Don Emanuele and Bettina Fantuzzo

Don Emanuele and Bettina Fantuzzo’s relationship joins spiritual trust to practical obedience: she regards him as a guide whose instructions carry religious authority, while he relies on her to carry out a carefully managed plan involving Lelia Camin. Their intimacy is not presented as an equal exchange of counsel. Don Emanuele supplies the purpose, the story Bettina is to tell, and the sequence of actions; Bettina’s faith makes her accept even deception as part of a providential duty. The resulting bond is both affectionate in its trust and troubling in the way authority recruits her conscience.

Spiritual Trust and Authority

When Don Emanuele reports his conversation with Lelia, Bettina interprets the news as a grace obtained through the prayers of her brother-in-law, the chaplain, and, to a lesser degree, her own. She asks what she should do. Don Emanuele tells her to wait for Lelia and suggest that the archpriest had said the girl might accompany her on a visit to Monte Berico and perhaps a journey to Castelletto. Bettina immediately notices that the attribution is false: the archpriest had told her nothing of the kind. Don Emanuele orders her to keep his name out of it and to say what he instructs.

The narrator makes the moral arrangement explicit without making Bettina cynical. Don Emanuele’s proposed lie, the narration says, has a soul of truth that remains inaccessible to her except through faith. Bettina accepts it on that basis, answering with humble confidence in her guide. Her obedience is therefore not simply a tactic or a convenient performance: she believes that his authority gives the falsehood a higher purpose. The episode shows how her trust transfers responsibility upward, allowing her to carry out an act she has already recognized as untrue.

Secrecy and the Journey Plan

The instructions extend beyond the first deception. Don Emanuele tells Bettina that Lelia will probably insist on obtaining her father’s permission, and that permission must cover both Monte Berico and Castelletto. Bettina is genuinely pleased by the prospect of going to Castelletto; she also hopes to gather information about the Sisters of the Holy Family for Don Emanuele, who is considering placing them in an institution in his future diocese. Her personal enthusiasm and her wish to serve his ecclesiastical plans overlap, making the proposed journey attractive to her as well as obediently accepted.

Don Emanuele then takes her along the road toward Lago, beneath the chestnut trees, to speak where they are less likely to be interrupted. He insists that she keep his plan to herself, even from the archpriest. The thought of concealing anything from Don Tita gives Bettina a physical shock, but Don Emanuele presents the secrecy as necessary to a providential route toward the salvation of two souls. She comes to feel chosen: the narrowness of the path, as she understands it, explains why a third person cannot be admitted. In this private confidence, spiritual direction becomes a means of isolating her from other sources of judgment.

The plan is specific. Rather than speak to Lelia, Bettina is to approach her father, Girolamo da Camin, when he arrives from Padova, and request permission in the names of herself and the archpriest. She must propose the pilgrimage and the visit, then set the date for the day after next. Don Emanuele speaks as if the itinerary were already settled, although it depends on the choices of other people. His certainty contrasts with Bettina’s apprehension: she follows the plan, but she does not possess the information that would let her understand its full purpose.

The Concealed Purpose and Its Strain

Don Emanuele’s instructions reveal that the journey is meant to do more than take Lelia to a shrine. Bettina is to observe Lelia’s own wishes about receiving the sacraments at Monte Berico. Afterward, at the station, she must say that she feels unwell and has changed her mind about Castelletto; instead, they will travel to Padova for Mass. She is then to persuade Lelia to stop at the Camin house out of consideration for her father, on the pretext that letters, newspapers, or visiting cards may have arrived. Don Emanuele’s actual purpose is to make Lelia encounter a woman who is staying there despite the public claim that she had gone to Lombardy and separated from Girolamo. He insists on the encounter’s necessity but withholds its explanation from Bettina.

Bettina recoils at the prospect. She has only a vague understanding of the relationship between Girolamo and Gorlago, and has deliberately avoided thinking about it. Once Don Emanuele makes the intended meeting clear, she imagines the scenes that may follow and feels horror at facing the woman. Her pity for sinners in the abstract, she recognizes, does not readily survive contact with one in person. She asks whether he truly expects this of her. He answers not with an argument but with a gesture of bowed head and joined hands, presenting their compliance as an act of submission to a higher will. The contrast is sharp: he has selected the deception and the destination, while she must bear the anticipated encounter and its emotional cost.

A Test of Obedience

The following day, the chaplain and Bettina come to the dinner at Girolamo’s home, but the archpriest is absent, having been summoned to Vicenza by the bishop. Before the meal, Bettina worries that she has not made the pilgrimage’s purpose clear to Lelia. She had mentioned a good Servite confessor, but Lelia had not indicated that she intended to confess. Rather than wait to raise the matter while traveling, Bettina seeks Don Emanuele’s guidance. His response dismisses the need for further thought, and she returns subdued and contrite.

Teresina then draws Bettina aside and describes signs that make the proposed excursion look very different from an ordinary visit: Lelia is packing abundant linen, devotional books, and sacred images; she has been studying a railway timetable; she has asked whether anyone would be distressed if her hair were cut, and whether Teresina had ever thought of becoming a nun. Bettina hears this as evidence of a feverish and potentially drastic change, not as a settled vocation. The news also confronts her with the gap between Don Emanuele’s confident arrangements and what Lelia may actually intend. Bettina fears that he knows nothing of these developments and that Castelletto is no longer part of the plan. Her distress shows the limits of her delegated role: she is expected to carry out a design whose essential circumstances may be changing beyond her knowledge.

The Meaning of Their Bond

Across these scenes, Bettina’s loyalty is made visible through small acts of submission: she accepts a false attribution, agrees to conceal Don Emanuele’s involvement, approaches a father for permission, and contemplates a journey whose real aim she only partly understands. Don Emanuele, in turn, entrusts her with the practical work because she is both devout and susceptible to the language of spiritual authority. His direction can comfort her by giving confusion the shape of a duty; it can also override her unease without answering it.

The relationship therefore carries the story’s tension between religious intention and the means chosen in its name. Bettina sincerely believes that obedience serves Providence, but the reader sees that the immediate plan depends on concealment, strategic misdirection, and an encounter Don Emanuele has decided is necessary. Her faith does not erase her hesitation: the shock at keeping a secret from Don Tita, her horror at meeting Gorlago, and her anxiety over Lelia’s preparations remain present beneath her compliance. That friction makes their bond more than a simple portrait of spiritual guidance. It shows how trust can become both a source of moral purpose and the channel through which another person’s unexamined authority is carried into action.