Posina Bridge, the crossing over the Posina, is a recurring landmark in Lelia’s story and the setting of a decisive inward reversal. She first approaches it after learning that she is Marcello’s universal heir and that Girolamo da Camin has declared himself her father; later, she fixes on the bridge as the place from which to end her life. When she returns after promising Donna Fedele not to die, the water instead makes her recognize that she no longer wants to. The bridge thus marks not merely a physical passage but the changing point at which her resolve gives way to an unbidden expectation of life.

Setting and Approach

The bridge lies on the route Lelia takes with Teresina to see the villa. Before they reach it, they encounter the archpriest walking toward them. He greets them with a courteous salutation and a sweeping removal of his hat; Lelia straightens stiffly, fixes him with a cold stare, and passes without returning the greeting. Teresina and Lelia then continue in silence. The encounter makes the approach to the bridge a scene of estrangement as well as travel: Lelia’s rigid response to the priest stands out against his ordinary social courtesy.

The Suicide Plan

From the open window of her upstairs room, Lelia can see the plain of Arsiero, Priaforà, and Montanina. The Posina itself runs out of sight between the plain and the mountain, but she imagines its bridge, the water rushing over pale gravel, and a millrace running beside it, higher than the river, before turning north beneath locust trees. At half past ten, she calculates that two hours remain until the time she has chosen to go out and throw herself from the bridge into the quiet, fast-flowing millrace. The landscape she can only partly see becomes the setting of a carefully fixed intention.

Return and Reversal

After giving Donna Fedele her promise, Lelia cannot pass the bridge without feeling both remorse and a shiver of desire mixed with revulsion. On one later passage, she stops almost against her will and looks down at the current. There she recognizes that the wish to die has gone; beneath her deliberate resolutions to renounce happiness, an instinctive expectation of love and joy has begun to open. The contrast is sharp: the water once formed part of a planned death, but at the bridge it becomes the occasion for recognizing a desire to live.

Narrative Significance

The change is not presented as a reasoned decision. The sound of the turbines at Perale seems to give voice to the mute things around her, while the air, scented by the woods, stirs a confident longing for love and happiness. Lelia briefly wants to leave the road and hide among the trees, but a barrier of logs and thorns blocks the path; passing carts and people also interrupt the impulse. She is frightened by the force of what has risen in her and resolves to write Donna Fedele a firm refusal of love and happiness. The bridge therefore holds the tension between a newly awakened desire and Lelia’s effort to suppress it: the revelation occurs there, even as she continues to resist its consequences.