The Viceroys

by Federico De Roberto

  He went on. He said that if his hardihood could be judged great he knew that the indulgence of his audience was no less. Then, qualifying the sub-committee’s report as ‘a model of its kind’, he called it ‘truly worthy of a Parliament’. He cited two or three paragraphs almost word by word. This feat of memory raised a long admiring murmur. But maybe the indulgent assembly was waiting for him to express his own opinion? This he would do ‘with the humility of a disciple but the boldness of an apostle’. He was for liberty; for liberty ‘which is the greatest conquest of our times’; which ‘can never be abused’ for it is ‘self-correcting’. The advantages of a Liberal régime were infinite, ‘as the celebrated Adam Smith says in his great work …’ and is also ‘the opinion of the great Proudhon …’ though perhaps ‘the famous Bastiat does not admit it’ yet ‘the English school is of the opinion …’ The wonder and delight on all sides matched the performance. Benedetto enjoyed it as a personal triumph, and seemed to be saying, ‘D’you see? Didn’t I guarantee it to you?…’

  Again and again salvos of applause interrupted this speech which all thought improvised, so confidently was it pronounced. A real triumph followed the peroration, on the necessary correspondence between economic and political liberty, ‘the greatest guarantees of well-being and happiness, the reason for this, our young Italy’s existence, reunited as a free and strong nation by virtue of its people and its King!’

  ONE night, while all were asleep in the palace except Consalvo, bent over his volume of Spencer, loud bangs were heard on the door. Garino, husband of the Cigar-woman, had come rushing over to call the prince as Don Blasco had had a stroke.

  The monk, flabby as a deflated wineskin, was in his death throes. The night before, after a tremendous blow-out and booze-up, he had been undressed and put to bed by Donna Lucia and fallen asleep at once. But in the middle of the night a dull thud made all rush to him, and there lay Don Blasco stretched full length on the floor, senseless. The Cigar-woman, her daughters and a maid kept on telling everyone within sight, while Garino, after leaving his message for the prince and calling a doctor, rushed home, frowning and silent. As the doctor was declaring that there was nothing he could do with a lightning stroke of this kind, and the women went on moaning and invoking the Blessed Mother and all the Saints of Paradise, Garino took the prince by the arm as soon as he arrived and drew him into a far room.

  ‘Excellency, we’re done! I’ve searched high and low and not found it! Your Excellency’s done and so are we! After serving him so many years! And the girls too! Never should His Paternity have played such a trick on us!’

  ‘Have you looked really everywhere?’

  ‘Turned the house upside down, Excellency. As soon as it happened, I took the keys and searched high and low … In Your Excellency’s interests … But who could have thought such a thing? After His Paternity had promised the girls twelve tarì a day! It’s betrayal! I’m done! And so’s Your Excellency … I thought the Will must have been written years ago, that other time he had a dizzy turn.’

  ‘Could he have given it to the notary?’

  ‘There isn’t a notary! His Paternity wouldn’t hear of one, in fact when Notary Marco mentioned it to him … from friendship for us … he answered sharply that he’d make his Will by himself and lock it in his strong-box!… but there’s nothing in the whole place … If only I’d thought of such a thing …’ And he was silent, looking at the prince.

  ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘I’d have written out the Will according to his intentions … to give him it to sign … He’d have put his signature to it in half a minute. I could also …’

  But at that point he was called inside. The doctor, just to content ‘the family’, had ordered the sick man to be bled and have leeches applied to his temples. Garino rushed off to carry out the doctor’s orders, and the prince began going round the house.

  By the time the blood-letter came it was dawn. The operation had scarcely any effect; the eyes of the dying man just opened for a second, but not a muscle moved, not a word came from his tightly shut mouth. With the day came the princess. The other relations knew nothing yet and began arriving later, one after the other. They entered the room of the dying man for a moment then passed into the next-door room, where they lounged about and waited for a chance to take the prince aside and say in his ear:

  ‘Is there a Will?’

  ‘I don’t know … I don’t think so,’ the prince would reply. ‘Who can think of such a thing now?’

  Actually they were all thinking of nothing else, devoured by curiosity and by greed for the monk’s money. Don Blasco was the first Uzeda with money to have died since the old princess. Ferdinando had not counted; he had very little, and the little he had was already in the prince’s hands. But the Benedictine, what with two farms, a house and savings, was leaving nearly three hundred thousand lire, and everyone hoped to get some scrapings. If there was no Will, then his two brothers Gaspare and Eugenio and his sister Ferdinanda would be heirs; and the old spinster, after a life of enmity, was waiting to grab her share. All the others on the contrary were hoping for a Will naming them. The prince whispered into his uncle’s ear that he did not hope for anything for himself but something for Consalvo, and every half-hour he sent one of the family’s servants, who had come with their masters, to the palace to call his son. But the young prince’s first answer had been that he was in bed, then that he must have time to dress, then that he was just coming, and the last messengers could not find him at all.

  He had gone off to the National Club for the meeting of a sub-committee charged with studying town-planning. Eventually he arrived when the leeches were being set on the dying man. The prince did not even say a word to him, and instead took aside Garino, who was just back for the fourth or fifth time. Then the Cigar-woman’s husband entered the dying man’s room, which his wife and the girls had never left for a second. Instead of helping, the leeches hastened the end; putting his head out of the door Garino announced:

  ‘The Lord has called him!’

  All entered the dead man’s room. He lay motionless, rigid, with shut eyes, his temples dotted with leeches’ bites. The room stank with the nauseating smell of blood, like a butcher’s shop. On floor and furniture was an appalling confusion of clothes scattered here and there, basins full of water, bottles of vinegar. The Cigar-woman, who had at once opened wide the windows so that the Benedictine’s soul could fly straight to heaven, was arranging, between sobs, two candles on the bedside table. The girls were weeping like a pair of fountains, and Lucrezia looked as if she had lost her second father; but the sobs and prayers gradually ceased; then, drying her eyes, Lucrezia said quite calmly:

  ‘Now that uncle is in paradise we can see if there is a Will’

  Amid the general silence, the prince, as head of the family, made a gesture of assent. But Donna Lucia, who had just finished lighting the candles, turned and said:

  ‘There is a Will, Excellency. The dear departed was so good as to consign it to me. I’ll go straightway and fetch it.’

  The very flies could be heard as the woman handed an open envelope to the prince and the latter, from respect, passed it to his uncle the duke. The duke glanced at the sheet of paper on which were written only a few lines, and without reading it out aloud, announced the contents of the short sentences as he ran over them.

  ‘Universal heir, Giacomo … Executory legatee … a legacy of two hundred onze a year to Don Matteo Garino …’

  ‘Nothing else?… nothing else?…’ everyone was asking.

  ‘Nothing else.’

  Donna Ferdinanda got up and began reading the piece of paper, taking it from the hands of the prince, to whom the duke had passed it. But Lucrezia came and stood beside her and said:

  ‘Would Your Excellency let me look?’

  The prince seemed quite disinterested. The two women, bent over the document, exchanged a few whispers. Then Lucrezia announced out loud:

  ‘
This Will is false.’

  All turned. The prince, looking astounded, exclaimed:

  ‘What do you mean, false?’

  ‘False?’ cried Garino, who was standing in a doorway.

  ‘I said—it’s false,’ repeated Lucrezia, giving a push to her husband, who was also trying to read the sheet of paper. ‘This isn’t uncle’s writing; I know his writing.’

  ‘Let me see …’ and Giacomo scrutinised the letters carefully, while all the others crowded round examining it too.

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ said the prince coldly. ‘The writing is our uncle’s.’

  None of the others expressed an opinion. In a subtly ironic tone Lucrezia replied:

  ‘Then I’d like to know when he wrote it. Last night? There’s still sand on it!’

  The Cigar-woman intervened.

  ‘Excellency, His Paternity wrote the Will the day before yesterday as, poor man, his heart spoke and told him his end was near …’

  ‘And why didn’t you say anything?’ asked Donna Ferdinanda.

  ‘Excellency …’

  ‘I was told of it,’ affirmed the prince.

  ‘But you told us you didn’t think there was any Will.’

  ‘You could have let us know,’ went on Donna Ferdinanda.

  ‘Nonsense!’ cried Lucrezia, giving another push to Benedetto, who was making some prudent remark in her ear. ‘It’s a false Will, that can be seen by the freshness of the writing and also by the signature. Uncle used to sign Blasco Placido Uzeda, with his second name in religion …’

  Then Garino thought he ought to put in a word.

  ‘Then Your Excellency thinks?…’

  ‘You be quiet!’ cried Lucrezia contemptuously, proud of performing an act of authority in front of the whole family.

  ‘Your Excellency may be mistress,’ the tobacconist went on, regardless, with a show of dignity, ‘but you cannot insult a gentleman. Are you suggesting I concocted it, this false Will?’

  All of a sudden the Cigar-woman burst into tears.

  ‘The insult!… Most Holy Mary!…’

  The duke, the marchese, Benedetto, all intervened together:

  ‘Whoever said that?… Keep quiet at such a moment … Silence, I tell you; what behaviour!’

  ‘You accept the Will then?’ insisted Lucrezia, turning to her brother.

  ‘Of course I do!’

  ‘Then we’ll see what the courts say. And now call in the authorities to put up seals …’

  Across the room the Cigar-woman was tearing her hair and kneeling before the dead man.

  ‘Talk! Tell them if it’s true … such an insult … after all the years we’ve served you … Speak from heaven with the voice of truth!…’

  Then broke out a struggle more ferocious than any previous one. Donna Ferdinanda was not inclined to take lightly being deprived of her part of the inheritance, but Lucrezia was implacable at the chance of revenging herself on Graziella, who had treated her badly, and also partly at the hope of her uncle’s inheritance setting her household accounts in order, for since she had kept them there was never enough money. The easy-going marchese wanted to avoid scandal, but Chiara, so as to do the opposite of what he wanted, took sides against Giacomo with her aunt. Gradually all her love for her husband had turned to the bastard, and as Federico was ashamed of his clandestine parentage and refused to recognise it, her old hatred was reborn for a husband imposed on her. In her sterile Uzeda head she had conceived and brought to birth a plan: to leave Federico, adopt the little bastard and take him away with her. And as she needed money for this she pinned her hopes on her share of Don Blasco’s inheritance. So she, Lucrezia and Donna Ferdinanda really let fly about that forger and thief Giacomo, who was trying to lay hands on the monk’s property just as he had snatched poor dear Ferdinando’s land; and about that police-spy Garino, who had suggested the trick and carried it out, for in the days when he plied the honourable trade of spy he had made a practice of imitating the writing of decent people to embroil them with the police. But the funny thing was that one thief had robbed another; for Garino, who was to have inherited only twelve tarì a day, had overdone it and brought his legacy up to two hundred onze a year! And the prince couldn’t breathe a word about it or he’d be digging his own grave!

  Garino and the Cigar-woman swore and perjured themselves that it was all an infamous lie invented by relations who had never been able to get on. Whom did they expect the poor man to leave his money to? To his sister and brothers who had loved him about as much as dogs do cats? The natural heir was the prince, the head of the family! As for themselves, it was surely quite natural that the holy man should want to repay their services; in fact to tell the truth two hundred onze seemed a paltry sum after all they’d done for him, didn’t it?

  Anyway Donna Ferdinanda sent off the first official plea impugning the Will and asking for a legal enquiry. The prince shrugged his shoulders on receiving this. Nothing ‘saddened’ him more than a family quarrel, and to all he met he would express his deep regret at his aunt’s and his sister’s conduct. But what could he do about it? Could he renounce the inheritance? It was they who were obstinate, overbearing, mad! At home, however, he became more irascible than ever. Reserved in the presence of strangers, he let out his ill-temper and bitterness to wife, children or servants. Teresa, actually, never gave him any pretext, being always docile and obedient; the princess also bowed her head to the storm. But he attacked his son continually, attributing Donna Ferdinanda’s harshness to the latter’s political apostasy.

  ‘He’s now quarrelled with his aunt who was so fond of him, the idiot! He’ll lose her fortune just to go and talk nonsense at that club and in the streets. Now he’s got me into a legal case. I ask you, could a worse disaster ever have happened to me than a son who’s such a fool and rascal?’

  But apart from that he had many other reasons for complaint. Imbued more than ever with his new ideas, determined, with the stubbornness of his family, to persevere on the road he had chosen, Consalvo was now spending enormous sums on books. He sent for them every day, about every subject, on a mere suggestion by a bookseller, with quantity as his only criterion. It was the same mania for show and for doing things on a grand scale which before, when smart clothes were his only thought, had made him buy walking-sticks by the dozen and cravats by the box. It was humanly impossible not only to study, but even to read all that printed paper pouring into the palace, subscription copies, huge encyclopaedias, universal dictionaries. Every new parcel made the prince more furious.

  ‘D’you see?…’ Consalvo would answer Teresa, when his sister came to talk the language of peace and love. ‘D’you see? He’s got it into his head to go against me in everything. What harm am I doing? Is there anything more commendable nowadays than study? Knowledge? No; but even that!…’

  And when the prince faced him and directly reproved him for falling out with his aunt and wasting money, ‘I make up my own mind,’ replied the son coldly. ‘Everyone’s free to think as he likes. My aunt can’t impose her ideas on me … and if I spend something on books do I ask for anything else?…’

  Every Sunday there was another quarrel about Mass. It bored Consalvo to attend it, and he would smile an ambiguous smile at his father’s religious zeal. When forced to go to confession he recited to the old Dominican a rigmarole of clownish sins. He would also jeer at his sister for her fervour in devotion, and turn his back on the black cassocks always rustling around the house. In the Milo cemetery the prince had had a monument of bronze and marble erected over the tomb of his first wife. On anniversaries of her death he would go up there with the princess and Teresa, have many Masses said for the repose of her soul and place huge wreaths on the tomb. Consalvo always refused to go with the family; he went either a day before or a day after. At every excuse his son put forward the prince looked at him fixedly, then he let himself be led off by his wife, who was doing all she could to keep the peace and avoid quarrels. By now there was more ill-feelin
g between son and father than between stepson and stepmother; Consalvo bowed more to a word from the princess than to the prince’s injunctions.

  One day he announced that he had taken on a tutor of German and English. The father, after looking him straight in the face, asked:

  ‘Will you explain once and for all what the devil you think you’re doing?’

  Consalvo stared back.

  ‘What I feel like doing,’ he replied.

  Suddenly the prince went scarlet as a lobster, leapt from his chair as if thrust by a spring and rushed at his son, shouting:

  ‘Is that the way to reply, you carter?’

  Had the princess and Teresa not flung themselves between them and Consalvo not left the room at once, it would have ended badly. From that moment the break was final. By the prince’s order the young man no longer came to eat with the family, which pained the princess somewhat and his sister more, but pleased Consalvo a lot. He saw his father for a minute every day to say good morning or good night, and the latter no longer complained of his son’s silence and solitude and even avoided a meeting himself. Before the young man had gone on his travels, at the time when his bad habits and debts had given the prince bilious attacks, nervous tics and real illness, an awful thought had occurred to the father: perhaps his son had the Evil Eye? This thought was now growing, although he did not dare show it. Why, for instance, every time he started a discussion with his son did he either get a headache or a bilious attack? Why during Consalvo’s long absence had he felt so well? Or, following another train of thought, had that political conversion which so enraged Donna Ferdinanda and seemed almost to justify this impugning of the Will, not been another proof of his evil influence? Delving into his memory the prince found other reasons for believing in that dreaded power; a sale gone badly when his son had said, ‘It’ll be hard to get a good price’; an earthquake shock just after the young man had remarked ‘Etna’s smoking’. So he was pleased now to see little of him. If he met him on the stairs or on his way through the rooms, he answered his greeting with a nod and hurried on; if he had to be close to him in the drawing-room during visits, he talked to him as little as possible and got away as soon as he could.