The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

It was now the moment for the monumental black satin cravat to be wound around his neck: a difficult operation during which political worries were best suspended.

The wealth of many centuries had been transmitted into ornament, luxury, pleasure; no more; the abolition of feudal rights had swept away duties as well as privileges; wealth, like an old wine, had let the dregs of greed, even of care and prudence, fall to the bottom of the barrel, leaving only verve and color. And thus eventually it cancelled itself out; this wealth which had achieved its object was composed now only of essential oils—and, like essential oils, it soon evaporated.

“Everything will be better, believe me, Excellency. Honest and able men will have a chance to get ahead, that’s all. The rest will be as it was before.” All that these people, these petty little local “liberals,” wanted was to find ways of making more money themselves. No more.

you don’t want to destroy us, who are your ‘fathers.’ You just want to take our places.

He opened one of the windows of the little tower. The countryside spread below in all its beauty. Under the leaven of the strong sun everything seemed weightless: the sea in the background was a dash of pure color, the mountains which had seemed so alarmingly full of hidden men during the night now looked like masses of vapor on the point of dissolving, and grim Palermo itself lay crouching quietly around its convents like a flock of sheep around their shepherds. Even the foreign warships anchored in the harbor in case of trouble spread no sense of fear in the majestic calm. The sun, which was still far from its blazing zenith on that morning of the thirteenth of May, showed itself to be the true ruler of Sicily; the crude brash sun, the drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled in violence as arbitrary as dreams.

The comets would be appearing as usual, punctual to the minute, in sight of whoever was observing them. They were not messengers of catastrophe as Stella thought; on the contrary, their appearance at the time foreseen was a triumph of the human mind’s capacity to project itself and to participate in the sublime routine of the skies.

“Let’s hope the summer is over, and that the rains are finally here,” said Don Fabrizio; and with these words the haughty noble to whom the rain would only be a personal nuisance showed himself a brother to his roughest peasants.

the animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings.

Six months before they used to hear a rough despotic voice saying, “Do what I say or you’ll catch it!” Now there was an impression already of such a threat being replaced by the soapy tones of a moneylender: “But you signed it yourself, didn’t you? Can’t you see? It’s quite clear. You must do as we say, for here are the IOUs; your will is identical with mine.”

Father Pirrone’s eyes were turned to the ceiling, as if he were a master mason charged with judging its solidity.

Now that Don Fabrizio felt serene again, he had gone back to his habit of evening reading.

They also trotted him a little around the town; under the honey-colored sun of that November day it seemed less sinister than it had the night before; he even saw a smile here and there, and Chevalley di Monterzuolo began to reassure himself even about rustic Sicily. Tancredi noticed this and was at once assailed by the singular island itch to tell foreigners tales that were revolting but unfortunately quite true.

“This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and these monuments, even, of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing around like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction, who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn’t understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.”

They came to my house, I accompanied them up on to the roof; they were simple youths, in spite of their reddish whiskers. They were ecstatic about the view, the light; they confessed, though, that they had been horrified at the squalor and filth of the streets around. I didn’t explain to them that one thing was derived from the other, as I have tried to with you.

Chevalley thought, “This state of things won’t last; our lively new modern administration will change it all.” The Prince was depressed: “All this shouldn’t last; but it will, always; the human ‘always,’ of course, a century, two centuries … and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.”

For them new fears have appeared of which we’re ignorant; I’ve seen Don Fabrizio get quite testy, wise and serious though he is, because of a badly ironed collar to his shirt; and I know for certain that the Prince of Làscari didn’t sleep for a whole night from rage because he was wrongly placed at one of the Viceroy’s dinners.

when they treat someone badly, as they do sometimes, it is not so much their personality sinning as their class affirming itself.

The only people who also despise themselves are laborers; when they’ve learned to jeer at others the circle will be closed and we’ll have to start all over again.

Look at France; they let themselves be massacred with elegance there and now they’re back as before. I say as before, because it’s differences of attitude, not estates and feudal rights, which make a noble.

if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would be formed straightaway with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on blood any more, but possibly on … on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or on greater knowledge of some text considered sacred.”

Later the brothers had quarreled, one of those family quarrels we all know with deeply entangled roots, impossible to cure because neither side speaks out clearly, each having much to hide.