The Viceroys (57 page)

‘And they've thrown me out! They've thrown me out!…'

When the Uzeda family returned to town at the beginning of the New Year 1862, a letter from the duke to Benedetto announced that the Chamber of Deputies would soon be dissolved. This time he did not even trouble to come, but charged his friends with working for him. Business affairs prevented him from leaving Florence, and these affairs, after all, were actually more the electors' than his own. So votes should go to him as the city's natural, legitimate representative; it was absurd to
think of anyone trying to oppose him. As for rendering any account of how he had exercised his office, explaining his own political convictions or studying the needs or listening to the wishes of his electorate, an exchange of letters with Giulente, uncle and nephew, with some others of importance, was enough.

The usual malcontents began making their silly accusations again, trying to dig up old stories. The republicans, the left, blamed the duke for his servility to the Government, and tried to put up a nominee of their own, but they met strong resistance on all sides and had to beat a retreat. A satirical little weekly rag called the
Ficcanaso
(or Nosey-parker) made people laugh by saying that the Honourable Member Oragua had done as much in the Chamber as Charles in France without ever opening his mouth, but the paper
Pensiero italiano
, successor to
Italia risorta
, declared that the country had too many talkers, and preferred responsible citizens who voted without listening to any other voice but that of their own conscience. It never named the duke without calling him the ‘eminent Patriot', the ‘distinguished patrician', the ‘illustrious Deputy'. At the proclamation of the dissolving of the Chamber it began a panegyric of him.

Among the many merits of the ‘conspicuous Citizen', not the least was that of having played a large part in the institution of the Southern Bank of Credit, and Don Lorenzo Giulente, in his director's office, would recommend the duke's election to those who came to draw money. ‘There's no need to remind you …'

But in view of the indications of opposition, the Deputy's friends wanted to achieve a shattering victory; in fact they put together almost three hundred votes. The duke, in gratitude, arranged for a heavy fall of Orders of St Maurice and St Lazarus on his constituency. Benedetto was among the first to get one, and was certainly pleased, although already a ‘cavaliere' by birth. But from the day of its announcement his wife gave him no respite. ‘Cavaliere!… Listen, Cavaliere!… What are you doing, Cavaliere? Cavaliere, shall we go out?…' she would say either alone with him or before strangers, in season and out of season. And if there were others there she would invariably add, ‘Now, you know … my husband's a cavaliere, yes, sir! A knight without a horse …'

The real origin of the harshness with which she had treated him for some time was the conviction now firmly fixed in her mind that he was not noble enough for her. Little by little, day by day, she realised that her relatives had been right in denigrating the Giulente; and forgetting her accusations against the prince, she made peace with him, making the first move herself lest it be said that the Uzeda refused to have anything to do with her. And the more submissive Benedetto was to her, the more she felt that she had granted him a special grace in marrying him. The Liberal opinions which she had once admired now exasperated her as proof of his vulgarity. Pure nobles were all Bourbonists; her uncle the duke and one or two others only played the Liberal as a speculation. If her husband's patriotism had brought him great honour or lots of money it wouldn't have been so bad, but those down-and-out's principles of his, aired with no constructive profit, showed up both Benedetto's low origin and his stupidity. Now, to boast of an Order like that, of a title of cavaliere that was given to absolute nobodies, really showed him up as descendant of petty attorneys! Benedetto laughed about this a little, but it hurt him, and once when they were alone he said to her:

‘You might drop this joke.'

‘Joke? What joke? They made you a cavaliere, have they or haven't they? Is that true or not?'

And to boast of her severity, not content with making, him look a fool by calling him that, she would say before Donna Ferdinanda or Don Blasco:

‘Anyway he needs no Order! He's already nature's cavaliere!'

But the odd thing was that Donna Ferdinanda would not listen to her now, in fact sided quite openly with Benedetto, who was being useful to her just then because of the famous law on compulsory inflation. As years went by the more her hoard increased the meaner she became; now she lent her money at thirty or forty per cent, and called a thief any poor devil who was a day or two late in payment. Now she refused to have anything to do with ‘dirty paper', as she called banknotes, and recognised no other money but old Sicilian coin. If her clients, when debts fell due, came to pay interest in paper, she refused to renew the loan, demanded her capital back at
once, and got her nephew
the lawyer
to suggest ways of eluding the law and obliging people to pay in silver coin …

As for Don Blasco, he too had other things to worry about, and the Giulente were beginning to enter his good graces. On returning from the country he had taken a small apartment by the Trinità, to be free and near the Cigar-woman just as when at San Nicola; but he now needed to furnish his little home. And spitting curses against the ‘Piedmontese' who had flung him into the streets with a pittance of a lira and a half a day, he asked each of his relations for a piece of furniture; a sofa from the prince, a pair of armchairs from the marchese, a wardrobe from Benedetto. Having bought some lengths of linen, he distributed it round his relatives for them to have it sewn up; once it was sewn, he asked for some embroidery to be added. And everyone made it a duty to please him, even rivalling each other in rendering him those services and ingratiating themselves, now that he too had a little nest-egg of his own. Exactly how much he had no one knew, but when the first half-year for his shares fell due and he found that the coupons were paid punctually—in paper, it's true, but paper as valid as money—he told the marchese to buy him another ten thousand lire's worth. And while shouting against the thieving Government, he kept its share certificates under his pillow.

At the beginning of summer, although the Chamber was still sitting, the duke arrived. The usual demonstrations by friends and admirers began again. He pontificated more solemnly than ever and commented on the work of Parliament. The suppression of religious houses was the greatest fact of modern times; he enumerated and illustrated its immense advantages. Before all else the estates brought under direct cultivation would redouble and improve their products ‘to the advantage of agriculture, industry and commerce, chief source of social riches'. In the second place, all, even those with no capital, could own land by being assigned small allotments to be paid for with produce. Finally the Government, with the proceeds of the sale, would reduce taxes ‘to the relief of public and private finance'. It was like another ‘agrarian law'; he cited the Romans, Servius Tullius. And those who did not understand clapped all the same in expectation of the Golden Age.

Meanwhile he was preparing to buy up some of the sequestrated land—some said in fact that was why he had come—and he advised the prince, Benedetto, and the marchese to do likewise. When Don Blasco heard of this, he went blind with rage.

‘The goods of the Church to this family of unbelievers and damned? So you're holding the sack open for the thieves, are you? Aren't you afraid of the after-life? It's no surprise that swindler'—that was now his only name for his brother the Deputy—‘doing such a thing after he'd voted for the theft. The first shall be last and not even can the Lord God Himself save him from eternal fire! But what about you others? Woe to you! Fire and brimstone be on your heads! Burning souls!'

Donna Ferdinanda on her part was all against it from religious reasons, and she too threatened the buyers of Church lands with infernal punishment. The princess, whose health was worsening, supported her aunt, and one day the Prior came to the palace on purpose to warn his relations against such purchases in language of evangelical persuasion.

‘Do not let yourself be drawn into temptation. They will tell you that it's a propitious occasion to make material gains, but the health of the soul is the highest of goods. The Lord will compensate you in another way and give you elsewhere what you are renouncing now …'

The prince listened to both sides without expressing an opinion of his own. The marchese, though, judged such scruples excessive, and Chiara, so as to follow her husband, refused to listen to her confessor's warnings. Lucrezia on her side urged Benedetto to buy, to enrich himself, for now she considered him not only ignoble but poverty-stricken too; he did not own a single country estate, while the Francalanza had sixteen!

Meanwhile Parliament was discussing another law ‘to the advantage of the public and private increment' as the duke explained, although he did not go to the capital. This concerned the freeing of lay chaplaincies and livings, and very quietly the prince began conferring with his notary and legal adviser, and preparing documentation so as to obtain ownership of all his ancestors' religious foundations, particularly of the chaplaincy of the Sacred Lamp. Then one fine day in came Don Blasco, who had not set foot in the palace for some time.

‘Careful, now! If the chaplaincy is freed, its property is divided among all descendants!'

‘Your Excellency is mistaken,' replied the prince. ‘The property re-enters the primogeniture.'

‘Balls! Primogeniture indeed! Where are primogenitures now? They've been abolished for forty years. I've read the deeds myself!'

‘But the right of patronage has been in my hands.'

‘Patronage? As if you were some private company?'

Don Blasco was now talking like a treaty of jurisprudence.

‘It's a simple inheritance
cum onere missarum;
must I explain the Latin to you? Or shall we go back over all your tricks to avoid paying out the legacy to the convent? In short, we must reach an agreement here and now; otherwise I file a suit, and then we'll see what the law says!'

The prince finding himself caught out, felt bile coming back to his throat, and exclaimed:

‘Did Your Excellency not forbid us to touch the goods of the Church?'

‘Swine!' broke out the monk. ‘What has the Church to do with it? Masses will be said as before, in fact better than before! Did you think you could put the whole income into your pocket?'

But before there was time to go deeper into the matter or decide anything, one August evening, as a crowd of guests were watching from the palace the procession of the image of St Agatha, the duke arrived, yellow as a corpse, and announced:

‘The cholera! The cholera! Again!…'

This time it was the real thing; those poisoners had finally hit on the right dose, for before twenty-four hours had passed the germ spread. And once again the country roads were full, day and night, with jostling refugees, and a terror infinitely more contagious than any plague seized the bravest at the announcement of the disease's rapid progress, and urged them up towards the hills, into the Etna woodlands. There with the assurance of immunity, the rent of every shack amounted to a fortune!

The Uzeda arrived at the Belvedere a few hours after the duke's news, he himself in the first carriage, such was his panic.
Once again Cousin Graziella was with her cousins. Her presence had now become all the more necessary as the health worsened of the poor princess, who, perhaps from fear of cholera or from discomfort at the sudden flight, went to bed as soon as she reached the villa. Partly from this, partly from the general gloom produced by hearing of the massacre caused by the epidemic in the town, there were no more receptions, gambling or late nights.

During the day they walked on the estate. Consalvo, Benedetto and one or two others risked going out on the roads, but the prince wanted everyone home by Angelus and had all doors and gates bolted. Don Blasco, at the marchese's villa, prudently kept to his own room and never even went over to quarrel with Giacomo, partly to avoid the company of that ‘swindler', the duke. But suddenly one dreadful day consternation fell; cholera had broken out at Belvedere. The maid of some people who had come from town three days before was dying of it; the bell of the Last Sacraments could be heard in streets deserted as those of a dead town.

‘We must get away! Let's be off! At once!… to Viagrande, to La Zafferana …' Lucrezia left at once for Mascalucia with the Giulente. The duke, more dead than alive, would have liked to perch on the peak of Etna to be quite safe, but for the moment the marchese's opinion prevailed, which was that they should all go up to Viagrande, where they were almost sure to find a house to hold the whole family. But someone must go ahead to find one. The duke, longing to get away at once, offered to accompany the prince. Giacomo said to his wife:

‘D'you want to come too?'

For some days the princess had been suffering from bad stomach trouble, could no longer digest and dragged herself agonisingly from bed to armchair; and for that very reason all agreed that she must be got to safety before others. So husband and wife left at once with their uncle and Baldassarre. The others stayed to load the carts of luggage, for this time, as they were not going to their own house, beds, linen and objects of daily use had to be taken. That night the major-domo returned to tell them that lodgings had been found, and next day at dawn they all rushed away from the Belvedere, where cholera was already raging. The house at Viagrande had been found
thanks to the Prince of Francalanza's money and connections. Even so it was a bug-run of three fair-sized rooms and two tiny ones all on the ground floor, the poor home of a cooper, where the ‘Viceroys' were only too glad to be able to roost. Thanks to the Uzeda name they were allowed entry into the village, though coming from an infected part, but once there, the prince, the duke and Don Blasco began shouting that no one else must be let in, or it would mean the ruin of Viagrande.