sarcastically by the athletic and
voluptuous names of Croton and Sybaris. Then, at Messina,
after the deceitful smile of the Straits had been given a lie
by the parched bald hills, there was another detour, long
and cruel as legal arrears. They had gone down to Catania,
clambered up again; the locomotive, as it panted up those
fabulous slopes, seemed to be about to die like an over-forced
horse; then after a noisy descent they reached Palernlo.
On the arrival platform were the usual masks of family
faces with painted smiles of pleasure at the journey's happy
outcome. It was in fact from the would-be consoling smiles
of those awaiting him at the station, from their pretence —
a bad pretence — at an air of gaiety, that there suddenly
came home to him what had been the real diagnosis of
Semmola, who to him had spoken only reassuring phrases;
and it was then, after getting down from the train, as he
was embracing his daughter-in-law buried in widow's weeds,
his children showing their teeth in smiles, Tancredi with
anxious eyes, Angelica with silken bodice tight over
mature breasts, it was then that he heard the crash of the
cascade.

Probably he fainted, for he did not remember how he
had reached the carriage; he found himself lying in it w^th
his legs ^;ontracted, only Tancredi with him. The cartiage
had not yet moved, and from outside came voices of his
family in confabulation. "It's nothing." "The journey
was too long." "Any of us might faint in this heat." "It
would be too tiring for him to go up to the villa." He
was perfectly lucid again now: he noticed a serious
conversation going on between Concetta and Francesco
Paolo, Tancredi's elegance, his brown and beige check suit,
his brown bowler; and he noticed too how for once his
nephew's smile was not mocking but touched with sad
affection; from this he got the bitter-sweet sensation that
his nephew loved him and also knew him to be done for,
since that perpetual irony had been driven off by tenderness.
The carriage moved off and turned to the right. "But where
are we going, Tancredi? " His own voice surprised him.
It seemed to ech^ that inner booming.

"Nuncle, we're going to the Tricania; you're tired
and the villa's a long way; you can have a night's rest and
get home to-morrow. Don't you think so "

"Then let's go to our place by the sea, that's even
nearer."

But it wasn't possible; the house was not in order,
as he knew well; it was only used for occasional luncheons
by the sea; there wasn't even a bed in it.

"You'll be better at the hotel, Uncle; you'll have every
comfort there." They were treating him like a new-born
baby; and he had just about a new-born baby's strength.

The first comfort he found at the hotel was a doctor,
called in a hurry, perhaps during his black-out. But it was
not the one who always treated him. Doctor Cataliotti,
with a big white cravat under a smiling face and rich gold
spectacles; this was a poor devil, doctor to the slum
quarter around, impotent witness of a thousand wretched
death-agonies. Above a torn frock-coat stretched his long,
haggard face stubbled with white hair, the disillusioned face
of a famished intellectual; when he took a chainless watch
from his pocket, the false gilt showed marks of verdigris.
He too was a poor goat-skin flask worn through by the
jostle of the mule path and scattering without realising its
last drops of oil. He felt the pulse-beats, prescribed cam-
phor drops, showed his decayed teeth in a smile meant to be
reassuring and which was pitiable instead, and shuffled off.

The drops soon arrived from a chemist nearby; they
did him good; he felt a little less weak, but the impetus
of escaping time did not lessen.

Don Fabrizio looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror:
he recognised his own suit more than himself; very tall
and emaciated, with sunken cheeks and three days' growth
of beard; he looked like one of those maniac Englishmen
who amble round the vignettes in books by Jules Verne
which he used to give Fabrizietto as Christmas presents.
A Leopard in very bad trim. Why, he wondered, did God
not want anyone to die with their own face on. For the
same happens to us all: we all die with a mask on our
features; even the young; even that blood-daubed soldier,
even Paolo, when he'd been raised from the cobbles with
taut crumpled features as passers-by rushed in the dust
after his runaway horse. And if in him, an old man, the
crash of escaping life was so powerful, what a tumult there
must have been as, the brimming reservoirs emptied in a
second out of those poor young bodies.

An absurd rule of enforced camouflage — he would
have liked to contravene it as much as he could; but he
felt that he was unable, that to hold up a razor would have
been like holding up his own desk, before. "Call a barber,
will you?" he said to Francesco Paolo. But at once he
thought, "No. It's a rule of the game; hateful but formal.
They'll s^have me afterwards." And he said out loud, ‘^It
doesn't inatter; we'll think about that later." The idea
of the utter abandon of his corpse, with a barber crouched
over it, did not disturb him.

A waiter came in with a basin of warm water and a
sponge, took off his coat and shirt and washed his face and
hands, as one washes a child, as one washes the dead.
Smuts from the day and a half's train journey turned the
water a funereal black. The low room was suffocating;
the heat fomented smells, brought out the mustiness of
ill-dusted plush; a medicinal odour came from the marks
of dozens of crushed cockroaches; around the night table
clung tenacious memories of stale and varied urine. He had
the shutters opened; the hotel was in shadow, but a blinding
light was reflected from the metallic sea; better, though,
than that prison stink. He asked for an arm-chair to be
taken on the balcony; leaning on someone's arm he dragged
himself out, and sat down after those few steps with the
sensation of relief he used to feel once on sitting down after
four hours of shooting in the mountains. "Tell everyone
to leave me in peace; I feel better; I want to sleep." He
did feel sleepy; but he found that to give way to drowsiness
now would be as absurd as eating a slice of cake immediately
before a longed-for banquet. He smiled. "I've always
been a wise gourmet." And he sat there, immersed in that
great outer silence, in that terrifying inner rumble.

He could turn his head to the left; beside Monte
Pellegrino could be seen a cleft in the circle of hills and,
beyond, two hillocks at whose feet lay his home. Un-
reachable to him as this was, it seemed very far away;
he thought of his own observatory, of the telescopes now
destined to years of dust; of poor Father Pirrone, who was
dust too; of the paintings of his estates, of the monkeys on
the hangings, of the big brass bedstead in which his dear
Stella had died; of all those things which now seemed to
him humble however precious, just braided metal, woven
threads, and canvas corded with sap and earth which he had
kept alive and would shortly be plunged, through no fault
of their own, into a limbo of abandon and oblivion. His
heart tightened, he forgot his own agony thinking of the
imminent end of those poor dear things. The inert row of
houses behind him, the wall of hills, the sun-scourged
distance, prevented him thinking clearly even of Donna-
fugata; it seemed like a house in a dream, no longer his;
all he had of his own now was this exhausted body, those
slate tiles under his feet, that surging of dark water to-
wards the abyss. He was alone, a shipwrecked man adrift on
a raft, prey of untameable currents.

There were his sons, of course. The only one who
resembled him, Giovanni, was no longer here. Every
couple of years he sent greetings from London; he had
ceased dealing with coal and moved on to diamonds; just
after Stella's death a short letter had come addressed to
her and soon after a little parcel with a bracelet. Ah, yes.
He too had "courted death," in fact by leaving everything
he had done his best to organise for himself as much of
death as he could while actually going on living. But the
others . . . There were his grandchildren, too, of course;
Fabrizietto, youngest of the Salina, so handsome, so lively,
so dear . . .

So odious. With his double dose of Malvica blood, with
his good-time instincts, with his tendency to middle-class.
chic. It was useless to try and avoid the thought, but the
last of the Salina was really he himself, this gaunt giant
now dying on a hotel balcony. For the significance of a
noble family lies entirely in its traditions, that is in its
vital memories; and he was the last to have any unusual
memories, anything different from those of other families.
Fabrizietto wopld only have banal ones like his schoolfellows,
of snackcs, of spiteful little jokes against teachers, horses
bought with an eye more to price than quality; and the
meaning of his name would change more and more to
empty pomp, embittered by the gad-fly thought that others
could outdo him in outward show. He would go hunting
for a rich marriage when that would have become a com-
monplace routine and no longer a predatory adventure like
Tancredi's. The tapestries of Donnafugata, the almond
groves of Ragattisi, even, who knows, the fountain of the
Amphitrites, might suffer the grotesque fate of being trans-
muted from the faded and subtle things they had been
into pots of quietly-swallowed foie gras or ba-ta-clan girls
as transient as their own rouge. And he himself would be
just a memory of a choleric old grandfather who had
collapsed one July afternoon just in time to prevent the
boy going off to Livorno for sea-bathing. He had said that
the Salina would always remain the Salina. He had been
wrong. The last Salina was himself. That fellow Gari-
baldi, that bearded Vulcan had won after all.

From the room next door, open on to the same balcony,
Concetta's voice reached him, "We simply must; he's got
to be called. I should never forgive myself if he weren't."
He understood at once; they were talking of a priest. For
a moment he had an idea of refusing, of lying, of starting
to shout that he was perfectly well, that he needed nothing.
But soon he realised how ridiculous all that would be:
he was the Prince of Salina and as a Prince of Salina he
had to die with a priest by his side. Concetta was right.
Why should he avoid what was longed for by thousands of
other dying people? And he fell silent, waiting to hear the
little bell with the Last Sacraments. It soon came; the
parish church of the Pieta was almost opposite. The gay
silvery tinkle came climbing up the stairs, flowed along the
passage, became sharp as the door opened; preceded by
the hotel manager, a Swiss, flustered at having a dying man
on his hands, in came Father Balsamo, the parish priest,
bearing under his humeral veil the Blessed Sacrament in
its leather pyx. Tancredi and Fabrizietto raised the arm-
chair, bore it back into the room; the others were kneeling.
He signed more than said, "Away, away." He wanted to
confess. Things should be done properly or not at all.
Everyone went out, but when he was about to speak he
realised he had nothing to say; he could remember some
definite sins, but they seemed so petty as not to be worth
bothering a worthy priest about on a hot day. Not that he
felt himself innocent; but his whole life was blameworthy,
not this or that single act: and now he no longer had time
to say so. His eyes must have expressed an uneasiness
which the priest took for contrition; as in fact in a sense
it was. He was absolved; his chin seemed to be propped
on his chest for the priest had to kneel down to place the
Host between his lips. Then there was a murmur of the
immemorial syllables which smooth the way, and the priest
withdrew.

The arm-chair was not pulled back on to the balcony.
Fabrizietto and Tancredi sat down next to him and held
each of his hands; the boy was staring at him with the
natural curiosity of one present at his first death agony
and no more; this dying person was not a man, he was a
grandfather, which is a very different thing. Tancredi
squeezed his hand tightly and talked to him, talked a great
deal, talked gaily; he explained projects with which he was
associated, commented on political developments; he was
a Deputy, had been promised the Legation in Lisbon,
knew many a secret and savoury tale. His nasal voice,
his subtle vocabulary flew like a futile arrow over the ever
noisier surging off of the waters of life. The Prince was
grateful for the gossip; and he squeezed Tancredi's hand
with a great effort though with almost no perceptible result.
He was grateful, but did not listen. He was making up
a general balance sheet of his whole life, trying to sort out
of the immense ash-heap of liabilities the golden flecks of
happy moments. These were: two weeks before his
marriage, six weeks after; half an hour when Paolo was
born, when he felt proud at having prolonged by a twig
the Salina tree (the pride had been misplaced, he knew that
now, but there had been some genuine self-respect in it);
a few talks with Giovanni before the latter vanished (a few
monologues, if the truth were told, during which he had
thought to find in the boy a kindred mind); and many hours
in the observatory, absorbed in abstract calculations and
the pursuit of the unreachable. Could those latter hours be
really put down to the credit side of life? Were they not
some sort of anticipatory gift of the beatitudes after death?
It didn't matter, they had existed.

Below in the street, between the hotel and the sea,
a barrel-organ had halted and was playing away in the avid
hope of. touching the hearts of foreigners who, at that
season, were not there. It was grinding out "You who
opened Your Wings to God" from Lucia di Lammermoor.
What remained of Don Fabrizio thought of all the rancour
mingling with all the torture, at that moment, through-
out Italy, from mechanical music of this kind. Tan-
credi, intuitive as ever, ran to the balcony, threw down
a coin, waved for the barrel-organ to stop. The outer silence
closed in again, the clamour within grew huge.

Tancredi. Yes, much on the credit side came from
Tancredi; that sympathy of his, all the more precious for
being ironic; the aesthetic pleasure of watching him
manoeuvre amid the shoals of life, the bantering affection
whose touch was so right. Then dogs; Fufi, the fat pug
of his childhood, the impetuous poodle Tom, confidant
and friend. Speedy's gentle eyes, Bendicb's delicious non-
sense, the caressing paws of Pop, the pointer at that moment
searching for him under bushes and garden chairs and never
to see him again; then a horse or two, these already more
distant and detached. There were the first few hours of
returns to Donnafugata, the sense of tradition and the
perennial expressed in stone and water, of time congealed;
a few care-free shoots, a cosy massacre or two of hares
and pheasants, some good laughs with Tumeo, a few minutes
of compunction at the convent amid odours of musk and
sugared almonds. Anything else? Yes, there were other
things: but these were only grains of gold mixed with
earth: moments of satisfaction when he had made some
biting reply to a fool, of content when he had realised that
in Concetta's beauty and character was prolonged the true
Salina strain; a few seconds of frenzied passion; the sur-
prise of Arago's letter spontaneously congratulating him
on the accuracy of his difficult calculations about Huxley's
comet. And — why not? — the public thrill at being given
a medal at the Sorbonne, the exquisite sensation of one or
two fine silk cravats, the smell of some morocco leathers, the
gay voluptuous air of a few women passed in the street, of
one glimpsed even yesterday at the station of Catania, in a
brown travelling dress and suede gloves, mingling amid the
crowds and seeming to search for his exhausted face
through the dirty compartment window. What a noise that
crowd was making! Sandwiches! " "II Corriere del' sola."
And then the panting of the tired breathless train . . .
and that appalling sun as they arrived, those lying faces,
the crashing cataracts. . . .

In the growing dark he tried to count how much time
he had really lived. His brain could not cope with the
simple calculation any more; three months, three weeks,
a total of six months, six by eight, eighty-four . . . forty-
eight thou|jind . . .Y/840,000. He summed up. "In
seventy-three years old, and all in all I may have lived,
really lived, a total of two . . . three at the most." And
the pains, the boredom, how long had they been? Useless to
try and make himself count those; the whole of the rest;
seventy years.

He felt his hand no longer being squeezed. Tancredi
got up hurriedly and went out . . . Now it was not a
river erupting over him but an ocean, tempestuous, all
foam and raging white-flecked waves. . . .

He must have had another stroke for suddenly he
realised that he was lying stretched on the bed. Someone
was feeling his pulse; from the window came the blinding
implacable reflection of the sea; in the room could be heard
a faint hiss; it was his own death-rattle, but he did not know
it. Around him -v^s a little crowd, a group of strangers
staring at him with frightened expressions. Gradually
he recognised them: Concetta, Francesco Paolo, Carolina,
Tancredi, Fabrizietto. The person holding his pulse was
Doctor Cataliotti; he tried to smile a greeting at the latter
but no one seemed to notice; all were weeping except Con-
cetta; even Tancredi, who was saying: "Uncle, dearest
Nuncle! "

Suddenly amid the group appeared a young woman;
slim, in brown travelling dress and wide bustle, with a
straw hat trimmed with a speckled veil which could not hide
the sly charm of her face. She slid a little suede-gloved hand
between one elbow and another of the weeping kneelers,
apologised, drew closer. It was she, the creature for ever
yearned for, coming to fetch him; strange that one so
young should yield to him; the time for the train's de-
parture must be very close. When she was face to face with
him she raised her veil, and there, modest, but ready to be
possessed, she looked lovelier than she eyer had when
glimpsed in stellar space.

The crashing of the sea subsided altogether.




VIII. Relics




　MAY, 1910




Anyone paying a visit to the old Salina ladies would be apt
to find at least one priest's hat on the hall chairs. All
three were spinsters and their household had been rent
by secret struggles for power, so that each, a strong
character in her own way, wanted a separate confessor
of her own. It was still the custom in that year, 1910, for
confessions to take place at home, and these penitents'
scruples required frequent repetition. Add to this little
platoon of confessors the chaplain who came every morning
to celebrate Mass in the private chapel, the Jesuit in
charge of the general spiritual direction of the household,
the monks and priests who came to draw alms for this or
that parish or good work, and it will be readily understood
why there was such an incessant coming and going of
clerics, and why the antechamber of Villa Salina was often
reminiscent of one of those Roman shops around Piazza
della Minerva which display in their windows every
imaginable ecclesiastical headgear, from flaming red for
Cardinals to cindery black for country priests.

On that particular afternoon of May 1910 the parade of
hats was quite unprecedented. The presence of the Vicar-
General of the Archdiocese of Palermo was announced
by his huge hat of fine beaver in a delicate shade of fuchsia,
placed on a separate chair, with next to it a single glove,
the right hand one, in woven silk of the same delicate
hue; his secretary's of gleaming long-haired black plush,
the crown circled by a narrow violet cord; those of two
Jesuit Fathers, subdued tenebrous felts, symbols of modesty
and reserve. The chaplain's headgear lay on an isolated
chair, as was proper for a person undergoing inquiry.

The meeting that day was no unimportant matter. In
accordance with Papal instructions the Cardinal Archbishop
had begun an inspection of the private chapels of his
archdiocese, to reassure himself about the merits of those
allocated to have services there, the conformity of liturgy
and decoration with the canons of the Church, and the
authenticity of relics venerated in them. The Salina chapel
was the best known in the city and one of the first
which his Eminence proposed to vjsit. And it was in
order to arrange for this event, fixed for next morning,
that Monsignor the Vicar-General had called at Villa
Salina. Unfortunate rumours about that chapel, dripped
through many a filter, had reached the Archiepiscopal Curia;
not, of course, anything about the merits of the owners
or of their right to carry out their religious duties in
their own home; such subjects were beyond discussion. Nor
was there any doubt thrown on the propriety or continuity
of services held there, for these were as near perfection
as may be, except perhaps for an overwhelming and perfectly
comprehensible reluctance on the part of the Salina ladies
to let anyone be present at the sacred rites who was outside
their close family circle. The Cardinal's attention had been
drawn to an image venerated in the Villa, and to the relics,
the dozens of relics, exposed in the chapel. There were
the most disturbing rumours about the authenticity of these,
and it was desired that their genuineness be proved. The
chaplain, an ecclesiastic of some culture and high hopes,
had been reprimanded severely for not having kept the old
ladies sufficiently on the alert; he had had, as it were
a "dressing-down of the tonsure."

The meeting was taking place in the main drawing-room
of the Villa, the one of the monkeys and cockatoos. On a
sofa covered with blue material interwovrn with pink, a
purchase of thirty years earlier that clashed with the
evanescent tints of the precious wall-hangings, sat the
Signorina Concetta with Monsignor the Vicar-General on
her right; on each side of the sofa in two similar arm-chairs
were the Signorina Carolina and one of the Jesuits, Father
Corti, while' the Signorina Caterina, whose legs were
paralysed, was in a wheel chair, and the other ecclesiastics
had to be content with chairs covered in the same material
as the walls, which seemed then far less valuable than the
envied arm-chairs.

The three sisters were all beyond seventy, and Concetta
was not the eldest; but the struggle for power which has
been hinted at the beginning had ended some time ago
with the rout of her adversaries, so no one would now have
dared contest her functions as mistress of the house.

She still showed the vestiges of past beauty; heavy and
imposing in her stiff clothes of black watered silk, she wore
her snow-white hair raised on her head so as to show her'
almost unfurrowed brow; this, together with contemptuous
eyes and a resentful line above her nose, gave her an air
that was authoritarian, almost imperial; so much so that
a nephew of hers, having caught sight in some book or
other of a picture of a famous Czarina, used to call her in
private "Catherine the Great "; an unsuitable name made
quite innocent by the complete purity of Concetta's life
and her nephew's total ignorance of Russian history.

The conversation lasted an hour, coffee had been taken
and it was getting late. Monsignor reassumed his argu-
ments: "His Eminence paternally desires that Mass
celebrated in private should be in conformity with the
purest rites of Holy Mother Church and that is why in his
pastoral care he is visiting your chapel first, for he knows
it to be a beacon^ for the laity of Palermo and he desires that
all objects venerated there should bring ever more edification
to yourselves and to all devout souls." Concetta was silent,
but Carolina, the elder sister, exploded, "Now we're to
appear as accused before our friends, are we? This idea
of inspecting our chapel, excuse me for saying so, Mon-
signor, should never have so much as passed through His
Eminence's head."

Monsignor laughed, amused. "Signorina, you cannot
imagine what pleasure your vehemence gives me; it is the
expression of a simple and absolute faith, most acceptable
to the Church and certainly to Our Lord Himself; and it is
only in order to make this faith flower yet more abundantly
and to purify it that the Holy Father has recommended
these inspections, which have been taking place for some
months throughout the Catholic world,"

The reference to the Holy Father was not, actually,
very opportune; Carolina was one of those Catholics who
consider themselves to be in closer possessiqn of religious
truths than the Pope himself; and a few moderate declara-
tions of Pius X, the abolition of some secondary feast days
in particular, had already exasperated her. "This Pope
would do better to mind his own business." Then she
began to wonder if she hadn't gone too far, crossed herself
and muttered a Gloria Patri.

Concetta intervened. "Don't let yourself be drawn
into saying things you don't think, Carolina. Or what sort
of impression will Monsignor take away with him? "

The latter was now smiling more than ever; here
in front of him, he was thinking, was a little girl grown
old in narrow ideas and arid practices. Benignly he
indulged her.

"Monsignor will take away the impression of having
been in the company of three saintly ladies," said he.

Father Corti, the Jesuit, tried to relax the tension. "I,
Monsignor, am among those who can best confirm your
words; Father Pirrone, whose memory is venerated by all
that knew him, often used to tell me when I was a novice
of the saintly atmosphere in which the ladies grew up: and
the name of Salina should be a guarantee for that."

Monsignor wanted to get down to facts. "Well,
Signorina Concetta, now everything's clear, I should
like, with your permission, to visit the chapel in order to
prepare His Eminence for the marvels of faith he will see
to-morrow morning."

In Prince Fabrizio's time there had been no chapel in the
Villa; the whole family used to go out to church on feast
days, and even Father Pirrone had to walk quite a step
every morning to say his own Mass. But after the death
of Prince Fabrizio, when, as a result of various complications
of inheritance which would be boring to narrate, the Villa
became the exclusive property of the three sisters, they at
once thought of setting up their own oratory. They chose
an out-of-the-way drawing-room, which with its half
columns of imitation granite stuck into the walls was
vaguely reminiscent of a Roman basilica; they obliterated
an unsuitable mythological fresco from the centre of the
ceiling; set up an altar. And all was ready.

When Monsignor entered, the chapel was lit by the late
afternoon sun, which fell full on the altar and the picture
above so venerated by the Salina ladies. It was a painting
in the style of Cremona and represented a slim and very
attractive young woman, with eyes turned to heaven and
an abundance of brown hair scattered in gracious disorder
on half-bare shoulders; in her right hand she was gripping
a crumpled letter, with an expression of anxious expectancy
not unconnected with a certain sparkle in her glistening
eyes; behind her was a green and gentle Lombard land-
scape. No Holy Child, no crowns, no snakes, no stars,
none in fact of those symbols which usually accompany
the image of Mary; the painter must have trusted that
virginal expression as being enough to recognise her
by. Monsignor drew nearer, went up one of the altar steps
and stood there, without crossing himself, looking at the
picture for a minute or two, his face all smiling admiration
as if he were an art critic. Behind him the sisters made
signs of the Cross and murmured an Ave Maria.

Then the prelate came down the steps again, turned
round and said, "A fine painting, that; very expressive."

"A miraculous image, Monsignor, most miraculous!"
explained Caterina, poor ill creature, leaning from her
ambulating instrument of torture.

"It has done so many miracles!" Carolina pressed on,
"It represents the Madonna of the Letter. The Virgin
is on the point of consigning the holy missive invoking her
Divine Son's protection on the people of Messina; a pro-
jection which has been gloriously conceived, as is shown
by the many miracles during the earthquake of two years
ago."

"A fine picture, Signorina; whatever it represents it's
a pretty thing and should be treated carefully." Then he
turned to the relics; seventy-four of them, they completely
covered the two walls on each side of the altar. Each was
enclosed in a frame which also contained a card with
information about it and a number referring to the docu-
ments of authentication. These documents themselves,
many voluminous and hung with seals, were locked into a
damask-covered chest in a corner of the chapel. There
were frames of worked and smooth silver, frames of bronze
and coral, frames of tortoiseshell; in filigree, rare woods,
box-wood, in red and blue velvet; large, tiny, square,
octagonal, round, oval; frames worth a fortune and frames
bought at the Bocconi stores; all collected by those devoted
souls in their religious exaltation as custodians of super-
natural treasures.

The real creator of this collection had been Carolina;
she had found somewhere a certain Donna Rosa, a great
fat old woman, with connections in all the churches,
convents and charity foundations of Palermo and its
surroundings. It had been this Donna Rosa who had
brought up to Villa Salina every few months a relic of a
saint wrapped in .tissue paper. She had managed, she
would say, to get some dilapidated parish or decayed
family to part with it. The name of the seller was not
given merely because of understandable, in fact praise-
worthy, discretion; and anyway there were the proofs of
authenticity which she brought and always handed over,
clear as daylight, written out in Latin or mysterious
characters she called Greek or Syriac. Concetta, ad-
ministrator and bursar, would pay. Then came a search
and adaptation of frames. And once again the impassive
Concetta would pay. There was a period, a couple of years
ago, when the collecting mania even disturbed Caterina
and Carolina's sleep; in the morning they would recount
to each other dreams of miraculous discoveries, with the
hope that they would be realised, as did indeed sometimes
happen after the dreams had been confided to Donna Rosa.
What Concetta dreamt no one knew. Then Donna Rosa
died and the influx of relics stopped almost completely;
anyway, by then, there was a certain superfluity.

Monsignor glanced rather hurriedly at one or two of the
nearest frames. "Treasures," he said, "treasures! What
lovely frames! " Then congratulating them on the fine
decor, and promising to return next day with His Eminence
("Yes, at nine exactly ") he genuflected, crossed himself
towards a modest Madonna of Pompeii hung on a side wall,
and left the oratory. Soon the seats were bereft of hats,
and the ecclesiastics climbed into the three carriages from
the Archbishopric, with their black horses, which had
awaited in the courtyard. Monsignor made a point
of asking the chaplain. Father Titta, to share his own
carriage, much to the latter's solace. The carriages moved
off, and Monsignor was silent; they drove by the sumptuous
Villa Falconeri, with its flowering bougainvillaea drooping
over the walls of the splendidly kept garden; and when
they reached the slope down to Palermo amid the orange
groves. Monsignor spoke. "And so you, Father Titta,
have actually said Mass for years in frdnt of the picture of
that girl? Of that girl with a rendezvous and waiting for
her lover? Now don't tell me you too believed it was a
holy image."

"Monsignor, I am to blame, I know. But it's not easy
to gainsay the Signorina Carolina. That you cannot know."

Monsignor shivered at the memory. "My son,
you've put your finger on it; and that wifi iJs taken into
consideration."

Carolina had gone off to pour out her rage in a letter to
Chiara, her married sister in Naples; Caterina, tired by the
long and painful conversation, had been put to bed;
Concetta went back to her own solitary room. This was
one of those rooms (so numerous that one might be tempted
to say it of all rooms) which have two faces, one with a mask
that they show to ignorant visitors, the other which is
only revealed to those in the know, the owner in particular
to whom all its squalid essence is manifest. This particular
room was airy and looked over the broad garden; in a
corner was a high bed with four pillows (Concetta suffered
from heart trouble and had to sleep almost sitting up):
no carpets, but a fine white floor with intricate yellow tiles;
a valuable money chest with dozens' of little drawers
covered with marble inlay and semi-precious stones: the
desk, central table and all the furniture in breezy Ideal
craftsmanship, with figures of huntsmen, dogs •and game
in amber-colour on a dark background: furniture con-
sidered by Concetta herself as antiquated and in wry bad
taste and which, sold at auction after her death, is to-day the
pride of a prosperous shipping agent when his wife serves
cocktails to envious friends. On the walls were portraits,
water colours, sacred images. All was clean, all ordered.
Two things only^ perhaps might have appeared unusual:
in the corner opfiosite the bed towered four enormous
wooden cases painted in green, each with a big padlock;
and in front of these, on the floor, was a heap of mangy
fur. To the lips of an ingenuous visitor the little room
might have brought a smile, so suggestive was it of an old
maid's affectionate care.

To one who knew the facts — Concetta herself — it was
an inferno of niummified memories. The four green cases
contained dozens of day and night shirts, dressing-gowns,
pillow-cases, sheets carefully divided into "best " and
"second-best ": the trousseau collected by Concetta herself
fifty years before. Now those padlocks were never opened
for fear incongruous demons might leap out, and under
the ubiquitous Palermo damp the contents grew yellow
and decayed, useless for ever and for anyone. The portraits
were of dead people no longer loved, the photographs of
friends who had hurt her in their lifetime, the only reason
they were not forgotten in death; the water-colours showed
houses and places most of which had been sold, or rather
stupidly bartered away by spendthrift nephews. Anyone
looking carefully into the heap of moth-eaten fur would have
noticed two erect ears, a snout of black wood, and two
astonished eyes of yellow glass; it was Bendico, dead for
forty-five years, embalmed for forty-five years, nest now of
spiders' webs and moth, detested by the servants who had
been imploring Concetta for dozens of years to have it
thrown oh the rubbish heap; but she always refused,
reluctant to detach herself from the only memory of her
past which aroused no distressing sensations.

But the distressing sensations of to-day (at a certain
age every day punctually produces its own) all referred to
the present. Much less devout than Carolina, much more
sensitive than Caterina, Concetta had understood the
meaning of the Vicar-General's visit and foreseen the
consequences; orders to take away all or nearly all the
relics, the changing of the picture above the altar, an
eventual reconsecration of the chapel. She had never really
believed in the authenticity of these relics, and had paid up
with the indifference of a father settling a bill for toys
which are of no interest to himself but help to keep the
children quiet. To her the removal of these objects was a
matter of indifference; what did touch her, the day's real
thorn, was the appalling figure the Salina family wbuld now
cut with the ecclesiastical authorities, and soon with the
entire city. The Church kept its secrets much better than
anyone else in Sicily, but that did not mean much yet;
all would be spread round in a month or two; as everything
spreads on this island which should have as its symbol
not the Trinacria but the Ear of Dionysus at Syracuse
which makes the lightest sigh resound for fifty yards.
And the Church's esteem meant a lot to her. The prestige
of her name had slowly disappeared, the family fortune,
divided and subdivided, was at best equivalent to that of
any number of other lesser families and very much smaller
than that of some rich industrialists. But in the Church,
in their relations with it, the Salina had maintained their
pre-eminence. What a reception His Eminence had given
the three sisters when they went to make their Christmas
visit! Would that happen now?

A maid entered: "Excellency, the Princess is just
arriving. Her motor-car is in the courtyard." Concetta
got up, tidied her hair, threw a black lace shawl over her
shoulders, resumed her imperial air, and reached the
entrance hall just as Angelica was climbing the last steps
of the outer staircase. She suffered from varicose veins;
her legs, which had always been a little short, scarcely
upheld her, and she was climbing up leaning on the arm of
her own footman whose black topcoat swept the stairs.
"Concetta, darling!" "Angelica, dear! It's so long since
we've met! " In fact only five days had gone by since her
last visit, but the intimacy between the two cousins, an
intimacy similar in closeness and feeling to that which was
to bind Italians and Austrians in their opposing trenches
a few years later, was such that five days really could seejgi
a long time

Angelica, now nearly seventy, still showed many
traces of beauty; the illness which was to transform her
into a wretched spectre three years later was already active,
but still secreted deep in her blood; her green eyes were
what they had been before, only slightly dulled by the years,
and the wrinkles on her neck were hidden by the soft black
folds of the hood and veil which she, a widow for the last
three years, wore not without a certain nostalgic coquetry.
"You see," she said to Concetta as they moved entwined
towards a drawing-room, "you see, with these imminent
celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of The Thousand
there's never a minute's peace. Just imagine, a few days
ago they told me I'd been put on the Committee of Honour;
a homage to dear Tancredi's memory, of course, but such
a lot for me to do! Finding lodgings for veterans coming
from all over Ital^, arranging invitations for the grand-
stand without offending anyone; taking care to invite the
m^or of every commune in the island. Oh, by the way,
dear; the Mayor of Salina is a clerical and has refused to
march past; so I thought at once of your nephew, of
Fabrizio; he came to visit me, and I pinned him down there
and then. He couldn't refuse. So at the end of the
month we'll see him filing past dressed to the nines down
Via Liberta in front of a big placard with 'Salina' on it
in letters a foot high. Don't you think it's a good idea?
A Salina rendering homage to Garibald^! A fusion of old
and new in Sicily! I've thought of you too, darling; here's
your invitation for the grandstand, right next to the royal
box." And she pulled out of her Parisian bag a piece of
cardboard in Garibaldi red, the very same colour as the
strip of silk worn for a time by Tancredi above his collar.
"Carolina and Caterina won't be too pleased," she went
on in her arbitrary way, "but I only had one place; any-
way you have more right to it than they have; you were
Tancredi's favourite cousin."

She talked a lot and she talked well; forty years of
living with Tancredi, however tempestuous and interrupted,
had been more than long enough to rub off the last traces
of Donnafugata accent and manners; she had camouflaged
herself even to the point of copying that graceful twining of
the fingers which had been one of Tancredi's characteristics.
She read a lot; on her table the latest books by Anatole
France and Bourget alternated with D'Annunzio and Serao;
and she had the reputation in the drawing-rooms of Palermo
of being an expert on the architecture of the Chateaux
of the Loire, about which she would often discourse with
somewhat hazy enthusiasm, contrasting, perhaps uncon-
sciously, their Renaissance serenity with the restless
baroque of the palace at Donnafugata, against which she
nurtured an aversion inexplicable to anyone who knew
nothing of her humble and ill-cared-for youth.

"But what a head I have, my dearl I was forgetting
to tell you that Senator Tassoni will soon be coaling here;
he's staying with me at Villa Falconer! and wants to meet
you; he was a great friend of poor Tancredi's, a camrade-
in-arms too, and he's heard Tancredi talk of you, it seems.
Our dear Tancredi!" The handkerchief with its narrow
black border came out of her bag, and she dried a tear
in eyes that were still fine.

Concetta had been inserting, as always, an occasional
phrase of her own into Angelica's continual flow; but at
the name of Tassoni she was silent. Once again she saw
a scene, very distant but quite clear, as if through the other
end of a telescope: the big white table surrounded by all
those people now dead; near her Tancredi, dead too — as
anyway, really, she was herself; his brutal anecdote,
Angelica's hysterical laughter, her own no less hysterical
tears. It had been the turning-point of her life, that; the
road she had taken then had led her here, to this desert
not even inhabited by extinct love or spent rancour.

"Oh, I've heard of the bother you're having with the
Curia. What a nuisance they are! But why didn't you tell
me before.' I could have done something; the Cardinal is
always very good to me. I'm afraid that it's too late now.
But I'll pull some strings. Anyway, it'll all blow over."

Senator Tassoni, who arrived soon after, was a brisk
and spruce old man. His wealth, which was great and
growing, had been acquired by competition and hard
struggle, and instead of making him flabby it had kept him
in a state of continual energy which now seemed to conquer
the years and made him almost fiery. From the few months
spent with Garibaldi's southern army he had acquired a
military bearing destined never to be discarded. Blended
with courtesy it formed a philtre which had gained him
many successes in the past, and which now, joined to the
number of his securities, was of great use for getting his
own way with the boards of banks and cotton factories;
half Italy and a great part of the Balkan countries sewed on
their own buttons with thread made by Tassoni & Co.

"Signorina," he was saying to Concetta as he sat beside
her on a low stool suitable for a page, which was just why
he had chosen it, "Signorina, a dream of my distant youth
is now being realised. How often in those icy nights camp-
ing out on the Volturno or around the ramparts of besieged
Gaeta, how often our unforgettable Tancredi used to talk
of you! I seemed to know you already, to have frequented
this house amid whose walls his untamed youth was passed;
and I am happy to be able, though with such delay, to lay
my homage at the feet of her who was the consolation of
one of the purest heroes of our Risorgimento."

Concetta was unused to conversations with people she
and not known since infancy; she was also no lover of
literature; so she had had no immunity against rhetoric and
was in fact open to its fascination. The senator's words
moved her; she forgot that old anecdote of half a century
ago, she no longer saw in Tassoni a violator of convents,
a jeerer at poor terrified nuns, but an old man, Tancredi's
sincere friend who talked of him with true affection, one
who brought to her a shadow, a message from the dead
man across the morass of time which the dead can so seldom
cross. "And what did my dear cousin tell you about me?"
she asked in a low voice, with a shyness that brought to
life once more the eighteen-year-old girl from that bundle
of black silk and white hair.

"Ah, so many things! He talked of you almost as
much as of Donna Angelical She for him was love, you
were the image of his sweet youth, that youth which for
us soldiers passes so soon."

Again an icy hand froze her old heart; but now Tassoni
had raised his voice, and turned to Angelica. "D'ybu
remember. Princess, what he said at Vienna ten yews ago? "
He turned back towards Concetta to explain. "I was
there with the Italian delegation for the Trade Treaty;
Tancredi put me up at the embassy like the warm-hearted
friend and comrade he was, with that great gentleman's
affability of his. Perhaps seeing a comrade-in-arms again
in that hostile city had moved him, for he told us so much
about his past. In fhe back of a box at the Opera, between
one act and another^of Don Giovanni^ he confessed, in his
incomparably ironic way, a sin, an unpardonable sin, which
he said he'd committed against you, yes, against you,
Signorina." He interrupted himself a second to gain time
to set his surprise. "He told us how one evening, during
dinner at Donnafugata, he had allowed himself to invent a
story and tell it to you; a tale of war connected with the
fighting round Palermo; and how you believed it and were
offended 'because the story was rather outspoken for the
customs of fifty years tago. You had reproved him. 'She
was so sweet,' said he, 'as she fixed me with those angry
eyes of hers and as her lips swelled with anger so prettily,
like a puppy's; she was so sweet that if I hadn't controlled
myself I'd have kissed her there and then in front of twenty
people and that terrible old uncle of mine!' You, Signorina,
will have forgotten it; but Tancredi remembered it well,
he had such delicacy of feeling; he also remembered it
because it happened in the very day he met Donna Angelica
for the first time." And he sketched towards the Princess
one of those gestures of homage, with his right hand drop-
ping away through the air, whose Goldoniesque tradition
was preserved then only among Senators of the Kingdom.

The conversation continued for some time, but it could
not be said that Concetta took any great part in it. The
sudden revelation penetrated into her mind slowly and did
not make her suffer much at first. But when the visitors
had said good-bye and left and she was alone, she began
seeing more clearly and so suffering more. The spectres
of the past had been exorcised for years; though they were,
of course, to be found hidden in everything, and it was
they that made food taste bitter and company seem boring:
but it was a long time since they had shown their true faces;
now they came leaping out, accompanied by the ghastly
laughter of irreparable disaster. It would, of course, be
absurd to say that Concetta still loved Tancredi; love's
eternity lasts but a year or two, not fifty. But as one who
has recovered from smallpox fifty years before still bears its
marks on the face although he may have forgotten the pain
of the disease, so she bore in her own oppressed life now
the wounds of a bitter disappointment that had become most
part of history, so much part, in fact, that its fiftieth
^Ifhaiversary was being celebrated officially.

Until to-day, on the rare occscions when she thought
over what had happened at Donnafugata that distant
summer, she had felt upheld by a sense of martyrdom, of
wrong endured, of resentment against a father who had
neglected her, and of torturing emotion on account of that
other dead man. Now, however, these second-hand feelings
which had formed the skeleton of her whole mode of thought
were also collapsing. There had been no enemies, just one
single adversary, herself; her future had not been killed by
her own imprudence, but the rash Saina pride; and now, just
at the moment when her memories had come alive again after
so many years, she found herself even without the solace
of being able to blame her own unhappiness on others, a
solace which is the last protective device of the desperate.

If Tassoni had told the truth, then the long hours spent
in savouring her hatred before her father's picture, her
hiding of every photograph of Tancredi so as not to be
forced to hate him too, had been stupidity — worse, cruel
injustice; and she suffered now at the memory of Tancredi's
warm and imploring tone as he had begged his uncle to
allow him into that convent; they had been words of love
towards her, words not understood, put to flight by her
pride which at her harshness had drawn back with their
tails between their legs like whipped puppies. From the
timeless depth of her being a black pain came welling to
spatter her all over at that revelation of the truth.

But was it the truth? Nowhere has truth so short a life
as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes
before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged,
embellished, disfigured, annihilated by imagination and self-
interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism,
charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling them-
selves on the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has
vanished altogether. And poor Concetta was hoping
find the ttuth of feelings that had never been expressed
but only glimpsed half a century before! The truth no
longer existed. Precarious fact, though, had been replaced
by irrefutable pain.

Meanwhile Angelica and the Senator were driving the
short distance back to Villa Falconer!. Tassoni was worried:
"Angelica," he said (they had had a very short affair
thirty years before, and kept the intimacy, for which there
is no substitute, conferred by a few hours spent between
the same pair of sheets), "I'm afraid I disturbed your cousin
in some way; did you notice how silent she was towards
the end of the visit? I hope I didn't, she's such a dear."

"I should think you have hurt her, Vittorio," said
Angelica, exasperated by a double though imaginary
jealousy, "she was madly in love with Tancredi; but he
never took any notice of her." And so a new layer of soil
fell on the tumulus of truth.


The Cardinal of Palermo was a truly holy man; and
even now after he has been dead a long time his charity
and his faith are still remembered. While he was alive,
though, things were different; he was not a Sicilian, he
was not even a southerner or a Roman; and many years
before he had tried to leaven with nordic activity the inert
and heavy dough of the island's spiritual life in general
and the clergy's in particular. Flannked by two or three
secretaries from his own parts he had deluded himself,
those first years, that he could remove abuses and clear the
soil of its more obvious stumbling-blocks. But soon he
had to realise that he was, as it were, firing into cotton-wool;
the little hole made at the moment was covered after a few
seconds by thousands of tiny fibres and all remained as
before, the only additions being cost of powder, ridicule
a useless effort and deterioration of material. Like everyone
who, in those days, wanted to change anything in the
Sicilian character he had soon acquired the reputation of
being a fool (which in the circumstances was exact) and
had to content himself with doing good works, which only
diminished his popularity still further if they involved
those benefited in making the slightest effort themselves,
such as, for instance, visiting the Archiepiscopal palace.

So the aged prelate who set out on the morning of the
fourteenth of May to visit Villa Salina was a good man but a
disillusioned one, who had in the end assumed towards
those in his own diocese an attitude of contemptuous pity
(which was sometimes, after all, unjust). This made him
adopt brusque and cutting ways that dragged him even
farther into the swamps of unpopularity.

The three Salina sisters were, as we know, deeply offended
by the inspection of their chapel; but, childish and above
all feminine in mind, they also drew a certain undeniable
satisfaction from the thought of receiving in their home a
Prince of the Church, at being able to show him the grandeur
of the Salina which in good faith they thought still intact,
and above all at seeing a kind of sumptuous red bird
moving round their rooms for half an hour and admiring
the varied and harmonising tones of its differing purples
and heavy shot silk. But the poor creatures were destined
to be disappointed even of this last modest hope. When
they, having descended the external staircase, saw His
Eminence get out df his carriage, they realised that he
was in informal dress. Only the tiny purple buttons on the
severe black cassock indicated his high rank; in spite of
his expression of injured goodness, the Cardinal was no
more imposing than the Archpriest of Donnafugata. He
was polite but cold, and mingled almost too ably a show of
respect for the Salina name and the individual virtues ol
the ladies themsellves, with a contempt for their inept and
formalised devotions. To the Vicar-General's exclamations
about the beauty of the decorations in the rooms they
passed he did not answer a word; he refused to accept
any of the refreshments prepared for him ("Thank you,
Signorina, only a little water; to-day is the eve of my
Holy Patron's feast-day "), he did not even sit down. He
went to the chapel, genuflected a second before the Madonna
of Pompeii, made a hurried inspection of the relics. Then
he blessed with pastoral benignity the mistresses of the
house and the servants kneeling in the entrance hall, and
said to Concetta, who bore on her face the signs of a
sleepless night, "Signorina, for three or four days no Divine
Service can be held in the chapel, but I will see that it is
reconsecrated as soon as possible. It seems to me that the
picture of the Madonna of Pompeii could well take the
place of the one now above the altar, which can join the
fine works of art I have admired while passing through
your rooms. As for the relics, I am leaving behind Don
Pacchiofti, my secretary and a most competent priest; he
will examine the documents and tell you the results, of his
reseatt:hes; and what he decides will be as if I had decided
it myself."

Benignly he let everyone kiss his ring, then got into
the heavy carriage together with his small suite.

The carriages had not yet reached the Falconeri turning
before Carolina with cheeks taut and darting eyes exclaimed
"This Pope must be a Turk," while Caterina had to be
given smelling salts. Meanwhile Concetta was chatting
calmly to Don Pacchiotti, who had in the end accepted
a cup of coffee and a baba.

Then the priest asked for the keys of the case of
documents, requested permission and withdrew into the
chapel, after first taking from his bag a small hammer and
saw, a screw-driver, a magnifying glass and a couple of
pencils. He had been a pupil of the Vatican School of Palae-
ography; and he was also Piedmontese. His labours were
long and meticulous; the servants who passed by the chapel
door heard the knocks of a hammer, the squeak of screws,
and sighs. Three hours later he re-emerged with his
cassock full of dust and his hands black, but with a pleased
look and a serene expression on his bespectacled face. He
apologised for carrying a big wicker basket. " I took the
liberty of appropriating this to j^t in what I'd discarded;
may I set it down here? " And he placed his burden in
a corner; it was overflowing with torn papers and cards,
little boxes containing bits of bone and gristle. "I am
happy to say that I have found five relics which are
perfectly authentic and worthy of being objects of devotion.
The rest are there," he said, pointing at the basket.
"Could you tell me, Signorina, where Pcan brush myself
down and wash my hands? "

Five minutes later he reappeared and dried his hands
on a big towel on the border of which pranced a Leopard
in drawn-thread work. "I forgot to tell you that the frames
are all laid out on a table in the chapel; some of them are
really lovely." He said good-bye. "Ladies, my respects."
But Caterina refused to kiss his hand.

"And what are we to do with the things in the basket?"

"Just whatever you like, ladies; keep them or throw
them on the rubbish-heap; they have no value whatsoever."
And when Concetta wanted to order a carriage to drive
him back, he said, "Don't worry about that, Signorina;
I'll have lunch with the Oratorians a few steps away; I
don't need a thing." And putting his instruments back
into his bag he went off on light feet.

Concetti withdrew into her room; she felt no emotion
whatsoeevr; she seemed to be living in a world known to
her yet strange, which had already ceded all the impulses
it could give her and now consisted only of pure forms.
The portrait of her father was just a few square inches of
canvas, the green cases just a few square yards of wood.
A short while later she was brought a letter. The envelope
had a black seal with a big coronet in relief.

"Darling Concetta, I've heard of His Eminence's
visit and am so glad a few relics could be saved. I hope to
get the Vicar-General to come and say the first Mass in
the reconsecrated chapel. Senator Tassoni is leaving to-
morrow and recommends himself to your bon souvenir. I'll
be coming over to visit you soon. Meanwhile a warm
embrace to you and to Carolina and Caterina too. Yours
ever, Angelica."

Still she could feel nothing; the inner emptiness was
complete; but she did sense an unpleasant atmosphere
exhaling from the heap of furs. That was to-day's distress:
even poor Bendico was hinting at bitter memories. She
rang the bell. "Annetta," she said, "This dog has really
become too moth-eaten and dusty. Take it out and throw
it away."

As the carcass was dragged off, the glass eyes stared at
her with the humble reproach of things that are thrown
away, got rid of. A few minutes later what remained of
Bendico was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited
every day by the dustman. During the flight down from
the window its form recomposed itself for an instant; in the
air there seemed to be dancing a quadruped with long
whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all
found peace in a heap of livid dust.


THE END