Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part one, chapter 20

Italiano

English

On the evening of the crowning, Christmas Eve, Don Ottavio Lanza, Prince of Trabia, gave a magnificent party in his palace in the Chancellor's floor. All those solemn ceremonies of entrances and crowning, in which the noble lord had fully exercised the prerogatives that came to him from his degree of second title of the kingdom, such as, for example, that of holding the king's staff, had made him believe that he had to manifest his devotion to the new king and, perhaps more, his magnificence, with one of those feasts, in which the lords of Palermo knew how to deepen with haughty gesture and with equal unknowingness what would be enough to promote the commerce and industries of the kingdom.

The Trabia lived in an ancient palace, noble architecture of the fourteenth century, still visible in the elegance of the ogival windows, twinned, polychrome-decorated, which give on the hanging gardens of the Via Candelai. The tradition wanted this to be the home of Majone, the famous minister of William the Malo assassinated by Matteo Bonello, but the story only kept a certain memory of this palace: that of a wedding feast, tragically ended with the death of hundreds of people, due to the sudden collapse of the floor of the grand hall. It was in 1527, and the palace then belonged to the noble Giorgio Bracco.

That unfortunate remembrance did not prevent the nobility to rush numerous to the invitation of the prince, who had several attractions; first of all the truly royal pump; the intervention of the Piedmontese and Savoyard nobility of the King's Court, and finally the traditional singularity of Christmas Eve: a magnificent crib, with wood characters sculpted beautifully and dressed richly and a singing composed for the occasion by Melchiorre LomÈ, anagrammatic name, with which he expresses his poetic furies the reverend Don Michele Romeo, Jesuit, and placed in music by Don Giuseppe Dia, master of the chapel of the Senate: it would be performed by the musicians of the union of St. Cecilia. And all this without counting the game and a great dinner of more than one thousand five hundred covered.

The large hall of the palace shone with light: from the ceiling there were gilded lights, on the walls covered with precious fabrics and tapestries, in front of small rococo mirrors burning groups of candles; light and gold everywhere, everywhere a dazzle that made it believe to be transported into the region of fire imagined by the ancients. But the other rooms offered surprising news: one of them had been transformed into a wood, which reproduced from the very large mirrors skillfully smashed between the trees, it multiplied to extend into other bushes, which fantastically lost themselves with a confusion of branches, in the shade. Another room looked like a large pergola, in which the vines were woven with ivy and other climbers and the bunches with large flowers with the most fantastic shapes and vibrant colors, in which the glass hid lamps. In the middle a bathtub with a fresh spout, in which the lights were reflected, in a sparkle that seemed to turn the water into fire. The hall where the crib was, looked like a cave of stalactites, drowned in a bland light blue, lunar, by lights skillfully hidden among the artificial rocks. After all, a large arch looked like the mouth of the cave, but a painted tent with angel glory closed it. Up, from here and beyond from the mouth, disguised by the rocks, were the boxes for the invisible musicians.

It was a fantastic kingdom, a kind of dream, an enchantment, which amazed, attracted, fascinated.

For all those halls there was a crowd no less dazzling and fascinating; the silks, the satin, the velvets, the fine trines of Holland and the golden embroideries spread with magnificent and tasty richness, the glistening gems in dizzying copy in the hair, on the white meats like snow intact, slightly colored by the dawn, were confused in a wave of perfumes. All the brightest irides vibrating the warmest tones and the most delicate nuances; the Will and Graces seemed to be joined together to preside over that assembly of semi-gods, descended from Olympus in that temple to miracles to show.

The most beautiful titles resonated for the mouths and between the honeyed words and the most obedient epithets that fashion had introduced in the sweet and frivolous frasario of that society, almost to veil with an archaic naivety the invereconda exhibition of shoulders and breasts, and the licentiousness of the costumes.

Coriolano della Floresta had said to Blasco: "Do you want to come tonight to the feast of the Prince of Trabia? I'll have you invited."

But Blasco refused.

"I would probably meet the Duchess and that would embarrass me somewhat..."

"You? You have enough spirit..."

"You must be deceived. I saw her at the crown this morning and I confess to you that I had a great disturbance. She saw that she did not notice me; if she had not kept this attitude cold, perhaps I would have been less upset... It's still too early to see her without a concussion."

So Coriolan of Floresta went alone.

Donna Gabriella, in fact, was at the party, surrounded by a swarm of young people, to whom her beauty made her lose her mind. In the midst of them, she, though small, dominated. The points of his spirit struck and dismayed, but, more than all, they targeted the prince of Iraki, who had not resigned to his defeats and was engulfed by a revenge.

Seeing her alone, without that antipathetic servant knight who, accompanying her everywhere, had prevented him from retrying the assault, had felt a vivid feeling of complacency, as if he had been freed from some nightmare. It had already been known, in the graceful gossip of the noble conversations, that Blasco had left the palace Albamonte, and had assumed a break between woman Gabriella and him, whose divergence of opinion in the right to beat the servants seemed nothing more than the pretext. The absence of Blasco had confirmed the logical reasoning, and the square seemed abandoned and exposed to the most daring occupier.

The prince of Iraci believed, therefore, the opportune moment to plant the batteries and open the breach; but Gabriella woman had dismayed him with two or three arrows that had made the noble one blush, as fatuous and vain young.

The others had applauded, laughing, delighted at the failure; which had made the young man even more mortified. But Gabriella, suddenly, smiling and with an air of goodness that upset the calculations of those who had laughed, said: "Let's go, Prince, offer me your arm! and take me around to admire the salt."

The words were addressed to the prince, but his eyes had looked at the knight of Floresta, who was approaching at that point.

She took with ostentation the arm of the young man, who had risen, radiant with joy, resuming his boria of a small peacock and crossed the group, responding with an ironic bow to the obsequious greeting of Coriolano della Floresta.

He did not have the time to notice the subtle smile, imperceptible grin, which touched Coriolano's lips, in bowing.

The knight, bartering a few words now with this hour with that, entered the playroom. There was a big fight around the big table where you used to play bass and the golden piles disappeared or grew at every leaf of cards, between the cicaeccio, the bets, the bets. The other tables played clumsy and other games more or less risky and the money ran, in fabulous places; here and there of the more mature groups of men were talking about the events of the morning and the way the feast of the crowning was held, the hopes conceived for the new kingdom.

"Do you know that the prince of Villafranca has been commissioned to hire a Sicilian company of bodyguards? Forty gentlemen..."

"Well thought... It is a fair recognition of our right..."

"The king will appoint three knights of the Annunziata and some chamber gentlemen..."

"Who are they? Who am I?"

The news was given by Don Raimondo Albamonte.

"If my news is correct, the knights of the Annunciation will be three princes..."

"Is Trabia there?"

"No. Maybe Butera, Geraci and Catholic."

"Why then Catholic and with Trabia that is second title?"

"What about the gentlemen?"

"There will be six or eight; the great chamberlain made the names of six princes, a duke and a count... I'm a big house..."

"The names, Duke, the names?"

The news of those next honors sharpened curiosity, aroused vain desires: having a distinction of more established a certain prominence in that Olympus.

"I bet the duke is you..." "No; it's Angiò..."

"Adjoined? Anjoined? Why him?"

"And among the principles, I believe, there are those of Carini, Scordia, Raffadali, Villafranca, Roccafiorita, Palagonia..."

Those names aroused, according to the mood and opinion that each one had of himself, approvals, disappointments, comments.

"It will then be true?"

Elsewhere we commented on the procedure of the ceremony of the crowning.

"Let it be said with all devotion, but in my opinion, since the king crowned himself with the crown of Sicily, the gentlemen assistants of the throne were to be Sicilians. The sword had to carry it to a Branciforti, and the crown to a Ventimiglia or a Moncada... They're rights..."

"Did you see that the king took the crown out of his head at the Sanetus, instead of getting it removed from the great chamberlain?"

"And then he put it on his own after communion."

They were already beginning to snake small criticism, and to manifest that deaf hatred towards the new monarchy that would never melt and amalgamate around the throne the Sicilian nobility.

Coriolano della Floresta passed distractedly from one group to another, stopping a bit, bartering a few words. Don Raimondo greeted him with a cold smile. He knew that he had hosted Blasco and this, given the reasons for the separation, seemed to him a lack of regard and a gesture of fear, since he had arrested Don Girolamo Ammirata and Emanuele, a certain anxiety disturbed his spirit. After all, he had no element of accusation, and except for the greed done to his livery by the young man, he could not blame them for anything else. The captain of justice could keep them in prison; but the admirer could bring a petition to the king and obtain release, there being no trial against him. He also feared that he had not laid his hands on the true author of the mysterious letters that arrived no less mysteriously, since the day after the arrest of Don Girolamo, the duke had found another letter, of the same writing with the usual verses of the psalms, the usual drawings, the usual dark words and even a not too distant allusion to that arrest.

He had called Matteo Lo Vecchio, but the birro had left for Girgenti, in the service of that fiscal lawyer, for the conflict that had arisen between the bishop and the civil power, following the interdict launched by the papal curia. He felt lonely, and this made him more vicious against Blasco, who had gone away for nothing, and against the knight of Floresta.

Coriolano pretended not to notice the coldness of that smile, bartered a few words and passed over. He was looking with his eye where the Duchess went.

The singing began: the first lines of a very simple orchestra were heard, imitating the soft and pathetic sound of the bagpipe. The Duchess was probably under the iridescent stalactites of the artificial cave, to enjoy the show. He also went in, indifferently, mingling among the crowd of men, standing before the gate.

Some servants had brought stools and small chairs and pillows for the ladies; Gabriella woman sat almost under one of the boxes, with her back to one of the pillars lined with stalactites and stalagmites that held them. Iraci's little prince was behind her, leaning on her shoulder, in an ostentatiously cheesy attitude.

Coriolano, insinuating gently, without opinion, came to put himself under the stage in the space between the pillar and the wall; the pillar hid it in the eyes of the prince, but the Duchess could see it.

At that time the great painted tent opened on one side, and the great nativity scene appeared in a glow of light that dazzled, behind a kind of dark work mouth, which seemed to be the opening of a large cave. Giacomo Serpotta, the wonderful sculptor, had conceived and shaped the wide scene; it was a series of harsh hills, covered on top of white snows, here raised to the peak, there gently degrading, which were lost in a cerulean distance, in sweeter forms. Towards the proscenium, the hut of the child Jesus, formed by some columns, leaning like a prone to a closed stone covered with straw; at the top stood a glory of angels with long! strips of paper on which it was written: Gloria in excelsis Deo et pax in terra hominibus bonae voluntatis; before the door of the hut the zampognar and the piper, and two or three Genuflexic shepherds; inside, Joseph and Mary: this kneeling, the other standing, leaning on the blossomed stick, between astonished and reverent; among them the manger, with the child Jesus in the act of blessing, and, behind, the donkey and the ox. From the child's head a nimbo of light was irradiated, formed by thin stripes of glass placed in order to reflect the hundred and a hundred hidden flames illuminating the nativity scene. On the other side there was a cave, where shepherds made ricotta and caci; round and prismatic caciocavalli hung from the vault of the cave; down a tavern leaning on the rocks, with tables outside, the tavern behind the counter full of carafes and around the tables shepherds, peasants, travellers, intent to revel. On top, on a rock, a tower, with a towerer above; under the tower a sleeping shepherd, and a little down another, frightened by the sudden light. In the bottom of the valley, a river, increased by a waterfall, crossed by a bridge, and scattered between the banks, along the course, on the slope of the hills, shepherds pulling goats by the horns; laundries, ortolani with the dome loaded with cauliflowers, a hunter with the dog, a fisherman, a curved farmer under a huge bundle of wood. Between one rock and the other, a group of houses, among them a salumaio shop, with all that gastronomic realism could suggest, in beautiful display of the adventurers who were negotiating. In the background there were other people, on foot, on horseback; and farther still a flap of the sea, and beyond that flap a city with its towers, its houses, its bell towers, wandering in the steam. rosy of the dawn that spread into the blue sky.

All those characters, taller than a palm, of wood, imagined and executed with a frank realism, were dressed in real fabrics: the silks, the velvets, the damasks, the golden tassels, alternated with the skins; the most straightforward fashions of the last seventeenth century with the shapes of no era and of no country; the most effective realism with the most spiritual figurations. There was no respect for chronology, nor for logic, nor for geography and costume, but fantasy had multiplied there episodes of life in a living and true form, which justified the fame that enjoyed that crib.

The singers had attacked with a wide and swaying motif, which dominated the whisper of admiration, while the bows, accompanying with tones now low now high, occasionally frammezed the traditional notes of the pastoral.

Donna Gabriella seemed very tired of the manifestations of the prince of Iraci, but turning her beautiful head and realizing Coriolano, she assumed a happy mask that caused an imperceptible smile on Coriolano's lips.

"Don't bother?" she asked slowly, with a lovely bow.

Donna Gabriella replied with adorable civetteria: "You?... You are so miserable of your company, it is a good thing to see you."

"Mrs. Duchess flatters me. But I was afraid to interrupt a conversation that, under this cave, can also take the color of an idyllic..."

Donna Gabriella looked at him to see if he was serious; she seemed to read something mocking, ironic in Coriolano's face; she misled the speech and, pretending to be careful with music, said: "Listen? Here's a nice sentence... Oh, really that Don Giuseppe Dia is a great teacher!... Do you agree?"

"You cannot fail to agree with your judgments..."

The prince of Iraki had stretched his neck, to see who Gabriella spoke to, and recognized Coriolano. He spited it, because he knew that the knight of Floresta was a friend of Blasco and he was hospitalized, and he seemed to see the hated and already lucky opponent, through the face of Coriolano.

Donna Gabriella was dying to know why Blasco didn't come to the party. Although the young man's conduct had hurt her, and an indefinable feeling that resembled hatred now stirred her chest against him, she had also hoped to meet him at the feast, to humiliate him with his contempt and lack of satisfaction that she had promised herself, poisoned her inside. But it didn't reveal contempt.

After an instant, distractingly and with the most indifferent air, he asked: "And your friend, your guest?... Why didn't you lead him?"

"Oh, I didn't miss it... He refused."

"Yes?" and he added shortly after: "You know, the poor young man is still a little wild and rude..."

"I ask forgiveness if I dare to say an opinion contrary to yours; I was able to discover instead that he has very delicate feelings, that should be better appreciated... Haven't you known them? I would be dismayed, but not amazed; but in this case he would deserve your pity."

"Are you his lawyer or his Minister Plenipotentiary?"

"Neither one nor the other. Do not accept this commission with you from anyone..."

"Why? Am I not a power worthy of you?"

"What do you say? Because, if ever, I would like to fulfill it on my own, not on behalf of others..."

"Galante!..."

"Not like you would deserve. For example, one should have the eloquence of the prince of Iraki."

Donna Gabriella made a smile, and returned the speech about Blasco.

"And why did he refuse to come?"

"Looks like it's a secret. I have not dared to penetrate it, for that regard that deserve the secrets, especially certain secrets..."

"Ah! so does your friend have secrets? How can you know?"

"I assumed. There is no man in the world who has no secret to keep. You can ignore exactly what the secret is, but it's so easy to guess if you have any... Especially when it comes to young people..."

"Ah! here!... So your friend's... is one of those young secrets, easy to guess...

"You've caught the mark..."

"That means that he is... in love....

"You guys have a wonderful penetration..."

"It doesn't take much to read in your words..."

"Really?" Coriolano resumed, pretending to be surprised. "Would I have been so unnoticed? I don't think so. In any case, I believe that this is the case; he must be in love..."

"And this love prevented him from coming, didn't it?"

"It's useless to deny it."

Donna Gabriella bit her lips: quickly in her brain she formulated a series of thoughts, of a rigorous logic, which gave the most acceptable explanation of many facts, and aroused at the bottom of her soul the snakes of jealousy and spite. This, then, is the reason for Blasco's cold and reserved attitude; this is what was hidden underneath the This is why he had abandoned the palace! All excuses; he loved another woman, and she, the Duchess of Motta, desired by all, had been nothing but a slight whim, a game for him. What humiliation! And who was this unknown rival? Was she beautiful? Prettier than you?

On his face they passed like waves! the concussions produced by the various thoughts; his small jaws were sometimes tightened with the nervous motion of anger of a young beast, and his eyes sparkled through the sudden veils of tears, and his chest was lifted up full of storm.

Coriolano smiled finely under his nose.

An outcry of applause indicated that the song was over: the cave was filled with cicacus and the sound of the stool rejected and distracted; Gabriella woman stood up and said to the prince of Iraki:

"So offer me your arm, and accompany me."

"With all my heart, my kind queen..."

They passed before Coriolano, who bowed respectfully, but not without irony. Donna Gabriella didn't notice it; she had more for the head: if she hadn't retained a feeling of pride and fear of letting herself be discovered, she would have tried to ascertain the name of that unknown rival, whose existence she didn't doubt and who she hated with all her heart. For as much as she tried to deny it to herself, she loved Blasco; she loved him with all the ardour of an unsatisfied soul, with all the anger of a hungry man to whom bread is taken away. He believed to guess, under the half words of Coriolano, more than he had not said; he ran further and thought for sure that Coriolano knew everything and was Blasco's confidant or accomplice.

In the storm that stirred it, sometimes, forgetting, he abandoned himself or tightened himself to the arm of the little prince who, believing that he was the object of sweet manifestations, going into visible began to murmur her to hold sentences...

"My idol, you open heaven for me!"

Donna Gabriella didn't listen to her: all her senses converged at one point; when the prince became more insistent, asking her why she didn't answer him, she came back and was about to say: "But shut up, you are an annoyer."

Unless in that moment he saw the eyes of Coriolano della Floresta above himself and then, with a sudden change, he resumed his dominion and with a soft and flirty air, he said to the prince, so that Coriolano could hear it: "Let's go: take me home, my beautiful knight."