The Leopard
Chapter 1 The prince and the changing Sicily.
Every morning begins the same way:
the sound of prayers, the smell of wax and flowers in the home chapel. My sisters
recite the rosary with devotion, while I, sitting in my seat, think of something else.
Outside the Sicilian sun burns the earth as always, but something is different in the air. My
land, so slow to change, now seems to be rushing towards something I don't know.
The news comes from Palermo, from Naples, from overseas. Garibaldi landed in Sicily. The
monarchy is faltering, and with it our lives. The servants whisper, the nobles pretend to
be calm and in control of the situation, even if they are clearly worried.
But I feel it: the world as we know it is ending.
Tancredi, my nephew, looks at me with eyes full of fire. He wants to leave and join those
liberators. He says it's right, that it's the future. I smile, but inside I feel a cold bite.
He's young, yes, but not stupid. He understood before me that power is shifting.
And I, Prince Fabrizio of Salina, man of stars and silences, remain still while everything changes.
That night, looking at the sky, I saw a star fall. An omen, perhaps.
Or maybe just the beginning of the end. But I didn't know it yet. Not entirely.
Chapter 2 Don Fabrizio and the passing of time.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night without knowing why. I walk slowly through
the dark corridors of the villa, I listen to my footsteps on the marble and I think about time.
Time is a silent animal: it walks alongside you and then, without warning, passes you.
I see my youth as if in a foggy mirror:
the hunts with friends, the travels, the studies. Everything seems so far away.
Now every gesture is slow, every thought heavy. My family still looks at me with respect,
but I feel like they no longer understand who I am. Maybe I don't know either.
I live among rituals and habits that never change: lunch at 2:00,
the walk in the garden, the evenings in the living room while my wife embroiders in silence.
But outside the world is racing. Cities explode. People want to vote, scream, fight.
And we, the nobles, remain closed in our palaces counting the shadows.
Sometimes I wonder if all this order serves any purpose, if it isn't
just an elegant way to hide fear. And while the island awakens, I continue to
observe like a tired lion who smells, in the dust, the scent of the approaching enemy.
Chapter 3 Tancredi is the new generation.
Tancredi is like the wind: you don't stop him, you don't follow him. You watch him go by and hope he comes back.
When he told me he wanted to join Garibaldi,
I smiled. Not out of joy, but out of respect. He knows where the world is going. I, on the other hand,
am letting it go. “Uncle, if we don't change,
they'll erase us,” he told me, with those bright eyes and that confident voice.
He spoke of homeland, freedom, future. I only saw dust and disorder.
But I remained silent, because ultimately he is right: everything must change to remain as it is.
It's our only hope. Tancredi brings with him something
that I have lost: the will to live. He laughs, jokes, falls in love easily.
Women love it, men follow it. He is the son of a new world,
born on the ruins of ours. When he left with the
crooked uniform and the stage sword, I hugged him. I smelled tobacco and youth.
And I was scared. Not for him. For me. For what it represents.
Now I sit in my study, looking at his portrait.
The silence is profound, and the future - his future - gallops away from me, without turning.
Chapter 4 The meeting with Angelica.
When Angelica entered the room, time stopped.
Her beauty wasn't just in her features: it was in her gestures, in her confident gaze,
in the silence she carried with her. Even I, a tired old prince,
felt a shiver, as if something powerful had entered our lives.
Tancredi saw it and forgot everything: wars,
ideals, future. She was there, in front of him, and one look was enough to know that she would be his.
I didn't tell him, but I knew right away. And even though she is the daughter of Don Calogero Sedara,
a crude and rich man, I remained silent. Because Angelica is not like him.
It's fire under the ice. The nobility huddled in their worn silks
trying to ignore her, but she shone too brightly. It represented what is coming:
an elegant, hungry bourgeoisie, ready to conquer everything.
I watched them talk, laugh, barely touch each other. And I felt a pang inside.
Not of jealousy. Of nostalgia.
Angelica is the future disguised as a dream. And I, who know dreams and their traps,
immediately understood that nothing will ever be the same again. That evening I raised my glass and toasted,
without telling anyone that our world was dying.
Chapter 5 The ball and the decline of the aristocracy.
The hall was full of lights, laughter and perfumes. The fans moved like butterfly wings.
The violins played endless waltzes. Palermo wanted to forget the war,
the tensions, the confusing news arriving from the continent.
But I don't forget. I observe.
Everyone was there: nobles dressed in gold, bourgeois in search of glory, officers in shiny uniforms.
Angelica dominated the room. In his every step there was grace and achievement.
Tancredi smiled at her, proud. It was his night, their victory.
I sat on the sidelines, like an exiled king. The ladies greeted me, the young men
came to kiss my hand. But it was courtesy, not respect.
I could hear it in the voices, in the too quick gestures, in the glances that passed by.
Walking among the mirrors and chandeliers, I saw again everything we have been — and everything
we will no longer be. The walls laughed at us,
at our titles, at our medals. At one point I asked for a glass
of water. Only water, because the wine that evening would have burned too much.
Then I saw it: my reflection. Tired, grey, out of time.
And I realized that I was no longer a prince. And maybe I never really was.
Chapter 6 Marriage and the new reality.
Tancredi and Angelica's wedding day was splendid. Yet bitter.
The sky was clear, the flowers were fresh, the clothes were bright.
People applauded, bells rang. Everything was as it should be.
Yet, inside me, something was breaking.
Tancredi was radiant, Angelica, in an ivory dress, looked like a queen.
But I knew that it wasn't just a union of love: it was an alliance between the
old blood of the Salinas and the new money of the Sedaras. A necessary compromise. An elegant rendering.
Don Calogero, the bride's father, smiled too much.
He looked at each guest as if he were counting coins.
Every word he said was out of place, but no one dared to correct him.
Now he too was part of our world. Or at least that's what he thought.
During the ceremony, I watched Tancredi's hands shake Angelica's.
Young, safe. Mine, hidden
behind my back, trembled slightly. Because what I saw was the future.
And I didn't belong there. At the table, between toasts and laughter,
I raised my glass to the new times, I said. Everyone applauded.
But I only thought of one thing: we had opened the door to change,
and change never asks permission to enter.
Chapter 7 Loneliness and the end of the prince.
The house is quieter now. The children are far away.
Tancredi lives in Palermo, Angelica organizes receptions and participates in salons.
I stay here, in the Donnafugata villa, among antique furniture
and habits that no longer serve any purpose. Every morning I walk slowly through the garden.
The trees are the same, but I'm not. The body bends, the mind wanders.
I no longer have desires, only memories. And every now and then a fixed thought:
when will the time come? Politics no longer interests me.
The new rulers talk a lot, they promise everything. But I don't believe it.
Nothing has really changed. Just the faces. The people remain poor.
Sicily remains motionless under the sun. The truth is simple: here everything changes
to never really change. I spend the afternoons watching the
sky turn red like a slow flame. I feel death near, but not with fear.
I look at her as one would look at an old friend arriving.
One evening, as the sun sank behind the hills, I felt a profound relief.
As if everything finally made sense. And for the first time I understood that
we are not masters of our end. But we can at least choose silence.
Chapter 8 Everything must change to stay as it is.
Now that I'm no longer here, maybe someone will still talk about me.
They will say I was an honorable man, a cultured prince, a tired dreamer.
But the truth is another: I just watched time slip through my fingers,
like hot sand in a hand that no longer holds.
After I died, life went on. Tancredi became a deputy, then a senator.
Angelica became a shining figure of the new Sicilian society.
They have children, parties, photographs. They talk about progress, about modernity.
Yet, if you look carefully, everything has remained as it was.
The farmers are still poor. Ancient buildings are falling apart.
The powerful change their names, but not their habits. Sicily allows itself to change on the surface, but
inside it remains the same: proud, wounded, immobile. One day, many years later, one of my daughters
found my old dog, dead, forgotten in a closed room.
No one had looked for him anymore. They buried him in silence,
like a relic of the past. Maybe that really was
the funeral of my world. Now my name is engraved on a cold tombstone.
But if someone asked me what I learned, I would only answer this:
for things to remain as they were, everything must change.