“The Illustrious Deceased” (“L’illustre estinto”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Illustrious Deceased” (“L’illustre estinto”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

Originally published in La Lettura, November 1909, this story was collected into a volume of Pirandello’s short stories printed by the Milanese publisher Treves in 1912, Tercets (Terzetti). It was later added into the eleventh Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), The Jar (La giara), published by Bemporad (Florence: 1928).

An account of the ways in which we bestow honor on “illustrious” men in life and death, this story highlights several themes that are dear to Pirandello throughout his corpus. On the one hand, the first section of the story envisions how a moribund leader of state imagines his own coming death and how he will be remembered. In this section, Pirandello plays with tropes from his oeuvre including the power of imagination and belief to shape reality, as well as humans’ existential confrontation with mortality. On the other hand, the second part of the story, after the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti has actually passed away, traces a more humoristic line, considering how the facts of real events betray and undermine our imagination and rendering laughable the grandeur and pomp of appearances. Underlying both sections is a shared reflection on the way in which life is a kind of stage on which we project ourselves and our beliefs about others. The themes in this story thus resonate with numerous other works. These include short stories that treat similar topics of impending death, like “Death Is Upon Him” (“La morte addosso,” 1908) – which was later adapted into his popular one-act play The Man with the Flower in His Mouth (L’uomo dal fiore in bocca, 1923) – or the recently dead, like “Interviews with Characters” (“Colloquii coi personaggi,” 1915). But it also resonates with works that have apparently disparate topics that nonetheless include similar underlying reflections and ideas, from the power of imaginative reality to resurrect the dead in his famous play, Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921/25) to the humoristic deconstruction of the difference between our perceptions of reality and what unfolds in the minds of others in works like his last novel, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila, 1926). At root, what these works suggest, like “The Illustrious Deceased” itself, is that the pretention of social esteem is just an imaginary phantom, like every other form of human meaning.

The Editors

I

They had propped him up in bed so his asthma wouldn’t choke him. Now, reclining on the stacked pillows, the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti was gazing through his swollen, half-closed eyelids at a ray of sun that, coming in from the window, stretched over his legs and bathed in gold the fluffy surface of a woolen, black-and-gray checkered shawl.

He felt death creeping up on him. He knew there was no more hope, and now he lay there all wrapped up in himself, forbidding his gaze from extending beyond the confines of his bed. Not so much to focus his thought on his imminent demise, but on the contrary, out of fear that, if he broadened the scope of his gaze even just a little, the sight of the objects around him would beckon him with nostalgia toward the ties he might still have with life, ties which would soon be severed by death.

Withdrawn, squeezed into that narrow enclosure, he felt safer, more sheltered, almost protected. And as he concentrated on noticing the tiniest details, such as the minute, curled-up threads of fluff on that shawl, made golden by the sun, he savored the length of time, of all the time he had left. It might be hours, or perhaps a few days; two or three days, maybe; even—at the most—a week. But if a minute spent among such minutiae went by so slowly, ever so slowly—well, a whole week might even give him time to get tired, yes, that’s right, to get tired. A week spent like that would never end!

The weariness he was already feeling, however, was not caused by the endless stretching of time over his fuzzy woolen shawl; it was caused by the strain he was putting on himself in order to stop thinking.

But what else was there to think about? His death? Or rather… that’s it: he could fantasize about the aftermath. Yes: since his wayward thought found no comfort in religion, that would be a way to prevent his life from soon falling into nothingness. A way to remain on this side a little longer, at least in other people’s eyes if no longer in his own.

And so, bravely, the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti imagined himself dead, as others would see him, and as he had seen many others: dead and stiff, right there on that bed, his feet crammed into patent leather shoes, his face waxen and frozen, his hands almost turned to stone. Composed and… well, yes, even elegant, in his black suit, with so many flowers scattered about his body and on the pillow.

His frock coat must be in the chest in the other room, along with his new uniform, dress sword and ministerial cocked hat.

In the meantime, just to test it out, he contracted his toes and looked at them. He felt a tingling sensation in his belly; he raised his hand and smoothed his hair, then he squeezed his disheveled, reddish beard. He thought that, once he was dead, the one in charge of combing that beard and fixing up those few straggly hairs on his scalp would be his personal assistant, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis,[1] who had been watching over him for so many days and nights with faithful devotion. Poor man, he hadn’t left Ramberti alone for a single moment, and sitting there at the foot of the bed he languished at the thought that he couldn’t in any way alleviate his suffering.

But without knowing it, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis was indeed helping him die with dignity, stoically. Perhaps, had he been alone, he might have become unhinged, he might have started crying, screaming with distraught anger. But with Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis sitting there at the foot of the bed and calling him Your Excellency, he didn’t even dare open his mouth. He just stared straight ahead, focused, almost surprised, his lips barely touched by a slight smile.

Yes, the presence of that bleak, lanky, short-sighted man held him by a thread—a very fragile thread at that point—upon the stage, still playing his part until the very end.[2] With each passing moment, the fragility of that thread exacerbated his anguish and terror, because he couldn’t help but realize how uselessly and desperately his entire soul was struggling to hang on to it. His effort was one he had witnessed many times with cruel curiosity: that of some agonizing little creature, some insect that had fallen into the water and was hanging on to a mere piece of lint, a floating bristle.

All those things with which he had filled the void that now enveloped his life as it passed before his eyes were reflected in Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis: his authority, his prestige—useless things that were drifting away from him, that had no more value, but that nevertheless stood out over the void that would soon swallow him. They looked like dream images, semblances of life which after his death he could expect to flutter a little longer around him, around his bed, around his casket.

That very same Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis, then, would wash him, dress him and comb his hair, devotedly in spite of a certain repulsion. A repulsion that, after all, he himself could feel picturing his flesh, his naked body seen by that man, touched by his large, bony hands. But he didn’t have anyone else; no relatives, either close or distant. He would die alone, as he had always lived. Alone, in that charming little villa at Castel Gandolfo,[3] which he had rented hoping that, given a rest of two or three months, he would regain his health. He was only forty-five!

Killed himself, that’s what he had done, barbarously, with his own hands. He had cut short his own existence by working himself to death and engaging in a fierce, obstinate struggle. And when, in the end, he had managed to snatch a victory, he already had death inside of him. Death had treacherously slipped into his body. He had gone to take the oath before the King, and with an air of grieved resignation but with a heart full of glee, he had been congratulated by his colleagues and friends. And all the while he had death inside of him and didn’t know it. Then one evening two months later, to the day, it had suddenly given his heart a little squeeze and left him gasping for air, face down on his desk in the office he held as Minister of Public Works.

All of the newspapers published by the opposition had discredited his appointment as impudent favoritism on the part of the Prime Minister. Now, however, in announcing his premature passing, they would perhaps take into account his merits, his long, patient studies, his constant, single-minded, absorbing passion for public life, and the zeal with which he had always carried out his duty, first as a Deputy, and then, briefly, as Minister.[4] That’s right. Someone who has passed away may be granted such consolations. All the more so since the Prime Minister’s friendship and much-talked-about protection hadn’t extended so far as to grant him that other consolation—to at least die as a Minister. Immediately after his collapse they had politely made it clear to him that it would be advisable—for the sake of his health, mind you, not for any other reason!—to step down from his position.

And so, not even the newspapers affiliated with the Ministry of Public Works would call his death “an event of national mourning.” But at any rate, to all he would be an “illustrious deceased,” yes he would, no doubt. And everyone would mourn his “untimely passing,” noting that, had his existence not been cut short, “he would certainly have continued to nobly serve the country,” etc.

Perhaps, given the geographical proximity and the short time elapsed since the Honorable Ramberti had stepped down from his ministerial position, His Excellency the Prime Minister, his former colleagues at the Ministry, the undersecretaries and the many Deputies who had been his friends would come from Rome to see his dead body. They would enter that very same room, transformed into a viewing parlor by the town mayor who would show off and, assisted by Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis, decorate it with planters of laurel and other shrubs, flowers, and candelabra. They would all take off their hats before filing in, headed by the Prime Minister. They would gaze at him for a while in silence, dismayed, pale, their curiosity held in check by that instinctive horror that he himself had often experienced standing before other dead bodies. A solemn, tearful moment.

“Poor Ramberti!”

And then they would all gather in the other room, waiting for the casket to be sealed.

Valdana, his hometown;[5] Valdana, which for fifteen years had re-elected him as its Deputy; Valdana, for which he had done so much, would certainly claim his mortal remains, and the mayor of Valdana would turn up solicitously, along with two or three town councilors, to escort the body.

As for his soul… well, his soul would already have departed, and who knows to what destination…

The Honorable Costanzo Ramberti squeezed his eyes in concentration. He finally managed to recall an old definition of “soul” which he had found quite convincing when he was still a philosophy student at the university: The soul is that being in us which is conscious of itself and of other things outside us. That was it! That’s how it went. A German philosopher had said it.[6]

That being—, he now thought. What does it mean? That certain being which, undeniably, ‘is’; that being through which I, while I’m alive, am different from me when I’m dead. That’s obvious! But does this being inside of me exist in itself, or only to the extent that I exist? Two possible answers: if it exists in itself and only inside of me does it become conscious of itself, does it then mean that outside of me it will no longer be conscious? And what will it be, then? Something that I’m not, that it isn’t either, as long as it’s inside of me. Once it’s out, whatever will be will be… if it will be at all! Because there’s the other hypothesis: that it exists only to the extent that I exist; therefore, when I cease to exist…

“Cavalier, please, a sip of water…”

Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis jumped up in all his lanky tallness, stirring from his slumber. He handed him a glass of water, and asked him, solicitously:

“How are you feeling, Your Excellency?”

The Honorable Costanzo Ramberti took two sips; then, handing him back the glass, smiled weakly to his assistant, closed his eyes again and sighed:

“Like so…”

Where was he? Oh, yes, he was due to leave for Valdana. The body… Yes, better to stick to just the body. There: they were picking it up by the head and the feet. In the casket they had already laid a sheet soaked in a preservative solution, in which they would wrap the body. Then the tinsmith… What was the name of that roaring instrument with a bluish tongue of fire?[7] There, the zinc slab that would be sealed onto the casket, the lid that would be screwed on top…

From that point on, the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti no longer saw himself inside the casket; he remained on the outside, and saw the casket as the others would see it: a nice, urn-shaped chestnut casket, smooth with gilded hinges. The funeral and transportation expenses would certainly be covered by the State.

Now the casket was being lifted; it traversed the rooms, descended with some difficulty the stairs of the little villa, traversed the garden followed by all of his colleagues, who once again had taken off their hats, headed by the Prime Minister. It was then loaded onto the township carriage amidst the timid, respectful curiosity of all the people who had rushed over to witness the unusual scene.

Here, once again, the Honorable Ramberti let the casket be loaded and remained outside watching the carriage which, accompanied by a crowd of people, headed slowly, solemnly, from the village to the train station. A box car with the forty-and-eight emblem stenciled on the side was already there,[8] its nailed boards all set to be hammered in once the casket was loaded. The Honorable Costanzo Ramberti saw his casket one more time as it was pulled out of the carriage, and followed it into the bare, dusty box car which, once in Rome, would be decked out with all the funeral wreaths sent by the King, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Township of Valdana, and his friends. And off it went.

The Honorable Costanzo Ramberti followed the train, with his casket in the last box car, through the long, long railroad, until it reached the station of Valdana, which was also crowded with people. Here, one by one, his most devoted, loyal friends and the provincial and town councilors came forward to pay their respects, some looking a little clumsy in their seldom-worn black suits and top hats. Robertelli… ah, yes!... Yes, he, dear Robertelli, was crying, as he tried to push his way through the crowd…

“Where is he? Where is he?”

Where could he possibly be? There, in the casket, dear Robertelli. Easy, easy, one at a time…

But the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti was watching that scene as if he weren’t really inside the casket, which nevertheless was heavy, yes, yes, quite heavy. He could tell because the Town Hall ushers, wearing white gloves and livery, were struggling to lift it to their shoulders.

He saw… oh, Tonni, poor man, whose fiercely jealous wife, every time he stepped out of the house, started counting the minutes until his return. There he was, restless, puffing and taking out his watch every minute, cursing the one-hour delay with which the train had arrived, knowing his wife wouldn’t believe him. Patience, dear Tonni, patience… Your wife will make a scene, but then the two of you will make peace again. You’re staying alive, you are. On the other hand, one doesn’t go over to the other world twice. Would you like your friend, he who did you so many favors, to have a skimpy little funeral? Let him have one with pomp and circumstance… See? There’s the Prefect… Stand aside, stand aside! Oh, the Colonel, too! But of course, he was entitled to a military accompaniment, too! All the schools would be present, with the banners from each institute… and so many other banners from various associations! That’s right, because although he had devoted himself to the highest political issues and to the hardest questions of social economy, he had never neglected the specific interests of his constituents, who would long be grateful to him for the many benefits he had bestowed upon them. And perhaps Valdana would show its gratitude with a marble plaque in the municipal villa, or name some street or piazza after him besides holding this official funeral… In his mind’s eye he pictured the main street in the city, its flags at half-mast:

VIA COSTANZO RAMBERTI

Crowds of people at every window would wait for the wreath-covered carriage drawn by eight caparisoned horses. Bystanders would point to the most beautiful one, sent by the King. Over there, behind the hill, was the cemetery, solitary and forlorn. The horses advanced slowly, almost to give him time to enjoy that final homage, which extended his life a little past the end…[9]

II

All of this was what the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti pictured on the eve of his death. It was partly his own fault and partly that of others that reality didn’t play out exactly as he had imagined.

First of all, he died during the night—in his sleep or not, no one knew. He certainly didn’t wake up Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis who, exhausted, had fallen into a deep sleep himself, in the armchair at the foot of the bed. This in itself wouldn’t have been so bad if Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis, waking up with a start at around four in the morning and finding him already cold and stiff, hadn’t been extraordinarily disconcerted first by a strange humming sound in the room, and then by the full moon which, as it set outside the window shutters that had been accidentally left open, looked as if it had stopped in the sky gazing at that dead man in the bed. The humming sound came from a bluebottle fly whose own slumber had been interrupted by Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis’s sudden awakening.

When, at dawn, Mayor Agostino Migneco rushed over, summoned anxiously by the manservant, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis explained:

“The moon was out… the moon was out…”[10]

He could find nothing else to say.

“The moon? What moon?”

“Such a moon!... Such a moon!...”

“Sure, fine, the moon was out, but… dear Sir, we need to send an urgent telegram to His Excellency the President of the Chamber of Deputies; another to His Excellency the Prime Minister; another to the mayor of… what town was His Excellency the Deputy from?”

“Valdana… (what a moon!)”

“Leave the moon alone! To the mayor of Valdana, we were saying; all three telegrams sent urgently, to deliver the sad news to all the citizens, understand? And to the voters… That mayor will have his hands full! Hurry up, for heaven’s sake! We’ll need them to open the telegraph office. Have an officer accompany you, and tell them I sent you. And then come back here right away! We’ll need to dress him up as soon as possible. See? The corpse has already stiffened.”

It was by some miracle that Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis didn’t mention in all those telegrams that the moon was out.

Truly, to make a good impression Mayor Migneco would have liked to set up a viewing parlor that would leave everyone in awe—one with a catafalque and all. But… those were small provincial towns, you could never find anything. There were no skilled workers. He ran over to the church for some regalia. All they had was red damask with golden stripes. If only they had been black! He took four gilded candelabra—antediluvian stuff. Flowers, yes, and plants: flowers on the floor, flowers on the bed: the whole room was filled with them.

Meanwhile, the frock-coat was not in the chest, so Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis was forced to rush to Rome, to search the apartment on Via Ludovisi,[11] but could not find it there, either. It was, indeed, in the chest, but all the way at the bottom. The poor man thought he had really lost his mind! Oh, such devotion he felt… He was crying his eyes out. But the frock-coat had to be ripped in half at the back (such a shame, it was brand new!) because the corpse’s arms could no longer be moved. And as soon as he was all dressed up he had to be undressed again, that’s right, and then dressed up one more time. Why? Because an urgent telegram came from the Township of Valdana (this the Honorable Costanzo Lamberti had actually anticipated) announcing that the inconsolable citizens had unanimously voted to request that the body of their illustrious personage be brought back to his hometown so he could be honored with an official funeral. A monument—even a monument! What grandiosity!—and yes, a piazza, Post Office Square, which would be renamed after him. A doctor came from Rome to inject the corpse with formalin; later, though with due respect, Mayor Migneco referred to it as “deformalin,” because after those injections… oh, the waxen face, the dignified expression that the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti had pictured for himself! His face instead swelled up to the size of a balloon, with no more nose, cheeks, neck, nothing. A tallow ball, that’s what it was. So much so that they decided to hide it under a handkerchief.

Many more Deputy friends than the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti ever imagined he had poured into Castel Gandolfo the next morning, along with the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the Prime Minister, the Ministers and Undersecretaries of State. A few of the least elderly Senators came, too, as well as a throng of journalists and even two photographers.

It was a gorgeous day.

To all those people, oppressed by countless serious social troubles and distressed by many daily struggles, that outing must have felt like a celebration: the countryside was a lovely sight, green and lush once again, and so were the sunny Roman Castles, the lake and the woods, the air still crisp but already with a hint of spring in it. They didn’t actually say it out loud; on the contrary, they acted somber, and perhaps actually felt somber, but the real cause for their somberness was their secret regret for having wasted, for wasting still, their existence on inane, petty battles. Their existence, which was so short, so unpredictable, and yet so dear to them in that fresh, airy, blissful apparition.

They drew a certain comfort from thinking that they could still, however fleetingly, enjoy that sight and that existence, while their companion could not.

Indeed, cheering up little by little during the short train ride, they started conversing amiably and laughing, thankful to those five or six more earnest ones who had first broken the ice of somberness with a few jokes and who now kept on playing the clowns.

Still, every now and then, it was as if Costanzo Ramberti’s head were peeking through the little doors of the interconnected train cars. Then their merry conversations and laughs would suddenly drop and they were overcome by something like a sense of dismay, of uneasiness. That was true particularly for those who had openly opposed Ramberti or disparaged him in secret, and who now had no reason to be there except to take part in that big outing. They sensed that their presence violated something. What was it? Perhaps the expectation of the deceased, the expectation of one who could no longer protest and chase them away, shaming them in public?

Were they or weren’t they there to pay their respects?

If they were, then come on! One doesn’t pay their respects to a dead person like that, chatting away and laughing merrily.

None of those colleagues there, friends or not, had any idea of how poor Ramberti, on the eve of his passing, had imagined their visit, of course endowing it with the appropriate sentiment: sadness, regret, pity. No idea whatsoever. And yet, by the mere fact that the visit was now taking place, they could not ignore how unseemly was the way in which it was taking place, and those who hadn’t even been his friends could not avoid sensing that they didn’t belong there, and that they were committing an act of violence.

As soon as they got off at the Castel Gandolfo train station, however, they all regained their composure, put on their somber façade, and adopted the solemnity of the mournful occasion, feeling invested with the importance given to them by the respectful crowd that had gathered to witness the arrival.

Led by Mayor Migneco and the town councilors, all flushed in the face, bathed in sweat, the cuffs of their shirts slipping out from under their sleeves and their ties from under their collars, the Ministers and Deputies walked in a single file towards Ramberti’s villa. The President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Prime Minister were at the front, trailed and flanked on both sides by a crowd of people.

The actual arrival and entrance into the town, which was all decked out for the funeral, greatly surpassed the scene that Ramberti had pictured. Except that, right at the most solemn moment, when the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Prime Minister, along with all the Ministers, Undersecretaries, Deputies, and the whole crowd of busybodies, entered the viewing parlor bareheaded, something happened that the Honorable Ramberti would never have foreseen—something horrible in the almost sacred silence of that scene: a sudden, dismal gurgling sound, quite gross, from the corpse’s belly. All the bystanders were stunned and terrified. What was it?

“Digestio post mortem,” sighed, in dignified Latin, a doctor who was among them, as soon as he managed to catch his breath from the shock.

All the others stared in bewilderment at the corpse. It looked as if it had intentionally covered its face with a handkerchief and then, freed of shame, had done what it did right in the face of the supreme authorities of the nation. Frowning, they left the viewing parlor.

At the train station in Rome three hours later, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis watched with infinite sadness as the people who had come to Castel Gandolfo took off without even turning around for one last farewell glance at the box car that contained His Excellency the Honorable Ramberti. To Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis it felt like a betrayal. Was it all over, just like that?

He remained alone in the uncertain, grieving light of the dying day, under the tall, enormous, smoky skylight, following the disassembly of the train. After many maneuvers up and down the railway maze, he finally saw the boxcar being left at the end of a track, next to another which they had already tagged as “Casket.”

An old train porter, half crippled and asthmatic, came over with a glue jar, affixed the same tag on the Honorable Ramberti’s box car, and left. Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis moved closer to see it with his nearsighted eyes. Above it, he read: “Forty and Eight.” He shook his head and sighed. He stood for a while longer staring at those two casket box cars next to each other.

Two dead, two who had already departed but who still had quite a way to go!

The two of them would spend the night there alone, among the rattle of arriving and departing trains, among the hurried comings and goings of the night passengers. They would be lying there, motionless, in the darkness of their caskets, surrounded by the ceaseless bustle of the train station. Farewell! Farewell!

And so Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis left, too. He left in anguish. However, on the way he bought the evening papers and was comforted to see they all featured long obituaries on the front page, with the portrait of the illustrious deceased right up top.

Back at home, he read them from beginning to end, and became very emotional at the mention, in one of the papers, of the loving care and devotion with which he, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis, had assisted the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti in those final months.

Too bad they had spelled “Nonnis” with only one “n”!

But it was clear they meant him.

He re-read that mention at least twenty times, and when he left his house again to dine at the usual family restaurant, first he went to a newsstand and bought ten more copies of that paper so he could mail them to his relatives and friends in Novara [12] the next day—after adding the missing “n”, of course, and circling the passage with blue ink.

All the papers had words of praise, great praise for the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti. They all expressed the same grief over his loss and underscored his merits, his zeal, and honesty—just as the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti had imagined. They mentioned his “untimely passing” as well as the fact that “he would certainly have continued to nobly serve the country.” And the telegrams from Valdana described the profound consternation of the citizens when they learned the dismal news, and the extraordinary, memorable homage that the town would pay to its Great Son. They also announced that the mayor, a delegation from the town council, and other respectable citizens who had been devoted friends to the illustrious deceased had already left for Rome to escort the body.

Returning home at around midnight in the silence of the deserted streets over which the streetlamps kept a gloomy vigil, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis thought again about those two casket box cars lying there, at the end of a track at the train station, waiting. If only those two dead men could keep each other company and chat with each other to pass the time! At that thought, Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis smiled melancholically. Who knows who the other one was, and where he would end up…. He was spending the night there, completely oblivious to the honor that had befallen him—of having, right by his side, someone who, at that very moment, was featured in the newspapers all over Italy, and who the following day would receive a triumphal welcome by an entire city that mourned him.

How could Cavalier Spigula-Nonnis possibly have anticipated that the box car with the body of the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti would, at around two in the morning, be accidentally hooked by a few exhausted railway workers to the train bound for Abruzzo, and that the illustrious deceased would thus be deprived of the triumphal welcome and the solemn respects paid to him by his hometown?

But the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti, a politician who had achieved a position of power and who had therefore become familiar with the “ins and outs of the system” and knew about all the flaws of the railway service, would easily have predicted such a betrayal. Given two casket box cars waiting in a busy train station, it was most likely and even obvious that one would be shipped towards the other’s destination, and vice versa.

Now locked and nailed inside his box car, he could not protest against that shameful exchange, against the violation that six brutish porters were now perpetrating against the funeral garb that his Valdana was putting on to welcome him solemnly the following morning. And so he was forced to travel through the rest of the night, slowly, gloomily, in the caboose of that half-empty train with worn brakes that rattled its old, meager, filthy cars, headed for Abruzzo—the destination of the other dead man, a young seminarian from Avezzano named Feliciangiolo Scanalino.[13]

Of course, the next morning the casket box car containing the body of the young seminarian was decorated sumptuously under the supervision of the head of the funeral home himself, who had taken on the responsibility of arranging the entire service at the State’s expense. Rich, pavilion-shaped velvet drapes with silver fringes, veils, ribbons, and palms! On the casket, covered by a magnificent pall, only the King’s wreath had been placed; on the sides, those of the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Prime Minister. About seventy more wreaths were loaded in the next box car.

At exactly half past eight, before the admiring eyes of a large crowd of friends of the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti, Feliciangiolo Scanalino departed for Valdana for the official exequies.

At around three in the afternoon, the train arrived at the Valdana train station, packed with a teary crowd. The mayor, who had accompanied the body along with the delegation from the town council, was surreptitiously called aside, into the telegraph room. The station master, trembling and dead-pale, informed him that a top-secret telegram had come from the Rome station: the casket box cars had been switched. The Honorable Ramberti’s body was currently at the Avezzano station.

The mayor of Valdana was flabbergasted.

What to do with all the people waiting? With the whole city already decked out for the funeral?

“Sir,” whispered the station master, placing his hand on his heart, “only I and the telegraph operator know about this. In Rome and in Avezzano, too, only the station master and the telegraph operator know. Sir, it’s in our interest, on behalf the railway administration, to keep this matter secret. Trust me!”

What else could one do in such a predicament? And so the innocent seminarian Feliciangiolo Scanalino received the triumphant welcome by the city of Valdana and was carried around in a hearse that resembled a mountain of flowers, drawn by eight horses. He received the King’s wreath, the mayor’s eulogy, and was accompanied to the cemetery by the entire population.

All the while, the Honorable Costanzo Ramberti was journeying back from Avezzano in a bare, dusty forty-and-eight box car, without a flower, without a ribbon; some miserable remains being shipped away once again, after being tossed in the wrong direction through places so far from their destination.[14]

The body arrived at Valdana in the middle of the night. Only the mayor and four trusty gravediggers were waiting for it at the station. Quietly, stealthily, like thieves hiding smuggled goods from customs officers, they carried it up and down country roads barely lit by a lantern all the way to the graveyard, where they buried it, finally heaving a great sigh of relief.