by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
This month we’ll plunge into Sicily and the Risorgimento. I’m half Italian.
An hors d’oeuvre:
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
The daily recital of the Rosary was over. For half an hour the steady voice of the Prince had recalled the Glorious and the Sorrowful Mysteries; for half an hour other voices had interwoven a lilting hum from which, now and again, would chime some unlikely word: love, virginity, death; and during that hum the whole aspect of the rococo drawing room seemed to change; even the parrots spreading iridescent wings over the silken walls appeared abashed; even the Magdalene between the two windows looked a penitent and not just a handsome blonde lost in some dubious daydream, as she usually was.
