La fuga di Lelia verso la Valsolda

Lelia’s flight toward Valsolda is the moment when a love she had tried to resist becomes a choice she acts upon. Massimo Alberti’s letter makes clear that he wants to live, but believes his renewed longing for Lelia has made that life impossible; her response is to leave secretly and tell him she will be his if he still wants her. The journey is at once a confession, a deception, and an attempted act of reconciliation: she sets out to admit her own fault and folly, while keeping her father from learning what she has done for as long as possible.

Causes and Decision

The immediate turning point comes in Massimo’s letter. He writes that, apart from his love for Lelia, he would want to live: to care for poor people, give what good he could, and seek a companion he could love in both soul and body. But he says the fever he had hoped to overcome, which he names as Lelia, has returned with such force that he can no longer fight it. The letter transforms her understanding of his despair. She is overcome physically and emotionally, clutching the rhododendrons in her lap and pressing them and the letter to her face as she kisses the words. She imagines a shared life in a mountain refuge, where her love might console him and sustain his wish to do good.

That first surrender is followed by a struggle to regain control of herself. Lelia turns her attention to a wild carnation trembling in the wind, and later, while preparing for bed, briefly falters before her secret plan. She then steels herself to go to Massimo without conditions, accepting in her imagination that she would be entirely his, without thinking about what might follow. The scene shows the distance between the composed decision she tries to impose on herself and the bodily agitation that accompanies it: she trembles, feels breathless, and reaches for the rhododendrons as she imagines the flight ahead.

The Funeral and the Cover Story

The departure takes shape amid the arrangements surrounding Marcello’s funeral. Donna Fedele is too ill to attend the service, and has asked Lelia’s father, Camin, to let Lelia remain until the following day. Lelia herself refuses to leave the villa before the expected arrival of a woman from Santhià. Nevertheless, she walks to Velo d’Astico with her maid for the funeral. Urged to sit beside her father, she instead takes a place near the main door so that she can leave as soon as the service is over. Her attention is fixed on her own thoughts, and she is reluctant to visit the rectory afterward, where Don Emanuele wants to speak with her.

Siora Bettina Fantuzzo accompanies Lelia and eventually proposes a change of plan. Claiming that she feels unwell, she suggests going only as far as Padova to visit the shrine, with the possibility of continuing to Castelletto later that evening. Lelia checks the timetable. A departure from Padova at 2:52 p.m. would allow them to reach Castelletto at 7:55 p.m.; it is then half past ten, and their train for Padova is due at 11:08. Lelia agrees to the arrangement, orders coffee and milk, and offers to buy both tickets. She says she is going out to post a letter and buy picture postcards, and leaves Siora Bettina to accept the proposed plan as genuine.

The Secret Departure

The station porter later reconstructs how Lelia turned that diversion into an escape. After leaving the café, she posted a letter, retrieved her luggage from the depot, and bought a ticket. Although she held a first-class ticket, she had the luggage taken into third class. When the direct train from Padova arrived, she leapt aboard before Siora Bettina could join her. Asked whether the other woman was travelling with her, Lelia said that her companion was going to Padova. Her rapid movements and deliberate separation leave Siora Bettina behind, bewildered and alone; when the porter confirms the departure, she faints and, on recovering, fears that Lelia has gone into a convent.

Lelia’s own note makes the destination and purpose explicit. She writes to a friend that she is boarding the train from Vicenza toward Dasio and is going to tell Massimo that she has been guilty and foolish, but that, if he wants her, she is his forever. She asks her father not to learn the truth until as late as possible, acknowledging that she has pretended and lied to him as though she were his true and legitimate daughter in order to carry out her plan. The deception is not incidental: it enables her to act before paternal authority can stop or redirect her.

Meaning and Immediate Aftermath

In her note, Lelia describes the journey as an act of love, humility, and justice, credits Donna Fedele with giving her the resolve and strength to undertake it, and asks her friend for forgiveness and blessing. Those terms recast the apparent flight from a mere escape into a moral decision as Lelia understands it: she means to confess her part in their separation and offer herself to Massimo, rather than wait for him to recover alone. Yet the decision remains secretive and costly. She leaves her father uninformed, deceives Siora Bettina, and must rely on an indirect route and a false account of her plans to reach the man she intends to face honestly.

The letter reaches Donna Fedele after Lelia has gone. Her elderly cousin sees her standing dark against the starry sky, apparently bent in prayer, before Donna Fedele calls for her and dictates telegrams to be sent the next morning. One is an instruction concerning Massimo that he should be a Christian and a gentleman. The scene places Lelia’s clandestine departure beside the older woman’s urgent, practical response: the flight has been carried out, but its consequences are already drawing others into action. The evidence establishes Lelia’s intention to reach Massimo and ask to be received by him; the decisive change is that she no longer treats love as a feeling to be suppressed, but as a choice for which she is willing to confess, deceive, and travel.