The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  Don Calogero did indeed know that; it had been the greatest migration of swallows in living memory: a thought which still brought terror, though not prudence, to the entire Sicilian nobility, while it was a font of delight for all the Sedàras. “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 result of all these disasters, of all this heart-burning, has been Tancredi. There are certain things known to people like us; and maybe it is impossible to obtain the distinction, 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 regulating earthquakes and drought.”

  He paused a moment as a lackey came in bearing two lighted lamps on a tray. As they were being set in place the Prince caused a silence charged with resigned concern to 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 appreciated the worldly subtleties of this part of the Prince’s speech; on the whole it merely confirmed him in his summary conviction 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, 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 Gibildolce; 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 properly 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; the impression remained.

  Luckily an impromptu remark from Don Calogero, 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 Sedàra are noble too; till I came along we’ve been an unlucky lot, buried in the provinces and undistinguished, but I have the documents in order, and one day it will be known that your nephew has married the Baronessina Sedàra del Biscotto; a title granted by His Majesty Ferdinand IV on his rights from Mazzara port. I’ve 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 folk; but the subject is too important to be treated fleetingly, and we will content ourselves with saying here that Don Calogero’s heraldic impromptu gave the Prince the incomparable artistic satisfaction of seeing a type realised in all its details; and that he gave a depressed laugh ending 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 understood, promised to return next morning with Angelica’s undoubted consent, and said good-bye. He was accompanied through two of the drawing-rooms, embraced again, and began descending the stairs while the Prince, towering above, watched getting smaller this little conglomeration of ill-cut clothes, money and cunning brashness 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 everything go off all right?”

  “Perfectly, couldn’t be better.” Tumeo mouthed some congratulations, put the leash back on the collar of Teresina, sleeping exhausted by the hunt, and picked up the game-bag.

  “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 a skein of wool, and as he passed got to their feet and smiled; Mademoiselle Dombreuil hurriedly took off 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 Sedàra’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 pleasant vales traversed by courteous wafts of “please”, “I’d be so grateful”, “how kind”, the Prin
ce, when chatting to Don Calogero, 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 ilexes and cedars of Donnafugata chords 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 kindly Don Fabrizio, was that as years went by the Salina were to acquire a reputation as extortioners of their own dependants, a reputation quite unjustified in reality but which helped to destroy their 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 Sedàra 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 “Sedàra-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 manage from then on to shave a little better and feel a little less aghast at the amount of soap used for laundering, no more; 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 boors 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 been 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 Gibildolce 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, comparable in its perfect timing to Eisenstein’s business with the 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 Sedàra at once, a suggestion which dismayed Don Calogero and made him, in order to reject it, think up a second indisposition 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 had 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: “Angelicà, Angelicà, pensons à la joie de Tancrède.” Only Bendicò, 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 looked down, admired the girl who ente
red, 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 Tancredi’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 you’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 enraptured 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.