Siora Bettina Fantuzzo

Siora Bettina Fantuzzo is Don Emanuele’s sister-in-law and a pious, gentle woman whose goodwill makes her especially susceptible to his direction. In the effort to guide Lelia Camin toward a religious visit, she agrees to repeat a falsehood, then struggles with the moral burden of having done so. Her part in the episode is modest but consequential: through her, the novel places sincere devotion beside the compromises and deception imposed by clerical authority.

Identity and Religious Disposition

Siora Bettina’s religious life is sincere, though not presented as serene or free of distraction. While seated facing the altar, she tries to maintain her devotion but finds her attention pulled toward the sound of a fountain in the vestibule. She wonders where its water comes from and where it goes, and whether it is clean and cool. Her gaze also returns to a mark on the green carpet at the altar step; she cannot stop wondering whether it is an old grease stain or a recent wet one. These small, physical curiosities puncture the ideal of absorbed prayer, but the narration treats them as ordinary temptations that she conscientiously tries to resist.

To recover her focus, Bettina turns her thoughts to Don Emanuele’s holiness and imagines that he is held in mystical rapture. The contrast is revealing: while she attributes spiritual absorption to him, her own prayer is interrupted by everyday details. Yet she does not treat her distraction as a reason to abandon devotion. Her effort to redirect herself, and her concern afterward about whether a lie must be confessed, show a conscience attentive to religious obligations even when she cannot confidently judge how to meet them.

Under Don Emanuele’s Direction

Don Emanuele makes Bettina an intermediary in his dealings with Lelia. After speaking with the girl, he tells Bettina to wait for her and to say that the archpriest had reported Lelia might be willing to accompany her on a visit to Monte Berico, perhaps continuing on to Castelletto del Garda. Bettina corrects his account: it was Don Emanuele, not the archpriest, who had told her this. He orders her to conceal his role and to attribute the information to the archpriest instead. When she hesitates because the attribution is untrue, Don Emanuele insists that she say what he has instructed. The narrator describes the lie as having, for Bettina, a higher truth accessible only through faith; she accepts it humbly because her spiritual guide has told her to.

The instructions also make the plan depend on Lelia’s father’s permission, both for the proposed visit and for travel to Castelletto. Bettina is pleased at the prospect of the journey, although she would have preferred Teresina’s company. She accepts traveling with Lelia out of affection for Don Emanuele and because she wants to help him gather information about the Sisters of the Holy Family, whom he is considering placing in an asylum in his future diocese. Her willingness is therefore not merely compliance: she sees the trip as a service to her brother-in-law and as an opportunity to assist his religious work.

The Journey and the False Excuse

At the church, Bettina realizes that she may not have made the purpose of the Monte Berico pilgrimage clear to Lelia. She had mentioned a skilled Servite confessor, but Lelia had given no indication that she intended to go to confession. Unsure how to raise the matter, Bettina turns to her spiritual adviser for guidance. The answer she receives is to go ahead and not worry. Her reliance on this counsel continues the pattern that governs her choices: she recognizes uncertainties, but yields the decision to someone she regards as an authority.

Later, as she and Lelia descend on foot, Bettina remains silent for a long while because the planned falsehood is difficult for her to speak. At the Campomarzo bridge, she finally says that she feels unwell and proposes changing their destination: instead of going to Castelletto, they could go to Padova to visit the saint, perhaps continuing to Castelletto that evening if she felt better. The excuse is presented as a small, tremulous deception, and its use places Bettina’s natural kindness in conflict with the instructions she has accepted.

Lelia studies the railway timetable at the station café. She finds that a train leaving Padova at 2:52 p.m. could reach Castelletto at 7:55 p.m.; it is then half past ten in the morning, and the train for Padova leaves at 11:08. Lelia offers to buy the tickets, saying she is going to post a letter and buy picture postcards, and Bettina accepts. The details make the proposed detour appear practical, while also giving Lelia an opportunity to leave Bettina behind. Bettina’s willingness to accommodate her is not accompanied by suspicion in the evidence presented here.

After Lelia’s Disappearance

The next morning, Teresina brings news of Lelia’s flight to Donna Fedele. She has heard the story indirectly, through the station keeper and a railway worker. Bettina believes that Lelia has gone to a convent. Teresina had initially entertained the same possibility, but has since become convinced that Lelia may have gone to throw herself into danger, as she had once been close to doing before. The difference between their interpretations marks Bettina’s limited knowledge of Lelia’s state: she understands the disappearance through a religious destination, while Teresina fears a self-destructive one.

The novel does not show Bettina discovering the full circumstances of Lelia’s departure in this scene. Instead, her belief is reported as part of the uncertainty surrounding the girl’s whereabouts. Her earlier participation in the journey has brought her close to the escape without making her its informed accomplice; she has followed Don Emanuele’s plan and accepted the detour, while Lelia’s actions remain hidden from her.

Narrative Role and Significance

Bettina’s scenes give the religious plot a domestic and bodily scale. Her wavering attention at prayer, her anxiety over the stain on the carpet, and her troubled hesitation before speaking the lie keep spiritual obedience from appearing abstract. She is neither a calculating schemer nor an independent opponent of Don Emanuele. Rather, her kindness and humility allow his authority to turn her into a messenger for a deception she herself recognizes as false.

That tension also shapes the episode’s irony. Bettina believes that the lie has a truth beyond her understanding because Don Emanuele says that God wills it; afterward, she must live with the ordinary moral question of what to do with a lie. Her innocence does not erase the consequences of her participation, but the text distinguishes her trusting obedience from the more deliberate direction of the plan. When Lelia disappears, Bettina’s convent explanation shows how readily religious hope supplies an answer where knowledge is absent. Her character thus embodies both the comfort of faith and the vulnerability of a conscience that has entrusted its judgment to another.