The Viceroys (65 page)

‘Excellency, they're waiting for you at the Cavaliere Ferdinando's … they're all there … The Signorino's having the Last Sacraments …'

The monk was in a great hurry to get to the Reading Circle and hear the latest news, of which the last to come was of Italian troops before Rome. Curiosity was universal and highly excited. Don Blasco was in a positive frenzy. Even so at this announcement of death he was just about to answer that he would come at once, when suddenly up rushed another messenger, this time from the duke.

‘His Excellency expects you at home immediately … It's most urgent.'

‘I'm coming.'

The teacher, declaiming against the Tribunal of the Holy Office, accompanied him to the duke's new house, where the latter had been living since the first of the month. On reaching the gate the monk asked permission of his companion, who walked up and down and waited for him. Two or three minutes later Don Blasco reappeared at a run, pale in the face and waving a piece of paper.

‘It's ours!… it's ours!…'

‘Who?… What?…'

‘Come on!…' exclaimed the monk, speeding his pace and panting hard.

‘To the Reading Circle!… Rome is ours!… The breach is open!'

‘What?… Wait!… Show me!'

‘On … On … my brother got the dispatch. The troops are in. To the Circle!'

He rushed in like a bomb among members sitting on the pavements in the cool.

‘It's ours! It's ours! It's ours … Rome is ours!'

All got up, surrounded him, talking together, and gesticulating. He spread out a piece of paper on which the duke had copied the telegram sent to the Prefect in order to hide its official character, changing the address to make people think it had come to him. People hurried over from the end of the room, passers-by stopped, the crowd grew from moment to moment. All wanted to read the news, but Don Blasco did not let any of them handle the dispatch, which in the excitement risked being torn to pieces.

‘Read it! Read it!… We want to hear it!'

Getting up on a chair the monk read out in his booming voice:

‘Florence, 5 p.m., to Honourable Oragua, Catania. At ten this morning after five hours' gunfire national troops opened breach in walls at Porta Pia … white flag raised on Castel Sant'Angelo ended hostilities … Our losses twenty dead, about one hundred wounded …'

A yell went up all round. But Don Blasco, dominating the shouts, called:

‘To the Hospice … For the band … Stop!… flags!…'

In a second, every flag in the Reading Circle was brought by waiters dazed at the shouting. Don Blasco seized one, opened a way amid the crowd and yelled out again:

‘To the Hospice!… to the Hospice!'

On the way shouts of ‘Hurrah for Italy!' … ‘Hurrah for Rome!' echoed all round, demonstrators grew and grew in numbers. Those still ignorant of what it was about were calling out to know what had happened, and all cried back:

‘Rome taken by our troops!… A dispatch has reached the Deputy, the Duke of Oragua!…'

When the band of the Hospice, collected in a rush, began playing, the noise became deafening. Meanwhile musicians and bandleader were asking:

‘Where to?… Where'll we go?'

‘To the Deputy's!…' replied ten, a hundred voices. ‘To the duke's.'

In the Deputy's house every window was lit up, a flag as big as a ship's sail fluttered from the central balcony, and the Deputy in person answered and waved his handkerchief to the cries of ‘Hurrah for Rome! Rome, Italy's Capital! Hurrah for Oragua! Hurrah for the Deputy!'

Suddenly, while some shouted for silence expecting a suitable speech, the duke vanished. To avoid the danger of having to speak, as Giulente was not there to help him, being with his wife at the dying Ferdinando's bedside, the duke now came down to meet the demonstrators and mingle in the crowd.

‘Hurrah!… Hurrah!… to the Prefecture!'

And the march began again. Don Blasco, holding the banner at the slope, his top-hat slightly askew, his clerical collar damp with sweat, was walking in the middle of the demonstration arm-in-arm with the teacher, who had run across him again and now did not let him go.

‘On with your lights!…' shouted his followers at every step, and applause or whistles alternated as windows were lit or stayed closed and dark as before. The flood of demonstrators stopped a moment in front of a draper's shop, ‘Torches!… Hand-torches!'

All those found were distributed and lit at once. The smoky, guttering gleams, reflected on houses, lit up their fronts, struck gleams in window panes; handkerchiefs and hats waved over the sea of heads; the band raised general enthusiasm by playing at full blast the Royal March and the Garibaldi Anthem. Shouts echoed loudest, longest, thickest around the Deputy.

‘Hurrah for Rome! Hurrah for Italy! Hurrah for Oragua!'

Suddenly the demonstration stopped again as if held up and a muttering arose.

‘Still here!… On … on!… Down with!… Death to!… What is it?… What is it?…'

From an alley had appeared a friar. At sight of the habit the demonstrators leading stopped and shouted to the unfortunate man:

‘Down with priests!… Down with habits!… Hurrah for our own Rome!'

The friar, livid-faced with starting eyes, glanced a moment at the screaming and threatening crowd. Suddenly he raised his arms and wailed:

‘Eh!… Eh!…'

‘It's the mad one … Let him go!' exclaimed some. But few heard this and the crowd began moving on shouting:

‘Death to priests!… Down with the Temporal Power!… Down!… Death!'

Don Blasco craned his neck and recognised Fra' Carmelo, another of the mad Uzeda, a bastard who in spite of his christening was showing himself one of the family too. Meanwhile, at sight of the habit, the teacher quite lost control like a bullock at a red flag.

‘Death to crows!… Down with tricorns!… Hurrah for lay thought!… Down with ultramontanes!'

In the fantastic light of the torches, the madman went on gesturing frenziedly, shouting, ‘Hey!… hey!…' without recognising His ex-Paternity, Don Blasco. The latter, not to be outdone by the teacher yelling away by his ear was also shrieking:

‘Down!… Death!… Down!…'

‘M
OST
honoured Signor,

‘A knowledge of the origins and history of our island nobility should never be underestimated, particularly in these times when the value of that nobility is at last being appreciated at home whereas hitherto naught but the foreign was admired. It might seem superfluous to undertake such a narration after the works of Mugnòs, Villabianca and other famous and immortal writers had torn aside the veils of history, but that those distinguished and authoritative authors stopped, by nature's law, at the times in which they lived. Apart however from the need to prolong their accounts into our own days there is another reason for re-telling; and that is the rarity of those distinguished works, which few have means to acquire. Wherefore, that all may have access to a new and modern version, we decided to embark on this enterprise. Lest we be accused of pride for undertaking so vast a task we would not mention that we learnt the doctrines of heraldry with our mother's milk, being ourselves descendants of not the last among armigerous families of Sicily, acquiring thus a suitable ground-work of such knowledge. Therefore we nurture a hope that thanks to our indefatigable studies and our patient examination of important archives rich in documents on which we alone have had the opportunity of setting eyes, we can bring to conclusion the task which we have set ourselves, in the words of the Poet “From infamy secure, perchance with praise”.

‘You, most honoured and illustrious Signor, as a cultivator of historical studies and a lover of Sicilian glories, will not, we are sure, deny us your much desired assistance by associating yourself with our enterprise; so we hope and trust that your noble
self will deign to put your signature on this form, already subscribed by numerous persons of importance. No low ideas of profit move us, since, thanks be to God, we are not in need of money, only of your noble support in order to provide for simple expenses. Thus we can assure all being well.

of the Cavaliere Don Eugenio Uzeda of the Princes of Francalanza and Mirabella, Dukes of Oragua, Counts of La Lumera, etc. etc.; formerly Gentleman of the Bedchamber (with functions) to His Majesty King Ferdinand II; decorated with the Ottoman Order of Nisciam-Iftkar by His Highness the Bey of Tunis, Member of various academies, etc. etc., entitled:

consisting in the documented history of the origins, fates and stories of noble Sicilian families from remote antiquity until present times: in three volumes, of which the first contains text, the second genealogical trees, and the third coats-of-arms. To appear by instalments every month. The price of every instalment: two lire; of subscription to the complete work: fifty lire. N.B. Anyone arranging for six subscriptions will have the right to publish his own genealogical tree. Anyone arranging for twelve will be granted a full-page of his coat-of-arms in colour.'

This circular, distributed in many hundreds of copies, proved to the Cavaliere Don Eugenio's fellow-citizens that he was still among the living. There had been no news of him for some years. At first he had written to his relations asking them to lend money for some important and safe speculation, but as they all flatly refused, he had finally given up. What he had done all that time, where he had been, no one knew. None of those who went to Palermo ever saw him, none heard tell of him, and in fact so ignorant were people about him that many supposed he had passed quietly on to the next world. Before the post had finished distributing the leaflets on
The Sicilian Herald
, the author arrived in person.

He had been away for a long time and was now nearly sixty;
but he was also strangely disfigured, in fact almost unrecognisable. On his thin, emaciated face his nose seemed to have lengthened like a trumpet or snout, a flexible proboscis perfectly adapted for rooting in muck. Loss of teeth, by making his mouth fall in, also contributed to the ignoble, almost animal aspect of his whole face. The filth of his shirt and tail-coat, which was too long and too wide, worn with a waistcoat that had once been white, and a greasy hat that seemed to be sweating from heat, made him look like a waiter in a cheap restaurant or a croupier in a billiards and gambling saloon. The gout that tortured his feet gave him a twisted dragging walk. He put up in a third-class hotel; but the first people to whom he revealed his identity—as no one recognised him—were told that he had found no rooms free at the Grand Hotel, and that having left Palermo unexpectedly he had been unable to bring his trunks with him.

The first visit he made was to the head of the family, but on reaching the palace gates he was amazed to find them shut and only the wicket open. When he made himself known as the master's uncle to the new porter, who was looking him up and down, he was told there was no one there. Neither the prince nor the princess, nor Consalvo; they were all away. The young prince had been travelling for nearly a year, the master and mistress were away collecting the signorina from college and showing her some of the world. Not quite convinced, used to being turned away, the cavaliere was looking up at the windows as if trying to see through the walls, when he heard himself greeted:

‘Excellency?… Your Excellency here?'

It was the coachman, Pasqualino Riso. He too had gone down in the world and no longer sported smart uniforms, rings and golden chains as once upon a time.

‘All away, Excellency … the house is empty!'

‘When will they be back?'

‘We don't know, Excellency; perhaps the master and mistress, for the vintage …'

‘And the young prince?'

‘Ah, the young prince, not for the moment …'

And Don Eugenio, eyes glittering with curiosity in his
famished face, sat down on the backless chair which the porter kept at the door of his little room, and asked:

‘Why? What's the news?'

Gradually Pasqualino revealed the truth. The young prince could no longer live at home, at least for a time, because of the constant friction with his father. From all these upsets the Signor Prince had fallen ill. As for Don Consalvo, he could not be said to be afflicted enough to fall ill, but the quarrels and disagreements had made him lose weight too. So it was best for them both to be apart for a time … thus the prince had had time to calm down and persuade himself that after all his son had not actually murdered anyone! Perhaps they were accusing him of taking no interest in the administration of the property, of ill-treating his stepmother? ‘But Your Excellency knows what the Signor Prince is like; he'd have both hands cut off rather than hand over the account-books and strong-box keys to others! It's true the Signorino is not as fond of the princess as he was of his mother. But one has only one mother, hasn't one, Cavaliere? A stepmother should be respected, and he does respect her …' The real reason for the friction was in fact different. The Signor Prince did not want to have money spent, and the young prince on the other hand spent it like a lord … So the Signorino had signed one or two I.O.U.'s, and every time creditors presented one to the prince, good God, he nearly had a stroke. He even wanted to have him arrested, as if such a thing could be said in the Francalanza palace even as a joke!