The Viceroys

by Federico De Roberto

  ‘What are you doing? Why “To Let”? Who the devil told you to …?’

  ‘The prince, the Signor Prince … there’s a letter too … there, on the table.’

  When Signor Marco read the note, his hands and his lips began trembling as if he were about to have a stroke. Baldassarre, alarmed, drew back a little, ready to call for help. Then, tearing the paper with some difficulty, the other shouted with a break in his voice.

  ‘Me … Dismissal?… Like a scullion? The end of the month? Dirty thief! Pig of a prince!’

  ‘Don Marco!…’ stuttered Baldassarre in terror.

  ‘Dismissal?… Me to hand over to the notary?… Does he think I wanted to take some of his money?… All the money he’s stolen from his brothers and sisters? Or his papers? The proofs of his thefts? Of his deceit? Thief, thief, thief! The more pig I for having helped him! Now he’s sending me packing as he’s no one else to fleece …’

  With hands to head, Baldassarre was begging, ‘Don Marco!… Signor Marco!… Please!… They can hear you!’ But the other, quite beside himself, trembling with rage, was spewing out all he had in him against his master and the whole brood.

  ‘Ten years!… ten years of trying to rob his relations! Those other crafty mad rogues! He couldn’t eat, drink or sleep for studying how to snare them, playing the moralist, pretending affection, respect for his mother’s wishes; more Jesuitical than that Saint Ignatius of a Prior, dirtier than that other swine Don Blasco! D’you think people don’t know what a pig he is, with his mistress in the house now he’s no one else to rob, with his mistress under his wife’s eyes, under his daughter’s eyes too till the other day.’

  ‘Don Marco!’ cried Baldassarre, now at last driven to threats too, in an attempt to stop this flow of vituperation which no begging gestures and show of alarm had been able to stop. And Signor Marco looked at him, almost out of his mind, as if just noticing his presence.

  ‘I’m amazed at you!’ went on the major-domo firmly and coldly. ‘Will you stop now once and for all!’

  Then the other gave a bitter sneer.

  ‘Be quiet, you! Taking your brother’s side, are you, you bastard?’

  At that moment appeared the notary from the prince’s apartments.

  ‘Signor Marco …’ but the other did not let him say a word.

  ‘You’ve come for the hand-over, have you?’ he began booming again. ‘What d’you want handed over? Your master’s false papers? The extorted deeds, the forced transactions? Here they are, take ’em!’ and he began to fling in the air all he found in the desk, on the shelves. ‘Are you afraid I’ll take them away? I don’t need them. Everyone knows what a cheat, thief and forger your prince is! You know he robbed his sister the nun and the convent by that quibble about royal approval, and his mad sister by consenting to her marriage, and the Booby because he’s a booby, and the young count by backing him during those other scandalous goings-on!… You yourself know better than I all the plots he laid, those old I.O.U.’s paid off by the mother and repaid twice over, first by the legatees, then by the co-heir; and the presumed debts; the extorted power-of-attorney …’

  ‘Please, Signor Marco … control yourself!’

  ‘Control myself! I’m quite under control, I assure you! Or d’you think I’m sorry to lose my job?… I’ll find another, don’t doubt that!… I’ll be treated better anywhere than by these harlequins and false princes here … Or maybe they’re afraid I’ve been stealing from them, eh?… That I’ve enriched myself at their expense?… That swine of a monk said so once; d’you think I wasn’t told?… I who had to pay up out of my own pocket? For if they found themselves one cent out, they’d complain a whole month … A truly munificent family to set up a nest in!’ and, flinging open cupboards and drawers, he went on, ‘Here! Take it all, I’ll hand you over the lot! Come and look under the bed to see if the pot’s still there!… Search me in case I’m taking anything away … Here, catch these; they’re the keys of the cupboards and chests. Tell him to …’ and he dropped them on the floor. Suddenly he noticed in the open cupboard, hanging on a brass hook, the key of the princess’s catafalque, except for snuff-boxes, the only legacy from his defunct mistress after nearly thirty years of service. In a second he seized it and flung it against the wall.

  ‘Take this with the rest!’ he shouted with a swear word strong enough to make the dead woman blush down in the Capuchin catacombs.

  ALONG dusty roads, under a fiery sky, drove endless rows of carts crammed with household goods. Wheels squeaked, bells tinkled, and carters sitting on shafts or crouching on top of loads would turn their heads every now and again if a more frequent clatter or livelier tinkle announced a carriage passing. Then the row of carts moved right over to the side of the road, and the carriage passed amid clouds of dust and cracking whips while at the windows appeared terrified faces of refugees.

  ‘The scourge of God!… Punishment for our sins!… More than ten years we’ve been left in peace!… Those murderers in the Government!’ The poor followed on foot, drawing handcarts with a few thin palliasses and one or two broken-down chairs; and in short halts to regain breath and dry the sweat pouring down their grimy foreheads, they exchanged comments on the cholera, its origins, the universal flight emptying the city.

  Most believed in evil spells or poison spread by orders of the authorities, and would rail against the ‘Italians’ who spread such poisons as much as the Bourbons. In ’60, the patriots had hinted that there would be no more cholera, since King Victor Emmanuel was no enemy of the people like King Ferdinand. And now here it was starting all over again! Then what was the use of a revolution? Just to have pieces of dirty paper in circulation instead of the fine gold and silver coins which were at least a pleasure to eye and ear under the other Government? Or to pay income tax and death duties, unheard-of diabolic inventions of the new Parliamentary thieves? To say nothing of conscription, the flower of youth torn from their families, dying in war, although Sicily had always been exempted by ancient privilege from military tribute? Were these then all the advantages brought by a united Italy? And the most discontented and enraged cried, ‘How right the Palermitans were to take to their rifles …’ But the Palermo revolt had been defeated. In fact, according to the few with no belief in poisoning, it was thence the pestilence came, borne by soldiers hurriedly brought in to pacify the rebellious city …

  And on heaps of stones by the roadsides, in narrow shadows thrown by walls from whose tops sprouted the spiky crests of prickly pears, refugees sat and discussed these matters, while past them filed carriages, carts, and pedestrians who were not yet tired out.

  The poorest of these had loaded all their things on donkeys, and men, women and children followed the slow patient beasts on foot with bundles of rags on their heads or under their arms or thrust on sticks. Acquaintances would stop each other, strangers exchange news and comments with the solidarity of danger in common misery. The womenfolk repeated what they had heard said by priests: cholera was a punishment for the sinful times. Had the excommunicated not warred on the Pope? Was the Church not persecuted? And, to fill the measure, now came a law despoiling convents and monasteries! The end of the world! The year of calamity! Who would ever have thought it! So many poor monks flung into the middle of the street? Holy places desecrated? Where would it all end?

  All nonsense, judged the menfolk on the other hand, ‘The monks had been spoilt and done nothing! Except eat! If monastery walls could speak they would have some fine tales to tell. It was high time their frolics were put an end to! The one good thing this government has done!…’ But think of all the saintly Fathers—and there were some—forced to live on a lira a day! The Benedictines, for instance, would be hard put to make do on a lira a day, after having led the life of kings! ‘Ah yes, but what about the splitting up of the monastery funds, eh?’

  News of this had been circulating for some time and people gave details as if they had been present themselves; savings made during recent years, in expe
ctation of the law, had been distributed variously all round; every monk had drawn no less than four thousand onze in gold and silver coin. Then they had divided up the table silver and all other valuables and, when the moment to leave drew near, sold the vast quantities of provisions accumulated in the storerooms: big barrels of wine, huge jars of oil, great sacks of corn and vegetables. So much the more money in their pockets—and even so the storerooms still seemed full! ‘They’d done right! Why should they leave cash as well to those Government thieves?’

  And the little caravans would start off on their march again, heads whirling at the thought of the millions of onze that would go into Victor Emmanuel’s pocket from selling the contents of San Nicola and all the other communities. Many beggars took advantage of the great mass of people surging by, stretching out hands from heaps of stones on which they were lying. Ragged children with them ran behind carriages in case some passenger dropped a coin into the dusty road. Those on foot recognised fleeing nobles, repeated their names, horror-struck at the emptying town. ‘The Prince of Roccasciano! The Duchess Radalì! The Curcuma! The Grazzeri! There won’t be one left!…’

  Towards evening, when the heat of the day lessened, three big family coaches, one behind the other, raised great clouds of dust on the road from Catania to the Belvedere. In the first was the Prince of Francalanza, Donna Ferdinanda and Cousin Graziella, the latter invited to the family villa as she could not be alone at La Zafferana. The young prince Consalvo was on the box. He was brandishing a whip triumphantly though still wearing a Benedictine habit, as his father had decided to bring him home at the very last moment when the monks were dispersed; Don Blasco and the Prior had also asked for hospitality at the palace. In the second carriage was the princess, without anyone sitting beside or opposite, just her maid in a far corner. Contact with a shoulder would have given her convulsions, so she had declared herself only too pleased for the prince to travel with his cousin. But the other carriage was crammed; there was the marchese and Chiara, Rosa with baby, and finally Don Blasco. The latter had refused the prince’s hospitality in the country and accepted the marchese’s, so as to avoid his sister Ferdinanda. His aversion did not cede to the danger of cholera and made him prefer even the little bastard’s company.

  The Prior, on the other hand, had stayed in town at the episcopal palace, where Monsignor the Bishop had received him with open arms. All his relations’ begging and invitations had been unable to make him take flight; his place, he said, was by the beds of the sick, with Monsignor. The one to insist most had been the prince, who maintained, as always, that in grave and solemn moments the family should keep together, so he was sorry to leave one of his relations in the midst of danger. What would people say? That he thought of nothing but himself?… But just as he had not succeeded in moving the Prior, so he had also failed with Ferdinando, who, having acquired a taste for town life, would not hear of taking refuge even at Pietra dell’Ovo. Lucrezia had already left for the Belvedere that morning with her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law. As for their uncle, the duke, he was in Florence near his niece Teresina, and since the cholera did not rage there or terrify people as much as in Sicily he was quite serene. To the Cavaliere Eugenio, still in Palermo, no one gave a thought.

  At the Belvedere began again the gay country life of autumn, so much so that the alarm spread by the first news of the pestilence soon seemed unjustified; in the city there had been a suspected case now and again. The young prince, having finally doffed his habit for clothes like everyone else’s, began tasting the enjoyments which he had yearned for. First of all he went shooting with a real gun on Mounts Elce and Urna, exterminating rabbits, hares, partridges and even sparrows, if he found nothing else. Then every day he had horses harnessed to learn driving, and soon his gig became the terror of those on country roads, always running into carts and carriages, rushing at full tilt to pass all other vehicles, at the risk of overturning, crashing or killing someone. When not driving he would be in the stables watching horses being groomed and learning the special language of coachmen, ostlers and farriers, criticising the horses of other nobles who had taken refuge at the Belvedere or near by, or so-and-so’s recent purchase, or someone else’s carriages. And Donna Ferdinanda, hearing him speak with ever-growing competence on such gentlemanly subjects, would say to him admiringly, ‘Those are the things to learn!…’

  The princess too, though still sorrowing at Teresina’s departure so far away, was proud of her son’s progress; Graziella, even prouder, was prodigal of caresses to the boy, though Consalvo never replied with equal effusion but did his best to avoid her. He had not forgiven her for opposing his return to the paternal roof earlier, and now on seeing her as much at home there as one of the family and taking his mother’s place, his antipathy grew. Donna Graziella really was behaving more as mistress of the house than as guest, particularly in the evenings when there was company and she did the honours of the house, all the more if the princess felt indisposed. And this often happened. Without having any definite illness Donna Margherita, after her daughter’s departure, felt a bout of dim malaise coming over her, headaches, and difficulties in digesting. And, glad to avoid a crowd, infectious contact, contagious handshakes, she would go off to bed leaving her guests in the drawing-room conversing animatedly, gambling and playing charades. Leaving the Giulente villa, Lucrezia was now helping her cousin in running the house. She who at home never even put a finger into fresh water came to lend a hand from pride at having a place again in the home of her brother the prince.

  Chiara was busy spoiling the little bastard, fussing over him much more than did the marchese, who always felt uncomfortable and ashamed at recognising his parenthood publicly, while his wife almost gloried in it. If the princess or Donna Ferdinanda or some other relation did not put themselves out to be nice to the baby, Chiara would look offended and might even not set foot in the villa for a week if she got it into her head that anyone was criticising her adoption of the child.

  Vice versa, she was now of one mind with her uncle Blasco, who, as he was staying with her, implicitly approved.

  At the news of the law for suppressing monasteries, the monk, during his last period in the cloister and first months at his nephew’s, had been frenzied, like a devil loosed from hell. The newly coined swear-words, curses, imprecations against the Government that he spat out at San Nicola, the palace, the Cigar-woman’s, in pro-Bourbon chemists and even in the streets, were beyond counting; his vituperations against his brother the Deputy, who had voted for the law, were far more violent than anything else that had ever come from his mouth.

  As if this monstrosity were too big, too stunning, he soon reduced himself to fuming silence, from which he was roused only by rumours repeated in his presence about the division of the monastery’s savings and the four thousand onze due to each monk. Then he would begin thundering, ‘Division, my foot! Due, my backside! Not a sausage is there for distribution. And if there were, no one would touch it! Us become accomplices of those thieves? Of that refuse of the galleys? Of those out-and-out brigands?’

  So he spoke before strangers, people of no consequence, and servants; in the family, among intimates, he would admit the division but reduce his own share to a few hundred onze, a couple of spoons and a pair of sheets, just enough to avoid destitution. He had come away from San Nicola with two chests, the keys of which he never let out of his possession. The prince in town had glanced them over as if weighing and judging them, with a new respect for this uncle, who now owned something; but all efforts to get a look inside the chests had been in vain, as the monk bolted himself into his room every time he rooted about in them.

  At the Belvedere, even Chiara and Federico often talked to each other of all this money that Don Blasco must now have. The marchese, fearing its being wasted on the Cigar-woman, would have suggested means of making it secure, of using it to get income, had the monk been anyone else, had Don Blasco not attacked him every half-year when his dividends fell
due, and nagged and prophesied the shares’ collapse. The inflation, the war, the cholera, every public calamity, had been causes of jubilation for the monk, who would rub his hands together every time and shout to his nephew, ‘Goodbye to your dirty paper! It’s done for, your Government is! You wouldn’t listen to me; all right!…’ But the marchese always drew his dividends to the very last cent on the day arranged. When the danger of cholera had stopped entirely, one day he went down into town on business and also to draw his half-yearly payment. On his return to the Belvedere, when taking his walk on the terrace after dinner, as Chiara played with the little bastard, he mentioned to his uncle what he had done that day.

  ‘I drew my money from the coupons too … Now they pay in advance, because of the exchange. If I sent them to Paris I’d draw as many Napoleons again … I’ve ordered another lot of shares. We’ll take them with a number of friends … as today there’s no other way of laying out money …’

  He wanted to insist on what a good chance this was, but fell silent as Don Blasco suddenly stopped and stared at him hard, as if about to burst:

  ‘Can you let me have ten thousand lire’s worth?’

  At first the marchese thought he had not heard properly.

  ‘Let you have … How d’you mean? For Your Excellency?’

  ‘I’m asking if you can sell me ten thousand lire of shares, d’you understand or don’t you?’

  ‘But I think … of course … ten thousand lire of capital you mean … Yes, Excellency, I can write another letter at once, to make quite sure, if Your Excellency wishes.’

  ‘When will you write?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘And will they come at once?’

  ‘By return of post.’

  The monk turned his back and walked off a little, then returned, planted himself there in front of him again and went on:

  ‘Listen, while you’re at it, ask for twenty thousand lire’s worth.’