The Leopard Read Online Free Page B

of the Catena. "Why, she's the real sinner! " Comforted by this reassuring discovery, he gave a firm knock at Mariannina's door.
    Two hours later he was in his brougham on the way home with Father Pirrone beside him. The latter was worried: his colleagues had been telling him about the political situation, which was, it seemed, much tenser than it looked from the detached calm of Villa Salina. There was fear of a landing by the Piedmontese in the south of the island, near Sciacca; the authorities had noticed a silent ferment among the people; at the first sign of weakening control, the city rabble would take to looting and rape. The Jesuit Fathers were thoroughly alarmed and three of them, the oldest, had left for Naples by the afternoon packet boat, taking their archives with them. "May the Lord protect us, and spare this holy Kingdom!" The Prince scarcely listened. He was immersed in sated ease tinged with disgust. Mariannina had looked at him with her big opaque peasant's eyes, had refused him nothing, and had been humble and compliant in every way. A kind of Bendico in a silk petticoat. In a moment of particularly intense pleasure he had heard her exclaim, "My Prince!" He smiled again with satisfaction at the thought. Much better than "mon chat" or "mon singe blond" produced in equivalent moments by Sarah, the Parisian slut he had frequented three years ago, when the Astronomical Congress gave him a gold medal at the Sorbonne. Better than "mon chat)" no doubt of that; much better than "Gesummaria!" No sacrilege, at least. A good girl, Mariannina; next time he visited her he'd take her three lengths of crimson silk.
    But how sad, too: that manhandled, youthful flesh, that resigned lubricity; and what about him, what was he? A pig, just a pig!
    Suddenly there occurred to him a verse read by chance in a Paris bookshop, while glancing at a volume by someone whose name he had forgotten, one of those poets the French incubate and forget next week. He could see once more the lemon-yellow pile of unsold copies, the page, an uneven page, and hear again the verses ending a jumble of a poem:
    . . . donnez-moi la force et le courage de contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans degout And as Father Pirrone went worrying on about a person called La Farina and another called Crispi, the Prince dozed off into a kind of tense euphoria, lulled by the trotting of the bays, on whose plump flanks quivered the light from the carriage lamps. He woke up at the turning by Villa Falconeri. "Oh, he's a fine one too, tending bonfires that'll destroy him!" In the matrimonial bedroom, glancing at poor Stella with her hair well tucked into her nightcap, sighing as she slept in the huge, high brass bed, he felt touched. "Seven children she's given me, and she's been mine alone." A faint whiff of valerian drifted through the room, last vestige of her crisis of hysterics. "Poor little Stella," he murmured pityingly as he climbed into bed. The hours passed and he could not sleep; some powerful hand was stirring three fires smoldering in his mind: of Mariannina's caresses, of those French verses, of the autos-da-fe on the hills.
    Toward dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to make the sign of the Cross.
    Next morning the sun lit on a refreshed Prince. He had taken his coffee and was shaving in front of the mirror in a red and black flowered dressing gown. Bendico was leaning a heavy head on one of his slippers. As he shaved his right cheek he noticed in the mirror a face behind his own, the face of a young man, thin and elegant, with a shy, quizzical look. He did not turn around and went on shaving. "Well, Tancredi, where were you last night?"
    "Good morning, Uncle. Where was I? Oh, just out with friends. An innocent night. Not like a certain person I know who went down to Palermo for some fun!"
    The Prince concentrated on shaving the difficult bit between lips and chin. His nephew's slightly nasal voice had such youthful zest that it was impossible to be