Lelia Camin and Girolamo da Camin's father-daughter relationship

Lelia Camin and Girolamo da Camin’s father-daughter relationship is defined less by intimacy than by the gap between legal kinship and lived attachment. He seeks access to his daughter and her inheritance, while she sends him money without affection, refuses contact, and ultimately resists returning to his home. Their encounters make parenthood a contested claim: Girolamo invokes his status as her father, but Lelia’s choices show how little that status can repair their estrangement.

A distant bond sustained by money

Before the inheritance dispute becomes explicit, Lelia secretly sends Girolamo money from the allowance Marcello Trento gives her for personal expenses. She passes the funds through Teresina, arranging for them to be sent from Schio because she fears that postal officials in Velo d’Astico or Arsiero might alert Marcello. The careful concealment reflects both her continued material assistance and her desire to keep her father outside the household in which she lives.

The money does not express trust. Lelia believes Girolamo is deeply in debt, but she doubts the accounts of hardship he gives her. From what she heard and observed while living in his house, she suspects that he knows how to evade creditors, display poverty, and hide money. She sends what she can without advice or reproach, treating the transfer as an obligation discharged at a distance rather than an opening toward reconciliation. Her contempt is explicit in her own understanding of the arrangement: she regards him as undeserving, yet continues to remit part of her allowance.

The contrast with her attitude toward her mother sharpens the nature of this estrangement. Her mother writes asking for affection, but Lelia does not answer and returns a rosary blessed by the Pope. Girolamo, by contrast, receives money, but not emotional confidence: Lelia’s practical assistance does not mean that she accepts him as a source of comfort or guidance.

The inheritance brings the father forward

After Marcello’s death, the opening of his holographic will makes Lelia his universal heir and gives Teresina a separate daily-wage legacy. A telegram from Girolamo, sent from Padua, announces both his condolences and his claim to be the father of a minor daughter; he says he is coming to take up his paternal place. The agent’s account records a discrepancy: Lelia acknowledges that Girolamo is her father and says she is twenty years and a few months old, while Marcello had believed her older. The news precipitates a terrible crisis for Lelia. She refuses to see Girolamo, does not attend Marcello’s funeral, and spends the day in bed with a severe migraine. Donna Fedele goes to the funeral in her place and meets the newly arrived father.

Donna Fedele’s description presents Girolamo as awkward and submissive on the surface, but not necessarily harmless. She finds him stiff, deferential, and almost unable to refuse anyone; at the same time, she recognizes him as a calculating man. He visits after the funeral to perform what he presents as a filial duty and asks to see Lelia in the manner of a tenant farmer making a request, not a father claiming closeness. Lelia will not receive him. His apparent acceptance of her refusal does not settle the relationship: he leaves content, according to Donna Fedele, despite not having obtained the meeting.

Paternal claims and financial calculations

Girolamo’s approach to Lelia is entangled with the value of the Trento estate. When he visits Donna Fedele at the Villino delle Rose, he hopes to present a modest desire to have his daughter with him while appearing not to insist. His private plan is more calculating: in the remaining months before she comes of age, he intends to appropriate as much movable property as possible, behave humbly so she may later grant him a generous allowance, and persuade his friend Francesco Molesin to arrange favorable terms with creditors.

His plans are constrained by his relationship with Gorlago. He believes he cannot keep both women in his house: Lelia would leave immediately, while dismissing Gorlago seems even less possible to him. He and Gorlago quarrel but do not separate, and he is attached to her despite their mutual infidelity. The prospect of bringing his daughter home is therefore not simply a restoration of family life; it would disrupt an existing household and compete with Girolamo’s other attachments and financial interests.

In front of Donna Fedele, he is hesitant and approves the proposed journey to Torino. He finally manages to request an audience with Lelia. At their meeting he approaches her eagerly, greets her repeatedly, and kisses both her cheeks. She shivers but remains rigid and does not invite him to sit. He gives her a packet of ten-lire notes, calling them the money he has brought because he was told of her journey, then reassures her that it is her own money and says he will account for matters in a few months, when she is of age. The gift carries two meanings at once: it is a financial provision for his daughter, but it also places their future relation in the language of property, accounting, and a coming change in control.

Refusal, dependence, and an unsettled future

Girolamo’s dealings with Francesco Molesin expose how sharply his financial calculations have changed. He had once offered creditors twenty percent, reasoning that his daughter, as heir to a substantial estate, might make sacrifices for him and that he could borrow the necessary money. Now he says he cannot offer even that amount: Lelia is hostile and unwilling to live with him, so he cannot count on her help. He protests that he cannot be expected to give creditors seventy-five percent and insists that, whether she wants to or not, the law obliges his daughter to provide him with a living. This is Girolamo’s claim about his entitlement, not a reconciliation between them; his argument makes the support he expects from her sound like a legal duty rather than a bond of affection.

Later, while Lelia is away from Velo, she writes to her father and waits for an answer. Donna Fedele expects a refusal, although Massimo Alberti thinks the response may not be negative. Whatever the answer, Donna Fedele judges that Lelia cannot remain where she is. Lelia fears returning to Velo and has only months to wait before reaching majority. After discussion, Donna Fedele decides that Lelia may stay with her cousin in Santhià, arranging for the cousin to meet her at the station and for Lelia’s letters to be forwarded there. She makes this decision without first securing Girolamo’s permission, relying on his habitual deference to her, the safety of the cousin’s household, and Lelia’s strong aversion to going back to Velo.

The relationship therefore remains unresolved in the evidence: Lelia has acknowledged Girolamo as her father, but she has not accepted his household, his claims to her resources, or the intimacy he performs through kisses and gifts. Her remittances and his expectation of support keep them materially connected, while her concealed transactions, refusal to meet him after the inheritance, and continued separation mark the limits of that connection. Fatherhood persists as a status and a source of pressure, not as a settled reconciliation.