The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Author:Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa [Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780099512158
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

IV

LOVE AT DONNAFUGATA

* * *

NOVEMBER, 1860

AS MEETINGS DUE to the marriage contract became more frequent, Don Fabrizio found an odd admiration growing in him for Sedàra’s qualities. He became used to the ill-shaven cheeks, the plebeian accent, the odd clothes and the persistent odour of stale sweat, and he began to realise the man’s rare intelligence. Many problems that had seemed insoluble to the Prince were resolved in a trice by Don Calogero; free as he was from the shackles imposed on many other men by honesty, decency and plain good manners, he moved through the forest of life with the confidence of an elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs, without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed. Reared and tended in pleasant vales traversed by courteous wafts of “please”, “I’d be so grateful”, “how kind”, the Prince, when chatting to Don Calogero, found himself on an open heath swept by searing winds, and although continuing in his heart to prefer defiles in the hills, he could not help admiring this vital surge which drew from the ilexes and cedars of Donnafugata chords never heard before.

Bit by bit, almost without realising it, Don Fabrizio told Don Calogero about his own affairs, which were numerous, complex and little understood by himself; this was not due to any defect of intelligence but to a kind of contemptuous indifference about matters he considered low, though deep down this attitude was really due to laziness and the ease with which he had always got out of difficulties by selling off a few more hundred of his thousands of acres.

Don Calogero’s advice, after listening to the Prince’s report and mentally setting it in order, was both opportune and immediately effective; but the eventual result of such advice, cruelly efficient in conception, and feeble in application by the kindly Don Fabrizio, was that as years went by the Salina were to acquire a reputation as extortioners of their own dependants, a reputation quite unjustified in reality but which helped to destroy their prestige at Donnafugata and Querceta, without in any way halting the collapse of the family fortunes.

It is only fair to mention that more frequent contact with the Prince had a certain effect on Sedàra too. Until that moment he had only met aristocrats on business of buying and selling or through their very rare and long-brooded invitations to parties, circumstances in which this most singular of social classes does not show at its best. During such meetings he had formed the opinion that the aristocracy consisted entirely of sheep-like creatures, who existed merely in order to give up their wool to his shears and their names and incomprehensible prestige to his daughter. But since getting to know Tancredi during the period after Garibaldi’s landing he had found himself dealing, unexpectedly, with a young noble as cynical as himself, capable of striking a sharp bargain between his own smiles and titles and the attractions

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