The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  The sensation of finding himself a prisoner in a situation evolving more rapidly than foreseen was particularly acute that morning. The night 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, “dearest Uncle Fabrizio”, which had a number of merits; of removing any suspicion of jesting on the verge of sacred ground, proclaiming from the very first line the importance of what was to follow, of allowing the letter to be shown to anyone and also of providing a link with ancient pre-Christian beliefs which attributed a binding power to the exact invocation of a name.

  “Dearest 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 Sedàra (here a long procession of adjectives to exalt the beauty, grace, virtue and intellect of his beloved); then, in neat hieroglyphics 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 Signorina 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 Sedàra (once he even dared write “The House of Sedàra”) 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 prophet, 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 résumé 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 ended 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 astoundingly 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 easy-going old planes pottering 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 eventually 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 honeyed 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 “It’s your fault” 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 an
d 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 by Phoenicians, Dorians and Ionians 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 clean 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 humble dun-coloured coat had been unable 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 sportsmen 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, universalising 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 Garibaldi, and further still flung dust in the eyes of Neapolitan 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 the 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. Attracted 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 again 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 inopportune 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 stretched and crouched like figures in relief, the little rabbit hanging head down from a branch was swinging out diagonally 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 surprise, 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 were known. He had noticed, though, that not all had been convinced by his words; into play had come the abstract Machiavellianism 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, or even of their interlocutors. Some of these who had made a visit ad limina leopardorum considered 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.