The Leopard

By July 1883, Prince Fabrizio has spent more than 12 years feeling as though his life is being “slowly but steadily” (183) drained away. He is constantly aware of this ebbing vitality, which he initially believed to be his personality fading so that it could be rebuilt in another form. He loathes anyone who cannot see their own decline, as he sees his. His wife and daughters have always clung to their present lives; they imagine heaven to be just like their current lives, including their current health problems.

Fabrizio remembers when Tancredi suggested that he was “courting death” (184). That courtship is now over, the Prince believes, and death has accepted his proposal. The only question remaining is the date when their courtship will be consummated. His body is in decline, and he feels his life leaving him in “great pressing waves” (184). He sits on a hotel balcony, watching the Palermo sea. That morning, he returned from a specialist in Naples. He traveled home slowly, accompanied by Concetta (now 40) and Fabrizietto (Paolo’s son and Fabrizio’s grandson). Fabrizio felt humiliated by the need to ask his grandson for help with basic things. When they arrived at the train station, the forced cheeriness of his family made him realize the implication of his diagnosis and the imminence of his death.