I got out of bed, got my pyjamas in order, and headed through to the lounge room, from where there was a view of the street in front of the house. Rosely was by the front gate, her face in her hands as she wept. I shook my head in puzzlement. What on earth could she have been so upset about?

But the heavy scents of the garden brought on a gloomy train of thought for the Prince: “It smells all right here now; but a month ago…”
He remembered the nausea diffused throughout the entire villa by certain sweetish odours before their cause was traced: the corpse of a young soldier of the Fifth Regiment of Sharpshooters who had been wounded in the skirmish with the rebels at San Lorenzo and come up there to die, all alone, under the lemon tree. They found him lying face downward in the thick clover, his face covered in blood and vomit, crawling with ants, his nails dug into the soil; a pile of purplish intestines had formed a puddle under his bandolier. Russo the agent had discovered this object, turned it over, covered its face with his red handkerchief, thrust the guts back into the gaping stomach with some twigs, and then covered the wound with the blue flaps of the cloak; spitting continuously with disgust, meanwhile, not right on, but very near the body. And all this with meticulous care. “Those swine stink even when they’re dead.” It had been the only epitaph to the derelict body.
After bemused fellow-soldiers had taken the body away (and yes, dragged it along by the shoulders to a cart so that the puppet’s stuffing fell out again), a De Profundis for the soul of the unknown youth was added to the evening rosary; and now that the conscience of the ladies in the house seemed placated, the subject was never mentioned again.
    The Leopard, a very beautiful and colourful and slightly boring book, by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, got what it deserved—addition to the High School reading lists and the eternal hatred of a whole generation. The Prince carries on in all pomp and circumstance while all about him decays, rotted by the true decadence at the core. I was still at the callow stage where the gory bit quoted above was the only passage of the novel that remained memorable to me, but in fact it does summarise the entire book. The rude interruption of the dead soldier into the lives of the nobility perfectly depicts their detachment from reality—it is to be remembered the soldier died defending their privileged way of life.
    It took the writer ten years to write and but if so he must have offered it only five minutes per day. I think this book was the first to cause me to realise that far too many books are written about rich people, who are all alike, and not enough about the poor, who carry the true identity and individualism of any society.