Monte Berico

Monte Berico is the setting for a pilgrimage woven into a larger plan for Lelia: the journey is presented as a devotional outing, but it also becomes a way to guide her toward encounters elsewhere. At the sanctuary, that carefully managed itinerary meets Lelia’s private decision to approach confession without Bettina Fantuzzo’s knowledge. The place therefore serves both as a site of religious practice and as a hinge between competing efforts to influence Lelia’s next steps.

The proposed pilgrimage

The journey begins as an idea Lelia raises herself. When Don Tita explains that his sister-in-law hopes to make her devotions at Monte Berico, Lelia says she might like to go too, while making clear that she has not committed herself and would first need her father’s permission. Don Tita is pleased by the prospect of her approaching the sacraments. He then returns to speak with her privately, presenting her inclination as an inspiration from the Madonna and urging her, if she goes, to meet a Servite priest whose reputation Bettina has praised.

The proposal takes on a second purpose through Don Emanuele’s intervention. He tells Bettina to claim that Don Tita had described Lelia as willing to accompany her, although Bettina herself had not heard this from him. Don Emanuele calls on her to follow his direction, and she accepts the small deception as part of a providential route. He instructs her to obtain permission from Lelia’s father for the pilgrimage and for a further visit to Castelletto, then to fix the departure for the day after tomorrow. Monte Berico is thus placed at the start of an itinerary whose religious appearance conceals a more specific plan.

A devotional visit and a hidden purpose

Don Emanuele’s instructions give the pilgrimage a planned turn after the visit. He tells Bettina that the women should go directly from Monte Berico to the station; there, she is to say that she feels unwell and suggest abandoning Castelletto in favor of a Mass in Padua. Afterward, she should persuade Lelia to visit the Camin home, ostensibly as a courtesy to her father. Don Emanuele insists that Lelia must meet a woman who is staying there despite having been publicly said to be leaving. He does not explain more, but presents the encounter as necessary for the salvation of two souls.

Bettina is appalled by the prospect of deceiving Lelia and fears a scene if the hidden woman is Gorlago, whose connection with Lelia’s father she has tried not to contemplate. Yet Don Emanuele’s appeal to Providence, delivered as an authoritative instruction rather than an argument, persuades her to take part. The sanctuary visit is consequently embedded in a chain of concealment: a misleading account of who proposed the trip, a change of destination, and a planned meeting Bettina herself dreads. Monte Berico matters to this scheme precisely because the pilgrimage gives the later redirection a devotional pretext.

Confession and communion

At the sanctuary, the planned religious purpose becomes a visible but uncertain matter of conduct. The two women arrive by carriage before eight in the morning, having left their baggage in storage, with a plan to continue toward Verona and Desenzano around eleven. Bettina asks for the priest she knows and tells Lelia she will confess first. Lelia does not answer. While Bettina is inside the confessional, Lelia moves toward another, in a darker part of the church near the sacristy, where Bettina is unlikely to see her. That confessional is occupied; when it becomes free, Lelia still gives no sign that she wants to confess, and the priest returns to the sacristy.

Lelia then comes out of the shadows and tells Bettina that she has already confessed. The narrative does not disclose what she said or explain her motive for keeping the act private. At the Mass that follows, Bettina rises to receive communion at the altar rail, but Lelia stays where she is. Bettina wonders whether Lelia has broken her fast inadvertently before leaving home, or whether she is waiting for another Mass because she does not feel properly prepared. The scene leaves Lelia’s reason unresolved: her confession is confirmed, while her refusal to communicate remains open to Bettina’s interpretations.

Narrative significance

Monte Berico brings together devotion, obedience, and uncertainty without making them identical. Don Tita welcomes the possibility that Lelia will approach the sacraments, while Don Emanuele uses the prospect of pilgrimage to advance a sequence of actions whose full purpose Bettina does not initially know. Bettina’s willingness to repeat a story she knows to be false is framed as obedience to spiritual authority; her anxiety about the lie and the meeting it is meant to arrange shows the cost of that obedience in practice.

For Lelia, the sanctuary offers a moment that the others cannot fully manage or read. She takes the step of confession on her own terms and apart from Bettina, then declines to receive communion in a way that invites speculation but yields no explanation. The location is not merely a stop between towns: its rites make the difference between outward participation and private intention sharply legible. Yet the scene withholds a final judgment about Lelia’s spiritual state, leaving the sanctuary as a setting where plans converge but knowledge remains partial.