The Viceroys Read Online Free PDF

Agostino, these wires to the Telegraph Office … and pass by the tailor’s …’
    As they got their commissions, the servants left and made their way through the crowd outside. They passed with the hurried air of military aides-de-camp, amid bystanders’ comments: ‘They’re off to tell the relatives … the sons and daughters, the in-laws, nieces and nephews, the dead woman’s cousins …’ The whole nobility would be in mourning, all the gates of noble palaces were now being closed or half closed according to degree of kinship. And the cabinet-maker explained:
    ‘Seven children, let’s count ’em; the Prince Giacomo and the Signorina Lucrezia, who lives at home with him, that’s two. The Prior of San Nicola and the nun of San Placido, that’s four. Donna Chiara, married to the Marchese of Villardita, that’s five. The Cavaliere Ferdinando up at Pietra dell’Ovo, six. And finally the young Count Raimondo, who married Baron Palmi’s daughter … Then come her four in-laws; the Duke of Oragua, the last prince’s brother; Don Blasco, also a Benedictine monk; the Cavaliere Don Eugenio; and Donna Ferdinanda the spinster …’
    Every time the wicket-gate opened to let a servant through, the watchers tried to look inside the courtyard. Giuseppe lost patience and exclaimed:
    ‘Away from here! What the devil d’you want? Waiting for lottery numbers?’
    But the crowd did not move and stared up at the windows, now shut, just as if they were waiting for the appearance of numbers on placards.
    The news was racing from mouth to mouth, like that of a public event. ‘Donna Teresa Uzeda is dead …’ the populace pronounced it ‘Auzeda’, ‘the Princess of Francalanza … She died this morning at dawn … Her son the prince was there … No, he left an hour ago.’ Meanwhile the cabinet-maker, amid a group of listeners as attentive as if he were telling legends from old chronicles, went on enumerating the other relations.’ There’s the Duke Don Mario Radalì, a loony, with two sons, Michele and Giovannino, by Donna Caterina Bonello; he belongs to a collateral branch, Radalì Uzeda; the Signora Donna Graziella, daughter of the princess’s dead sister and wife of the Cavaliere Carvano, and so a first cousin of all the dead woman’s children; the Baron Grazzeri, the young princess’s uncle with all their relations; then the more distant relatives, and connections, almost all the city nobility; the Costante, the Raimonti, the Cùrcuma, the Cugnò …’ Suddenly he interrupted himself to say:
    ‘Aha! Here come the parasites arriving before anyone else!’
    Don Mariano Grispo and Don Giacinto Gostantino were arriving, as they did every day at lunch-time, to pay court to the prince, and knew nothing. On noticing the crowd, and the shut gate, they stopped in their tracks.
    ‘Holy Faith! Good God of Love!…’
    Suddenly they increased their pace, and went in, questioning in consternation the porter as he gave them the first news. ‘It can’t be true!… A thunderbolt from a clear sky!…’ Then they went upstairs with Baldassarre, who was also just going up from the court, and moved before them murmuring:
    ‘Poor princess!… It was too much for her … And the Signor Prince left at once!’
    As they passed through a row of antechambers with gilt doors but almost bare of furniture, Don Giacinto exclaimed in a low voice, as if in church:
    ‘’Tis a disaster indeed!… A bigger one for this family than for any other …’
    And Don Mariano confirmed in as low a voice, with a shake of the head:
    ‘She led ’em all, kept the whole thing going!…’
    On entering the Yellow Drawing-room they stopped after a few steps, unable to make anything out in the dark. But they were guided by the Princess Margherita’s voice:
    ‘Don Mariano … Don Giacinto …’
    ‘Princess!… Ah, dear lady … How are you bearing up? And Lucrezia?… Consalvo?… The girl?’
    The little prince, sitting