Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

prologue, chapter 3

The next morning, around the seventeen hours of Italy, a valet of Palazzo came to seek urgent Don Raimondo, by his Excellency.

Don Raimondo, who was inquiring, correctly, how the sister-in-law had spent the night, quickly said to Maddalena: "If the Duchess asks for me, tell her that I will be back soon."

And he went away on foot, and commanded the servants to send him the porter to the palace. Real.

If the Viceroy sent for him, it was a sign that he had some news to tell him. Would you have confirmed what Fr. Marcello de Oxorio had told him? He walked the road in a short time and came to Palazzo almost at the same time to the valet who had come to call him. The Viceroy was waiting for him in the studio, sitting in front of a large table full of papers.

"Ah! Mr. Knight," he said with a voice of mourning, "unfortunately they had told you the truth!"

"My brother?" exclaimed Don Raimondo palely.

"God wanted it with him..."

Don Raimondo had a tremor for the whole person; pale, his lips tightened, he could not find a word.

The Viceroy added, comforting him: "We must resign ourselves to God's will!..."

Then, after a moment of silence, he said: "I think of the poor Duchess, in the conditions in which she finds herself... Did you tell me she was on childbirth?"

"Yes, Your Excellency," answered Don Raimondo with a suffocated voice, "she wore off last night..."

"O Lord God! And..."

"A boy," stuttered the knight Albamonte with his teeth tightened.

"Poor Duchess!... Usted pro cure to keep this news hidden..."

Don Raimondo made a gesture that could be interpreted as a absenteeism or a promise. Then, after a brief silence, he asked: "Did your Excellency receive official news?."

"Here," said the Viceroy, taking from among the cards a letter; "this morning two prisons arrived from Naples, on which the courier of Rome had embarked... Mr. Duke died in Africa, Algiers..."

"In Algiers?..."

"Killed..."

"Killed? My brother?"

Pale, with eyes barred from wonder, the mouth sucked, preying to a live emotion that could not dominate, Don Raimondo stuttered automatically:

"Killed!... But are you sure?"

"Very sure. The news was brought by one who saw him die."

"In Algiers?..."

"So says the letter of Mr. Ambassador of your Catholic Majesty. The letter does not abound with details, but it is quite precise. Two Tuscan prisons captured an Algerian prison a month ago and freed the rowing Christians. There were Sicilians; one of them told of being caught by the Moors in early October last year, with other Christians traveling from Marseille to Naples in a tartan. Among the prisoners was Mr. Duke of Motta. It seems that the duke tried to shake hands to free himself and his companions, but boldness cost him his life. The others, transported to Algiers, were thrown into life sentences and then sent to row in jails..."

"What about this man who narrated the fact?" "I don't know what it is. Of course, the governor of Livorno sent the news to Florence, from where, being a subject of his Catholic Majesty and an illustrious patrician, it was communicated to the Spanish ambassador in Rome... Fra Marcello de Oxorio had unfortunately told the truth."

"But," Fr. Raimondo objected, "Mr. Duke my brother had led with him two servants..."

"It is obvious that they too will be taken. Either they are among the Christians freed from the Tuscan prisons, or they will be in some life sentence, or sold... However, Usted will try to keep the news hidden for now to the Duchess lady; she will know, then, with caution, little by little, to make her understand the great misfortune... Tomorrow I will celebrate a mass of rest in the Palace Chapel..."

"Oh, God! God!" stuttered Don Raimondo lost in a murky sea of thoughts. "What misfortune! What a blow!"

"Believe, Mr. Knight, that my soul is no less troubled than yours. The city loses a remarkable citizen who was its lustre and decorum, and his Majesty a faithful valiant servant..."

Don Raimondo was silent. For a moment, they both kept quiet.

"And could your Excellency have an investigation of the man who brought the news?"

"If you wish, with the courier who will leave tomorrow I will write to Rome."

"I beg your Excellency... He will easily understand the anxiety and interest of knowing more minute news about the unfortunate end of my brother..."

"It's too fair. In the meantime, you are invested in an assignment no less pitiful than serious... This poor little creature who came into the world at such a tragic time will have a father in you."

Don Raimondo collected himself, became paler and darker, and answered with a monosyllabus that he really did not know what it meant.

"Yeah..."

His eyes had a left glow and a thrill kept his jaws.

He left the Royal Palace staggering. The Duke of Veraguas believed that it was for the pain and sighed behind him: "Poor Don Raimondo! The duke had been a second father to him."

When she arrived home, the knight Albamonte asked if Aloisia was awake and asked her if she would allow him to greet her and see her grandson. She felt a sense of shame, but not of repulsion: the pride of her motherhood suppressed all other feelings and felt happy to show her creature. Her happiness was only obscured by a cloud of sadness: her husband's delay.

Don Raimondo entered with an impenetrable face, showed himself courteous, asked her if she was okay and leaned on the cradle to look at the newborn. He looked at him long with an inexpressible look. The little being slept; the face still enfiato, poonazzo, covered with a slight hair, closed in a headphone adorned with lace and ribbons, the small body narrow in the bands, with arms barbaricly imprisoned. He breathed serenely: once in a while on the vise there were contractions that broke him down, altered him. vain as a breath of wind over the crops. The insistence of that gaze seemed to disturb the serenity of sleep. If woman Aloisia could see the face of Don Raimondo at that moment of contemplation she would have been afraid: and the image of the nest suspended on the nest of the roaring, would have appeared before her eyes. But Don Raimondo turned his back on her; and she was happy to see her brother-in-law so attentive, assuming that a feeling of tenderness held him on that cradle.

"Isn't that nice?"

Don Raimondo rose, shuddering at that voice, as reawakened by a vision. He said in a whisper, "Yes..."

But his eyes did not deviate from that emerging face among the rich trines. Nice? He did not understand the beauty that the mother's eyes recognized in that monster; he saw there, in that development of unconscious flesh, the possessor of a large heritage; that "thing" had on his head a ducal crown and in his small fist, unable to tighten anything, held fiefs, villages, a crowd of servants, peasants, vassals. That "thing" was already a sign, an image, a symbol of greatness and power before which everyone bowed with religious fear, with awe.

Only that he had pressed with a finger on the still soft skull or on the throat of that innocent, and that life would stop forever, and that symbol of greatness, that signification of lordship would pass to him. What was that life still unformed, unconscious, useless? Who could have noticed his passage from the mother's bee to the great and no less mysterious womb of the earth? Those eyes had not yet seen the sun; that mouth had not yet said, "I am." Was it a man? No, it was one thing.

He spent the whole day alone, closed in a great silence, dark. An evil thought suggested that he go to his sister-in-law and say, "The duke was murdered!"

But something held him back, which certainly was not a matter of the delicate conditions in which Aloisia was a woman. In silence there was perhaps a fund of perfidy or a certain calculation. But he communicated the painful news to the servant, the midwife, the relative. It was an indirect way of getting Aloisia's ear into her ear.

In fact, the palace seemed to be struck by lightning: a great silence surrounded it, in which people moved like shadows oppressed by the misfortune; and they all had a look of affectionate piety for the child, even though they did not dare to utter a word of comfort. In the evening some distant relatives came; before entering the room of woman Aloisia, they stopped in the room whispering a few words with Don Raimondo. She heard that whisper with a suspicious soul and marveled not little in seeing those relatives in huddled robes. But no one made the slightest allusion. Although visitors had something unusual in the serious and almost silent aspect and some embarrassment, Aloisian woman suspected nothing. In fact, his marvel turned into a bad mood, as if that way of visiting, those brown clothes were a bad wish for his creature.

But the next day, when he saw Don Raimondo enter the room, pale, cold, dressed in a rigorous and very tight mourning, which could not leave doubt, he sent a very sharp and heartbreaking cry: "Don Raimondo!... what happened?..."

The knight Albamonte bent his head unanswered, as if the answer were heavy and painful.

"Don Emanuele?... Say! Don Emanuele?"

He kept the same deep silence. Standing, still, with low eyes, from all his person came out the sad affirmation of misfortune. Donna Aloisia stayed a minute as she waited, with her hands joined, her heart suspended, her temples pounding; but when the eloquence of silence dissapeared her to the slightest shadow of doubt, then she sent a great scream and fell on her cheeks.

A smile just flashed on Don Raimondo's thin lips and his eyes quickly ran over the cradle.

Then, as if he had not expected the signal, the whole palace resonated with tears. The pain that had first manifested itself in tears and whispers submerged and concealed, now was freely abandoned in lawsuits and weeps. The little cradle was surrounded, not with smiles of joy, but with compassionate lamentations.

Don Raimondo had retired to his room. He thought. Luck put that in his hands. "what": there was only one step to take. They told him that a great pain could kill a fresh woman in childbirth; woman Aloisia had lost her feelings, which was evident proof that the blow had been very strong. If she had died, the small and insignificant wrapper of flesh, which represented a feudal crown, would have remained at her nurse. And it's so easy to die at that age!

When they told him shortly after that woman Aloisia had a fever, her heart whispered with joy, but she knew how to hide the treacherous feeling under the pale of her face: "Send for the doctor" she ordered.

"Send for Father Alaimo.

He didn't want it to be believed he didn't care for his sister-in-law.