PART ONE

The next morning, the principal protagonists of the Madellis family began to suffer the torments of purgatory.

"God only knows how that savage will behave," moaned Donna Leo, as she held her smelling salts to her nose.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Elisabetta wailed, "if he came dressed as a cowboy."

"He'll spit on the ceiling!" cried another.

"He'll curse in seven languages!"

"He'll poke his finger at the young ladies!"

Uncle Casimiro, however, did not come dressed as a cowboy but instead wore a well-cut dinner jacket, and he did not spit on the ceiling or poke his finger at the young ladies. He almost seemed well brought up.

There were a number of guests; among them, naturally, the three candidates for Carlotta's hand. She handled them very carefully. She managed to withdraw into a quiet corner first with one, then with the other, and then with the third; she was noncommittal with all three, and she let all three know that Uncle Casimiro possessed a peculiar power over her.

"It is he," she said, "who rules my life. I could never marry a man he didn't like. It must seem a very peculiar thing indeed that in order to marry Carlotta a man must pay court not to Carlotta but to Uncle Casimiro."

When she finished speaking, first one, then the other, and then the third pressed the dainty little hand that Carlotta had absent-mindedly left in theirs, after which they took off to confront Uncle Casimiro.

Following the introductions and a bit of amiable chatter, Uncle Casimiro decorously withdrew to the little Japanese room to smoke his cigar, and it was there that Count Donalot, first of the three suitors for Carlotta's languorous hand, found him.

"Sir," he said politely to Uncle Casimiro, "shall we help each other to eliminate boredom by a hand at cards?"

Uncle Casimiro accepted with good grace and played cards and chatted with Count Donalot. Then an opportune hint from Carlotta called the Count elsewhere, and he was succeeded by Doctor Grimal, who in turn was followed by Signor De Parpay. In brief, Carlotta managed things so well that her three suitors had the chance, one after the other, to try to enchant her authoritarian uncle.

Which one of the three succeeded in winning the affections of Signor Wonder became known only later, when Uncle Casimiro called Carlotta to him, and asked her harshly: "Well? Am I to see the three famous champions, or not?"

"Uncle Casimiro," Carlotta replied smiling, "you've already seen them--they are the three gentleman with whom you have just spent so much time. Now all you have to do is choose--which of the three do you prefer ?"

"Not any one of them!" Uncle Casimiro barked in his most peremptory tone. "Show me some others or it's all off."

Carlotta gently tried to explain to him that her collection of admirers was now exhausted, and she saw no immediate way to replenish it.

"Grant me an extension," she asked. "I have no other candidates to offer you at the moment."

Uncle Casimiro looked at his watch. "It's almost midnight," he said, "and I am aware of the difficulties you might encounter in getting hold of some new numskulls. I will therefore grant you an extension of twelve hours. If you haven't found a husband I like by noon tomorrow, you're just out of luck."

"But Uncle Casimiro!" Carlotta implored him. "Please remember that I live in a fashionable world where men never get up before noon. Would you force me to go around getting young men in pajamas out of their beds?"

"Well, another five hours of extension then," grumbled Uncle Casimiro. "Zero hour is now five o'clock in the afternoon. Good night to you. And the devil take all the other nitwits that are here."

"Where shall I bring the candidates to you?" Carlotta sounded frightened.

"Not here, that's for sure. At my house."

Uncle Casimiro departed, and a little later, after the guests had departed too, Carlotta gave her family an account of what had happened.

"Now what?" said Signor Gastone, much worried. "Where do we find any more candidates ?"

"I certainly didn't ask your help to find the first batch," Carlotta told him, "and I'm not going to ask it for the second."

Carlotta retired to her room and fell asleep soon after making this new decision: "Tomorrow I'll throw Flamel and Gigi into the assault on Uncle Casimiro. If he likes Gigi, I'll marry Gigi and get engaged to Flamel. If he likes Flamel, I'll marry Flamel and get engaged to Gigi. And if he likes them both..." Carlotta laughed to herself. "If he likes them both, I'll marry them both."

"And if he doesn't like either one?" asked an inner voice. "Then let all three of them go to the devil--Flamel, Gigi, and Uncle Casimiro."

~~~  ~~~  ~~~

PART TWO

"Heads for Gigi, tails for Flamel," said Carlotta, as she tossed a coin in the air.

Tails came up as it fell on the rug. Carlotta jumped out of bed, dressed with special care, and as it was already past noon, ate heartily.

"You're taking it awfully easy," observed Edo, who was not without a certain degree of common sense. "Will you still have time to call a general assembly of your boyfriends? Wouldn't it be better to print an order and summon them here, say, according to their draft cards?"

"I forbid you to make jokes about such a serious subject," said Donna Leo. "I'm sure that you, even for the good of your family, couldn't do as well."

"That's true," Edo admitted honestly, for he was not without a certain degree of common sense. "I'd never be able to find a husband in three hours."

Carlotta got up from the table.

"There's no point," she said, "in going anywhere before two. Only after two do I know where to find them, those chickens of mine."

From two in the afternoon on (that is to say, until two the next morning), Gigi and Flamel were available respectively at the Hunt Club and the White Rose, where they could always be found around the baccarat and poker tables.

Carlotta calmly went to her usual cafe in the Old Park, and from there telephoned the White Rose, asking for Flamel. The gentleman came to the phone at once but had very little time to say anything. Carlotta came to the point at once.

"Flam, this is Carlotta. I'll meet you at the cafe in the Old Park in ten minutes. Very urgent, maximum importance." She hung up.

Then she telephoned the Hunt Club and asked for Gigi. She wanted to know his precise location so she could rush him to Uncle Casimiro should her first candidate flunk out.

She was told that Gigi had just gone out, but Carlotta wasn't worried. "Lazy as he is, he couldn't have gone very far," she thought. "He'll be back soon." She didn't think about him for long, however, for Flamel arrived shortly.

"Flam," cried Carlotta, putting her hands on his shoulders and staring into his eyes. "Flam, do you really love me, or don't you?"

"I'll do anything," Flamel panted, "no matter how crazy, to prove it."

"This is your chance then. Go to my uncle Casimiro and ask for my hand in marriage."

"From your uncle Casimiro?"

"Yes, from him. He wants me to get married before tomorrow or--I can tell you this--he'll cut me out of his will. I don't have anyone else in the world but you, Flam..."

"I'll fly to your uncle, Carlotta! Oh, how happy I am! Oh, the immeasurable joy of it!"

"Take it easy, Flam," Carlotta warned him. "Don't build too many castles in the air. We can get married only if my uncle likes you. And he's so very strange."

"Oh, I've tamed wild animals a lot wilder than that wild uncle of yours," boasted Flamel gaily.

Uncle Casimiro was in his study and remained seated at his desk when Carlotta came in with Flamel. He did not rise when Carlotta presented the gentleman to him.

"Signor Flamel wants to speak to you, Uncle Casimiro," Carlotta murmured and backed out into the adjoining room to await the results of the examination.

"I have," said Flamel as soon as he found himself alone with Signor Wonder, "the honor of requesting the hand of your niece Carlotta."

"You're an odd kind of guy," Uncle Casimiro grumbled. "You've only just met me and you're already asking me for something. But, tell me now, why do you want to marry Carlotta?"

"Because--because I love her!" Flamel stammered, embarrassed.

"And does she love you?"

"Yes, of course."

"That's a pack of lies, my fine young fellow. If that's the way things were, you'd have married her without asking my permission. Love doesn't think about uncles. Therefore, you're a liar."

"Not at all," Flamel explained. "We haven't married because until today Carlotta didn't want to. If it were up to me, we'd have got married two years ago."

"Then you have no pride. When a woman puts too high a price on herself, then you should tell her to go to the devil. Let's see your hands."

Flamel held out his hands.

"The index finger and the middle finger of your right hand are stained with nicotine. You smoke too many cigarettes, one after the other. Say 'thirty-three.'"

"Thirty-three," said Flamel, as Uncle Casimiro put his ear against the young man's back.

"Weak lungs," grumbled Uncle Casimiro. "You've been sitting around in closed rooms. You're as white as a sheet. Do you know how to play scopa?"

"I play very little," lied Flamel, for he didn't want to seem like a wastrel.

"So much the worse for you. I always let luck decide. Take that deck of cards and sit down here. We'll have a game--if you win, I'll give you the hand of Carlotta; if you lose, you don't get anything."

It was a lightning-quick game. Flamel, who thought he was an experienced scopa player, lost so fast and so thoroughly he could only sit there looking at Uncle Casimiro with his mouth open.

"I've played twenty thousand games," he cried at last, "but I've never played against anyone as good as you are."

"While I," said Uncle Casimiro, "have cheated at least forty thousand times but never against a player as dumb as you are." And he began to draw sevens out of his sleeves, his pockets, his collar, and the cuffs of his trousers. "A player as obstinate and as stupid as you would go through my niece's inheritance in a couple of years."

"But, sir," Flamel protested, "you've judged me wrongly--I'm a gentleman and I spend only my own money."

"We'll soon find out about that, young man. I'll give you the hand of my niece on condition that you renounce her dowry entirely."

"I accept!" cried Flamel, with a noble light in his eyes. Uncle Casimiro shook his head.

"Do you perhaps doubt my sincerity, Signor Wonder?"

"On the contrary, Signor Flamel. It's quite obvious that you are speaking in perfectly good faith. And that's the whole trouble. Only a romantic fool would give up an inheritance like that. No, you're not the man for us."

He accompanied Flamel to the door, where, in a loud voice, Uncle Casimiro called, "Send in another!"

Carlotta and Flamel looked at each other for a long time; then Flamel shrugged his shoulders and left, while Carlotta went into her uncle's study.

"Hurry up," said Uncle Casimiro, without raising his head from his papers. "Let's cut out the compliments and get to the point--why do you want to marry my niece ?"

"This is me, Uncle, Carlotta."

"Oh? Then where are the others? It's now four-fifteen," growled Uncle Casimiro. "Your time runs out, my girl, in three quarters of an hour."

"Then let me have a few more hours," begged Carlotta. it's not so easy to scrape a lot of suitors together. Be nice for once in your life!"

Uncle Casimiro grumbled a bit, then said he would wait until eight o'clock that evening. But after eight there would be no possibility of changing anything.

Carlotta rushed over to the Hunt Club and in a voice trembling with anxiety asked for Gigi, for Gigi by now was her last hope. They told her that Gigi had left about two o'clock and had not yet come back. A gentleman explained the situation to her, "Gigi's at home. It's useless to call him because I myself have just put the telephone inside the safe. Gigi's asleep and doesn't want to be disturbed."

By now it was six-thirty in the evening, and time was of the essence. Carlotta had herself driven to Gigi's house and began to hammer on the door.

An old nurse tried to stop her, but Carlotta talked her way into the house and succeeded in finding Gigi's bedroom.

The wretch was stretched out with an ice bag on his head and so deeply asleep that Carlotta had to smack him soundly in order to wake him.

"I pass," muttered Gigi. Carlotta went on shaking him, and when he opened his eyes at last, he said: "I didn't get any sleep last night. I was playing cards and drinking and smoking until two in the morning. When I finally got to bed, my eyes were on fire and my head was thumping like a hammer. Let me sleep, Gelsomina."

"I'm not your nurse," cried the girl, shaking him and sprinkling water in his face. "I'm Carlotta!"

"Carlotta? My God, what's happened?"

"Get up!" said Carlotta. "And go straight to my uncle, and if you love me as much as you claim, ask him if you can marry me!"

"But how can I, my darling?" moaned Gigi. "Don't you see I can't even stand up? What would your uncle think of me if I turned up in this miserable condition?"

All that was true enough, but Carlotta did not yet give up the ship.

"Pretend that you're really sick," she said. "I'll persuade my uncle to come here, and when he sees how things are, he'll let me have another extension."

"All right, Carlotta," said Gigi, "and may God have mercy on us."

And so Carlotta appeared once again before her uncle Casimiro, who began at once to holler that this was nothing but an excuse and that he couldn't possibly do it, but after an impassioned plea by his niece, he agreed to visit the sick man. Twenty minutes later, preceded by Carlotta, he entered Gigi's room.

The wretch had fallen asleep again and was snoring in the most disgusting fashion.

Carlotta shook him. "Gigi," she implored, "here is my uncle--open your eyes for a minute."

"The hell with all uncles," muttered Gigi.

"He's delirious," Carlotta said to Uncle Casimiro.

Then to Gigi she said gently: "Gigi, it's me, Carlotta. Wake up for a minute, don't torture me this way."

The wretch did at last wake up but could open only half an eye.

"I am very ill," he mumbled. "Please excuse me, sir, but I am very very ill and here on my bed of pain I ask your hand in marriage--"

"You," said Uncle Casimiro, "are the most shamelessly drunk human being I have ever seen in my entire life. You are disgusting."

"I mean," said Gigi, "I want to marry the hand of your niece," and promptly fell asleep again and resumed his snoring.

Carlotta found herself in a carriage beside her uncle. "Wonderful merchandise you offer," said Signor Wonder, in a disgusted tone. "Well, anyway, it's over and done with now. Your time runs out in half an hour. And I swear to you I will have no more pity on you."

"I understand, Uncle," Carlotta remarked bitterly. "It's precisely what you wanted. You must always have your way."

"All right, all right!" said Uncle Casimiro. "I'll let you have until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. But if by ten o'clock tomorrow morning you don't bring me the man you're going to marry within the day, I'll cancel your allowance and I'll throw you all out. And then I'll change my will."

When she got back home, Carlotta refused to make a report on the situation as it then was. She postponed it all until morning.

"Set the alarm for six," she told Giusmaria. When the old butler asked if the alarm was only for her, she replied: "No, it's for everybody except me. I won't need to be awakened."

And that night, truthfully enough, Carlotta slept not a wink, and at five in the morning she was already walking in the garden.

The meeting was held in the drawing room, and the sleepy eyes of the delegates were hardly open, but after Carlotta retold the events of the previous evening, they flew wide apart and the last traces of sleep vanished with a wink. A prolonged and animated discussion followed.

"It's inhuman," cried Gastone Food indignantly, "to suppose that a poor little girl could find a husband in four hours."

"In one hour," corrected Edo Food, who was not without a certain degree of common sense.

The clock, confirming his announcement, struck nine.

"Well, then," said Edo, breaking the silence, "do we pack our bags?"

"Not yet!" cried Carlotta, rising. "Let me think."

"In God's name, think fast!" begged her aunt Elisabetta. "Time is flying!"

Carlotta ran up the stairs to her room, closed and locked the door, and went to the window that looked out onto the garden. At the very moment that she rested her elbows on the cold marble of the sill, she felt something damp and pungent cross her face.

~~~

The house that Signor Wonder had assigned to the Madellis family was one of those great old mansions that may still be seen today in streets which the unwholesome mania for orderly rows of floors and the frenzied imagination of the new architects have not yet succeeded in destroying. They are long, one-storied buildings with great ornaments on the facade, with bulging gratings over the ground-floor windows, and with a huge door in the center. The plan of these buildings is almost invariably a U. The base of the U is the front of the house and looks onto the public street; in the middle is a great courtyard; beyond it stands a garden. When the sun strikes the back of the house, the huge door in the darkened facade opens like a great eye full of a soft green light.

Onto the ample garden of the Madellis' house opened the window of Carlotta's room, which was at the end of the right wing of the building. When she was in her room, Carlotta could see whoever happened to be on the other side of the wall in the neighboring garden. And vice versa: whoever happened to be on the other side of the wall, in the neighboring garden, could see, if nothing more, at least the window from which Carlotta often leaned. It is because of this that Camillo Debrai, Carlotta's neighbor and the melancholy hero of this tale, often saw Carlotta leaning on her sill. Too often, to be precise.

Camillo Debrai, at this time, was twenty-five years old; he had a very pleasing and attractive air but--aside from his profession of woodcarver--possessed nothing else. He worked in a small room on the ground floor of the house next door to that of the Madellis, and when he had to carve large pieces of wood moved his workroom out into the garden because of lack of space.

The ancestors of Camillo Debrai had not gone off to the crusades, like the maternal forebears of Carlotta: but this did not prevent Camillo from falling in love with Carlotta Wonder. For her part, Carlotta Wonder was not even aware of the existence of the unhappy lover: however, she was aware, and had been for almost two years, of a mysterious bunch of flowers that appeared daily in her room.

Carlotta might find the flowers on the bed or on the floor, or perhaps on the dressing table. She had often wondered about the source of this sweet-smelling homage: but she discovered who it was only that morning when she leaned out the window. The homage, in fact, struck her right in the face--and the man who bestowed it had no time to hide.

Thus Carlotta discovered that she had a fourth suitor, perhaps the most tenacious of the lot.

Camillo wore a big gray apron from whose pocket stuck out the handle of a hammer and the blade of a chisel. On his head was the battered crown of an old hat, as greasy as a pancake. But by then it was twenty minutes past nine o'clock, and Carlotta could no longer quibble.

"A gift from God!" said Carlotta to herself, and a minute later was down in the garden, where she climbed up a ladder and leaned over the wall onto the neighboring garden.

Terrified by all that had happened, Camillo was still standing there, with his mouth open, staring up at Carlotta's window. He paled when he saw the head of Carlotta herself appear miraculously above the garden wall.

"What kind of work do you do?" Carlotta asked him.

"Woodcarving," Camillo stammered.

"Excellent! There's some very urgent work for you at the Palazzetto Wonder, in Piazza Tokai. Wash your hands and face, put your best clothes on, and hurry to the Palazzetto. You'll find me in front of the door. Be polite--don't keep me waiting."

"Yes, ma'am," said Camillo, in a trembling voice.