Lelia's attempted suicide

Lelia’s attempted suicide is a tightly staged crisis in which a carefully prepared plan is interrupted by accident, and its immediate aftermath becomes an act of protection as much as a medical emergency. On a dark, rainy night, she sets out to jump from a bridge into a millrace. Carnesecca’s unexpected presence at the villa and Donna Fedele’s quick recognition of what has happened save her; Donna Fedele then lets Lelia believe that she left the house while sleepwalking, sparing her the humiliation of a failed attempt.

Background and preparation

The attempt takes place amid a period of bereavement and family upheaval. Lelia has been named the universal heir in Marcello’s handwritten will. A letter reporting its opening also conveys a telegram from Girolamo da Camin, who claims to be her father and says he is coming to see her. Lelia has told the agent that she is twenty and a few months old, although the father’s telegram describes her as a minor and Marcello had believed her older. These circumstances place inheritance, family identity, and Lelia’s uncertain independence close to the crisis, although the narrative does not reduce her decision to any single cause.

Late in the evening, Lelia remains alone after playing the piano. The maid warns that it is raining and the wind is rising; Lelia asks her to leave the heavy veranda doors open, saying that she may go out for air. She alternates between the piano and the open doors, listening and looking into the darkness. Upstairs, she knows the time is half past ten and has fixed two hours later as the moment to leave. From her bedroom window she looks toward the plain of Arsiero, Priaforà, and Montanina. She imagines the unseen Posina, its bridge, the water below, and a quieter millrace running beside it. She has chosen that millrace as the place where she will jump.

Lelia writes a brief note to Donna Fedele, saying that she is going to die without knowing why, and that she knows even less why she should live. She cannot find words of apology or farewell that seem appropriate, and tears the note apart. She changes out of the close-fitting mourning dress Donna Fedele lent her and puts on the gray dress she wore when she came to the villa. From the silver-mesh handbag Andrea gave her, she takes his photograph and writes beneath it that she is coming. The handbag also holds other keepsakes, and its small nameplate recalls a dispute; she hesitates over whether to leave it, then decides to take it after all. These objects make the departure pull in opposing directions: she prepares for death while still carrying a personal link to Andrea.

The planned departure and interruption

Before leaving, Lelia places the photograph where it will be seen, washes a small ink mark from her finger, and puts Eugénie de Guérin’s Journal aside. She feels no kinship with the religious writer and reflects that the prohibitions of the priests’ God mean little to her; at the same time, she experiences a grateful, gentle prayer toward an unknown presence with which she feels at peace. The passage does not resolve this tension into a return to conventional religious belief. Instead, it sets her private sense of peace beside her decision to die.

Although it is only a quarter past eleven, Lelia decides not to wait for the hour she had set. She cuts a length of curtain cord to tie her skirts before jumping, so that they will not turn up and expose her legs, and puts on rubber overshoes to descend quietly. On the stairs, the imagined fall becomes physically specific: she remembers black posts in or near the millrace and worries that she might strike them if she dropped straight down from the bridge. She decides she would have to jump as far out as possible. At the bottom of the stairs she remembers the torn pieces of her note but does not go back for them.

Lelia moves through the dark rooms toward the veranda, listening to the clock and fearing that the floorboards will creak and wake the maid or cook. As she slips through the partly closed doors, a human figure suddenly rises in front of her. She overturns chairs, does not call out, and bolts down the garden steps. Donna Fedele, whose windows are open, hears the noise and calls to find out who is there. Carnesecca answers that a woman has run out. Donna Fedele urges him to pursue her, calling her a sleepwalker. He runs toward the small gate; a moment later, Lelia cries out as he catches her on the grassy slope near it and falls as if dead.

Carnesecca had been on the terrace because, with nowhere to shelter from the rain, he had taken the liberty of spending the night there. His presence is accidental, but decisive: without it, Lelia could have reached the bridge and carried out the plan she had prepared. Donna Fedele understands the danger and, when she realizes Lelia is safe, loses her strength and sits on the last veranda step in the rain. Carnesecca comforts Lelia as though waking a sleepwalker, then carries her indoors with the help of the maid and cook.

Concealment and immediate aftermath

Donna Fedele has Lelia taken to a room with two beds, undressed, and put to bed. When Lelia regains consciousness, she is bewildered and tries to push away the maid’s hands. Donna Fedele sends the servants out, closes the door, and gently tells Lelia that she had a sleepwalking episode and fell outside. She asks her to keep still because she herself feels very ill and needs rest. The explanation is not what Donna Fedele believes; she is convinced that Lelia tried to die. Her immediate concern is that Lelia should not have to endure the shame of knowing that anyone has understood.

As Lelia sleeps, her breathing grows labored and her forehead burns with fever. She wakes in alarm, insisting that the room is not hers, and confuses the word “fall” with the fatal act she had intended. Donna Fedele embraces her. Lelia returns the embrace, kisses her, and weeps, feverish and disoriented. Donna Fedele summons a doctor, then tells him privately what he needs to know: Lelia went out during severe moral agitation caused by family circumstances, fell near the gate, and lost consciousness. She asks him to maintain the sleepwalking explanation in conversation with the patient, both to protect Lelia’s private feelings and to preserve the concealment already established.

Lelia refuses medicine and food. With a high fever, she talks almost continuously about sleepwalking and sleepwalkers, seeming preoccupied with confirming Donna Fedele’s account. Only once does she change the subject: she mentions Marcello and grows tender when she looks at Donna Fedele. Her fever declines toward evening, followed by a dark, taciturn period. Donna Fedele, meanwhile, is also visibly feverish, though the doctor attributes her condition to exhaustion. She chooses to have her bed placed beside Lelia’s, accepting the strain because caring for the young woman gives her a sense of a life unusually full. Her devotion is bound not only to Lelia but also to Marcello’s continuing love for his dead son.

Consequences and narrative significance

The attempt does not remain a secret from everyone. Later, Teresina hears that Lelia has fled and fears that she has gone to throw herself into a precipice. Donna Fedele writes back that the feared disaster is not to be feared because she has Lelia’s solemn promise. The reassurance marks a consequence of the failed attempt: Lelia’s continued safety now rests, at least in part, on a promise made to the woman who has protected her.

The event also becomes part of the calculations of those around Lelia. The archpriest sees her suicidal crisis as evidence that she still recoils from the proposed Camin–Alberti marriage. Don Emanuele interprets her disgust with the world as something that might be redirected into religious life, imagining a contemplative order as a possible future for her. These readings reveal how Lelia’s crisis is appropriated by competing plans for her, even as Donna Fedele’s response is to stay close and guard her confidence.

That protective role continues beyond the night itself. When Lelia later reaches Valsolda, Donna Fedele and Massimo agree that she cannot remain there and arrange for her to travel with Donna Fedele toward Turin, with the possibility of staying with Donna Fedele’s cousin in Santhià if her father permits it. The attempted suicide thus marks more than a thwarted plan: it brings Lelia’s vulnerability into the open for Donna Fedele, while leaving Lelia herself shielded by the sleepwalking story. Its central reversal is intimate and contingent—an intended solitary death is interrupted by an unexpected witness, and the secret of the attempt becomes the basis for a closer, carefully maintained guardianship.