Carolina Gorlago
LeilaCarolina Gorlago is a housekeeper whose presence links Girolamo Camin’s private attachments to his pursuit of money, respectability, and influence. When she enters the household at Montanina after Marcello Trento’s death, she becomes a disruptive force in the lives of the servants and part of the domestic tension surrounding Lelia Camin’s inheritance. The novel presents her not as a mere subordinate, but as a woman whose hold over Camin complicates the schemes he makes for himself and his daughter.
Background and Position
Carolina is about thirty-five, a robust woman whose loud voice and imposing manner distinguish her from the small young driver who takes the party from Arsiero toward Montanina. She comes from Cantù. A master builder from Como met her when she was serving at an inn, married her, and took her to Padua; after they separated, she entered Camin’s employment, first as his cook and later as his housekeeper. The narrative sums up her authority in the household by observing that she both served and governed it.
Her position makes her a conspicuous difficulty in Camin’s bid to return to favor with his old clerical associates. He had once belonged to the clerical party, was expelled after becoming entangled in schemes that risked prison, and briefly moved into anticlerical radicalism before working as an electoral agent for the moderates. A clerical-moderate alliance renewed his connections with former associates, some of whom were willing to think him wronged. But Carolina’s presence in his home, and the suspicion attached to their relationship, stood in the way: those sympathetic acquaintances preferred to suppose that his keeping her was imprudent rather than evidence of anything more compromising. Party leaders, the narrator notes, were less easily persuaded.
Arrival at Montanina
Three days after the opening of Marcello Trento’s will, Camin, the doctor Francesco Molesin, and Carolina travel together by the first train to Arsiero. They continue by carriage toward Montanina. Molesin initially pays Carolina some compliments while they are boarding, but, encouraged by Camin, climbs inside; Carolina, displeased, takes the seat beside the driver. Her arrival is marked by the odd assortment of heavy coats and scarves worn by her companions, which nearly makes Giovanni laugh.
Teresina receives her with a funereal expression and escorts her to the room intended for the new master’s housekeeper. Carolina knows that Teresina served Lelia, whom she calls by a Lombard diminutive, and confidently predicts that the two women will get along. She praises Camin as a good-hearted fellow, then warns Teresina that he has a liking for pretty women. Teresina blushes and rejects the insinuation as irrelevant to her. Carolina is dissatisfied with the room assigned to her, despite its size, because it receives light from a dormer. Without ceremony she takes another room at the front of the villa, above the salon.
That choice carries an irony the household cannot miss. The room is known as the Swallows’ Room, and years earlier Marcello had told Teresina that Andrea’s children would sleep there. Teresina remembers his words; seeing Carolina take possession of the room as its new mistress brings her to tears. The room thus makes Carolina’s arrival collide with the memory of the family life Marcello had once imagined.
Rivalry in the Household
Carolina’s conflict with Teresina becomes concrete over a glass of Marsala. After Carolina raids the kitchen and drinks half of the wine Teresina had set aside for her work, the two women quarrel. Teresina resigns, and Camin’s pleas cannot persuade her to stay. Molesin recognizes the bad effect of this departure: Teresina’s loss and Carolina’s triumph make it harder to present Camin’s household as a suitable setting for the political and clerical arrangements he hopes to make.
The rivalry also spills into the men’s private negotiations. When Carolina secretly listens at the study door, Camin is praising her to Molesin; she apparently hears enough of the exchange to believe that Molesin has spoken against her or wants her dismissed. She bursts into the room and loudly defends herself. Camin tries to quiet her, while Molesin protests and backs away, eventually escaping into the salon. The servants gather at a distance, and Giovanni reconstructs the episode from what he has witnessed and overheard. His account makes clear that the apparent dismissal was an inference, not a decision the scene confirms. Carolina’s intervention nonetheless exposes the volatility of a household in which her standing is both important to Camin and disputed by others.
Attachment and Narrative Role
Camin’s dependence on Carolina is not simply domestic. The narration describes their attachment as passionate and reciprocal in its own way: neither is faithful to the other, they sometimes quarrel bitterly, yet neither can bring themselves to separate. Camin sees taking Lelia into his home while keeping Carolina there as impossible; dismissing Carolina seems even less possible to him. Her presence therefore limits his attempt to draw his newly wealthy daughter under his control, even as he plans how to use the months before Lelia reaches adulthood and hopes she will provide him with support.
A later scene catches Camin writing to Carolina after they have separated in a storm of jealousy concerning Teresina. He addresses her with a string of affectionate pet names and says that, without her, he feels he is dying in the dullness of the place. When Bettina Pagan enters unexpectedly, he hastily turns the note over. The episode neither establishes a reconciliation nor resolves their relationship; it shows instead how quickly his tender private language gives way to concealment when another person arrives.
Carolina’s narrative importance lies in this unsettled combination of intimacy, labor, and leverage. She has authority in Camin’s home but remains a source of embarrassment to his political acquaintances; she can displace Teresina but cannot erase the sorrow attached to the room she occupies; and her bond with Camin obstructs his plans for Lelia without itself offering a stable alternative. Through her, the household’s supposed respectability is revealed as precarious, sustained by arrangements that its inhabitants cannot openly reconcile.
