The Leopard

On an evening in November 1862, the Salina family attends a ball. Prince Fabrizio rides in a carriage with his wife and two daughters, Concetta and Carolina. The “violence and spoilation” (162) of the revolution has begun to fade, and Palermo’s high society is resuming the lavish parties of the pre-unification age. They party with a renewed sense of vigor, as though they are celebrating their continued existence. The evening’s ball is thrown by the Ponteleones and promises to be among the biggest social events of the year. At the ball, Angelica will be presented to Sicilian high society for the first time. The Salina family understands the unwritten rules of the social event; they would never turn up early. Since the Sedàras lack this knowledge, however, they are arriving at the time stated on the invitation.

Prince Fabrizio is keen to see Angelica’s reception but fears what her father will wear. Tancredi has taken Don Calogero to a fine tailor to guard against another embarrassment. The carriage stops as a priest passes by, en route to a dying person. Prince Fabrizio respectfully exits the carriage and kneels in the road as the priest passes. Then, the journey is resumed.

The Ponteleone palace is lavish and beautiful. The Salinas are greeted at the entrance by Don Diego—the Prince of Ponteleone and the family patriarch—and his wife, Donna Margherita. Tancredi is already inside, waiting eagerly to see Angelica enter. Colonel Pallavicino will also attend, Fabrizio is told. Pallavicino is famous for having shot Garibaldi in the foot during the invasion of Sicily. Fabrizio senses that his host approves of the Colonel as a symbol of the enduring balance between the old and the new. The Colonel passes among the guests, charming the women with his war stories.

Don Calogero arrives late with Angelica. He is better dressed than Fabrizio feared, though he does not look elegant. Fabrizio compares him to “a rat escorting a rose” (166). Tancredi moves quickly to remove a military medal that he has worn by mistake. Angelica has been tutored by Tancredi; she moves with restraint and modesty. Spontaneity is not becoming of a soon-to-be princess. Her appearance is a success. The male guests envy Tancredi for finding such a striking woman, though rumors circulate that she was bestowed on him by Prince Fabrizio. Angelica quickly feels at home in the lavish surroundings. She moves with grace and ease, praising the décor in a reserved and polite manner. She is keen to show that she is not too provincial.

Fabrizio tours the palace in a worsening mood. To him, the décor seems old fashioned. He spots several women who were once his mistresses, and he regrets not spending his best years with them. The young women leave him unimpressed; he suspects that they are poorly fed and too intermarried into lower classes. They seem only interested in sitting and giggling among themselves. Escaping their “unbearably giggly” (169) company, Fabrizio seeks out the company of the older male guests. He has rarely spent time with this group, many of whom view him as an “eccentric” (170) for his interest in astronomy. Their company makes Fabrizio regret having come to the ball.

The Prince enters the ballroom. The sight of the muted colors makes him wistful for Donnafugata. There is a sense of immortality to the painted deities on the ceiling (even though a bomb will prove this wrong in World War II). Fabrizio is joined by Don Calogero, who comments admiringly about the expensive gold leaf décor. Don Calogero can only admire the expense of the decoration, Fabrizio notes with “loathing” (172), rather than any aesthetic or emotional quality. Fabrizio considers Don Calogero to be an example of why these palaces are intended to be imposing, to intimidate men like Don Calogero. Fabrizio turns his attention to the dance floor, where Tancredi and Angelica are staring into one another’s eyes. The beauty and romance of the moment disguises their self-interest.

Feeling a sudden sense of impending death for everyone, Fabrizio is struck by compassion for them all. The guests are savoring whatever pleasures they can, he reasons, before their imminent and inevitable demise. For all his loathing of them, these nobles are the only people among whom Fabrizio ever feels truly comfortable. He feels that they have a common interest, even if he feels superior to them in terms of intelligence and ancestry. Don Calogero is distracted, so Prince Fabrizio slips away.

At two o’clock, Fabrizio is becoming tired. The library is quiet, allowing him to appreciate a painting in which an old man lies dying in a bed, surrounded by sorrowful grandchildren. Fabrizio thinks about his own death, whether it will be similar. This thought calms him; other people’s deaths have always disturbed him far more than his own, as his own death means the death “of the whole world” (174). Tancredi and Angelica enter the library, interrupting the Prince’s thoughts. They glance casually at the painting, and Fabrizio thinks that death is little more than an abstraction to the young lovers. Angelica invites Fabrizio to dance, having heard about his reputation as a fine dancer. She wants to dance the mazurka, but despite a surging feeling of youth, Fabrizio suggests a calmer dance.

As they dance, Fabrizio chats amiably with Angelica. He feels a pang of sadness for his daughter, Concetta, but this passes. He feels young again on the dance floor and remembers dancing with his wife many years earlier in this same ballroom. That was before he “knew disappointment” (176). The dance ends, and Fabrizio notices that many of the couples are leaving the dance floor to admire him and Angelica. She invites him to dine with her and Tancredi, but he refuses. He knows that he would not be good company to the young people. In the supper room, cakes and desserts are piled high on fine plates. Above, a chandelier hangs over the guests. Fabrizio takes several cakes and then searches for a seat, eventually finding a place beside Colonel Pallavicino. They talk, with Fabrizio realizing that the Colonel is “anything but a fool” (179). The Colonel describes firing his gun at Garibaldi, who was surrounded by others. If he had not done so, he says, then the unified Italy would surely have collapsed. The wound to the foot, he believes, helped Garibaldi to recognize the flatterers among his men. Later, he claims, Garibaldi personally thanked the Colonel, who responded with a kiss to Garibaldi’s hand. The Colonel sees Garibaldi as an adventurous young lad.

Their conversation turns to the rest of Italy. Conditions are deteriorating, the Colonel says, and disunity is rife. Each city is looking out for itself, with Turin unwilling to relinquish the status of capital city to Rome. The Colonel believes that Garibaldi’s red shirts will inevitably return. He compares them to the stars, fixed in the sky. Yet the astronomer Fabrizio knows that the permanence of the stars is an illusion. The Colonel’s words fill him with a sudden chill. The ball continues until six the following morning. By this time, the women’s clothes are tousled and the men have turned pale from vomiting. Each table is laden with dirty plates. No one wants to be seen as the first to leave. Fabrizio decides to walk home rather than ride in the carriage with his family. He wants to breathe the fresh air and look at the last stars in the dawn sky, as they always seem to comfort him. He sees a wagon laden with slaughtered bulls; the blood drips onto the street as the wagon passes. He sighs and looks up, where “always faithful” (182) Venus is still visible in the sky. Fabrizio wonders when he will join the stars in eternity.