A Proposal

When Don Calogero’s arrival was announced at exactly half-past four the Prince had not yet finished his toilet; he sent a message asking the Mayor to wait a minute in his study and went on placidly embellishing himself. He plastered his hair with Lemo-liscioy Atkinson’s‘ Lime Juice and Glycerine’, a dense whitish lotion which arrived in cases from London and whose name suffered the same ethnic changes as songs: he rejected the black frock-coat and chose instead a very pale lilac one which seemed more in keeping with the presumably festive occasion; he dallied a little longer to tweak out with pincers an impudent fair hair which had succeeded in escaping that morning in his hurried shave: he had Father Pirrone called; before leaving the room he put on a table an extract from the Blaster fur Himmehforschung and on the turned back page made the sign of the Cross, a gesture of devotion which in Sicily has a non-religious meaning more frequently than is believed.

As he crossed the two rooms preceding the study he tried to imagine himself as an imposing leopard with smooth scented skin preparing to tear a timid jackal to pieces; but by one of those involuntary associations of ideas which are the scourge of natures like his, he found flicking into his memory one of those French historical pictures in which Austrian marshals and generals, covered with plumes and decorations, are filing in surrender past an ironical Napoleon; they are more elegant, undoubtedly, but it is the squat little man in the grey topcoat who is the victor; and so, put out by these inopportune memories of Mantua and Ulm, it was an irritated Leopard that entered the study.

Don Calogero was standing there, very small, very badly shaved; he would have looked like a jackal had it not been for eyes glinting intelligence; but as this intelligence of his had a material aim opposed to the abstract one to which the Prince’s was supposed to tend, this was taken as a sign of slyness. Devoid of the instinct for choosing the right clothes for the occasion which was innate in the Prince, the Mayor had thought it proper to dress up almost in mourning; he was nearly as black as Father Pirrone, but while the latter was sitting in a corner with the marmoreally abstract air of priests who wish to avoid influencing the decisions of others, the Mayor’s face expressed a sense of avid expectancy almost painful to behold. They plunged at once into the skirmish of insignificant words which precede great verbal battles. But it was Don Calogero who launched the main attack.

“ Excellency,” he asked,“ have you had good news from Don Tancredi?” In little towns in those days the Mayor was always able to examine the post unofficially and maybe he had been warned by the unusually elegant writing paper. The Prince, when this occurred to him, began to feel annoyed.

“ No, Don Calogero, no. My nephew’s gone mad . ..”

But there exists a deity who is a protector of princes. He is called Good Manners. And he often intervenes to prevent Leopards from unfortunate slips. But he has to be paid heavy tribute. As Pallas intervened to curb the intemperances of Odysseus, so Good Manners appeared to Don Fabrizio and stopped him on the brink of the abyss; but the Prince had to pay for his salvation by becoming explicit for just once in his life. With perfect naturalness, without a second’s hesitation, he ended the phrase; “. . mad with love for your daughter, Don Calogero. So he wrote to me yesterday.”

The Mayor preserved a surprising equanimity. He gave a slight smile and began examining the ribbon on his hat; Father Pirrone’s eyes were turned to the ceiling as if he were a master mason charged with judging its solidity. The Prince was put out; that silence on both their parts even deprived him of the petty satisfaction of arousing surprise. So it was with relief that he realised Don Calogero was about to speak.

“I knew it, Excellency, I knew it. They were seen to kiss on Tuesday, 25th of September, the day before Don Tancredi’s departure. In your garden, near the fountain. Laurel hedges aren’t always as thick as people think. For a month I’ve been waiting for your nephew to make some move, and I’d just been thinking now of coming to ask Your Excellency about his intentions.”

Don Fabrizio felt assailed by numbers of stinging hornets. First, as is proper to every man not yet decrepit, that of carnal jealousy. So Tancredi had tasted that flavour of strawberries and cream which would always be unknown to him! Then came a sense of social humiliation at finding himself an accused instead of a bearer of good news. Third, personal vexation, that of one who thought he had everything in his control and then finds much has been happening without his knowledge. ” Don Calogero, let’s not change the cards we have on the table. Remember, it was I who called you. I wished to tell you of a letter from my nephew which arrived yesterday. In it he declares his passion for your daughter, a passion of whose intensity I . ..” (Here the Prince hesitated a moment, because lies are sometimes difficult to tell before gimlet eyes like the Mayor’s) “.. . I was completely ignorant till now; and at the end of it he charges me to ask you for Signorina Angelica’s hand.”

Don Calogero went on smiling impassively; Father Pirrone had transformed himself from architectural expert into Moslem sage, and with four fingers of his right hand crossed in four fingers of his left was rotating his thumbs around each other, turning and changing their direction with a great display of choreographic fantasy. The silence lasted a long time; the Prince lost patience. “Now, Don Calogero, it is I who am waiting for you to declare your intentions.”

The Mayor’s eyes had been fixed on the orange fringe of the Prince’s arm-chair; for an instant he covered them with his right hand, then raised them; now they looked candid, brimming with amazed surprise, as if that action had really changed them.

“Excuse me. Prince ” (by the sudden omission of “Excellency” Don Fabrizio knew that all was happily consummated) “but Joy and surprise had taken my words away. I’m a modern parent, though, and can give no definite answer until I have questioned the angel who is the consolation of our home. But I also know how to exercise a father’s sacred rights. All that happens in Angelica’s heart and mind is known to me, and I think I can say that Don Tancredi’s affection, which honours us all, is sincerely returned.”

Don Fabrizio was overcome with sincere emotion; the toad had been swallowed; the chewed head and gizzards were going down his throat; he still had to crunch up the claws, but that was nothing compared to the rest; the worst was over. With this sense of liberation he began to feel his affection for Tancredi coming to the fore again, and thought of those narrow blue eyes of his glittering as they read the happy reply; he imagined, or recalled rather, the first months of a love match with the frenzies and acrobatics of the senses approved and encouraged by all the hierarchies of angels, benevolent though surely surprised. And he foresaw Tancredi’s security of life later on, his chances for developing talents whose wings would have been clipped by lack of money.

The nobleman rose to his feet, took a step towards the surprised Don Calogero, raised him from his arm-chair, clasped him to his breast; the Mayor’s short legs were suspended in the air. For a moment that room in a remote Sicilian province looked like a Japanese print of a huge violet iris with a hairy fly hanging from a petal. When Don Calogero touched the floor again, Don Fabrizio thought, “This won’t do, I really must give him a pair of English razors”.

Father Pirrone switched off the turbine of his thumbs; he got up and squeezed the Prince’s hand. “Excellency, I evoke the protection of God on this marriage; your joy has become mine.” To Don Calogero he extended the tips of his fingers without a word. Then with a knuckle he tapped the barometer hanging on the wall: it was falling; bad weather ahead. He sat down and opened his breviary.

” Don Calogero,” said the Prince,“ the love of these two young people is the basis, the only foundation of their future happiness. We all know that. But we men of a certain age, men of experience, we have to think of other things too. There is no point in my telling you how illustrious is the family of Falconer! It came to Sicily with Charles of Anjou, flourished under the Aragonese, and Spanish, Bourbon kings (if I may name them in your presence) and I am sure that it will also prosper under the new dynasty from the mainland (may God preserve it).” (It was impossible to tell how much the Prince was being ironic or how much just mistaken.) “They were Peers of the Realm, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Santiago, and when they have a fancy to be Knights of Malta they need only raise a finger and Via Condotti cooks up a diploma for them at a moment’s notice, like buns, so far at least.” (This perfidious insinuation was entirely lost on Don Calogero, who was quite ignorant of the statutes of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem.)

“I am sure that your daughter will decorate the ancient trunk of the Falconeri by her rare beauty, and emulate in her virtues those of the saintly Princesses of the line, the last of whom, my sister, God rest her soul, will certainly bless the bride and bridegroom from Heaven.” Don Fabrizio felt moved again, remembering his dear Giulia, whose wasted life had been a perpetual sacrifice to the frenzied extravagances of Tancredi’s father. “As for the boy, you know him; and if you did not, I am here to guarantee him in every possible way. There is endless good in him, and it is not only I who say it. Isn’t that true. Father Pirrone?”

The excellent Jesuit, dragged from his reading, found himself suddenly facing an unpleasant dilemma. He had been Tancredi’s confessor and he knew quite a number of his little failings: none of them very serious, of course, but such as to detract quite a good deal from the endless goodness of which the Prince had spoken; and all of them such (he almost felt like saying) as to guarantee the firmest marital infidelity. This, of course, could not actually be said both for sacramental reasons and from worldly convention. On the other hand he liked Tancredi, and though he disapproved of the wedding with all his heart he would never say a word which could either impede it or in any way cloud its course. He took refuge in Prudence, most tractable of the cardinal virtues.

“The fund of goodness in our dear Tancredi is great indeed, Don Calogero, and, sustained by Divine Grace and by the earthly virtues of Signorina Angelica, he might become, one day, an excellent Christian husband.” The prophecy, risky but prudently conditional, passed muster.

“But, Don Calogero,” went on the Prince, chewing on the last gristly bits of toad, “if it is pointless to tell you of the antiquity of the Falconeri, it is unfortunately also pointless, since you already know it, to tell you that my nephew’s economic circumstances are not equal to the greatness of his name. Don Tancredi’s father, my brother-in-law Ferdinando, was not what is called a provident parent; his magnificent scale of life, and the irresponsibility of his administrators, have gravely shaken the patrimony of my dear nephew and former ward; the great estates around Mazzara, the pistachio woods of Ravanusa, the mulberry plantations of Oliveri, the palace in Palermo, all have gone; that you know, Don Calogero.’’

Don Calogero did indeed know that; it had been the greatest migration of swallows in living memory: a thought which still brought terror, though not prudence, to the entire Sicilian nobility, while it was a font of delight for all the Sedàra. “During the period of my guardianship all I succeeded in saving was the villa, the one near my own, by judicial quibbles and also thanks to a sacrifice or two on my own part which I made joyfully, both in memory of my sainted sister Giulia and because of my own affection for the dear lad. It’s a fine villa; the staircase was designed by Marvuglia, the drawing-rooms frescoed by Serenario; but at the moment the room in best repair can scarcely be used as a stall for goats.’’

The last shreds of toad had been nastier than he had expected; but they had gone down too, in the end. Now he had only to wash out his mouth with some phrase which was pleasant as well as sincere.

“But, Don Calogero, the results of all these disasters, of all this heart-burning, has been Tancredi. There are certain things people like us know; and maybe it is impossible to obtain the distinction, the delicacy, the fascination of a boy like him without his ancestors having romped through half a dozen fortunes. At least so it is in Sicily; it’s a kind of law of nature, like those which regulate earthquakes and drought.”

He paused a moment as a lackey came in bearing two lighted lamps on a tray. As they were being set in place the Prince made a silence vibrant with heartfelt pleasure reign in the study. ”Tancredi is no ordinary boy, Don Calogero,” he went on, “ He is far more than merely gentlemanly and elegant; though he has not studied much, he knows about the important things; men, women, the feel and sense of the times. He is ambitious and rightly so; he will go far; and your Angelica, Don Calogero, will be lucky to mount the ladder with him. Also, in Tancredi’s company one may have moments of irritation, but never of boredom; and that means a great‘deal.”

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Mayor appreciated the worldly subtleties of this part of the Prince’s speech; on the whole it just confirmed him in his conviction of Tancredi’s shrewdness and opportunism; and what he needed at home was a man astute and able, no more. He thought himself, he felt himself to be the equal of anyone; and he was even rather sorry to notice in his daughter a genuine affection for the handsome youth.

“Prince all these things I knew, and others too. And they don’t matter to me at all.” He wrapped himself round once more in a cloak of sentimentality. ”Love, Excellency, love is all, as I know myself.” And he may have been sincere, poor man, if his probable definition of love were admitted.” But I’m a man of the world and I want to put my cards on the table too. There’s no point in talking about my daughter’s qualities: she’s the blood in my heart, the liver in my guts: I’ve no one else to leave what I have, and what’s mine is hers. But it’s only right that the young people should know what they can count on at once. In the marriage contract I will assign to my daughter the estate of Settesoli, of 644 salmi, that is 1010 hectares as they want us to call them nowadays, all corn, first-class land, airy and cool; and 180 salmi of olive groves and vineyards at Gibidolce; and on the wedding day I will hand over to the bridegroom twenty linen sacks each containing 10,000 ounces of gold. I’ll only have a stick or two left myself”, he added, knowing well he would not and not wanting to be believed, “but a daughter’s a daughter. And with that they can do up all the staircases by Marruggia and all the ceilings by Sorcionario that exist. Angelica must be properly housed.”

Ignorant vulgarity exuded from his every pore; even so the two listeners were astounded; Don Fabrizio needed all his self-control not to show surprise; Tancredi’s coup was far bigger than he had ever imagined. A sensation of revulsion came over him again, but Angelica’s beauty, the bridegroom’s grace, still managed to veil in poetry the crudeness of the contract. Father Pirrone did let his tongue cluck on his palate; then, annoyed at having shown his own amazement, he tried to rhyme the improvident sound by making his chair and shoes squeak and by crackling the leaves of his breviary but failed completely; the impression remained.

Luckily an impromptu remark from Don Calogero, the only one in the conversation, got both of them out of the embarrassment. “Prince”, he said, ”I know that what I am about to say will have no effect on you who descend from the loves of the Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice; but the Sedàra are noble too; till I came along we’ve been an unlucky lot, buried in the provinces and undistinguished, but I have the documents in order, and one day it will be known that your nephew has married the Baroness Sedàra del Biscotto; a title granted by His Majesty Ferdinand IV for work on the port of Mazzara. I have put the papers through; there’s only one link missing.”

A hundred years ago this business of a missing link, of getting such papers  “through” was an important element in the lives of many Siciliani, causing alternating exaltation and depression to thousands of respectable or not so respectable people; but this subject is too important to be treated fleetingly, and we will content ourselves with saying that Don Calogero’s heraldic impromptu gave the Prince the incomparable artistic satisfaction of seeing a type realised in all its details, and that the depressed laugh he gave ended in a sweetish taste of nausea.

After this the conversation drifted off into a number of aimless ruts; Don Fabrizio remembered Tumeo shut up in the darkness of the gun-room; for the nth time in his life he deplored the length of country calls and ended by wrapping himself in hostile silence. Don Calogero understood, promised to return next morning with Angelica’s undoubted consent, and said good-bye. He was accompanied through two of the drawing-rooms, embraced again, and began descending the stairs while the Prince, towering above him, watched getting smaller and smaller this little conglomeration of astuteness, ill-cut clothes, money and ignorance who was now to become almost part of his family.

The Leopard, by Guiseppe di Lampedusa, translated by Archibald Colquhoun.