Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part three, chapter 25

At the monastery of St. Catherine a steering wheel had run to bring the great news to the two sisters of Don Raimondo, and to pray to send the girl, Violante, to see the father even though she would come to see him alive. She had spent a sad night, agitated by ghosts and, after the morning prayers, She threw herself on the bed, more to hide her pain than to sleep, when a conversation came to call her on behalf of the aunts and the abbess.

"What will be there again?" he asked.

But when he went down to the small parlour he found the aunts and the abbess who reasoned softly and seemed to be affected by sudden and painful news. As soon as the two aunts came in, they hugged her and the abbess caressed her hair.

"My child," she said, "they want you at your house: Your father is not well..."

"What happened to him?" asked Violant frightened.

"An evil of nothing. Suddenly. I'll have Father Mongitore take you down to the confessional... There is also a steering wheel from your home."

She would never have imagined that she had to find her father in the conditions in which she saw him and, believing him dead, she threw herself at his feet sobbing. Only the presence of woman Gabriella who, when entered at that moment, rebuked her those manifestations of pain, too violent, could force her to stifle crying and to moderate herself. It was also the stepmother who came the night ordered her to go to sleep; and she obeyed, or because in that moment of pain and weakness she might have suffered the empire of everything, or because, after what had happened the evening before, the appearance and voice of that woman threw blood at her.

Now, getting up, and thinking that she could take her place next to her father's bed, she would come to the tip of her feet, so as not to make a noise. To go from his room to the room where - for that circumstance - Don Raimondo's bed had been placed, he had to necessarily cross the room, where Blasco and Gabriella had spent the night.

Above the table was still burning one of the beaks of a brass lamp; the other had turned off: the light weakened by the lack of food just illuminated a short circle around, within which things confused their contours or guessed for some brighter touch. Violant saw at the table a human mass that turned its back and stopped hesitant, but the immobility of that and the slow and deep breath warned him that sleep weighed over that mass not yet well distinguished to his eye. He crossed the room as light as an impalpable creature, turning to look, and recognized Blasco's face. The young man had fallen asleep with his head upside down on the lower back of a chair with arms; his mouth just stood, in the face spread a deep sadness. Violante stopped for a moment, coming his hands, but his eyes descended down the young man's body, buried in the shadows, where something too voluminous had attracted his gaze...

He suffocated a cry of sorrow and wonder, and, feeling faint, he leaned heavily at the table.

Next to Blasco, but much lower, with his head resting on his arms on one of the arms of the chair, almost touching Blasco's chest with his hair, in an attitude full of sweet intimacy he had seen Gabriella woman. He was asleep. Maybe the sleep caught her in that pose of devotion and abandonment.

Violent he felt his heart pierced by a cold blade; a sense of horror, an indefinable pain, a rush of weeping filled her chest and yet could not lift her eyes from that group. He made an effort to enter the chamber and perhaps did not have the strength to mitigate the noise of the steps or to avoid shocks. Donna Gabriella rose up, saw, without recognizing her, the girl's shadow, leaped up confusedly and approached her. Then to the confusion were added the spite, the anger, the jealousy:

"You!" cried he, "You! Come and spy?..."

The cry woke Blasco, who, fearing some sinister, also rose up, holding the sword that he had on the table at hand, but he found himself before the two women, and remained like a statue, not explaining what had happened, and what new reason he put them, in that hour, against each other.

He had been so overcome by sleep, that he had not heard a point that Gabriella woman had approached him in the night and had fallen asleep almost on his chest; she was now amazed to see her threatening and murky against the maiden.

The Duchess repeated by pressing her teeth: "Come and spy?..."

Violant turned back his tears, raised his head and, with dignity greater than the years, replied:

"No, ma'am; I'm going to see my father."

And entering the room he went to take his place at the foot of the bed, without turning, without bending his head, without betraying the least emotion. But Gabriella, to whom the torment of jealousy took away the prudence, followed her and said to her:

"You don't need your presence when I'm here..."

"You, madam?" said Violante, looking into her eyes.

"Back to your room..."

"I hope you'll recognize me the right to stay here!..."

The servants and the rational, awakened to those words, rose up, confused that they had let themselves be overcome by sleep and that they had been discovered, and stuttered words of excuse; but Violante dismissed them:

"Go and rest; you are too tired; here I remain: Go!"

The servants and the rational looked at the unresolved Duchess, as if to ask if they were to obey, but Violante imperiously added:

"Well? I feel like I've dispensed with watching. Go therefore..."

Though the astonishment of this unexpected attitude had upon the first surprised woman Gabriella, nevertheless recognized that her authority was diminished and offended before the bondage. He said haughtily:

"Do you forget I'm here?..."

"No, madam," said Violante, "I do not forget anything; but I take away the trouble of caring for my father, and I believe that if he could express his desire, he would not want others at his bedside that I..."

And he turned again to the servants and to the rational who were on the side, impaled and a little embarrassed, he added:

"Go; even the Duchess finds it more convenient that you go to rest."

They bowed down and went out; the rational believed to offer himself again: "If ever, Your Excellency... I'm on the machine... let me call freely."

When they came out, Violante approached a high chair at the foot of his father's bed and sat there without saying a word. Donna Gabriella felt devoured by spite, hatred, the need to put that girl under her feet. Remembering how he had slandered Violante before Don Raimondo, he felt a mortification rage for having been discovered in an attitude that gave his stepdaughter full right to slap her with the saddest words of revenge. He wanted to overwhelm her at all costs, to return his own defeat against her, to destroy that heart doubly broken.

"You will not demand," he said, "that I leave you alone..."

"What is your lordship afraid of?" answered the maiden by turning in the middle of the high chair. "Are you not going to be in the other room... with Mr. Blasco? There they will be more comfortable than before this bed..."

Donna Gabriella bit her lips, and Blasco, who did not understand the reasons for the painful irony of these last words, murmured softly, but with a tone of regret very similar to a faint rebuke:

"Violant!"

"Nothing, ma'am... But I think... with satisfaction that... now, you can no longer accuse me of being the lover of Mr..."

"Disgrateful!" cried Gabriella woman interrupting her with gesture and voice and making the act of grasping the maiden.

But Blasco didn't give him the time; he held her back, rebuking her:

"What are you doing?"

Violent, who had risen up; with the gesture he indicated the wounded; and all three saw him at that moment open his eyes and look at them with an expression of pain, which did not find in the voice the way to manifest itself. That look stopped and Agiacò woman Gabriella, penetrated into the blood of Blasco, closed those mouths in a silence full of thoughts, dismay, piety, according to the soul of each. Violante approached the bed and gently asked:

"Would you like something, Mr. Father?"

Don Raimond turned his eyes toward her and looked at her long; her lips were unnoticed, but only a groan came out. The maiden stood to contemplate him with her eyes full of tears; then, following the direction of her father's gaze, she saw that she was standing over the Duchess and Blasco. She thought she was interpreting it.

"Lord," he said turning to Blasco, "please leave him quiet..."

The word was addressed to the young man, but evidently the prayer also touched the Duchess. Donna Gabriella raised her shoulders with a bike of contempt.

"Accompani me, sir," he imperiously said, stretching out his hand, to lean it on the wrist that Blasco still did not give her.

Blasco felt like he was nailed; a crowd of thoughts, suspicions, questions flowed into his brain; there was in Violante's harsh, haughty, rigid attitude, as in the confusion of woman Gabriella, a mystery that did not come to decipher. He would have wanted to question the maiden, to have some explanation; if ever to clear himself up and defend himself, but the Duchess was waiting for him, irritated by the curiosity:

"Lord, I begged you to accompany me..."

"Forgive me," said Blasco "but everything that happens in here is so strange, and I feel so embarrassed, without knowing anything, that it seems legitimate to me the desire to ask some explanation..."

Violating coldly, but not without bitterness, he replied:

"Mrs. Duchess can explain everything to you better than I do... Have the goodness to follow her..."

It directly required him to go out; why? What fault was he guilty of in the eyes of the maiden? He looked at the Duchess, who was waiting for him, in a pose full of noble dignity and with a light of evil satisfaction on her face. Violent had turned his back on them and had taken up his attitude before his father, who with his stunned eyes followed the gestures of one and the other, as they spoke, as if he did not hear the words well, or understood what they sounded. Donna Gabriella was suspicious of Blasco's irresoluteness; she said irritated:

"I'll wait for you!"

Then he put his arm on her, with his low head, and his tumultuous heart, on which the duchess leaned her hand, and accompanied her in the little room. where they had spent the night.

Donna Gabriella stayed a little' unsolved, then resumed her place at the coffee table and indicated to Blasco a chair at the end of the room, from where she could not see or be seen:

"Sit down."

She imperiously ordered, as if she had caught others in a foul, for a need of the spirit to exercise a revenge, to hide, to recover and to desire to overwhelm, to take revenge on someone. Blasco, however, did not sit down; he felt an outrage, a deaf rebellion against that woman who did not even feel respect for that bed where she was agonizing her husband, to abandon herself to her blind instincts; he did not want to obey that imperious, unreasonable act, and said:

"I don't have anything to do here anymore. I hope Don Raimondo heals. In order to carry out my plan, I do not need to stay in this house, where, moreover, with the way of people I would not be sure. It's not day yet; the streets are almost dark and I can save myself..."

"Do you leave? You're leaving? How? Why?" hurriedly asked the Duchess.

"Because it's necessary."

"I won't let you out..."

"You will not oppose it!" replied Blasco firmly and dominating it with his will.

Then she felt her heart broken and her eyes filled with tears.

"Why do you want to leave me?"

"I have to go. I have other things to do. I can't leave my work in the middle of... Maybe I'll come back tonight... if I can... In any case you will have my news, do not doubt; and believe me that I will watch over this house..."

"What does it matter to me about this house!" exclaimed Gabriella painfully and spitefully woman.

But Blasco didn't pick up the interruption; he took his cloak, his sword, and his hat, and greeted her:

"Goodbye! be more just and more human; and remember that at this moment you have a great office to perform, because you alone represent for now the house of the Albamontes."

He kissed her hand with cold convenience and went out: Gabriella didn't know how to hold him, she couldn't even say a word; to the nervous tension of his impulses a weakness of will and a prostration of forces had succeeded by natural reaction, which made her find no other outlet except in crying.

Blasco went out revolted in the cloak, with the lapel raised on the nose, and took the road of Porta Carini to get out of the city as soon as possible. It had already become a day; some windows opened the dark ones, some sleepy faces stood behind the glazed ones. The shops opened. The gabellots had already opened the door, behind which they were waiting for cars with a "redine" of mules loaded with barrels or sacks, and carts pulled by oxen. Blasco drove away from each other, and following the line of the ramparts to the left, soon reached the gardens and on a path returned to the Capuchin monastery, where he would wait the hour for his confrontation.

Responding evasively to the friar who accompanied him, he entered the cell and jumped on the bed to think and reorder his ideas. It was necessary to put Violante under the cover of every snare and every violence of the Duchess, and to provide at the same time for her future. There was only one way: reveal everything to the Ventimiglia and the Branciforti, to the relatives of Emanuele and Violante, the two orphans, and put them under their protection. He wrote two letters, signing them: "Blasco Albamonte" and, called the brother, who was about to go to the police station, begged him to deliver them to their address.

"Wow!... They are the first lords!" said the friar; "are they friends of your illustrious lordship?"

"Yes."

The friar put the letters in the bag and left. Blasco had asked the one and the other lord for a bite for very serious events concerning their families; he begged them to excuse the boldness if, as he should have, he himself did not go to revere them up to their palaces, but could not because forced by higher force. He would meet them in two different hours, in the "wild" of the Capuchins.

The two lords arrived at the convent at the appointed time, with their carriages and one and the other were no less surprised to recognize in that Blasco Albamonte, who had invited them and who they believed they did not know, that young Blasco from Castiglione, whom they considered an adventurer of unknown origin. Blasco had to reveal his birth twice, with his annoyance; what amazed the two lords, who, knowing that the young man finally had noble blood in his veins, seemed to be reconciled with him and looked at him with greater benevolence. But their amazement reached the height when they knew that the heir of Don Emanuele, Duke of Motta, the legitimate duke, the son of woman Aloisia lived, saved by miracle, and that it had to be removed by now to the protection of his savior and return him to his rank, all the more because there was an act, with which Don Raimondo recognized the grandson, and this act was in the power of the Notary Di Bello. Now that Don Raimondo was between life and death, he felt it necessary for the motherly relatives of the young man to integrate him into his state; but meanwhile, for a matter of the house, and to remedy any inconvenience and not disperse the heritage, he proposed to marry Emanuele with Violante. It was up to relatives as natural guardians of the two young people - given the seriousness of Don Raimondo's health conditions, - to regulate the future state. All these news, these proposals did not stun the Marquis of Geraci, grandfather of Emanuele, to whom the idea that the son of his poor Aloisia was still alive gave a sweet and tender emotion, and did not stun even the prince of Butera, to whom the solution proposed by Blasco seemed the most logical and convenient. They did not take any resolution at the time; they had to have in their hands the act released to the notary Di Bello and collect all the elements; in any case they had to wait for Don Raimondo's health to be resolved in one way or another.

Blasco in his revelations had silenced how much he could harm Don Raimondo and what part the Beati Paoli had in all those events; only one thing he said in one ear to the prince of Butera: to protect Violant his nephew, threatened by grave dangers in his father's house.

While the two lords, who had ended up together, were still doing so, the prince of Branciforti said to Blasco:

"But you, my son, with this ban that weighs upon you, what devils have you committed?"

"No one, Mr. Prince; I wanted to do good, I got hurt and had to defend myself. Here's what I did. If I'm struck by a ban, I owe it to Don Raimondo that I saved. But it doesn't matter. Your Excellency will get me a boarding. The ban hits Blasco da Castiglione, and I am instead Don Blasco Albamonte, of the dukes of La Motta. Blasco from Castiglione died for justice..."

"Hell, here's an idea I like. Let me do it."

Blasco accompanied them to their carriages; when they left, he felt his chest wrinkled and breathed, but he caught a tear on his eyes and heard a painful hiccup coming up.