Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

prologue, chapter 2

The Duke Don Emanuele Albamonte until forty-five years had remained single, although not disdaining to hang sometimes a garland at the altar of Venus. Strong, vigorous, exuberant of life, disdaining the effeminateness of the noble society, he had passed his youth among his lands: immense feuds that stretched out among the valleys and up the hills detaching from the harsh and snowy yokes of the Madonie. The intricate wilds that infused those yokes were rich in big game, the wolf was rare. Don Emanuele preferred to chase and face the dangers of these hunts, rather than let himself be dragged in the carriage for the walk of the Navy; he felt more happiness to vibrate his dagger inside the throat of a wolf, than to spend the day bowing down to look at the beautiful trines of the sleeves in the living rooms of some lady.

For these reasons, during the war of Messina ", being already at the head of his state, he gladly accepted the ban on arms and, as a feudal lord, enlisted a team of militias from his states and ran to fight the French and the rebels. Then he was 27 years old and he fell in love with the trade. The wolf hunt was a good thing, but the war was even more beautiful; there was more heroism, there was more grandeur and nobility of gesture. And then he got a colonel's patent, and since, after the fall of Messina, there was nothing more to do in Sicily, he passed the sea and went to Spain, while opening large brackets in his war life to come and breathe the air of his mountains.

At the age of 45, however, Don Emanuele realized that he had to continue the lineage, and that he would be the first Duke of Motta, who would not transmit the state to his direct and legitimate descendant. Perhaps there were scattered and unknown branches of his blood, to which the mystery of birth did not allow Albamonte's name to be given, but the heir wanted by the law was not there. The idea of marriage came to him then and made him reflect that it was necessary to hurry, because he was now too mature; either to do so immediately or to resign himself to celibacy, as if he had been a knight of Malta, and to give up the direct heir.

His family now consisted of him, two sisters nuns in the monastery of Saint Catherine, and Don Raimondo; two other brothers, older than Don Raimondo, had died at an early age: Raimondo was the last born. Among them there was a difference of seventeen years; when Raimondo began to stutter the first words and to take the first steps, Don Emanuele ran on horseback through the woods, like a wandering knight in search of adventures. Don Raimondo had grown up in the city in the shadow of the vast palace of the Albamonte, almost always alone, under the care of a teacher priest, passing life between studies, religious practices and some chivalrous exercise according to his own rank. Every Sunday he went to visit the sister nuns, to whom he had never been able to become attached, because he had never lived with them even one day in the sweet family intimacy; neither were the most affectionate relations with Don Emanuele, whom he saw very rarely, when the duke returned from the war or from his long homes in the country.

Don Raimondo had a great awe for his big brother, robust, noisy, enemy of the ceremonies, almost rude, who treated him like a child. In fact, Don Emanuele considered his brother with the goodness of a tolerant and broad-sleeved father, assuming that Don Raimondo was a young man who had his hairdressers. At the table he would bring him between his knees and ask him:

"Come on, let's hear what nonsense you've committed today!..."

"But I have done nothing, my brother; I swear to you."

"Go there! At your age I made all the colors. Is it possible that you don't do the same?"

Don Emanuele spent about ten years in Sicily, alternating the residence between the feuds and the capital and in these ten years took a lively affection for his little brother, to whom he forbade to become a priest. An Albamont, who were all men of war or near little by little, engulfed themselves in the talar dress? Oibò! What else did he need? Did he miss anything in the palace where he was born? And maybe his older brother didn't love him? If ever, his place was in the Tribunal of the Regio Patrimonio, or in the Grand Criminal Court, when he felt no vocation for arms.

Don Raimondo obeyed that submission that the birthright could require of him, but he could never become addicted to his brother's familiarity.

One morning Don Emanuele said to him: "Dear my dear, I am old; it is time for me to take a wife."

Don Raimondo lifted his head alive, palening. For the first time, perhaps, he looked his brother in the eyes, but without betraying the inner thought.

"I've already seen your future sister-in-law; she's much younger than me, but for an old trunk like me it takes just a beautiful young virgulto to make me green again."

"What you do is always well done," answered Don Raimondo without enthusiasm, but without showing coldness; and after a minute of silence he resumed: "And will it be too bold to ask the name of my sister-in-law?"

"But it is most natural, my son; it is woman Aloisia Ventimiglia, of Good Blood. It descends from the Norman kings."

"I'm not lucky to know you..."

"I think so, son: instead of spending the day at St. Olive's, with the other young knights, walks, receptions, adventures, cards and sword blows, you... Where the hell do you spend the day?"

"But... I'm going for a walk too, Mr. Brother..."

"As a friar, son, as a friar; indeed worse, because the friars, saving their clothes, take some debris, which you seem to escape... You're another Joseph... I, look: at your age, the wives of Putipharre I went looking for them and I did not leave their cloak in their hands, no."

"You are an other man, and I admire you...

But don't impersonate me... Perhaps it is my fault; I left you too alone: I should have led you with me, to hunt, to war..."

"I would never be your partner."

"Why?"

"Because there's too much distance from years, and I would always have been awesome."

"To hell with this awe!"

A few days later Don Emanuele formally asked for the hand of woman Aloisia Ventimiglia, of the noble house of the Marquises of Geraci, who was twenty years younger than him, and who came out of the monastery of Saint Catherine, where she had been educated under the guidance of the sisters of Don Emanuele. The wedding took place there at six months and were sumptuous, as were usually those of the primary families: on the floor of the Royal Palace the young knights roamed with magnificent liveries and beautiful inventions, and the Viceroy himself intervened at the feasts, which lasted three days.

The people had their share: in the square of Mercedes, Don Emanuele improvised a fountain that gave, instead of water, wine, and some barracks full of all the wells of God, which the crowd plundered, triumphing in honor of the spouses. Although among the newlyweds it was a great disparity of years that offered to the evil-tongued material to be scissored, or by unceasing envy or to make of the spirit, one could not say a badly combined couple, because Don Emanuele did not show his forty-five years, not only because of the freshness and quickness of his physique, but also and more for that playful liveliness of his spirit, which did not seem to have aged. Perhaps this earned woman Aloisia. On the day that Don Emanuele had given her the engagement ring, she had remained as dismayed in the presence of that piece of man who did not bow ridiculously and faintly, and laughed loudly; but during the six months she had taken to love him, although feeling as subjugated and not daring to stare at his own in his eyes for a long time. Don Emanuele appeared to her by hand in a light that enchanted her, she felt all taken for her handsome master who could be her father. The first night that Aloisia was alone with Don Emanuele, in the vast palace of the Albamonte, she was afraid. Trepidating he took refuge in his chest like a gazelle; he lifted her up in his arms, put her on his knees like a little girl and asked her gently, with a tenderness that made her weep:

"Come on! Are you afraid of me? Do I scare you?"

She could not answer that with a nod of the head that she wanted to say no, but her body trembled under the gentle pressure of those hands, to which she did not know nor wanted to escape. He put her to bed like a little girl and sat down in a high chair at the foot of the bed: and so they spent more hours, silently, without sleeping; then Aloisiah woman shyly lifted her head out of the blanket and, looking with pity, remorse, tenderness that man who made her tremble, said to him with a breath of voice,

"Do you want to spend the night on that high chair?"

After two months Don Emanuele called from a royal dispatch had to leave his wife to go to Spain. The farewells were long, tender, tearful. Although the duke tried to be cheerful and joking, he could not control his emotion. Recommended his wife to his brother and an old faithful servant, he had gone off promising to return as soon as possible. Instead, six months passed, which for woman Aloisia were six months of sad loneliness.

She did not meet with Don Raimondo who at the table, and for that hour they remained silent in front of each other, exchanging just those words that convenience made it indispensable. Don Raimondo had a cold and glacial appearance, almost astute and she felt for him a kind of repugnance and aversion that bordered on fear. The man had something left: at least that's what she thought. She certainly did not have a smile of goodness for her; if sometimes her thin and pale lips were touched by a smile, this had something treacherous that made her shudder. The night woman Aloisia slept in the Maddalena room, her trusted waitress, and opened the door and windows, almost fearing an assault and during the day she made sure that she was not alone for an hour.

However, he could not say that Don Raimondo weighed his presence: she never saw him around, but felt above herself the biecious light of those black and dark eyes, felt that unfathomable look to watch over her cloudy, insistent, unbearable. He was spying on her? So she believed. Why were you spying on her? She didn't spend time, counting the days in the expectation of her handsome lord Didn't she prescribe, for as long as Don Emanuele was absent, a strict cloister? Had he not resisted the temptations of invitations to watch rides, rides, shows? Oh, no wife could more devoutly and with greater self-denial, holocaust the absence of the beloved man! And yet he felt spied on by those blinking eyes leftly in the shadows.

The return of Don Emanuele, in March, seemed to his heart the return to light after a long dark night. She rushed into his arms weeping and murmuring: "Don't leave me anymore! Don't leave me."

Don Emanuele informed himself of the state of the house and seemed happy and satisfied with his brother's restrained attitude; which made his new departure less painful four months after the renewed honeymoon.

This time woman Aloisia clinged to his neck and did not want to leave him, unraveling in tears and prayers.

Don Emanuele in order not to let himself be overcome by the emotion, pretended to be angry: "Go! What are these weaknesses? Come on, you're making me angry!"

But he did not resolve to separate himself, taken from a great tenderness for that creature, and from a great anger against his Majesty, who seemed to do so in good standing to disturb the sweetness of a life, which he repented of having known too late. Pale, cold, with his sharp look like a blade and his narrow mouth, Don Raimondo did not seem moved by those goodbyes. The duke left, after having warmly and affectionately recommended his wife to his brother.

On August 5, the day of the Virgin, woman Aloisia heard a new life pulsating in her womb. She was alone; she went out and burst into tears, but she felt great consolation. From then on she seemed to have a custody, and motherhood filled her hours of loneliness and dismay, talking to the good Magdalene of that creature, in which she seemed to have her husband far in mind. One day, as he entered the dining room with his clothes a little wide, he noticed that Don Raimondo's eyes had settled on his lap with an insistent investigation. Arrossi and he was afraid of it. Fear not for itself, but for the creature that agitated in her bosom, as if she also had heard that look. Instinct? Clairvoyant? Crazy? She didn't know it, but from that moment on, it seemed that Don Raimondo threatened the unborn child.

Did he realize that he was distrustful and fearful? Maybe I do. He tried to smile and joke.

"Well, Mrs. Sister-in-law, are we there?"

Donna Aloisia blushed, bowed the boss and did not answer.

"Therefore we shall have a new Duke of Motta."

His words were augurable, but to woman Aloisia it seemed that in the tone they concealed a great bitterness, almost a deaf anger, a livor. But why?

From then on she was more closed, more sheer, more guarding; fearing that the malevolence of her brother-in-law could harm her creature, that he could plot spells and other tricks to kill her, she surrounded herself with all the precautions that were advised by the credulity of those times. He went to the church of S. Francesco di Paola, where, after a good almsgiving, he gave two fava beans and two blessed hosts, the black wool cord and the candle with legend: all things very effective. He ate the broad beans and the hosts in the church on his godly knees and at home surrounded the blessed cordon on the flesh. So she seemed to have pre-municated herself, and she kept herself more sure, but she always avoided meeting with Don Raimondo.

This is how the months flowed; a great consolation and a day of joy and sweet tears brought her at this time a letter from Don Emanuele, in whom she had participated the great news. Don Emanuele wrote her a letter full of tenderness; stating that the unborn child could only be male, abandoned himself to the dreams of his fantasy and surrounded the heir of all joys. He also seemed full of that motherhood, in which he continued his lineage. Behold, his forefathers should be glad that the virtues passed down to him by a long order of firstborns were not extinguished, or Better they did not stop in him: he obeyed the great law of the race, and handed them down to his unborn child. Three hundred years of nobility watched over the new cradle.

That letter, in which Don Emanuele announced his next return, took about two months to arrive in Palermo, so that Aloisia woman, who had her in late November, waited day by day for her husband to arrive.

It was known from the notices from Rome and Naples that the war was over, that peace had been closed and Father Emanuele, therefore, had no reason to stay at the camp and, according to his letter, should have left. How come he wasn't coming? Donna Aloisia was anxious about it and ransacked a thousand dangers, which the good Magdalene tried to destroy.

"Your Excellency be not afraid," he said to her; "of these times the season does not depend and his Excellency Mr. Duke will not go into the sea, if he does not know quietly..."

He said to her: "What do we know if the king has given him any commission?

His Excellency is a man, and a lord of those whom the king counts on his fingers..."

But woman Aloisia, if on the one hand because of the need that the spirit has to grasp the explanations that offer a comfort and a hope, agreed with what Maddalena said, on the other could not suppress the anxieties, the apprehensions, the fears that distressed her and that the silence of the duke and the lack of news, even indirect, increased.

One morning, overcoming every repulsion, he said to Don Raimondo: "Have you not received any news of Don Emanuele?"

"If I had any, I would have told you..."

"Couldn't you go to the Viceroy and know something?"

"I'll go, to please you, but I suppose the Viceroy would have sent some of the secretaries if he had anything to let you know..."

"You will understand that this lack of news keeps me in a state..."

"And you are wrong: no new, good new... But in order to remove your apprehension, I will go to the Palace tonight."

"And I will be grateful."

He spoke these last words with such heartfelt emotion that it seemed that there were always cordial relations between them; and the feeling of gratitude he felt, as if he really should have brought her consoling news, did not surprise her the wicked smile that he put on the thin lips of Don Raimondo, and the flash of wickedness that illuminated his gaze.

Don Raimondo returned without any news. Even the Viceroy didn't know anything, but he assumed that since he was the duke of peace negotiators, he probably had to go to Madrid.

"No, no! He would have warned me!..."

The pregnancy took place in the mute pain of that lack of new; every day that passed, the discouragement grew: woman Aloisia felt the despair taking hold of her heart. They were long days of tears, often hidden in the shadow of loneliness. Maddalena, driven by her devoted affection, dared to move her sweet cramps.

"Your Excellency gets sick and will sicken the creature, that God frees!..."

Those words drove her tears back and she refocused all in the thought of her little creature, shaking at the idea that she could get sick, and trying to remain quiet.

The day, however, when she felt the first symptoms of the great moment, she was dismayed. She would have seen no other friendly face beside herself than that of Maddalena. The man who could and knew how to infuse her courage, who with the sweet caress, with the playful smile, with the sure word would lead her in that great, august and mysterious fringe, was not there at her side; and she did not even know where she was; she was not there and would not welcome in her arms, would not welcome the born from him, in his first appearance in the world!

"Don Emanuele! Don Emanuele, why did you abandon me?" cried desperately.

But nature had reason for its pain; what was to happen was for the indefectible and immanent laws of life.

The little being came to light and had only the mother's kiss...

He would never have had the paternal kiss.