The poisoning of Gallante Selvi

The poisoning of Gallante Selvi is a secret act of resistance by Prosperine and Violetta D’Annunzio against a violent husband whose artistic perfectionism governs the household as harshly as his temper. Their plan turns the debris of his work into a weapon, but its consequences exceed what they intended: Selvi dies, and the doctor’s unexpected meal helps uncover the poisoning. The episode is recounted as a story within the larger narrative, where the women’s constrained choices and the danger of discovery shape both its action and its aftermath.

Background and Motive

Gallante Selvi’s unfinished triptych is the setting for the repeated conflict that leads to the poisoning. He works slowly and exactingly, making small studies on glass before adding even minor details to the larger piece. When the results disappoint him, he destroys the work. His frustration also turns against those around him: he kicks a goat and strikes or pulls Violetta’s hair. Prosperine is expected to abandon her own work and clear away the broken glass, paint, and lead wire left behind.

This household labor makes Prosperine responsible for managing the aftermath of Selvi’s violence as well as its immediate effects. Violetta is warned that Selvi would beat her if he cut his feet on the glass, so when she hears his work smashing, she must hurry to sweep. The discarded material accumulates beyond the place where the goats are kept. When a young goat gets loose and eats some of the wreckage, it becomes gravely ill and dies. Seeing what the glass and wire have done, Prosperine recognizes that Selvi’s waste could be turned against him. The animal’s death is thus both a consequence of his destructive work and the circumstance that gives her a method.

Planning the Poisoning

Prosperine and Violetta prepare in secret, speaking quietly when Selvi is near and working on the plan when he is away. They choose Sunday because Prosperine is not required to go to the square and butcher on that day. The timing gives them a limited opportunity to prepare and serve the poisoned food without interrupting the routine that keeps Selvi unaware.

Prosperine gathers the colored glass Selvi has discarded, breaks it into small pieces, and grinds it into a fine powder. She also boils scraps of the lead cable he uses in his glazing work. Their plan combines these materials with food and water, intending to make Selvi swallow them over a meal. The preparations are specific to his practice: his rejected pigments, glass, and lead become the means by which the women seek to end his control. Their whispered cooperation makes the poisoning a joint action, though Prosperine organizes the materials and Violetta helps carry out the plan.

Selvi’s Death

On Sunday morning, Selvi eats two bowls of cornmeal prepared with extra salt and grit and drinks the lead-poisoned water. Prosperine and Violetta busy themselves nearby, waiting until he has finished. At first, he does not object to the meal. Within about an hour, however, he complains of thirst, nausea, and an unpleasant taste. His condition worsens over the course of the day, and he cannot eat the later meal Prosperine offers him.

Violetta paces and cries while Selvi sleeps fitfully. Prosperine prepares his special chicken, but he never eats it. Later, as the night passes, Selvi becomes gravely ill and stops breathing in the hour before sunrise. His death ends the immediate threat the women say they sought to stop, but it does not resolve their fear or protect them from the consequences of what they have done.

Violetta grieves over Selvi’s body and begs him for forgiveness, troubled by the possibility that the act will condemn them after death. Prosperine reminds her that Selvi’s violence had already made their lives unbearable. The exchange sets the women’s different responses side by side: Violetta’s remorse does not erase her participation, while Prosperine’s conviction that the killing was necessary does not make the aftermath easy. After Selvi dies, Prosperine goes to the village to avoid the suspicion that might follow if they failed to seek help; Violetta remains outside because she is afraid to be alone with the body.

Exposure and Consequences

The women do not anticipate what happens when the doctor, left in the house during the funeral arrangements, eats the roasted chicken Prosperine had stuffed with bread and glass. He takes enough of the tainted stuffing to become ill. His sickness draws attention to the meal, and his wife later examines what he has passed and finds glittering particles. She carries this evidence to the magistrate with the doctor, and the group goes with the undertaker to open Selvi’s body at the church.

The chicken turns Prosperine’s contingency into the point at which the poisoning becomes visible to others. She had prepared it for Selvi, but because he never ate it, it remained in the house and was served to the doctor. The women’s carefully concealed plan is therefore exposed not through Selvi’s complaint or an immediate witness, but through an unintended second victim and the evidence noticed by his wife. The account establishes that suspicion falls on Selvi’s widow and her accomplice; it does not provide the outcome of any later legal proceedings.

Narrative Significance

The episode places the material remains of Selvi’s art at the center of both domestic violence and resistance. Glass that he repeatedly rejects and smashes becomes the substance Prosperine and Violetta use against him; the same workshop debris that they are forced to clean supplies their means of action. That reversal gives the poisoning a grim practical logic without making it a simple escape: the plan ends Selvi’s life, but the doctor’s accidental exposure makes the women answerable to the authorities.

As an embedded account, the episode also preserves distinctions between motive, action, and consequence. Prosperine understands the killing as necessary to stop continuing harm, while Violetta’s grief and fear make its moral cost explicit. Neither reaction changes what the women did or the danger created by the evidence. The story therefore holds their constrained position alongside the irreversible nature of their choice, ending not in secure freedom but in discovery and the prospect of accountability.