Lelia Escapes from Vicenza Station

Lelia Camin’s escape from Vicenza station transforms a proposed stop in Padova into a calculated separation. She allows Siora Bettina Fantuzzo to believe they will travel together, then uses the station’s ordinary routines—checking the timetable, ordering coffee, and supposedly posting a letter—to recover her luggage and board a train for Milano. The deception leaves Siora Bettina stranded and shaken, while revealing how urgently Lelia wants to avoid the return to Velo that awaits her if she remains in her companion’s care.

Background: an unwanted return

The journey takes place amid Lelia’s estrangement from her father, Girolamo da Camin. After Marcello Trento’s death, the opening of his holographic will makes Lelia his universal heir. A letter from the dead man’s agent reports that Girolamo has telegraphed from Padova, declared himself Lelia’s father, and announced his imminent arrival. The letter also corrects the age assumed by Marcello: Lelia is twenty years and a few months old, not as old as her guardian had believed. Her inheritance and her father’s renewed presence thus converge at a moment when she is still not legally of age.

Girolamo’s visit does not resolve their distance. Donna Fedele Vayla receives him and, despite Lelia’s poor health, insists that the girl meet him when he asks. Lelia receives her father standing, stiff and grave; she allows his kisses but remains rigid and does not invite him to sit. He offers her a packet of ten-lira notes, speaking of the money as hers and promising that he will account for it. The encounter gives no sign of a restored intimacy. In a later meeting with Francesco Molesin, Girolamo’s discussion of a proposed settlement with creditors exposes his anxiety about what Lelia will contribute and his limited means. His paternal claim therefore exists alongside financial pressure and a daughter who has shown little willingness to live under his authority.

The immediate journey is also shaped by the protective role Siora Bettina has taken on. She is accompanying Lelia toward Castelletto, but at the Campomarzo bridge she suggests changing their plan: she says she feels unwell and asks to go first to Padova, where they might visit the Santo, before continuing to Castelletto later that evening. Lelia has reason to dread being returned to Velo, and the proposed detour creates an opening without revealing what she intends to do.

The detour becomes an opportunity

At the station café, Lelia studies the timetable in silence. She finds that a departure from Padova at 2:52 p.m. could bring them to Castelletto at 7:55 p.m. It is then 10:30 a.m., and the train to Padova is due at 11:08. Rather than reject Siora Bettina’s plan, Lelia lets the timetable reassure her companion that their onward journey remains possible. She waits after their coffee and milk arrives, then says she is going out to post a letter and buy picture postcards. She offers to buy both tickets to Padova; when Siora Bettina reaches for the money, Lelia says they can settle up later.

This apparent errand is the hinge of the escape. Lelia’s conduct is measured and practical: she does not rush away at the first opportunity, but first establishes a plausible shared itinerary and gives Siora Bettina a reason to remain in the café. The promise of a later accounting, like the proposed stop in Padova, sustains the impression that the two women are still travelling together. The plan depends less on a dramatic confrontation than on allowing her companion to wait while Lelia acts elsewhere in the station.

The departure from Vicenza

As the minutes pass and Lelia does not return, Siora Bettina goes looking for her. She is not in the adjoining station hall. Among the people crowding the ticket windows, Siora Bettina thinks she sees her companion, but it is someone else. She then questions the porter who had taken their bags to the left-luggage area. He tells her that he has already carried Lelia’s luggage to a train and placed it for her.

Siora Bettina protests that Lelia cannot have left, but the porter identifies the train as the one for Milano, which departed five minutes earlier. He reconstructs the escape in concrete details: Lelia wore an ash-coloured dust coat with large blue buttons, a blue hat with an ash-coloured veil, ash-coloured gloves, and a blue parasol with a gold handle. She left the café, posted a letter, retrieved her luggage with the porter’s help, and took a ticket. Although she held a first-class ticket, she had her luggage carried into third class and sprang into the train as soon as the direct train from Padova arrived. When the porter asked whether the other woman was travelling with her, Lelia said that Siora Bettina was going to Padova.

The difference between the first-class ticket and the luggage placed in third class marks the escape as a deliberate operation, not a misunderstanding about where the bags had gone. Lelia has arranged her movements and her explanation so that the porter, too, understands her companion to be travelling separately. By the time Siora Bettina realizes what has happened, the train has already left.

Aftermath and significance

The discovery overwhelms Siora Bettina. Her sight and strength fail, and she would have fallen without the porter’s support. Several bystanders help her back to the café; someone tries to give her marsala, while another splashes water on her face. Even in that distress she worries that the water will ruin her hat. The station newspaper seller and café waiter eventually remain with her, offering reassurance. Once she recovers somewhat, she concludes that Lelia must have gone to a convent and laments that she has been left alone. This is Siora Bettina’s guess, not an established destination: the scene confirms only that Lelia has boarded the Milano-bound train.

The later events place Lelia in Valsolda, where Massimo Alberti tells Donna Fedele that Lelia has written to her father and may receive permission to stay away from Velo. Donna Fedele nevertheless judges that Lelia cannot remain there and arranges to take her onward to Turin, with a possible stay at Santhià under the care of Donna Fedele’s cousin. That aftermath confirms the practical cost of the escape: Lelia has removed herself from Siora Bettina’s immediate supervision, but has not secured an independent home or freedom from decisions made by others.

The scene’s tension rests on a sharp reversal of apparent purpose. A journey planned as a shared trip to Castelletto becomes a departure whose real destination is withheld from the person accompanying Lelia. Her composure and attention to tickets, timetable, luggage, and disguise contrast with Siora Bettina’s trust and subsequent physical collapse. The escape is therefore both an assertion of Lelia’s will and a painful rupture in the protective bond between the two women.