The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

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.