Not only to Isabelle and to Roman society, but to the entire Italian people, the war became what the Spaniards, using a bullfighting term, call el momento de verdad—the moment of truth—when a man, all alone, grasps the sword in his hand and faces the bull. In that moment the truth about the man and about the brute that faces him stands revealed. All vanities, human and animal, fall away. In that supreme moment the man stands naked and alone face to face with the brute who is also naked and alone. At the beginning of the war, in that moment of verdad, Isabelle also had found herself naked and alone; she publicly opened the great front gate of the Colonna Palace to Galeazzo Ciano and his court, making it clear that she had definitely made her choice between the principle of legitimacy and illegitimacy, and transformed the palace of Piazza Santi Apostoli into what the Paris Archbishop's palace had been in the days of Cardinal de Retz— herself becoming a Cardinal de Retz in a certain sense. Over that citadel of illegitimacy, over that palace where gathered everything equivocal and spurious that had risen to the surface in a new Rome and in a new Italy, Isabelle reigned as queen without for a moment renouncing an ancient, amiable and mischievous predisposition for tyranny. Within that world Galeazzo appeared more as a tool of tyranny than a tyrant.
Isabelle's table was no longer adorned with white and red roses and with winter strawberries—royal bounties, the gifts of Italo Balbo—sent daily by air from Libya, but with the smiling faces, rosy cheeks and strawberry lips of young women whom Isabelle offered as royal bounties to the insatiable vanity of Galeazzo.
By then Italo Balbo was dead, and dead were the roses and winter strawberries of Libya.
No young woman whom Galeazzo had noticed during a fleeting encounter, no foreigner of standing, no aspiring gallant, no dandy of the Chigi Palace who yearned for promotion or for a sinecure in some comfortable embassy, could escape the obligation that was sought through every conceivable art—to pay tribute with a convivial wreath of roses to Isabelle and Galeazzo. The chosen crossed the threshold of the Colonna Palace with an air of mysterious and yet open complicity, as if they were members of a publicly known conspiracy. An invitation from Isabelle was no longer of any real social value. Perhaps, it still had a political value, but many were mistaken even about the political value of an invitation to Piazza Santi Apostoli.
Isabelle was the first and, perhaps, the only one to perceive even before she opened the gates of the Colonna Palace to him, that Count Galeazzo Ciano, the young and dashing Minister of Foreign Affairs, the lucky son-in-law of Mussolini, was unimportant in Italian life and politics. Why then had Isabelle hoisted the colors of Galeazzo Ciano over the Colonna Palace? A number of people were simple-minded enough to accuse her of playing chaperon to Galeazzo merely out of social ambition—could a more ludicrous charge be imagined?—or out of a passion for intrigue, but they overlooked the fact that the "first lady of Rome" was not in any need of improving her social position and even less so of defending it; she had everything to lose and nothing to gain by her alliance with Galeazzo. Justice must be done to Isabelle's social genius and to her far-reaching, worldly policy; no one, not even Mussolini, could have reigned in Rome against Isabelle. In rising to power Isabelle had nothing to learn from anyone,- she had carried out her own march on Rome and she had made a much earlier start, almost twenty years before Mussolini. Her efforts were crowned with much greater success.
The reasons for Isabelle's partiality to Galeazzo are much deeper and more complex. In a decadent social body approaching its final ruin, in a nation in which the principles of historical, political, and social legitimacy no longer held any authority, in a country in which the classes closely linked with the fate of social continuity had lost all prestige, in an Italy which, with her unfailing Sursock instinct Isabelle sensed, was about to become the greatest Levantine country of the West—from the standpoint of political morality Rome, no less than Naples, deserved Lord Rosebery's description: "The only Eastern city in the world that lacks a European quarter"—in such an Italy only the victory of the principles of illegitimacy could have insured a peaceful recovery from the terrible social crisis that was proclaimed and precipitated by the war, or could have attained the supreme and passionate aspirations of the conservative classes during days of serious social upheaval to save what can be saved.
Some people have been simple-minded enough to tax Isabelle with abandoning the cause of legitimacy for illegitimacy, which, in the language of the smart-set, means having preferred Count Galeazzo Ciano to the Prince of Piedmont who, according to the conservative classes, embodied the principle of legitimacy, that is, of social order and continuity, and who appeared to be the only man capable of insuring a peaceful recovery from the upheaval within a constitutional framework. If there is any prince in Europe richly endowed with virtue, it is Humbert of Savoy. His grace, good looks and smiling simplicity of manner are the virtues the Italian people demand from their princes. However, he lacked some of the gifts that were indispensable for shouldering the task which the conservative classes assigned to him. The Prince of Piedmont thought that he had as much intelligence as he needed, but not so much as others thought that he needed. To say that he lacked a sense of personal honor would be unfair. He had a sense of honor, but not to a degree that conservatives expect from a prince in moments of danger. In the vocabulary of frightened conservatives the term "personal honor" in a prince means a particular kind of honor that is concerned with saving not only the monarchical principle, statutory institutions and dynastic interests, but also everything back of that principle—the institutions and interests that constitute the social order. Nor was there anyone in the Prince of Piedmont's entourage who could be expected to grasp what the term "sense of honor" means to conservatives during days of serious and dangerous social upheaval.
Many people pinned their hopes on the Princess of Piedmont, but she was not a woman with whom Isabelle could get along. During moments of serious social upheaval, when not only the Royal family and their dynastic interests, but everything is at stake and in danger, a Princess Isabelle Colonna, Sursock by birth, cannot conceive of coming to terms with a Princess of Piedmont except on equal terms. Isabelle called her "the Fleming" and, falling from Isabelle's thin lips, the word brought forth a vision out of a Flemish picture of one of those fleshy girls with red hair, wide hips and a lazy, greedy mouth. Isabelle was of the opinion that certain attitudes assumed by the Princess of Piedmont and certain strange, indeed rather foolhardy contacts maintained by her with opponents of the monarchy and even communists, justified the surmise that the Princess of Piedmont was inclined to prefer the advice of men, even of foes, to the confidences of women, even of friends. "She has no friends, and she does not want any," was the inference Isabelle drew, and she was deeply concerned about it, not on her own behalf of course, but on behalf of the pauvre Flamande.
Between the Prince of Piedmont and Count Galeazzo Ciano Isabelle could only choose the latter. Yet among the many reasons that induced her to prefer Count Ciano to the Prince of Piedmont was one that was a grave error of judgment. Unquestionably, from a political and historical view Ciano was the most genuine representative of the principles of illegitimacy that among the conservative classes was known as "a tamed revolution," and a tamed revolution is always more advantageous for the object of social preservation than a raging, or merely a stupid and inept reaction. But Isabelle made a fatal mistake in permitting her choice to be influenced by an opinion she shared with many people that Ciano was the "Anti-Mussolini," that in fact as well as in the minds of the Italian people he embodied the only policy which could "save what can be saved," namely,- a policy of friendship with Britain and America and finally, that, if not "the new man" sought for and awaited by everyone—Galeazzo at thirty-six was too young to be considered a new man in a country where men begin to be regarded as new only when they are past seventy—he was at least the man of tomorrow required by danger and the complexity of the situation. Later it became apparent how grievous was this mistak
e, and how pregnant with consequences. Some day it will be perceived that Isabelle was merely a tool of Providence—the very Providence with which Isabelle maintained such good relations through the Vatican—in speeding and evolving a style for the agony of a society that was fated to die.
Many people shared with Isabelle the delusion that Count Galeazzo Ciano was the "Anti-Mussolini," the man to whom London and Washington looked expectantly. Galeazzo himself, thanks to his vanity and smug optimism, was secretly convinced that he was viewed with favor by English and American public opinion,- that in speculating about the future, London and Washington considered him the only man in Italy who could take over Mussolini's complex legacy and, after the inevitably disastrous ending of the war, accomplish a transition from the Mussolini order to a new order agreeable to the liberal, Anglo-Saxon civilization, without causing irreparable ruin, unnecessary bloodshed or a serious social upheaval; finally, he believed himself the one man who could guarantee to London and Washington a social order and, above all, a necessary continuity of social organization that had been badly shaken by Mussolini, and was now threatened with complete destruction by the war.
How could the unfortunate Isabelle avoid sharing this delusion? A Levantine by birth, an Egyptian in fact, she loved Britain through her nature, education, habits and moral and material interests. Consequently she was inclined, almost predestined to look for or imagine in others what she strongly and deeply felt herself and wanted other people to feel. Moreover, in observing Galeazzo's nature, character, manners, and external attitudes that easily could be mistaken for political convictions, she had discovered a number of traits that inspired her with confidence and opened her heart to great and lively hopes—traits that formed a kind of spiritual kinship between her and Count Ciano,- the lower, so to speak, Levantine traits in the Italian character that never had been so conspicuous as when the crisis, the war, began to move toward its inevitable conclusion. Galeazzo had an abundance of such traits in a particularly sharp and apparent form. He was aware of them and was on occasion complacent about them, maybe because of the origin of his family that was more Magna Grecian than Tuscan. His ancestors, simple fishermen who owned a few wretched boats, hailed from Formia near Gaeta.
However, he was born in Leghorn which of all Italian cities shows the most vivid and colorful traces and the greatest immediacy and reality of the Levant—or because of the unfortunate educational effects of his exceptional good luck, or because of his peculiar conception of wealth, power, glory and love—a conception strangely similar to that of a Pasha. Isabelle had good reason to sense instinctively another Sursock in Galeazzo.
Thus within a short time Isabelle became the arbiter of Roman political life in the strictly worldly meaning that the word "political" has in the smart-set. To an inexperienced observer who never looked beyond the various aspects of smiling arrogance, she might even have appeared happy. But her happiness as it always happens in a corrupt society when it comes on evil and calamitous days, through a subconscious force, gradually assumed the semblance of moral indifference and sad cynicism that were faithfully mirrored by the small court gathered around the table of the palace in Piazza Santi Apostoli.
Everything best and worst that Rome could offer in names, manners, reputations and behavior sat around that table. To be asked to the Colonna Palace became the supreme and fairly easily attainable ambition of young women who belonged to the Roman smart-set, of neglected beauties from the North who were beginning to cross the fateful threshold—scions of Lombard, Piedmontese and Venetian families who more than once had succeeded in mixing in their veins new and obscure blood of the Cianos with their own ancient and illustrious blood. There were also minor actresses of the Roman film colony who, during the later days, seemed to attract Count Ciano more and more through a kind of weariness, quite Proustian in character, the Guermantes way, or through his illusion of craving for sincerity.
Every day there was a greater number of "Galeazzo's widows," those simple-minded favorites who had fallen into disfavor with Count Ciano—who was always ready to seek out new loves and was as fickle in matters of love as he was in all others. They were in the habit of pouring their tears, their confessions and their jealous rages on Isabelle's bosom when she had a "widow's day" three times each week. On these days at designated hours between three and five in the afternoon, Isabelle was at home to the "widows." She welcomed them with open arms and a smiling face, as if to congratulate them on some danger that they had escaped or on an unexpected bit of good luck; she seemed to experience an extraordinary joy, a peculiar, almost physical pleasure, a morbid and sensual gratification in mingling her shrill laughter and her irrepressible gay words with the tears and complaints of the unfortunate "widows," who instead of suffering with sincere grief and with deep pangs of a true love, were motivated by spite, humiliation and rage. Those were the moments when Isabelle's malignant genius, her genius for intrigue and delusion, rose to a height and nobility of pure art, of a free and voluntary game, of a disinterested immorality that was almost innocence. In that art, in that game of Isabelle's materiam superabat opus, Isabelle's great secret, probed for so many years, spied upon and scrutinized in vain by the evil curiosity of all of Rome, would have been revealed to an indiscreet observer at such times if indiscreet observers had been allowed to witness the pathetic, malicious scenes of Isabelle's triumphs and of the humiliation of the "widows." To the shocked and troubled observer, Isabelle's queer joy was enough to cast a revealing, turbid and pathetic light upon her complex, mysterious and yet unhappy mind.
Around Galeazzo and his elegant and servile court the desert landscape of indifference, contempt or hatred, which was by then the moral landscape of unfortunate Italy, was daily closing in. There were moments when Isabelle felt the gloomy horizon closing in on her, but she had no eyes for anything she did not want to see,- she was completely wrapped up in her hopes, and in the machinations of her unselfish intrigue that was intended to allow Italy to overcome the awful and unavoidable trial of defeat and to seek refuge like a new Andromeda in the loving arms of the British Perseus. The fact that everything was crumbling around her, that Count Ciano, with his fickle vanity, revealed more each day his severance from the realities of Italian life, confirming what she had known for a long time, what she had been the first one and, perhaps, the only one to discern: Galeazzo's complete lack of influence on Italian life, his purely formal and decorative value, his sole significance as a pretext—all this, instead of overwhelming her mind with bitterness and despair, instead of unsealing her eyes and making her aware of her fatal mistake, only strengthened her lofty and high-minded delusion and added new grounds for her pride. Galeazzo was the man of tomorrow. What if he were not the man of today? All alone Isabelle still believed in him. That young man loved by the gods, that young man whom the benevolent and envious gods had heaped with such extraordinary gifts and even more extraordinary favors, would some day save Italy, and carry her in his arms through the flames to the safe and generous bosom of Britain. There was the fervor of a Flora MacDonald about her mission as an apostle.
Isabelle conducted an able and tireless campaign through the Vatican, where Osborne, His British Majesty's Minister to the Holy See, had taken refuge since the beginning of the war—to make London and Washington aware of the love and respect that the entire Italian people had for Count Ciano. Nothing could free her from the delusion that Galeazzo was the only man in Italy on whom British and American policy could depend, the only man whom London and Washington kept secretly ready for the day of reckoning, that is for the day which Englishmen describe as "the morning after the night before." Even the wisdom of the many and powerful friends she had at the Vatican, their persistent doubts, their advice of moderation and humility, their tightening of lips and shaking of heads, and the icy reserve of the British Minister Osborne could not shake Isabelle's faith. If anyone had told her, "Galeazzo is too much loved by the gods to be able to save himself"—if anyone had revealed to her t
he fate granted as a supreme favor by envious gods to those whom they love best and had said, "It is Galeazzo's fate to be Mussolini's lamb at the approaching and inevitable Easter and that is why he is being fattened by Mussolini," the halls of the Colonna Palace would have resounded with Isabelle's shrill laughter. "The very idea, my dear!" Isabelle, like Galeazzo, was too much loved by the gods.
During the years when war began to reveal its true, mysterious face, a kind of sinister complicity sprang up between Isabelle and Galeazzo, a complicity that gradually swept them, as if by an invisible force, toward an ever more flagrant moral indifference, to a doom that follows a long and habitual acceptance of laxity and mutual deception. The law that governed their relationship was the same that governed the dinners and gay parties in the Palazzo Colonna—not the Proustian code of Faubourg Saint-Germain, not that of Mayfair of recent years, not that of a still newer Park Avenue, but the easy and affluent social code of the fashionable, modern sections of Athens, Cairo and Constantinople. It was an indulgent code based on caprice and boredom, and it functioned without any scruples. In a corrupt court where Isabelle reigned as the servile queen, Galeazzo assumed the role of a Pasha. Fat, rosy, smiling and despotic, he needed only slippers and turban to be in harmony with the decadent, saccharine atmosphere of Palazzo Colonna.
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