So Donna Isabella risked nothing; in fact being so young and so unable to resist temptation it suited her better to return to her first lover rather than look for new ones: one mistake would be so much more easily forgiven … But for Raimondo things were different. There were his children, two innocent babes to be considered! And people pitied the countess, so gentle, so sweet, so devoted to her husband, yet condemned—such is the world!—to a life of anguish.
The servants in the Francalanza palace could talk of nothing else; they even forgot Benedetto Giulente’s engagement to the Signorina Lucrezia. This event, although foreseen and long discussed, had already stirred up again the factions into which the prince’s familiars were divided; and while Giuseppe the porter would doff his cap and bow at Benedetto’s arrival, as if the master of the house, no less, were entering, Pasqualino Riso did not even touch his cap from under the arch of the second courtyard where he was lounging, and scarcely deigned to lower his pipe and turn aside if he felt like spitting.
Baldassarre alone kept his usual fine impartiality, did his job and treated the Signorina’s future husband as he saw the prince treat him: very politely but aloofly. ‘Masters are masters,’ the major-domo would say, and if he heard the lower orders of servants discuss too warmly their young mistress’s choice he would send ostlers back to the stables and scullions to the kitchens with, ‘Suppose she was your own sister, animal?’ What business was it of theirs if Donna Ferdinanda and Don Blasco, in agreement as always in spite of their mutual dislike, no longer came to the palace because they disapproved of the marriage?
Actually an Uzeda marrying a lawyer did rather worry Baldassarre, though the young man had studied for his own pleasure and not to carry on a profession. And although not a grandee he had been brought up a gentleman and called his father and mother ‘Excellency’; also on first coming to his bride’s home he had tipped the servants in a proper manner. Perhaps his father and mother were a bit coarse, but the young couple would not have to share a house with them after all. For all these reasons Baldassarre would not allow his dependants to chatter criticisms, but gossip went on and only the young count’s arrival turned it in another direction.
To the servants it was obvious that their young master Raimondo had not come on business as some tried to suggest; if he had he would have brought at least a trunk, not just that grip with a couple of shirts and pairs of socks and pants; nor would he have looked so preoccupied, he who was always in such good humour when away from his wife! Anyway if there had been business it would have been with his brother the prince; instead of which every day he visited his aunt Donna Ferdinanda, who had served as cover in the early days of his relationship with Donna Isabella. And Donna Ferdinanda told everyone her own opinion frankly: things being as they were, considering the incompatibility of the husband and wife’s characters, there was nothing for it but separation by agreement; put the girls in college, marry them off as soon as possible, and thereafter each go their own way.
The prince, on the other hand, never mentioned wife or children to his brother, never even asked if they were alive or dead. On his side Raimondo seemed to have left his tongue at home, and if he did open his mouth spoke distractedly whatever the topic, taking less interest than ever in family affairs. He had not said a word about the agreement with the legatees, or about Lucrezia’s marriage, as things of no interest to him or about which he had already shown his own opinion. And he scarcely noticed his future brother-in-law Giulente at all.
Lucrezia was triumphant; Benedetto came to pay her court every evening; in six months he would be her husband. The transaction forced on her, the sacrifice made by herself and almost imposed on the others, she did not even remember. The young man had scarcely let her say a word about money, as he wanted her and not her dowry, and such were the conditions under which he had obtained the prince’s consent. Yet this consent was so cold that it might have been forced. And now Don Blasco and Donna Ferdinanda no longer came to the palace, and even Don Eugenio put on a forbidding look when he saw his future nephew.
But the more her relations seemed to take against the marriage, the more affectionate Lucrezia was to Benedetto, ‘Don’t bother about them; they’re all mad! They hate you without reason now, and one day they’ll all make it up without reason …’ And she would describe their various foibles, suggest ways of disarming them, of taking them at their weakest spot.
The young man had no need of her advice; he was doing all he could to get himself accepted by his future relatives, well aware that, though he might have made a better marriage financially, he would never have made a nobler. And the Giulente had a mania about being nobles, or at least ennobled by the number of judges in the family; their greatest grief was the abolition of primogeniture. Meanwhile they carefully preserved diplomas and portraits of all the doctors, magistrates and judges from whom they descended, and boasted of noble alliances contracted, particularly in the most recent generations.
In the eyes of the undiscerning they were considered as nobles, and as untitled nobles were called Cavaliere. But purists kept them at a certain distance. In such conditions Benedetto’s marriage with the Prince of Francalanza’s sister was a real stroke of fortune, and was considered as such by Don Paolo and his wife Donna Eleonora. So proud were they of having brought it off that they never even noticed the coldness and hostility of the Uzeda, or attributed that to Benedetto’s liberalism. The young man, vain as they but less dazzled, did notice and set himself to overcome it.
The princess’s sympathy he captured at once by avoiding shaking hands and by praising Teresina’s beauty and grace. It was not very difficult to conquer Don Eugenio, who had affected not to notice him at first. Put up to it by Lucrezia, the young man had begun to talk of historical and artistic matters and about the Uzeda Viceroys, and listened open-mouthed to the cavaliere’s opinions. Then he begged the old man to show him his art collection, and went into paeans of praise at the sight of all the pots and daubs, laying on superlatives before Titians and Tintorettos which he declared superior to all pictures by the same painters in the Naples Museum.
On Raimondo’s arrival, though, Benedetto often found himself between two fires, for when Don Eugenio and Don Cono praised the city’s glories and buildings Raimondo broke his silence only to denigrate them. Then Giulente would try to agree with both, not knowing quite how to set about that as they never agreed between themselves. Such was Raimondo’s admiration for all that was not Sicilian that he almost despised the nobility of his own family, while Don Eugenio was hard at work on his Chronological History. As this title did not seem sufficiently impressive, he had changed it to—Historico-Chronological Disceptation. And when Don Cono sustained that a ‘disceptation’ was not the same as a ‘dissertation’ the pair of them would start discussions even longer and more vivacious than those about whether to write the word ‘solemn’ with one or with two ‘l’s’. Asked for his opinion, Benedetto, thinking less about words than about the cold way he was being treated, and the open war declared by the monk and the spinster, replied:
‘I think they must be synonymous …’
‘Did you hear, you stubborn head?’ Don Eugenio then said triumphantly to Don Cono. ‘Will you surrender at last?’
The prince on the other hand made different use of his future brother-in-law. In May 1861 the Sardinian Code of Law had been substituted for the Neapolitan, and judges, lawyers and litigants were now going into frenzies over those new laws. Benedetto, partly from love of study, partly from patriotic zeal, had mastered them with his tutor. So, discoursing of this and that, the prince would get the young, man to make comparisons between the two codes, show where they differed and agreed. Sometimes, as if he were talking generally about imaginary cases of no interest to himself, he would take what amounted to legal consultations. One day he asked what the other thought of the legacy to the convent.
Giulente, although he actually thought the opposite, replied it was a doubtful case and that the nullity of t
he deed might easily be sustained. To ingratiate himself with all these Uzeda he supported and encouraged their pretensions, but from pride at frequenting their home and joy at becoming a relation he accepted that role and came to espouse the causes of his future relations quite sincerely; the cavaliere’s Disceptation seemed to him a genuinely useful work; the prince’s reasoning genuinely plausible. His father’s vanity about aristocracy and his uncle’s infatuation with the Liberals were now linked in him, so that, glorying in his descent from Giolenti, Master of Law, he maintained, in connection with the Duke of Oragua’s election, that the government of the country should be taken over by ‘us’, by, that is, ‘an aristocracy capable, like the English, of understanding and satisfying the nation’s needs …’ But at this point he lost the thread, for the prince and the cavaliere were smiling, not so much from contempt for Liberal theories as at hearing him use that ‘us’, at seeing a Giulente take seriously his own nobility.
When the young man talked of his ancestors, of the honours they had gained, of his family’s noble traditions, of their coat-of-arms, the prince would stroke his whiskers, Don Eugenio look into the air, the princess lower her eyes, and the hangers-on wink at each other; even Lucrezia would look glum at this sudden chill in the atmosphere, and agree by a nod but not dare to by word.
One evening he was talking of a Canon Giulente who had flourished the century before and been celebrated for works on ecclesiastical law, particularly for a great treaty On Marriage. Raimondo, who was present, seemed interested in this subject.
‘The treatment is new,’ Benedetto was saying, ‘in the chapter about impediments, impedients and diriments. I’ve had many a work on this subject through my hands, but the development, richness of quotation and comment of that are really admirable.’
‘Yes, yes …’ the cavaliere confirmed this time. ‘I’ve read it too.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Raimondo. ‘Impediments?’
‘Impedients and diriments.’
‘To me, though,’ observed Don Eugenio, ‘impediment and impedient seem the same thing.’
‘Yes, Excellency’ (he already called his future uncle that), ‘but I said “impediment” to distinguish it from “diriment”; in other words, obstacles which impede the celebration and obstacles …’
‘Excuse me!’ interrupted the Gentleman of the Bedchamber. ‘An impediment that impedes must be nonsense—isn’t it? Surely no impediment can be a help?’
Very patiently Benedetto went over his demonstration again, but the cavaliere kept on repeating obstinately that the ‘wording’ was confused, and only stopped when Raimondo exclaimed irritably:
‘Uncle, go and tell that to the canonists! If that’s the right legal expression! And what are the diriments?’ he asked Giulente.
‘The diriment impediments are those which annul a marriage after it has already been contracted.’
‘Such as?’
‘Eh?… There are over a dozen of them … fourteen to be exact. Before there were twelve, then the Council of Trent added two … It’s some time since I studied them. Nowadays,’ he added turning towards Lucrezia, ‘rather than the impediments I ought to be studying the reasons contained in the sacramento magno.’
‘The Blessed Sacrament …?’ exclaimed Lucrezia, who was quite in the clouds … ‘It’s exposed in the cathedral.’
Everyone smiled and the subject was dropped for that evening. But a day or two later Raimondo asked his future brother-in-law again:
‘So you haven’t remembered what the diriment impediments are?’
‘Yes … but not all of them,’ replied Benedetto, who did not want to explain certain things in the presence of his future wife. So he said them in Latin.
‘Error, conditio, votum, cognatio, crimen …’
‘Enough! Enough! It’s useless, I don’t understand …’ Raimondo turned his back on him.
But before leaving Benedetto called him aside:
‘I couldn’t explain in front of the women. The impediments are these,’ and he then enumerated and explained them all in Italian.
A few days after this discussion the servants down in the courtyard were all a-chatter. A rumour was going round the town that the duke was coming back from Turin for the sole purpose of arranging the young count’s affairs. Baldassarre, when asked if the news was true, shrugged his shoulders.
‘Why should I know! Wait till the duke comes, can’t you?’ But the news was true; it was repeated by Giulente, by his uncle Don Lorenzo, and by all the deputy’s political friends who even talked of going out to meet him if he came by land, and giving him a demonstration of welcome. He arrived by sea and was not alone; Baron Palmi, nominated Senator after the revolution, was with him. The latter, instead of going to the palace as at other times, put up at the hotel. Things seemed very grave. Did this mean a complete break between the count and his wife? That it was now a question of separation? Then what about the duke? Why had he come back too?
In the town the deputy’s arrival caused great excitement, and visitors began pouring in on him at once. Don Lorenzo Giulente and his nephew were the very first, then came authorities, representatives of many political societies, then numbers of citizens of all classes, notabilities, old friends, and new patriots coming to pay their respects to the Honourable Member and thank him for the great things he had done in Turin, and while they were there ask for news of the particular matters with which they had entrusted him. These he received downstairs in the estate offices as at the time of his election, thanked them for their thanks, made a great show of modesty. When questioned, though, by admirers, he would describe the sittings of Parliament, the audience with King Victor Emmanuel and ‘poor’ Cavour, the political life of the capital; and all listened rapt. He had not opened his mouth in Parliament to say either yes or no, but in this room he was not alarmed by his audience, composed as it was of more or less familiar people who were standing deferently before him, and he enjoyed his triumph, chatty as an old magpie, the fatigues of his journey quite forgotten.
Cavour had promised him the earth: what a pity the great minister had died! But the new Government was just as well disposed towards Sicily; soon work would start on railways, ports, great public schemes. To keep watch on these promises being carried out he should not have left the capital at that period, but he had had to come rushing down about grave family affairs … to settle certain matters … His lips remained sealed, but everyone knew what he meant all the same. Visits followed till right on into the evening; those wanting to talk to him privately stayed and seemed determined to sleep there. When he had enough he gave a sign to Don Lorenzo, who led them all away.
But the Honourable Member did not go to bed. Raimondo, warned by Baldassarre that his uncle wanted to talk to him, was awaiting him in great agitation in his room.
‘What d’you want to do?’ began the duke, without bothering about preamble.
‘About what?’ replied his nephew, as if he did not understand.
‘About your wife and family!… Your father-in-law is here, don’t you know?’
‘I know nothing.’
‘After escaping like a fugitive! After not showing your face there for two months! Now I think it’s time this little matter was wound up …’ He was talking in a grave tone of authority, walking up and down the room with hands clasped behind his back; Raimondo was sitting staring at the floor, like a boy frightened by the threat of a rebuke.
‘What have you to say against your wife?’ Don Gaspare suddenly asked, stopping in front of him.
‘Me? Nothing,’
‘That I knew quite well! I just wanted to hear it confirmed from your own mouth. I ask because your conduct could only be explained if you had any complaints against Matilde! Well, why ever did you leave her?’
‘I haven’t left her.’
‘What? You’ve been here two months, you haven’t written her a line, you haven’t done a thing about your family, as if none of them existed? And now you say …’
‘I came because I’d things to do. I can’t be sewn to my wife’s skirts, can I?’ And he looked the other in the face.
‘Well, there’s no question of your being sewn now!’ replied the duke. ‘But no-one who is leaving on business or pleasure or any other reason, just rushes off as you did, leaves his home for a hotel.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Your father-in-law told me … I’ve heard everybody repeat it.’
‘It’s a lie!’ his nephew cried again loudly, almost stridently.
Then the duke beat a retreat.
‘If it’s a lie all the better. Anyway that’s not the important thing … what’s done is done … now we’ve the future to think of. If it’s not true you’ve left your wife, you ought to have no difficulty in going back to her.’
‘I haven’t,’ replied Raimondo, getting up.
His uncle stood looking at him for a moment, as if not sure he had heard properly, then repeated:
‘You’re ready to take her back?’
‘I’m ready to do anything provided they stop all this fuss.’
‘Better still … They must have exaggerated, misinformed me. All the better! Can your father-in-law come tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow or whenever he feels like it! What I want to know is why he went and stayed at the hotel? He could have stayed at home instead of putting on this silly act, causing all this gossip by behaving so idiotically!’ He was talking harshly now, between set teeth, with red eyes. And the duke also changed his tone and exclaimed in agreement:
The Viceroys Page 31
