‘Poor girl! Poor dear girl!… Like a mad woman she is, just like a mad woman … And calling out, “Sisters! Sisters!” …’
Now Lucrezia also was weeping, Chiara said between her sobs:
‘I’m going to the convent …’
‘Your Excellency would be doing holy work … The Mother Abbess too was sobbing, “the poor princess! a worthy servant of God!” ’
Cousin Graziella offered to accompany her; then seeing the princess did not know where to turn:
‘I’d better stay and help Margherita,’ she said to Chiara, and the latter got up, while everyone gave messages:
‘Give her a kiss from me … And from me … Tell her I’ll come to see her tomorrow …’ And Don Giacinto called out, ‘Marchese, marchese … Accompany your wife …’
Amid this confusion, while the marchesa was going off with her husband, Don Blasco at last appeared, his big face gleaming with sweat, and a tricorn on his head. He came in without a greeting to anyone, and exclaiming:
‘I said it, didn’t I?… It was bound to end like this!’
No one replied. The Prior lowered his eyes to the floor as if looking for something. Donna Ferdinanda did not even seem to have noticed her brother’s arrival. The monk began to walk from one end of the room to the other, mopping the sweat on his neck and still talking to himself:
‘Pig-headed!… pig-headed! To the very last!… To go and die in that twister’s hands. I foretold it, eh?… Where is he? Hasn’t he come? And to think he’s master here!’
As no one breathed a word, Cousin Graziella took it on herself to observe:
‘Uncle, at such a moment …’
‘What’s that mean, at such a moment?’ replied the monk caught on the raw. ‘She’s dead, may God glorify her!… But what’s to be said about it? That she’s done something wonderful?… And what about Giacomo?… Has he gone?… Has he gone alone?… Why does no one else go?… Has he forbidden others to go?…’
‘No, Excellency …’ replied the princess timidly. ‘He left as soon as he heard the news.’
‘I wanted to go with him …’ said Lucrezia, whereupon the Benedictine pounced on her:
‘You? What for? Always you women interfering! D’you think you are the only ones who can settle things?… Where’s Ferdinando … Hasn’t he come yet?’
At that moment arrived the Cavaliere Don Eugenio, and Don Cono Canalà, another of the hangers-on. Don Cono entered on tiptoe, as if afraid of breaking something, and stopping in front of the princess, waving his arms, exclaimed:
‘Immense calamity!… Immeasurable catastrophe!… Words die on lips …’ while the Cavaliere read Signor Marco’s note.
Meanwhile Don Blasco was wandering round like a spinning-top, stopping by doors, looking down the row of rooms, seeming to sniff the air as he muttered:
‘Such haste!… Such devotion!’ and other, incomprehensible, words.
Within the group of relatives each was now giving his own opinion. The Prior, next to the duchess and to his Aunt Ferdinanda, was talking in a low voice about his mother’s ‘unfortunate obstinacy’, but every now and then, as if afraid of doing wrong by discussing the dead woman’s wishes, however respectfully, he would interrupt himself and bow his head. Cousin Graziella was worrying about the lack of news from the Belvedere:
‘Giacomo could have sent someone down!…’
At this Don Eugenio offered to go up if a carriage was harnessed for him; then the princess, embarrassed and confused, did not know what to do, and observed in her cousin’s ear:
‘I don’t know … Giacomo may not like it …’
Then Donna Graziella intervened:
‘Let’s wait a little longer; maybe Cousin Giacomo will return himself.’
The Prior and the duchess were now asking again:
‘What about Ferdinando? Why isn’t he here?’
The hangers-on hurried off to question Baldassarre. The major-domo replied:
‘I did not send anyone to the Cavaliere Ferdinando, as the Signor Prince told me that he would pass by there himself.’
‘He may have gone to the Belvedere too … Or he’d be here by now.’
Anyway it took some time to reach the Pietra dell’Ovo; and in fact the marchesa returned first from the convent, having been given by her sister, the nun, a habit for the dead woman to wear.
‘Touching sign of filial piety!’ murmured Don Cono to Don Eugenio.
No one else spoke in those moments of emotion; only Cousin Graziella, drying her red eyes, suggested into the princess’s ear:
‘I’d like to take advantage of this moment to induce Uncle Blasco to make it up with Aunt Ferdinanda and Don Lodovico. What d’you say, Margherita?’
‘As you think … if you think … you do …’
And Cousin Graziella went to look for the monk. She could not find him, he had vanished. Baldassarrc, told to track him down, discovered him at the other end of the house, before a locked door leading to the dead woman’s apartments. Hearing footsteps, the monk swung round.
‘Who’s there?’
‘They are awaiting Your Paternity in the Yellow Drawing-room.’
The Benedictine turned back with a snort. Cousin Graziella came to meet him with a mysterious air and said:
‘Excellency, come and embrace your sister … and let Lodovico kiss your hand …’ He turned his back and exclaimed out loud so that all could hear him even down in the courtyard:
‘Let’s cut out the charades!’
Donna Graziella shrugged her shoulders, with a gesture of sad resignation.
The monk, noticing the marchese, who had returned with his wife from the convent, went up to him, seized him by an arm and pulled him into the Portrait Gallery.
‘What are you doing here?… Why haven’t you left? The other one’s gone …’
‘What for, Excellency?’
‘Will you always be a ninny? That other has gone there! By now he’ll have made a clean sweep …’
‘Excellency!’ protested his nephew, scandalised.
Don Blasco looked him in the whites of the eyes as if wanting to eat him. But then, as Baldassarre rushed by, he turned on his heels booming:
‘Ah, no? Go stew in your own juice, the lot of you …’
After giving all his orders to the servants, Baldassarre was now in a great rush, as messages began to arrive from more distant relatives, friends, and acquaintances who were sending to express their condolences and get news of the survivors. The major-domo received the more respectable messengers in the antechamber of the administrative offices, leaving servants to the porter; but many among these were bearers of funeral gifts: trays of cakes, jellies and chocolates, crystallised fruit, sponge cakes, bottles of muscatel and rosolio wine. Baldassarre went rushing round arranging these things, and announcing the gifts to the family, and thanking the givers, and giving audience to new arrivals. Cousin Graziella, with cupboard keys at her waist, was acting as mistress of the house, to save the princess. The Cavaliere Don Eugenio was also giving a hand, and although the hangers-on were working like domestics and protesting, ‘Leave things to us,’ he was emptying trays to be returned, carrying their contents into the dining-room and every now and again thrusting a handful of sweets into his pocket.
In place of the Duchess Radali, who had left, being unable to leave her husband alone for long, another ten visitors arrived: the Baron Vita, the Prince of Roccasciano, the Giliforte and Grazzeri families, and Don Carlo Carvona, Cousin Graziella’s husband. As the day wore on letters and notes of condolence poured in from all sides. The Royal Intendant sent to express his sorrow at the mourning of a family so devoted to the King and the good cause; the Bishop participated in his dear children’s sorrow; from the Uzeda orphanage, the old folks’ home, and the other charitable institutes founded or supported by the Francalanza family came rectors and chaplains, many a black cassock, or poor tenants themselves, but these were not allowed to go upstairs and had to express their regrets to the porter
or the under-coachman. The Garrison Commander, the President of the High Court, all the authorities, the entire city came to condole with the family. Groups of beggars waited in the hope of alms being distributed. Many people asked insistently for Signor Marco. Hearing that he had not yet come from the Belvedere, some went off to come back later; others began walking up and down in front of the palace, patiently waiting to catch him as he passed.
The two courtyards looked like a fairground, with so many carriages lined up in the shade. Horses, with heads inside fly-bags, ruminated and every now and again grated at the cobbles with their hoofs. One by one, as dusk came on, servants of the relatives arrived, to await their masters and mistresses, and make lively chat, all about the event and its consequences. The women, seeing the confusion, and the coming and going and processions of messengers and letters, were all compassion for the young princess: ‘Poor lady! At this hour she must be in tortures …’ In fact she suffered from a kind of nervous disease by which she could not bear to be in a crowd or touch things handled by others. Luckily her cousin was there to help. And others were reflecting philosophically: ‘Now if the prince’s mother had died six years ago instead of today, that cousin, instead of helping the mistress, would be mistress here herself.’ But the old princess had forbidden the marriage. The prince had obeyed his mother and married Donna Margherita Grazzeri. It must be said, though, that Donna Graziella had behaved very well. Married to the Cavaliere Carvano, she had been most affectionate to the aunt who had refused her as daughter-in-law, and treated her former lover’s wife like a real sister. ‘And what about the prince? Maybe he remembers having loved her that way?…’ But there were also many praising what the dead woman had done; she had turned out right in opposing that marriage, since the two former lovers had set their hearts at rest. ‘A great woman, the princess! After all, she did pull the family together when it was already bankrupt!’ And all asked, ‘Who’ll she leave things to?…’ But who could know, as she had never confided in anyone at all, even her own children?… ‘If young Count Raimondo had been here, though!…’
Then the prince’s partisans came out flatly with, ‘It should all go to the master, if that mad woman hasn’t played another of her tricks!…’ For she had loathed her eldest son and made a favourite of young Count Raimondo, and the young count, though called again and again by his mother as she felt her end near, had not moved from Florence …
At the arrival of Fra’ Carmelo, sent by the Abbot of San Nicola for news of Don Lodovico and Don Blasco, the conversation took another turn. Fra’ Carmelo knew the palace well, as he had often accompanied Don Lodovico there when he was a novice, and all the servants loved him, he was so good, with his big face which looked as if it was about to burst, and its rolls of fat down the nape of the neck.
‘The poor princess!… What a tragedy!’
He praised the dead woman and recalled the days of Father Lodovico’s novitiate, when, taking the boy home on leave, he would bring her little presents of fruit which the good lady had deigned to accept.
‘So easy-going!… So warmhearted!… Poor Father Lodovico! How he must have wept!’
The women exclaimed:
‘Imagine! A saint like him!…’
And Fra’ Carmelo:
‘A saint indeed! There are no other monks like him. It’s not for nothing he was made Prior at thirty!’
‘His Uncle Don Blasco is not like him, is he?…’ said the head coachman suddenly, with a wink.
‘He’s different. People can’t all be alike, can they? But he’s good too!… A gentleman too!…’
The conversation had just reached this point, when the distant jingle of harness bells made them all quiet. Giuseppe peered through the wicket and flung open the gates. The curricle of that morning entered at full tilt and from it alit the prince and Signor Marco, who was holding a valise, while all doffed hats and Don Blasco peered from the first-floor loggia.
The reappearance of the head of the family in the Yellow Drawing-room produced renewed emotion: sighs, sobs, mute handshakes. The prince was still pale and spoke with an effort, making sweeping gestures of distress.
‘Too late!… Nothing more to be done!… Till last night she was quite well, in fact ate a couple of eggs and drank a cup of milk with appetite … At dawn this morning, suddenly she called out and …’ he fell silent, as if unable to continue.
Signor Marco, having put the valise down, added:
‘The catastrophe was impossible to foresee … In the first moments, I hoped it was only a stroke … But alas, the sad truth …’
Chiara and Cousin Graziella wept. The Prior was deploring in particular that no priest had been present at her last moments, but Signor Marco assured him that she had confessed two days before and that the Vicar-General Ragusa had arrived in time to give her absolution. Meanwhile the prince on his side was saying:
‘We’ve improvised a mortuary chapel … All the flowers in the villa sent in from every side …’
‘What about Ferdinando?’ asked Chiara.
‘Hasn’t he come?… Ah!’ he suddenly struck his forehead, ‘I was to go past and warn him … I quite forgot … Baldassarre!… Baldassarre!’
But in the middle of this Don Blasco, who had been eyeing the valise as if it contained contraband, pulled him by a sleeve and asked:
‘What about the Will?’
The prince’s reply was in quite a different tone, no longer sorrowful, but very precise and scrupulous.
‘Signor Marco here,’ he said, ‘has informed me that our mother’s last wishes are deposited with the Notary Rubino. We will await, if you agree, the arrival of Raimondo and our uncle the duke. Meanwhile we have sealed up all that was to be found so as to render a strict account, at the proper time, to whoever it is due … But Signor Marco has a document about the funeral in his possession. I think this should be read out at once …’
And Signor Marco drew a piece of paper from his pocket and read out amidst deep silence:
‘On this day, the nineteenth of May 1855, being in health of mind and not of body, I the undersigned, Teresa Uzeda Princess of Francalanza, recommend my soul to God and dispose as follows. The day that it will please the Lord to call me to Him, I order that my body be handed over to the Reverend Capuchin Fathers that it may be embalmed by them and kept in the necropolis of their friary church. I desire the funeral to be celebrated with ceremonial proper to our family in the church of the said Fathers, in sign of my devotion to the Blessed Ximena, our glorious forebear, whose body is venerated in the same church. During the funeral and after my body has been embalmed, I desire, order and command that it be robed in the habit of a nun of San Placido, and that from the girdle be hung the most holy Rosary given me by my beloved daughter Sister Maria of the Cross on the day when she took her vows, and that on my breast be placed the ivory crucifix, given me by my beloved consort Prince Consalvo of Francalanza. In sign of particular penitence and humility, I expressly impose that my head be supported upon a simple and bare tile; such are my wishes and no others. For my tomb in the Capuchin church I order to be constructed a glass coffin, inside which my body will be placed, robed as above: it will have a lock with three keys, one of which will be given to my son Raimondo Count of Lumera, the second, in sign of particular benevolence for the services he has rendered me, to Signor Marco Roscitano, my procurator and general administrator, and the third to the Reverend Father Guardian of the said Friary of Capuchins. In case, however, of the said Signor Roscitano ceasing to administer my household, I order his key be passed to my other son Lodovico, Prior in the Monastery of San Nicola dell’Arena. Such are my wishes and no other.
TERESA UZEDA.’
Signor Marco, who had bowed respectfully at the passage relating to himself, lowered the sheet of paper. The prince, looking round at those present, said:
‘Our mother’s wish is law to us. All will be done as she has laid down.’
‘In full and without exception …’ confirmed the Prior,
bowing his head.
Don Blasco was puffing like a bellows, and did not even wait for the meeting to break up. Seizing the marchese by an overcoat button, he exclaimed:
‘More charades?… To the very last?… Making herself a figure of fun …’
Signor Marco had scarcely gone up to the administrative offices near his own little rooms, to give dependants appropriate orders, when persons waiting to see him appeared. The chandler of San Francesco came to offer him candles of the finest quality, worked in the Venetian mode, at six tarì; the music master Mascione brought a letter from Lawyer Spedalotti, begging Signor Marco to have the young composer’s Requiem sung; Brusa, the painter, asked for the contract for decorations at the princess’s solemn funeral.
‘How d’you know there’ll be a solemn funeral?’
‘For a lady like the princess!’
‘Come back tomorrow …’
And Baldassarre called:
‘Signor Marco! Signor Marco!… The prince …’
But new petitioners arrived. No-one had yet said so, but it was known that the Princess of Francalanza could not go into the next world without much pomp and much spending of money, and all were hoping to earn some of it. Raciti, the first violin of the Municipal Orchestra, offered a funeral Mass composed by his son; on hearing that Mascione had a letter from Spedalotti he had rushed off to request a more weighty recommendation from Baron Vita; Santo Ferro, who was in charge of upkeep of the public gardens, hoped to be given charge of the floral decorations for the lying-in-state; but Baldassarre, from the courtyard, was calling out again:
‘Signor Marco! Signor Marco!… The prince!…’ Signor Marco broke brusquely away from the petitioners:
‘Oh go to hell … I’ve other things to do now!’
On Saturday morning the Capuchin Church was like an ant-heap, with more people there than came to visit the Sepulchre even on Maundy Thursday. All night a din of hammers, axes and saws had come from the church and the windows had been blocked since the day before. Very early, in view of the curious crowds milling on terrace and steps, there had been nailed over the great doors a huge draped curtain of black velvet with silver fringes, on which could be read in gilt lettering:
The Viceroys Page 4
