Lelia Camin and Donna Fedele's friendship

The friendship between Lelia Camin and Donna Fedele is one of the novel’s most intimate chosen bonds: it gives Lelia a place of refuge when family ties fail, and gives Donna Fedele a chance to turn an old wound into care for someone else. Their closeness is made legible less by declarations than by gestures—the hands Lelia kisses after hearing Donna Fedele’s voice, the hand held across two beds after a near-fatal crisis, and a letter whose disclosure Lelia cannot bear to leave intact. The relationship grows into an honorary motherhood, but never loses its awareness of the limits and responsibilities that distinguish chosen care from actual parenthood.

Recognition and Trust

Lelia’s emotional reserve has deep roots. She continues to feel pursued by the memory of Andrea Trento, whose last painful words remain in her mind. As she interprets her own emerging capacity for love as a danger, she resolves never to love again. She believes this abstention is owed both to Andrea’s memory and to Marcello Trento, who has accepted her as a living relic of his dead son. That severe self-command shapes the conditions under which she can approach Donna Fedele: intimacy is possible, but Lelia experiences it alongside guilt and fear of what her own feelings might become.

A quiet exchange around music marks a change in their understanding. Donna Fedele speaks from the shadow, and Lelia rises from the piano, finds her hands, and kisses them one after another without speaking. The gesture conveys that Lelia feels understood as a woman; the narration also signals a second meaning that remains unspoken. Donna Fedele welcomes the kisses but quickly avoids turning the moment into a verbal confession. She asks whether Lelia will stop playing and offers to go to bed, leaving Lelia free to continue at the piano. Their discretion is itself part of the bond: mutual recognition does not require either woman to force the other into an explanation.

Care in the Crisis

When Lelia is brought back unconscious after going out at night, Donna Fedele has her carried to a room with two beds and stays beside her. Once Lelia regains consciousness, Donna Fedele asks the servants to leave, tells Lelia that she has had an episode of sleepwalking, and encourages her to lie down. She sustains this explanation with the doctor as well, describing Lelia’s distress as connected to family circumstances and asking him to respect the account she has given the young woman. Lelia refuses food and medicine, speaks feverishly about sleepwalking, and never openly gives away what happened. Donna Fedele’s protection is therefore not abstract sympathy: she manages what others are told in order to spare Lelia the humiliation of having her attempt understood as an attempt.

The concealment costs Donna Fedele physically. She is herself seriously unwell, and the doctor does not know the true cause of her suffering. Even so, she has a second bed placed beside Lelia’s and chooses to remain close. The narration presents her care as bound to Marcello’s memory: she gives herself to Lelia partly out of love for the affection Marcello continued to feel for his dead son. This is not a simple substitution of one person for another. Rather, care for Lelia lets Donna Fedele honor an attachment that still shapes her own life.

That night, the bond becomes reciprocal. Donna Fedele tells Lelia about a man she had loved, whose mother and sister believed she had first enticed and then rejected him. His mother died, and his sister lives alone in Torino. Donna Fedele has been secretly helping the sister, who would refuse aid if she knew its source. She asks Lelia to continue that support after her death, and to meet the sister and explain that Donna Fedele had believed, mistakenly, that she could return the man’s love. Lelia gives no spoken answer, but reaches for Donna Fedele’s hand, squeezes it, and presses it to her tearful eyes. The request makes trust concrete: Donna Fedele entrusts Lelia not merely with affection, but with a private account of guilt and a duty that will outlast her.

Honorary Motherhood and Its Limits

Donna Fedele later names their bond directly in a letter to Massimo Alberti, accepting the honorary motherhood he has offered and writing to him with the familiarity of a mother. She also begins to tell him that he misunderstands Lelia’s feelings. As Lelia reads, she swiftly scratches through the final lines of that disclosure. Donna Fedele is astonished, but Lelia does not explain herself; Donna Fedele mistakenly assumes that the erasure answers Massimo’s harsh words. The episode shows both the depth and the asymmetry of their knowledge: Donna Fedele is prepared to speak for Lelia’s love, while Lelia cannot allow that private feeling to become part of a letter.

The rest of the letter makes clear that Donna Fedele’s care does not mean shielding Lelia from every difficult decision. She tells Massimo that Lelia is returning to Montanina because her father requires it, and urges him to write to Don Aurelio rather than remain silent. She also admits that she is not equipped to debate Massimo’s arguments on his own intellectual terms. Her maternal role combines advocacy with moral counsel: she communicates what she believes about Lelia, but also presses Massimo toward a relationship with Don Aurelio that he has avoided.

Donna Fedele also has to negotiate with Lelia’s father. When he visits the Villino delle Rose, Donna Fedele has told Lelia, with considerable force, that she must receive him if he asks to see her. Lelia greets him standing and rigid, allowing his kisses but offering no warmth; he gives her a packet of banknotes and speaks of accounting for her property. Donna Fedele’s insistence brings father and daughter face to face, though it cannot repair their estrangement. Her care therefore includes arranging encounters that Lelia would rather refuse, not simply affirming Lelia’s immediate wishes.

Protection and Separation

In Valsolda, the same mixture of tenderness and responsibility governs Donna Fedele’s decisions. After hearing the account of Lelia’s letter to her father, she accepts that a negative reply is not certain, and is glad to learn that Massimo hopes to obtain a local medical post. Even so, she concludes that Lelia cannot remain there and must leave with her. Lelia protests in a tone closer to pleading than defiance: she hopes Donna Fedele can stay to rest, fears returning to Velo, and is only months away from coming of age. Donna Fedele points out that Torino would leave her without support, then considers whether Lelia might stay with a cousin at Santhià if her father permits it.

They agree that Donna Fedele will rest for the day, see a doctor the next morning, and, if he approves, travel with Lelia to Torino. The cousin is to meet them at Santhià, while Donna Fedele’s companion continues with Lelia; letters for Lelia at San Mamette are to be forwarded to Santhià. Donna Fedele yields on the need for paternal permission, judging the proposed household safe and Lelia’s horror of returning to Velo urgent. Yet she also asks for an hour of silence and asks Massimo to leave, with Lelia to see him only later and in her presence. She feels responsible for Lelia’s reckless flight and recognizes that the maternal part she has chosen does not give her the freedom of a real mother. Their friendship is thus neither a substitute family without constraints nor a merely private solace: it is an active, protective attachment, tested by illness, secrecy, family authority, and the painful necessity of deciding where Lelia can safely go.