Don Emanuele Arranges Lelia's Meeting with Gorlago

Don Emanuele’s arrangement for Lelia to meet Gorlago is a calculated spiritual and financial intervention, not a chance encounter. He lays out a deceptive itinerary for Siora Bettina Fantuzzo, intending to bring Lelia to Casa Camin under the pretext of a family courtesy; the meeting is meant to make Lelia recoil from her father’s household and seek refuge in faith. The episode exposes how Don Emanuele’s confidence in Providence coexists with deliberate concealment and manipulation.

Background and Stakes

Lelia has said that she must obtain her father’s permission for her plans. Don Emanuele uses that practical constraint to redirect Siora Bettina: rather than asking Lelia herself, she is to approach Lelia’s father when he arrives from Padova and seek permission, also in the archpriest’s name, for a pilgrimage to Monte Berico and a journey to Castelletto. They are to set the departure for the day after tomorrow.

The father’s authority is also entangled with the Trento inheritance. In the surrounding plot, he is trying to secure money from Lelia and manage the estate for his own purposes, while she remains unwilling to return to him. Don Emanuele’s plan makes the proposed visit to Casa Camin serve a second end: he hopes that the encounter with Gorlago will prevent the Trento wealth from sustaining the father’s vices.

The Itinerary and Intended Encounter

Don Emanuele’s instructions unfold as a sequence of concealed changes. At Monte Berico, Siora Bettina is to observe Lelia’s own wishes about receiving the sacraments. They will then go directly to the station. There, Siora Bettina is to say that she feels unwell and has changed her mind about Castelletto, proposing instead that they travel to Padova for Mass at the Santo. The train is to leave at eleven.

After Mass, Siora Bettina is to persuade Lelia to stop at Casa Camin as a courtesy to her father, where letters, newspapers, or calling cards might have arrived. Don Emanuele insists that Lelia must meet the person who is there: Gorlago. Her presence is pointedly at odds with the public account that she had gone to Lombardia and separated from Lelia’s father. The itinerary thus disguises a forced confrontation as a sequence of religious observances and ordinary family considerations.

Siora Bettina’s Resistance

Siora Bettina is distressed when she understands what the plan requires. She is willing to give up the trip to Castelletto and endure the lies, but fears the scenes that could follow from meeting Gorlago. Although she feels abstract pity for sinners, she admits that their presence in reality repels her; the prospect of facing this particular woman fills her with horror. She asks whether Don Emanuele truly expects her to do it.

He answers not with an explanation but with a bow of the head and hands joined in prayer, presenting the scheme as submission to a higher will. Siora Bettina protests that she is ignorant and foolish, unable to understand why such a maneuver is necessary. Don Emanuele does not clarify the design. Instead, he turns the conversation to whether she will return by the road they came or continue toward Lago and Sant’Ubaldo, leaving her with the burden of carrying out his instructions.

Don Emanuele’s Purpose and the Limits of the Plan

The narration makes clear what Don Emanuele withholds from Siora Bettina. He believes that contact with something repellent will leave a powerful impression on Lelia and drive her to seek the Lord. If that happens, the Trento fortune will not be used to nourish her father’s vices. He also hopes that the scandal in Padova may benefit the father’s soul. Don Emanuele treats these hoped-for effects as providentially significant, while carefully managing the route and the information available to those involved.

The scene records the design and its preparation, not a confirmed account of the meeting itself. Its force lies in the gap between the stated journey and its concealed destination: pilgrimage, Mass, and filial courtesy become instruments for arranging a morally charged encounter that Siora Bettina herself finds repugnant.