Marcello asks Don Aurelio to bring Massimo and Lelia together in a private conversation after Mass, turning his anxiety about Lelia’s future into a tentative plan for marriage. The proposal is both protective and practical: Marcello fears she may refuse a bequest and fall under the control of one of her parents, while hoping that a union with Massimo might make a limited inheritance acceptable. Don Aurelio agrees to try, but the match is only a possibility, not an arrangement secured by either young person’s consent.

Background and Stakes

Marcello raises the subject in the sacristy after Mass. He speaks as though he believes himself near death, mentioning that he is seventy-two without explaining why he feels his end may be close. Don Aurelio notices a new calmness and tenderness in his voice and eyes. The proposal therefore comes from a man confronting his own mortality and trying to settle the future of the young woman he regards as his daughter.

His immediate fear is that Lelia will not accept a benefit from his will and may then be left in the power of one or the other of her parents. A marriage to Massimo, the friend of Marcello’s dead son Andrea, might avert at least the danger of parental dependence. Marcello also thinks the marriage could make Lelia more willing to accept something from him: he might leave her only the villa, rather than require her to accept a larger benefit that she could reject outright. He hopes that neither Lelia nor her husband would refuse a legacy in a way that seemed to dishonor his memory.

The Proposed Match

Marcello does not regard Lelia’s grief for Andrea as a reason to demand a permanent renunciation of marriage. She is twenty-two, he reasons, and cannot fairly be asked to remain in mourning forever or to forgo marriage irrevocably. If she can be helped to believe that Andrea, from heaven, would not condemn her for another future, she might consent. Marcello thinks she would be especially reluctant to make a choice that seemed an affront to Andrea while Marcello was still alive; reassurance could alter how she understood the proposal.

The plan is thus framed not as replacing Andrea, but as allowing Lelia a life beyond bereavement without making her feel disloyal. Yet Marcello recognizes that its uncertain element is Massimo. He has heard Don Aurelio praise the young man, but does not know whether Massimo has attachments, affections, or an intention to marry. The proposed union rests on an open question about Massimo’s private wishes as much as on Marcello’s hopes for Lelia.

Don Aurelio’s Scruples

The request troubles Don Aurelio because he cannot simply recommend the match as though Massimo were free to be directed. He is confident that Massimo has no concealed entanglements, but cannot be certain that he is not in love. Massimo has written to him about passing attractions: a glance might awaken a feeling that conversation then extinguished. Don Aurelio understands that Massimo is not opposed to marriage in principle, but is firmly unwilling to marry without love or to let anyone else prescribe his choice. Advice of that kind had already turned him away from a marriage that might otherwise have taken place, though Don Aurelio gives no further details.

Don Aurelio would like Massimo to marry and believes him capable of creating an ideal family. Still, he has little experience in matchmaking and doubts his ability to guide the matter without making his intention obvious. He tells Marcello what he knows about Massimo’s independence, but withholds his most persistent reservation: Lelia herself remains an enigma to him, like a closed case that might contain something genuine or something false. His promise to do his best arises partly from affection and reverence for Marcello, whom he has come to regard as warm-hearted, open, humble, and deeply faithful. It is not a promise that the young people will accept one another.

Constraints and Later Complications

The conversation is followed by a practical urgency that Don Aurelio had not known about when Marcello first spoke to him. A letter from the Vicenza diocesan curia dismisses him from his curacy in Lago di Velo and requires him to leave within fifteen days. He is distressed at being turned out of his home and separated from his small congregation, yet his attention returns to Marcello’s request and to finding Massimo. The new deadline makes the proposed courtship harder to pursue: Don Aurelio wonders whether Massimo might leave too, and whether a delicate plan can be carried through in so little time. He considers asking Donna Fedele for advice, since she knows more about Lelia and understands such matters better than he does.

Later disclosures sharpen the risks that lay behind Marcello’s concern. When the will is opened, Lelia is named universal heir, and a telegram from Girolamo da Camin declares that he is her father; Lelia confirms the relationship and says she is twenty years old and a few months, younger than Marcello had believed. The more limited bequest of the villa had been a possibility Marcello considered in connection with the marriage, not the inheritance ultimately revealed. The later encounter with her father also gives concrete force to Marcello’s fear that Lelia might fall into a parent’s hands, though the proposal itself does not settle what she will do.

Significance

This episode makes marriage part of Marcello’s effort to care for Lelia beyond his lifetime, binding affection to questions of inheritance, grief, and parental power. Its protective intention does not erase the problem of choice: Marcello hopes for a match, but Don Aurelio knows that Massimo will not be steered into marriage without love, and he cannot yet read Lelia’s feelings. The conversation therefore initiates an attempt, not a resolution. Its unresolved conditions—whether Lelia can accept a future beyond Andrea, whether Massimo is willing, and whether Don Aurelio has time to help—give the proposal its precarious character.