Beati Paoli
by Luigi Natoli
part four, chapter 11
| Italiano | English |
On the first Sunday of October, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, the road of Butera was full of noble carriages, of porters, and of servants in rich galloned liveries, who gathered in front of the door talking or talking about the masters.
At every carriage that reached, preceded by the wheels, they opened in two wings, to let it pass, wringing their eyes, murmuring comments, between deep bows. The ones who went into the news of the day gave explanations and news about the spouses.
"A marriage without genius..."
"Saying that when they went to take over the bride at the monastery, the poor girl was pale as a dead woman."
"He's not a handsome husband..."
"Why else? He's a handsome young man... Rich... A gallows piece... Did you know what happened to him?
"Oh, yeah... Banged..."
"That they hanged him half..."
"The Beati Paoli."
"He made some..."
"Who knows with whom?..."
"Some poor daughter of Mom."
"How many do you see, so many take..."
"He'll end up dead."
"Poor bride."
"Is she beautiful?"
"A Madonna!..."
"Good bite, for God's sake!..."
"It's not for us..."
"Yeah, if he wants to change, I'm willing..."
Small strifes and salacious allusions began between laughter, which were immediately repressed upon the arrival of a new carriage.
The halls of the palace were crowded with ladies. The prince of Butera, both for the natural generosity of his house, and that being an orphan grandson he did not want to make believe that he wanted to do less than what he had and would do for a daughter, had wanted to give the promise of marriage all the greater solemnity, worthy of his rank and of the family of the bridegroom.
But all the luxury and splendor of invitations and treatment contrasted terribly with the face of Violante.
The poor girl, in her room, among her married aunts, waited for the time to go out and be presented to society, with the same aspect as the condemned, who in the chapel, among the priests who assist her, waits trembling and at the same time anxious the fatal moment when the door opens to go to the scaffold.
And she came out of the monastery that same morning, to receive the ring: and she knew from the day before. that he had to set himself up for sacrifice.
Grandpa had gone to tell him.
Violent at first words she had dyed of a mortal pallor and almost fainted.
"Why so soon?" he asked.
"Oh, it's not early; far from it," said the prince; "at your age you should already be married. We have delayed giving you a state, but now it is time, my daughter; you cannot stand here closed."
"But I'm fine with it, I don't want anything, I've become fond of these good mothers... Why does your lordship want me to marry?"
"Bitch, but you're almost obligated to do it. You have a remarkable inheritance, which you cannot and must not let pass into other hands, out of those of your children..."
"Oh, sir, I beg you... send me back to another year, give me time... it's serious..."
What do these prayers mean? It's an agreed thing. I'm sure I interpret your father's will."
"But if I had a calling to the monastery?..."
"You'll get over it..."
"If I had no vocation to marriage?..."
"You'll come..."
"Mr. Prince, he will not come... I swear it's something that scares me... Leave me here in the monastery with the aunts."
"Oh, let's get this over with! Since when does a girl meddle in this stuff? In the morning we'll pick you up and tomorrow night we'll drive you here, where you'll stay until the wedding. And let's not talk about it anymore."
The prince left her pale, as she died, repeating with indifference:
"God damn it! God damn it!"
Violante followed him with his eyes, through the grate, then suddenly burst into tears and went back up, looking for the aunts, to invoke their help. He threw himself into their arms, sobbing and begging:
"Mrs. Mother Rosalia, Mrs. Conception, save me you! Save me you!..."
The two nuns were frightened, they anxiously asked:
"What was that? What happened to you?"
"I'm lost, if you don't save me, my good aunts!... Do it for my father's memory!..."
"But say, speak! Holy Virgin of the Rosary!... what happened?"
With words broken by hiccups, pale, lost, she reported to them the dialogue with her grandfather.
"I don't want to marry him! I don't want to!" he exclaimed vigorously, with a gesture of the boss.
The two nuns were distressed.
"My child, you must obey... if the Lord wants you to enter the world, do his will. Grandpa's looking for your advantage!"
"Ah! so you also abandon me?..."
"But no, we don't abandon you, daughter, you have to be reasonable. Recommend yourself to God and to the Blessed Virgin and you will find yourself more relieved..."
"Oh, God! God! God! Why do you want me to die?..."
The nuns tried to comfort her; they were distressed, but what could they do? They had no authority and could certainly not prevent that marriage wanted by Grandpa.
"I want to be a nun!" sobbed Violante; "I don't want to leave the monastery... I want to be a nun!..."
As for them, yes, they would have been happy to have that niece with them; they would have been happy to see her nun, to celebrate that profession with all the luxury she deserved, but how to counter with the will of the prince of Butera that when she put something in her head, there was no way to get rid of her?
To comfort her, they promised her that they would perorate her cause and write a note to the prince, but the prince replied with great courtesy, that it was not appropriate to give weight to those maidens.
Violante spent the night in the deepest despair; all the past was renewed to her memory and the images she had tried to oblivion, appeared again before her. Oh how many things she saw, and how the dreams of her youth, which had already seemed so far away, now appeared to her close and alive, almost to increase the torments of her soul!... So what slight hope persisted in her heart, if that marriage filled her with fear and pain, as the threat of an immature and violent death?
Emanuele? But she hated him. He had glimpsed him and felt an invincible repugnance for him. Although she had sworn and imposed on herself to forget Blasco, that Mr. Blasco who had slept one night with his head leaning on his bedside, that Mr. Blasco who had had so delicate tenderness for her, and in whose arms almost surprised her stepmother, yet now her image rose again as that of an intensely desired and irreparably lost good!
Where was he? What was it? She didn't know anything about it anymore. He had for four years jealously kept the secret of his first youth and had not dared, nor wanted to ask any news of Blasco. On the day that the Viceroy Marquis de Lede made his solemn entry to Palermo, she from the hanging loggia and the "view" that gave on the Via Toledo, looking at the dragons that rode, was suddenly moved, because one of them resembled Blasco, but it was far from assuming that the handsome knight could be one of those foreign soldiers and had believed one of those extraordinary similarities, which are not rare.
Where was he? What was it? Did he live?
Ah! she did not know, and perhaps it was better for her, that that dragon was Blasco, and that while she was despairing in the shadow of her cell, for that marriage digging a deep grave at the last extreme ghost of hope, Blasco was in the arms of another woman, her stepmother!...
Thus, among these spasms, dragged her in spite of the ancient dream, ideally stretching her arms to the one who appeared to her as a liberator, Violante spent the night.
She recognized that she was alone: alone in the world!
In the morning the grandparents took her in their carriage and brought her to the palace. Violant was frighteningly pale.
The prince wrestled a little about that pallor and that fear, but under the veil of the joke there was something imperious and irrevocable, which took away from the maiden all hope and courage.
She let herself be clothed without will, without genius, cold and automatic like a doll.
The waiters and aunts Butera couldn't get a word out of her mouth and believed it was for the concussion of that ceremony. He was moved in fact, but from the pain and his pupils fixed in the void seemed to be lost in the depths of his dark and tragic destiny.
When, led by her grandmother, she entered the hall crowded with guests, her pallor had bruises, which gave her such a deadly appearance, that a murmur of amazement and pity touched the mouths of those who saw her.
Violante made superhuman efforts not to faint and to keep a calm and dignified attitude.
She was immediately filled with compliments and greetings, each of which was a very sharp blow to her heart. Only the sight of Emanuele could revive her, for a sudden flash of hope to which she attached herself to every little hold.
Emanuele, who was advancing alongside his grandparents, was also horribly pale and his face expressed an invincible reluctance.
She recognized from the appearance, that in his heart the same feelings of aversion and almost repugnance were lifted up as she felt. So Emanuele also suffered the will of others! Emanuele also approached those weddings without desire, without joy, as a sacrifice.
He did not love her. Violating the same, and his heart had a throbbing of joy. If Emanuele didn't love her, he hated her, he was her best help. A crazy idea shook her for the boss: to ask the young man who destined them for companion of all life, if it was not better, for one and the other, to refuse to these weddings with an act of energetic will.
But Emanuele was approaching.
When he was before her, the prince of Geraci, taking him by the hand and presenting him to the prince of Butera, begged him to do him the honor of granting the hand of his grandson and pupil, woman Violante Albamonte, to his nephew and pupil, Father Emanuele Albamonte, Duke of Motta.
And, having obtained an answer full of subsiego and courtesy studied, he asked him to pray Violante woman to be worthy of accepting the pledge of the exchanged faith, the engagement ring, wanted by the customs.
Violante had to turn his right ring finger to stick the ring in it. His forehead had become wet and his hands frozen. Pride prevented her from abandoning herself to her pain under those hundreds of eyes that looked at her. But he did not say a word, he did not answer, neither to the gracious words of his future relatives, nor to the wishes that came from all sides.
An army of servants in large green livery embroidered with gold, with a profusion and amazing wealth, served refreshments, while in a room next to the notary of the house with two grandparents and witnesses stipulated the marriage chapters. Emanuele was fuzzy and silent among those compliments.
"You are a lucky man, you have beauty and wealth!"
"I didn't know woman Violante yet, she's really beautiful! I make you my joys..."
"You'll be an enviable couple."
"Good boy, good boy..."
All these phrases, largely dictated by convenience, bothered Emanuele. He would sometimes look at Violante to discover all this beauty that they were decanting, and he recognized that she was really beautiful, but that she had no attraction for him. However, it was not so much for the bride who assigned him that he felt a deep aversion, but for the marriage, which seemed to him a sort of imprisonment.
He was still so young! and wanted to enjoy life. His father had not taken a wife until after the Forty years; why did they want to tie his youth to an unwanted yoke, not enlivened by any idealism, by any dream?
He too, like Violante, when he was still a teenager, had not been very concerned about this marriage. There was still time! and so many unpredictable things could happen in such a long time!... But time had passed so quickly that it did not seem true and what seemed far away, it was already imminent, indeed he stood there on the threshold, there was nothing else to do but cross that threshold.
One thing only comforted him: his departure to Rome, which, in addition to dispensing him from the official visits he should have made to the bride, in the monastery, behind the grate of the parlour, could have unexpected consequences.
Forced by his grandfather, he had approached Violant woman to speak a few words to her, but the maiden had remained still, pale, with her eyes fixed on the ground, like a funeral statue: This disrespected Emanuele and, as usual, excited and raised in him that rude rudeness that was the substratum of the education received in a small and poor bourgeois environment.
"It seems," he said to her, capturing the opportune moment "that these weddings are not of your genius..."
Violent did not answer, nor did he seem to have heard it.
His silence caused Emanuel's spite and made him angry.
"Furthermore," he added, "they don't like me either!"
And he turned his back on her, glad to have told her those abusive words like a slap, which instead opened Violante's heart to a sudden hope. In the depths of her heart she murmured a thank you that was the expression of all the feelings that tormented her.
Those who saw her cheeks coloring with pink, imagined smiling that the girl had blushed out of shame at some sentence of her future boyfriend and no one assumed, instead, that it was the joy of not knowing herself loved, nor desired by that man so hateful.
She returned to the monastery the next morning, with the heart fought between the faint hope that Emanuel himself would break that bond, the pain of having tightened it, the comfort that for some time would not see her boyfriend, who, as had been decided, would leave for Rome.
In fact, Emanuele left in the evening, with two prisons in Tuscany touching Civitavecchia, where he, on the ground, would go to Rome. He was accompanied by three servants and carried four horses with him and was equipped with letters and recommendations, as well as for the ambassador of Spain, also for his eminence the vicar and for his father Don Antonino Inguaggiato, one of the many priests exiled under the Savoy government, who, like most exile priests, lived in Rome.
The encamped father was to be the confessor of Emanuele, for the time of his abode in Rome.
