The old woman did not reply.
‘Physically, yes; our blood is impoverished; and yet that does not prevent many of us reaching Your Excellency’s enviable age in health and sanity … By nature they’re often stubborn, excessive, unbalanced, and even …’ He wanted to add ‘mad’ but passed over that. ‘They’re never at peace between themselves and always at each other’s throats. But let Your Excellency think of the past! Remember that Don Blasco Uzeda was nicknamed in the Sicilian tongue Sciarra which may be translated as Quarreller. Remember that other Artale Uzeda, nicknamed Sconza, which means Rotten!… I and my father did not see eye to eye, and he disinherited me, but the Viceroy Ximenes imprisoned his son and condemned him to death … Your Excellency can see that in some aspects times have changed for the better … And remember the felony of the sons of Artale III; remember all the quarrels between relatives, about confiscated property, about dowries …
‘Even so I have no intention of justifying what is happening now. We’re too voluble and too pig-headed at the same time. Look at my Aunt Chiara, first willing to die rather than marry the marchese, then one mind with him in two bodies, then completely broken with him. Look at my Aunt Lucrezia, who, vice versa, acted the madwoman to marry Giulente, then despised him like a servant, and is now all one with him to the point of quarrelling with me and pushing him into a ridiculous electoral fiasco! Look, in another way, even at Teresa. From filial obedience, to be thought saintly, she married someone she did not love, so hastening poor Giovannino’s madness and suicide, and now she goes and kneels all day in the Chapel of Blessed Ximena, where the lamp burns which she lit for her poor cousin’s health! And what was Blessed Ximena herself if not divinely pig-headed?
‘I myself, since the day when I decided to change my life, have lived only to prepare myself for the new one. But our family history is full of similar sudden conversions, of stubborn addiction to good or evil … I could try and amuse Your Excellency by writing out all our contemporary family history in the style of old authors. Your Excellency would soon realise your judgment to be mistaken. No, our race has not degenerated; it is the same as it ever was.’
The Viceroys Page 70
