The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

“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 so. Isn’t that true, Father Pirrone?”

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 was accompanied through two of the drawing rooms, embraced again, and began descending the stairs as the Prince, towering above him, watched this little conglomeration of astuteness, ill-cut clothes, money, and ignorance who was now to become almost a part of the family getting smaller and smaller.

AS MEETINGS due to the marriage contract became more frequent, Don Fabrizio found an odd admiration growing in him for Sedàra’s qualities.

Many problems that had seemed insoluble to the Prince were resolved in a trice by Don Calogero; free as he was from the shackles imposed on many other men by honesty, decency, and plain good manners, he moved through the jungle of life with the confidence of an elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs, without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed.

Reared and tended in tranquil vales across which blew the courtesies of “please,” “I’d be so grateful,” “How very kind,” the Prince, when talking to Don Calogero, now found himself on an open heath swept by searing winds,

Don Calogero’s advice, after listening to the Prince’s accounts and reorganizing them for himself, was both opportune and immediately effective; but the eventual result of such advice, cruelly efficient in conception and feeble in application by the easygoing Don Fabrizio, was that in years to come the Salina family would acquire a reputation for treating dependents harshly, a reputation quite unjustified in reality but which helped to destroy its prestige at Donnafugata and Querceta, without in any way halting the collapse of the family fortunes.

It is only fair to mention that more frequent contact with the Prince had a certain effect on Sedàra too. Until that moment he had met aristocrats only on business (of buying and selling) or through their very rare and long-brooded invitations to parties, circumstances in which this most singular of social classes does not show at its best. During such meetings he had formed the opinion that the aristocracy consisted entirely of sheeplike creatures, existing merely in order to give their wool to his clipping shears and their names and incomprehensible prestige to his daughter.

But since getting to know Tancredi during the period after Garibaldi’s landing, he had found himself dealing, unexpectedly, with a young noble as cynical as himself, capable of striking a sharp bargain between his own smiles and titles and the attractions and fortunes of others, while knowing how to dress up such “Sedàraish” actions with a grace and fascination which he, Don Calogero, felt he did not himself possess, b...

When he got to know Don Fabrizio better, he found there again the pliability and incapacity for self-defense that were characteristic of his imaginary sheep-noble, but also a strength of attraction different in tinge, but similar in intensity, to young Falconeri’s; he also found a certain energy with a tendency toward abstraction, a dispositio...

This abstract energy made a deep impression o...

much of this fascination he noticed simply came from good manners, and he realized how agreeable can be a well-bred man, who at heart is only someone who eliminates the unpl...

Gradually Don Calogero came to understand that a meal in common need not necessarily be all munching and grease stains; that a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog fight; that to give precedence to a woman is a sign of strength and not, as he had believed, of weakness; that sometimes more can be obtained by saying “I haven’t explained myself well” than “I can’t understand a word”; and that the adoption of such tactics can result in a greatly increased yield from meals, arguments, women, and questions.

The Princess, who possessed to eminent degree the faculty of reducing emotions to the least common denominator, began narrating sublime episodes from Tancredi’s childhood;

so bold at twelve as to have stolen a handful of cherries.

As this episode of banditry was being recalled, Concetta burst out laughing. “That’s a habit Tancredi hasn’t yet been able to rid himself of,” she said. “D’you remember, Papa, how a couple of months ago he took those peaches we’d been so looking forward to?”

Such was the general zest and jollity that a quarter of an hour was enough for the two young men to dry, clean up, change uniforms, and meet once again in the “Leopold Room” around the fire; there they drank tea and brandy and let themselves be admired.

So those two young officers were in fact the first the Salina girls had ever seen, close to;

Don Fabrizio did not quite understand: he remembered both the young men in lobster red and very carelessly turned out. “Shouldn’t you Garibaldini be wearing a red shirt, though?”

The two turned on him as if a snake had bitten them. “Garibaldini, Garibaldini indeed, Uncle! We were once, and now that’s over! Cavriaghi and I, thanks be to God, are officers in the regular army of His Majesty, King of Sardinia for another few months, and shortly to be of Italy. When Garibaldi’s army broke up we had the choice: to go home or stay in the King’s army. He and I and a lot of others went into the real army. We couldn’t stand that rabble long, could we, Cavriaghi?” “Heavens, what dreadful people! Good for ambushes and looting, that’s all! Now we’re with decent fellows, and we’re real officers!” And he plucked at his little mustache with a grimace of adolescent disgust.

The class system at work. I'm sure the "nobles" did a fair amount of looting too!

“We had to drop rank, you know, Uncle. They didn’t seem to think much of our military experience.

With our uniforms, we’re now respected in quite another way.” “I should think so,” interrupted Cavriaghi. “People aren’t afraid we’ll steal their chickens.”

The two lovers embarked for Cythera on a ship made of dark and sunny rooms, of apartments sumptuous or squalid, empty or crammed with remains of heterogeneous furniture.

A symbolic love quest. Pertaining to, Cypress, the home of Aphrodite.

Once the surprise was of a different kind. In one of the rooms in the old guest wing they noticed a door hidden by a cupboard; the centuries-old lock soon gave way to fingers pleasantly entwined in forcing it: behind it a long narrow staircase wound up in gentle curves of pink marble steps.

Describing a suite of rooms where it seems, according to the deliberately vague descriptions that S&M stuff wasdonen (allusions to whips, etc.).

Tancredi, disturbed, would not let Angelica touch a cupboard on the wall of the drawing room, which he shut up himself. It was very deep, and it contained the oddest things: little rolls of fine silken cord; little silver boxes immodestly adorned; stuck to the outside, on their underside, were tiny labels with obscure indications neatly handwritten, a little like the labels on an apothecary’s jars: “Estr. catch.” “Tirch-stram.” “Partopp.”; phials whose contents had evaporated; a roll of dirty stuff standing upright in a corner; inside was a bundle of small whips, switches of bull’s muscle, some with silver handles, others wrapped halfway up in a charming old silk, white with little blue stripes, on which could be seen three rows of blackish marks; and metal instruments for inexplicable purposes. Tancredi was afraid, also of himself; he realized he had arrived at the secret nucleus, the center from which all the carnal agitation within the palace radiated outward.

Yes!

“After the happy annexation,

Deliberate or a slip of the tongue?

They must, he told them, face up to the reality of this atheist and rapacious Italian State now in formation, to these laws of expropriation, to conscription which would spread from Piedmont all the way down here, like cholera. “You’ll see,” was his not very original conclusion, “you’ll see they won’t even leave us eyes to weep with.”