Everyone knew what sort of woman the old princess had been, how she had tyrannised her children. Had she not ridden roughshod over Chiara’s wishes to give her to the Marchese of Villardita? So she had also violated Raimondo’s to give him the Palmi girl! There were dozens, hundreds of witnesses to affirm that the young count had never had the slightest desire to get married; first relations, the prince, his sisters, in-laws, uncles and aunts, cousins, then his friends, then the servants, and then the whole town.
But to obtain the dissolution of the marriage it had to be shown that in the act of pronouncing the ‘yes’ which tied Don Raimondo for ever, he had felt grave fear. And then Don Eugenio had come before the magistrates to witness that his sister-in-law the princess had had her son accompanied to the parish church by two armed rangers, who if he answered ‘no’, were to bind him, fling him into a carriage waiting near the church, take him into the country and beat him up. Two rangers came down from the Mirabella estate to confirm this testimony, and the coachman also swore to his part of the story, as did the sacristan. And so the Tribunal gave their verdict.
Certain people—Pasqualino found this really too much!—were actually suggesting that these witnesses were false, that the rangers had been paid and that Don Raimondo had given his uncle Don Eugenio a tip of three hundred onze! As if Don Eugenio Uzeda of Francalanza, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to His Majesty Ferdinand II (without duties, however, as Ferdinand was no longer in this world and his descendants had been dismissed) was capable of such an action! As if the judges were people to accept untrue depositions! Others were hinting that, being a man, the young count could not have been cowed by threats and there had never been a case of a marriage annulled because of undue pressure on the husband’s will. There had not yet been, now there was; well, what was there to laugh about? Not even Baron Palmi had found it laughable, for he had taken no part in the case! Gossip said that the baron had let things run on from love of his daughter, whose life was near its end, but Pasqualino just couldn’t understand how some thoughts got into people’s heads! What had Donna Matilde’s illness to do with the baron’s silence? Donna Matilde wouldn’t suddenly get well from pleasure at hearing her marriage had been dissolved, would she? Instead of which she died—Heaven preserve us!—a few months after the count’s marriage to Donna Isabella! So the baron must have remained silent because he knew his son-in-law was telling the truth!
Immediately after making his peace with the prince, Raimondo and Donna Isabella had been reconciled to most of their old opponents. Cousin Graziella in particular had set to work defending them even more warmly than Pasqualino himself, pointing out that passion is ‘blind’, that men are ‘made of flesh and blood’ and so are women, and that the blame for all that had happened could be attributed to the irresponsibility, ‘to say the least’, of the Palmi family. Even so a large part of the nobility still remained hostile to Raimondo and his mistress. But the cousin was full of assurances that gradually they would all be tamed, particularly when the tribunals had done their jobs and granted the divorces; not content with assurances, she also made active propaganda, persuaded the hesitating, faced up to mutterers.
Meanwhile, after thanking Ferdinando for his hospitality, Raimondo had taken an apartment in the Palazzo Roccasciano and set up house there with his future wife. Actually Giacomo, the Prior, the duke, had all advised them to do no such thing but stay up at Pietra dell’Ovo until the day of their legitimate union, and then go off to Naples, Milan or Turin, amid new people. But Donna Isabella had been so affronted by past insults that she wanted to get her revenge and enjoy her triumph.
Raimondo, who had pledged himself to conquer one and all, was still doing what she wanted in spite of himself. His firm intention was to go away as soon as possible, not for the reasons of prudence suggested by his relations but because he avowed he just could not live even a day or two in his native town except from extreme necessity; a few words from her were enough to dissuade him. Might not his relatives be giving that advice because in spite of making up their quarrel, they did not much want to receive her and preferred to know that she was at a distance? Weren’t there still many who greeted her coldly and avoided talking to her?
And he began to splash money on his home, insisted on the wedding being celebrated with the greatest pomp, as if challenging those who had before considered his aim quite impossible. It was a sumptuous occasion which many of those who had most criticised him asked for the great honour of attending, and so Donna Isabella tasted the joy of seeing them at her feet. It was a pity that Cousin Graziella, who had contributed so much to it all, could not enjoy it too, for a few days before, her husband caught a cold which seemed at first quite unimportant but which on the very night of the wedding developed into pneumonia and three days later killed him.
All the Uzeda were at her home on that sad occasion. The prince, particularly, lost his habitual cold mien and showed himself very close to his cousin in her sorrow. She seemed quite inconsolable, and told everyone, amid sobs, how truly good her husband had been, and what an irreparable disaster his death was to her. Only the sight of ‘her dear cousins’, the comforts of ‘the family’ softened her sorrow; her ‘cousins’ and ‘uncles’ were the only people left in the world to her. She put signs of mourning everywhere and only just avoided painting her face black. For a number of months she steadfastly refused to go out, even in a closed carriage at night. The first visit she made, though, was to the prince’s, where she gradually got into the habit of coming often to draw comfort. She would take Teresina in her arms and exclaim in broken tones, ‘My daughter! My daughter!… If God had granted me a daughter like you, I wouldn’t be all alone in the world!… May God always preserve you to your mother’s affection … Oh, daughter! My daughter!…’ and went on so that Princess Margherita, who was very impressionable, would begin crying too.
In time, however, her great sorrow grew calm and composed enough for her to take an interest in worldly matters. Her husband had left her sole heir to a goodly substance, so that she had no worries about the future; but, not knowing how to lay hands on her inheritance, she had appealed to her cousin the prince to put things in order for her. And now she would come to the palace every day, some days more than once. And although there were no business matters to take her there she would often visit Lucrezia and ‘Aunt Ferdinanda’, and ‘Cousin Isabella’. Because of her mourning, however, she never went to the latter’s home on Mondays, the day on which the countess ‘received’.
This custom of receiving on a definite day was a great novelty, much discussed. Donna Isabella, not appeased by the triumph of one single evening and wanting to bend the last stubborn opponents, had introduced it and thus succeeded in giving her salon a special tone and unusual importance, so that the most restive eventually intrigued for the honour of being admitted there. So much so that scarcely three years after first arriving in a vulgar hotel room as a very illegitimate wife with everyone against her, that winter of ’65 she found herself enthroned as genuine Countess of Lumera with a court of admirers around her.
‘Thank you! Thank you!…’ she would cry to Raimondo, flinging her arms round his neck and hugging him tight. ‘You wished it and you achieved it!… Thank you! Thank you!…’ Beneath these caresses he was like marble. With his case won, and the frenzy calmed which had borne him through difficulties and opposition of every kind, he was now adding up what that result had cost him. In a confused, mute fashion—for he would never admit his own blindness—he felt that he had been working away simply to forge a heavier and more unbreakable chain round his neck, when his own longing, his one ardent desire had been to free himself altogether. Discontented, restless, irritable, he would rein himself in before the world, but at home among his own people the slightest thing would make him lose his temper, shout and ill-treat someone. Pasqualino took the worst of the storm on his shoulders; Donna Isabella often felt it threatening her too, but managed to appease it by submission and by always bowing to her
husband’s mood.
Raimondo’s unconscious rancour against himself now turned against his relations. He knew that in various ways, for various reasons, by either encouraging or contradicting him, they had all contributed to his situation, and being unable to blame himself he took it out on them. His wife, to avoid him thinking something else, also began criticising all the Uzeda. And there was no lack of material.
Chiara, for example, who had put on such a scrupulous act when they had not been legally wed, was now getting herself talked about all round town, for the shameful things she allowed in her own home. With her womb in the state it was after the cyst had been cut out she could no longer be touched by her husband. Then what did the mad woman go round complaining of? The state to which she had been reduced? The illness threatening her? Not at all; her great sorrow was being unable to go to bed with Federico! Realising that he, who had nothing wrong with him and was in fact sound as a bell, could not abstain the whole year round, what had she gone and thought of, if you please? Of selecting him a series of buxom maidservants, each prettier than the last, putting them into his bed, and almost attending them herself instead of being attended by them! ‘Isn’t it shameful?… Is she mad?…’ Donna Isabella would exclaim, reminding Raimondo of the story of Chiara’s marriage with that abhorred marchese whom the old princess had to force her daughter to take. ‘And what about the other men? And the other women?’ Lucrezia, for instance? Her madness had taken the opposite direction. After turning everything upside down to marry Giulente, she had gradually come almost to despise him, called him a fool on every possible occasion, detested his politics which had thrilled her before and said right out in his face, ‘I wish Francis II would come back and tie up the lot of you!’ And what about Don Eugenio’s speculations? He, after making the Prince of Roccasciano pay through the nose for pots and shards, then took them off the latter’s wife for a few cents when the gambling demon overcame her and she plucked them off the shelves … And the metamorphosis of Ferdinando? His passion for his country place had seemed boundless; then one fine day he left everything, dropped all his agricultural and mechanical experiments and came to live in town. He never failed to be present at his sister-in-law’s on Mondays, went to the theatre every night, frequented the ladies, and in order not to have to set foot in the estate he had so loved let himself be robbed hand over fist by his agent. ‘Is he mad? Are they all mad?…’ Donna Isabella spoke of nothing else, knowing that by this she was appeasing Raimondo’s humour. He was against the lot of them, yes, but his greatest grudge was against the prince.
Giacomo had not only done his brother moral harm but made him pay through the nose for his support. When going all out to win through and triumph over the immense obstacles with which the dissolution of both marriages was scattered, Raimondo had not even bothered to calculate what his peace with his elder brother was costing; so deeply was he then involved that he might have agreed to handing over all he possessed.
But now on making up accounts he found that Giacomo had taken a good third of his fortune. As he had done with Lucrezia, the prince had presented a bill for hospitality, a very long, one, since it included his former wife’s and his children’s expenses too; then he brought out those old I.O.U.’s which had appeared after their mother’s death and put half of them down to him; then in the bills under power-of-attorney Giacomo showed himself to be creditor for many thousands of onze on interest accumulated from advances. So he had taken two estates, Burgio and Burgitello.
But the biggest trickery had been in the division, for he set down the price of land according to his convenience and kept the best and nearest for himself. In exchange for other property he handed over worthless rents, difficult and uncertain of payment, and not content with all that also made Raimondo renounce the use of the apartment in their ancestral palace, that clause in their mother’s will which had been like a mote in his eye …
Now that the frenzy of the struggle was over, Raimondo was animated by a deep grudge against him, but Donna Isabella did not remind him of these things when talking against his brother, realising that it was a double-edged argument and could twist back on to her. Instead she would criticise her brother-in-law’s overbearing character, his severity towards his wife, his dislike of everyone, his double-dealing with his aunt and uncles. Curious by nature, watchful from self-interest, she now found something going on in her brother-in-law’s house which was a weapon in her hands. ‘Did you notice?… Did you notice?…’ she said to her husband every time they came home from the palace. ‘And to think he acted the moralist too! How he used to preach!… And that stupid Margherita not noticing a thing!’
The princess in fact did not seem to notice that their widowed cousin had been coming to console herself ‘in the family’ every single morning and every single evening for some time. The prince was now busy putting her inheritance in order, and as he had to talk to her about it would often go and see her on his own account. And sometimes he would bring her back to the palace with him. In the evening she would stay till the last in the Yellow Drawing-room when the usual society met.
None of the Uzeda, for the moment, were lacking: Raimondo’s marriage seemed to have brought peace back to all their hearts. The duke would pontificate away, setting Europe to rights in a twinkle and Italian finances in less time than it took to say so, while Giulente sat listening as if he were the Messiah, letting himself be drawn ever more in his wake, deserting his own party to court this uncle in the hope of taking over his job. The duke had said to him, ‘When I’m tired, I’ll leave the seat to you,’ and this had been Benedetto’s secret dream, to be a deputy, to get into high politics. Meanwhile the duke had got him elected a communal counsellor, and would also discuss with him Town Council matters and reforms to be introduced. Although Parliament was in full session he did not mention leaving, busy as he was settling his own affairs. His patriotism had cost him a lot of money. To subsidise the persecuted, buy rifles and cartridges, offer drinks to the National Guard, he had contracted debts and mortgaged his small fortune; now he was putting things in order. Where was he finding the money? He was said to be drawing a percentage from contracts he had landed for the Giulente uncle, but such earnings, however big, could not be enough for the great operations which he was planning. On the foundation of the Southern Bank of Credit and Deposit he had subscribed for a hundred shares of a thousand lire each. It is true that he had not paid for more than a quarter, but at the same time he was talking of a big steam-navigation company, of a company to work the sulphur mines and another to fell the Etna forests. Don Blasco and Donna Ferdinanda were trying every means, each on his own accounts, to find out how he was setting about it. It was the Marchese Federico who put them on the right path.
With what remained from his large income the marchese used to make some purchase every year. Recently he had bought a villa at the Belvedere in order to be in his own home during country stays, and he still had in hand a small sum which he did not know what to do with. It was too small for buying land; he did not want to lend it; what was to be done with it? ‘Buy public utilities!’ the duke advised him, explaining the advantages of this and offering to send for some from Turin. ‘Has Your Excellency bought any then?’ asked the marchese. ‘I’ve bought ’em, sold ’em … according to the market … you understand …’ then, almost regretting having given this hint of speculations on information picked up in ministerial antechambers during his five years in Turin, he had changed the subject.
The marchese hesitated for a time, partly from loyalty to the Bourbon principle, much more from fear of losing his money, both interest and capital, with the idea that Italy was always on the point not only of failure but of bankruptcy. Finally one day, meeting the duke on his way from drawing his half-yearly dividends and tucking away a fat roll of banknotes, he made up his mind. The evening he announced his purchase at the palace, Don Blasco had to be heard to be believed!
‘Ah, you turncoat! You as well? With Italy now too, are yo
u? Have you gone mad also?’
‘Why?’ the marchese tried to reply. ‘In ’66, 7½ per cent was paid on capital … Dividend coupons are paid punctually when due …’
The monk listened with staring eyes, as if waiting to see just how far the enormities spouted by this creature would go. Eventually he burst out:
‘You’ll be wiping your arse with your coupons!… That’s where you’ll get ’em paid, you donkey!…’ And turning to Chiara, with hands in hair, ‘Stop him … he wants to ruin you! Interest at 7 per cent!… It’s not worth it even as alms!’ and sweeping round a glance full of bitter irony, ‘A safe investment, my dear sirs!… When Neapolitan income was at 110 … It won’t take long for the dirty paper to come down to five … Then on 5 lire capital we’ll net 5 lire a year! And all get rich! Long live the millennium! Long live the great King Victor!’
The duke was in a corner with Benedetto, explaining his ideas about the development of the Bank, which under Don Lorenzo Giulente’s management was to ‘come to the help of industrial and commercial development’ and ‘co-operate with the protective work of the Government’. At his brother’s outburst he smiled imperceptibly and shrugged his shoulders. Chiara, taking her husband apart, said:
‘Don’t listen to that madman!… You’ve done fine. Buy some more.’ And a little later she took him away before the evening broke up, as she had for some time, without letting anyone know the reason for her great hurry to get home.
The reason was this. Rosa Schirano, a new maid whom she had taken on for Federico, a fine-looking lass from Piana, white and apple pink, was pregnant by the marchese; and instead of Chiara throwing her out she was beside herself with joy. That, in fact, was the secret hope which induced her to pop so many fresh young girls into her husband’s bed. As she wanted a child by him and was unable to bear one, she would content herself with another’s. So it seemed quite natural to fuss over this other girl whom Federico had put with child, and envy her fate. She had herself made the girl confess, and the trembling Rosa had been astounded to find her mistress, instead of flinging her downstairs, saying, ‘Don’t worry now! I’ll see to your child!’ From that day Chiara thought of nothing but the maid. A certain sense of human respect prevented her from having the girl round in her own rooms with her belly swelling all the time, but down in the courtyard, in rooms which the coachman’s wife had been forced to give up, she visited her three or four times a day, sent her the best titbits from her table, kept her in cotton-wool.
The Viceroys Page 40
