The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  The mounting steps 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 Salina 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 fête is at its height. But this time they had to be early if they wanted to be there for the entry of the Sedàras, who were the sort of 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 engagement 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 effect 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 tail-coat? 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. “Tancredi’s here already too.” There in the opposite corner of the 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 orchestra from the ballroom.

  “We’re also expecting Colonel 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 the aptness of his dispositions, the timely deployment of his battalions, and his ability to carry out successfully against the same adversary what Landi had so unaccountably failed to do at Calatafimi. At heart, though, Ponteleone thought that the Colonel “did so well” by managing to stop, defeat, wound and capture Garibaldi, in so doing saving the compromise 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 serene 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 whe
n 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 Crown of Italy recently conferred on him; but this soon vanished into one of the secret pockets in Tancredi’s tail-coat.

  Her fiancé 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 particularly 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 appreciated more 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 rapacity.

  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 outstanding.” 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 “Monsù Gaston”, the Salina chef. And as Monsû Gaston was positively the Raphael of cooks, and the tapestries of Palazzo Pitti the Monsû 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 politest partners. Don Fabrizio was wandering round the rooms; he kissed the hands of ladies he met, numbed the shoulders of 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 tarnished 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, weighed down by years and daughters-in-law, 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, Tutú Làscari 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, improbably 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 hallucination; 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 crinolined monkeys rose a monotonous, continuous sacred cry. “Maria! Maria!” the poor creatures were perpetually 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, a tireless shot and a fair 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; smoothed on cornices, stippled on door-frames, damascened pale, almost silvery, over darker gold 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 certain 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.