Della Tessiera stated on his way out of the room. His wife followed suit.
It took Telonio and Anna Pellettieri two days and two nights to regain their composure. At dawn of the third day, they began to think of what they would tell all the relatives and friends who expected an imminent wedding between Matilda and Arnaldo. The version they and the Della Tessieras concurred to give was that the two families had not reached a satisfactory financial agreement, and for a while that story was taken as truthful by all and the matter set to rest. As time went by, however, Matilda’s relatives—her two brothers and the score of her aunts, uncles, and cousins—could not but notice the state of prostration in which Matilda lived, the stubbornness with which her parents refused to discuss the incident, and their edginess whenever someone inquired about their daughter’s future. So the relatives started to wonder and talk. Rumors began to circulate that perhaps there was something wrong with Matilda that had caused the Della Tessieras to reject her. It didn’t take long for Anna and Telonio to became aware of the rumors and realize that the only way to keep them from spreading further was for Matilda to marry, and soon. The groom should live far from Turin, they decided, so Matilda would leave the family for good and the relatives would stop talking and wondering much sooner than if she continued to live close by. Promptly, they began looking for Matilda’s future husband amongst noble families from all over Italy, including those as far south as Florence and Rome, even Naples at a certain point (unthinkable as that was), and Palermo came up one day but Anna fainted at the idea.
“That Giuseppe Garibaldi did a great disservice to the world, darling,” she told her husband when she regained her strength, “when he set out to make one country out of many, as we Piedmontese have nothing in common with those ignorant, gaudy peasants who live in Sicily. They can’t speak Italian, I hear, and most of them are bandits.”
In spite of their continued efforts to find a suitable husband for Matilda, it soon became clear that the breakup with Arnaldo had made all the aristocratic families suspicious and unwilling to look upon Matilda as a desirable bride for their offspring. Besides, there was always the question of how a husband would react to Matilda’s lack of virginity and how the Pellettieris could possibly justify it and not incur another rejection. On that thought, reluctantly, Anna and Telonio decided to look outside the aristocratic circles for untitled families who would accept their daughter’s condition in exchange for the prestige a wedding to an aristocrat would bring to their breed. The Berillis turned out to be the perfect match. They were wealthy and respected, hungry for prestige, and lived far enough from Turin to foster forgetting but still in the North of Italy, not anywhere close to Rome or Naples, which the Pellettieris considered another world altogether.
Filiberto and Giulia Berilli met privately with the Pellettieris the day after their encounter at the theater, and at that time the Pellettieris dictated the proviso for their daughter to join the Berilli household: Giuseppe would accept Matilda’s imperfect physical condition and would never, ever mention the missing hymen to a soul. Filiberto met then with his son. He talked to him about Matilda not being a virgin and pointed out what an asset it would be to have a Pellettieri in the family despite the inconvenience of Matilda’s condition. Giuseppe agreed that Matilda would be an asset not only to the family but also to his own legal career and swore he’d keep the story of the missing hymen a secret for the rest of his life.
“Wonderful!” Filiberto exclaimed. “I’m proud of you, my son.”
The wedding date was chosen. Shortly before the set day, Giuseppe and his father sat in the reading room and discussed over several glasses of red wine where Giuseppe and Matilda would live once wed.
“Our palazzina is so spacious,” Filiberto told his son, “Why don’t you continue to live with us? There’s plenty of room in this house for Matilda and all the children she will have.”
Giuseppe was pleased. “Thank you, father, for your generous offer. I’m sure Matilda will be happy here and will love this house as much as I do.”
Indeed, in a matter of days, as Giuseppe had predicted, Matilda grew fond of the palazzina and its occupants—with one