The Viceroys (68 page)

News about the young man got back to the palace through Baldassarre, who wrote to the prince every two days with details of his young master's life. These letters would draw ringing laughs from Teresa, written as they were in a fantastic language peculiar to the major-domo. ‘His Excellency be well and is enjoying
himself … today we went to the
Buà di Bologna
, where there was great passing of carriages and gentlemen and ladies on horseback …' Every day the major-domo announced the programme for the next, ‘Tomorrow we go to the
Ussaburgo
 … tomorrow we leave for
Fontana Bu
to see the Royal Palace …' Donna Ferdinanda was awaiting the account of a far more important visit: that to His Majesty Francis II. Before Consalvo left she had made him promise when he passed through Paris to ‘kiss the King's hand', and as soon as she heard that her nephew was in the French capital she reminded him to keep his promise at once.

Father Gerbini, now Chaplain at the Madeleine in Paris, who frequented the houses of all the legitimatist nobles and had access to the ex-King as one of his intimate circle, requested an audience for the young Sicilian, laying timely emphasis on the loyalty of most of the Uzeda family to the Bourbon cause. In a long letter, which Donna Ferdinanda read out amid a circle of relations, Consalvo described the affectionate greeting of their former sovereign, the concern with which he had asked after the whole family and the gift he had made before dismissing him after a long conversation: his own portrait with an autographed dedication. ‘Her Majesty the Queen was unwell, so he had been unable to be received by her too, but the “King” had told him he would like to see him again before his departure!…'

Then too came a letter from Baldassarre describing the visit to ‘
So Maistà Francisco Secundo
, together with
So Paternità don Placido Gerbini. So Maistà
talked to
So Eccellenza
about
Sigilia
and the
Sigilian
gentry he had met in Naples and
Pariggi. So Eccellenza
kissed his hand and
So Maistà
gave him his portrait, saying that we must come back another time to be presented to
So Maistà
the Queen.' In fact before master and servant left Paris both announced this second audience, but this time the major-domo's letter to his master contained a detail of which there was no word in Consalvo's letter to his aunt. ‘
So Maistà
made a great fuss of
So Eccellenza
, and when they shook hands he said who knew when we would meet again; and
So Eccellenza
, as
So Paternità
told me, answered, “
Maistà
, we'll meet again in Naples, in
So Maistà's
palace!” …'

From Paris the young man finally returned to Italy, stopped for a short time in Turin and Milan, and passed on to Rome, the last stop on his journey. There he remained some time. But after a couple of letters to his aunt no more was heard from him. Donna Ferdinanda had also recommended him to ‘kiss the Pope's foot', and Baldassarre had at the beginning announced that ‘
Monsignori Don Lotovico
' was to take his nephew to the Vatican, but then did not say if the visit had taken place. One day, quite unexpectedly, he announced by telegraph their imminent return.

Met at the station by Donna Ferdinanda and by Teresa—for the prince had stayed in the palace and ordered his wife to do so too—Consalvo made a kind of triumphal entry between two rows of servants and estate employees, who admired their young master's excellent bearing, hailed his return and did all they could to help Baldassarre unload the great quantity of trunks, suitcases, portmanteaux and hat-boxes which filled the carriage and a hired cart. The prince, part-dignified and part-affable, was waiting in the Red Drawing-room and gave him a hand to kiss. And the princess did the same, but with more demonstration of loving concern, ‘Have you had a good time? Was the sea calm? Have you all your things? Your rooms are quite ready.'

Travel weariness, bemusement on arrival naturally explained Consalvo's lack of loquacity in those first few hours. In fact that evening, after sending to his father's, sister's, and stepmother's rooms various presents, he chattered away, described his impressions, told some comic anecdotes about Baldassarre, who knowing no language abroad had often got into trouble, and started quarrels with people at whom he mouthed Sicilian swear-words; once in Vienna he had nearly spent the night on a guardroom floor.

Next day Consalvo went on talking about his journey, particularly about Paris; but gradually, as this subject came to an end, the young man took no further part in the conversation. If the princess told some story, or the prince discoursed on family affairs, he just sat and listened and replied with a ‘Yes, Excellency' or a ‘No, Excellency,' now and again. At table he would sit with his nose in his plate and never look at anyone, often
without uttering two consecutive words. The prince for his part began sniffing and dropping into silences, though he sometimes made remarks which did not augur well at all. The princess raised her eyes to the ceiling in consternation, and Teresa, tortured by the chilly atmosphere, even began losing appetite. As he got up from table when his son left the prince burst out with:

‘Here we go again! You'll just see, we'll have it all over again! What's wrong with the young fool? He's been travelling for more than a year, had everything he wanted and this is his thanks, sulking, ruining my meals day after day!…'

It could not be said that the ‘young fool' was mute from lack of desire to talk, for in the presence of strangers he would go on and on telling of his travels, of the great things he had seen, of novelties not even a rumour of which had yet reached Sicily. With Benedetto Giulente in particular and with people more or less in public affairs, he discoursed to their amazement about the organising of city police, maintenance of public gardens, systems of watering streets or illuminating theatres. Why on earth did he bother about such things? To show people he had been abroad? No, not at all; for as well as talking on quite different subjects from before, he was even changing his way of life. He scarcely saw his old wild companions, no longer sought them out, seemed in fact to avoid them. His passion for horses seemed to have quite passed; he never went into stables, never talked to ostlers. No women, no gambling; now he spent his time shut in his own room, where no one knew what on earth he was up to. When he went out he made frequent visits to his uncle the duke and talked to him of serious matters, or was seen in company of people whom before he had avoided like the plague: pundits, politicians of the Reading Circle, frequenters of pharmacies, public place-holders, all the Deputy's retinue. Every day the post brought him a pile of Italian and French newspapers, and every week arrived a big packet of books chosen and ordered by himself.

‘What other nonsense is he getting up to now?' the prince said to his wife in ever more acid tones.

‘What are you complaining of?' she would reply in conciliatory tones. ‘He's quite unrecognisable, he might be a
different boy. Let's bless that journey for changing him from black to white!'

Some days Consalvo did not come to table at all; to the lackey sent to call him he replied from behind the door that he was busy. Then the prince flung down his napkin, ground his teeth, almost burst out in front of the parasites present at the meal. At a sign from the princess, Teresa went to visit her brother, and insisted with gentle voice and loving persuasion on his opening the door.

‘Why don't you come, you know father gets annoyed.'

‘'Cause I'm busy, I'm writing, I can't lose the thread …'

‘Stop writing then, to please him, dear! You have so much time to study! Otherwise it would look as if you were doing it on purpose, had something against him … or against mother.'

‘I haven't anything against anyone. Can't you see I'm writing.' In fact the writing-table was covered with sheets of paper and open books.

When finally he did come to table the prince slowly swelled with rage at seeing his son taciturn and pensive as a new Archimedes.

‘I'll eat alone rather than see that funereal face! Frowning like that all day long! He has the Evil Eye! My food will go down the wrong way! It'll choke me!…'

Teresa, as the only one capable of exercising an influence over her brother, would go to Consalvo again, take his hands, beg him to be good, talk to him of his filial duties, and he, mute and motionless, let her have her say. But once when among other arguments she produced that of gratitude owed to his father and stepmother he replied with cold and cutting irony:

‘A great deal, in truth … My father has always loved me, hasn't he, since he kept me shut up for ten years in the Novitiate, as he kept you at college for six? We both of us ought to be grateful, oughtn't we, for his not letting six months pass after our mother's death before putting another in her place?… She too, from paradise, must be grateful to him for the respect, love and care with which he surrounded her …'

‘Quiet! Quiet!' exclaimed Teresa.

‘Why should I be quiet? You know, don't you, what they
made the poor thing suffer? But you were in Florence, you couldn't know anything …'

‘Quiet, Consalvo!'

‘Well, what d'you want? Tell me what I must do to please him! When I was out of the house all day, amusing myself in my own way and spending money, it was “no, sir, you must change your life!” Now that I'm always indoors, studying, is he going to badger me still?'

Consalvo was studying political economy, constitutional law and administration. People who did not know what he was doing but could see a radical change in him, attributed it to his lengthy travels, to the common sense which all young men must get into their heads one day sooner or later. The journey in fact had been the origin of the young prince's conversion, his great lesson.

The struggle with his father had disgusted him with his home and also with his native town, where lack of money and weight of paternal authority prevented him doing all he wanted; so he had greeted with joy the idea of leaving and seeing a bit of the world. But the first impression he felt as soon as he got out of Sicily was that which a real king must feel on his way into exile. The day before, although he could not gad as he liked, he had yet been an important person, the most important person in his own town, where everyone from high to low doffed their hats and took an interest in him and his affairs; quite suddenly he woke up to find himself a nobody in the midst of a crowd which did not notice him. Had he seen no-one it might have been better, maybe, but the letters of introduction with which he was furnished put him into touch at Naples, Rome, Florence and Turin with the other nobles of those parts, and he then realised that there were people even more important than he was. The name of the young Prince of Mirabella had lost its virtue, become that of a noble among thousands. The real luxury, as opposed to his father's mediocre one, the sumptuous taste and elegant splendour of which he had been unable to form an idea in that corner of Sicily away from the highways of the world where he had lived, forced him to recognise his own inferiority. The Club at Catania was almost a family affair with himself enthroned there. In Naples or in Florence he could
obtain a membership card for only a few days; had he stayed longer he would have had to expose himself to a vote, to being recommended, to run, why, even risk of blackballing! A revolution had taken place in his head.

Suffering deeply in his pride, in his ‘Viceroys' ' vanity when he went to pay visits in palaces four times as big as his ancestral one, in which, instead of shops let out were galleries vast as museums and full of art treasures, he had ceased to frequent such acquaintances and refused to make new ones. To assert his own wealth in some way he flung money about on hiring carriages, in cafés, theatres, or shops, where he would buy quantities of useless things simply in order to leave his address, the Prince of Mirabella, Hotel such and such—the most expensive in town. It was not so bad in Naples, where Spanish tradition equal in every way to that of Sicily drew an ‘Excellency' even from unknowns who professed themselves his ‘servants'. But in Florence, in Milan, he just got a plain ‘Signore', and in vain did Baldassarre, who was always beside him, lavish his Your Excellency, or dialect
Voscenza
; people would smile or look amazed at the major-domo's extravagant expressions.

To avoid these mortifications the young prince left Italy much earlier than he had intended. In foreign countries the greater riches and power of members of his own caste did not wound him so much. But another discomfort awaited him. With his poor, ill-pronounced French he felt quite an outsider in Vienna, Berlin and London, while in Paris he made people smile as Baldassarre had done in Italy. But meanwhile Sicily, his native town, his own home, where his former consideration and primacy still awaited him, were becoming ever pettier and more squalid in his eyes. How could he resign himself to returning there after having seen the great life of big cities? And how could he hold a mediocre position in a capital? He must be first among the first then.

And once Consalvo got this idea into his head he began to consider ways of carrying it into effect. Would his father consent to his going away for ever? That was doubtful enough; but one thing was quite sure—that he would allow him as little money as possible, and even that with humiliating bonds such as on this journey, when all expenses had to be paid out personally
by the major-domo! So he would not be able to achieve his aims while his father was alive; and the prince might live to a hundred like so many of those Uzeda, all tough as leather unless the old blood disintegrated before its time …

Then Consalvo, coldly reasoning, taking all factors into account and calculating about his father's death as an event necessary to his own happiness, considered another side of the matter; that the whole of his paternal inheritance, on the day when he was its only master, would not be enough to give him the satisfactions he was seeking. Great for Sicily and anywhere else too for one without immoderate desires, the Prince of Francalanza's fortune was to Consalvo little more than mediocre—for Rome. His father's death was therefore useless to him; he would have to seek another means. And there, in the capital as he passed through on his way home, he found it.