The Viceroys Read Online Free Page A

on Via Etnea of the Prince of Roccaromana (Paternò Castello). As the afternoon light fades great balloon figures, floating spread against the sky, diffuse an odd sense of timelessness, so that De Roberto and the carriages might still be there. On one such afternoon he must have scribbled the lines found on his desk after his death: ‘Among all human constructions the only ones that avoid the dissolving hands of time are castles in the air.’
    A RCHIBALD C OLQUHOUN
    Allington, Kent.
    July, 1961.
    *
cf.
the causes of relaxation of monastic discipline in the ninth century, at the times of the reforms of St Benedict of Aneane; these according to Mabillon, were undue severity or indulgence by superiors, greed for property, and consequent law-suits and quarrels.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

    T HE first publication of
I vicerè
was in 1894, and its earliest translation, into Polish, in 1905. In 1954 it was translated into French by Henriette Valot, with an introduction by Marcel Brion (Club Bibliophile de France), and in 1959 into German (Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich). This is the first book by Federico De Roberto to appear in English.
    The Italian prose flows very fast, as if under pressure, and is full of racy idiom, Sicilian and otherwise. Without the numerous, meticulous and very valuable suggestions of Mr John D. Christie, Lecturer in Humanity at Glasgow University, I should often have gone astray. I am also grateful to Mr Anthony Pensabene for translating the verses, to Signora Natalia Baldini (Natalia Ginzburg) for drafting some difficult pages, to Professor Ermanno Scudèri of Catania for many informative and agreeable conversations about De Roberto, and to Dott. Andrea Cavadi and the staffs of the Biblioteca Universitaria, Catania, and of The Italian Institute, London, particularly Signor Camillo Pennati, for invaluable help. The author’s niece, Donna Marianna Paola De Roberto of Catania, owner of most of his manuscripts and letters, among other kindnesses, showed me her uncle’s library and the original manuscript of
I vicerè.
    This text is complete, and based on the Garzanti edition of 1959, edited by Luigi Russo. In the same edition are to be found the other works by De Roberto now in print,
La Messa di Nozze, Il Rosario
, and
La Paura.
    A.C.



PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
 
    The Uzeda family
    The late Donna Teresa Uzeda and Risà, Princess of Francalanza
    Her children
    Donna Angiolina (Sister Maria of the Cross), Nun of San Placido
    Don Giacomo XIV, Prince of Francalanza
   First wife:
    
Margherita
(née
Grazzeri)
   Children:
    
Consalvo, Prince of Mirabella
(later
Prince of Francalanza)
 
    
Teresa,
later
Duchess Radalì
   Second wife:
    
Donna Graziella (Carvano)
    Don Lodovico, Prior of San Nicola (a Benedictine monk,
later
Cardinal)
    Don Raimondo, Count of Lumera
   First wife:
    
Donna Matilde
   Second wife:
    
Donna Isabella (Fersa)
    Donna Chiara, Marchesa of Villardita
   Her husband:
   
Federico, Marchese of Villardita
    Don Ferdinando, of Pietra dell’Ovo
    Donna Lucrezia,
later married
to Benedetto Giulente
    Her in-laws:
the brothers and sisters of her late husband
   
Don Gaspare, Duke of Oragua
 
Don Blasco (a Benedictine monk)
 
Cavaliere Don Eugenio
 
Donna Ferdinanda (spinster)
    Land in Sicily was measured by SALMA , equivalent to just under an acre. The main weight measurement was a ROTOLO , equivalent to about 2lb: these terms became officially disused after 1860.

BOOK I

G IUSEPPE was standing in front of the gates, dandling his baby, showing it the marble coat-of-arms on top of the arch, the arms-rack nailed to the vestibule wall where the prince’s men hung their pikes in olden times, when there came the sound, quickly growing louder, of a vehicle arriving at full tilt; and even before he had time to turn round, into the courtyard with a deafening clatter drove a curricle so dusty it looked as if it had been snowed on, its horse