Ants

Ants become the focus of a small but consequential episode on Mount Morco: drawn to grape skins, they advance in a procession that the narration casts as an imperial campaign. Their activity keeps Don Fabrizio awake, recalls the Donnafugata plebiscite, and leads him to question Don Ciccio Tumeo about his vote. The insects’ miniature political world gives the scene an ironic counterpoint to the human struggle over annexation and civic choice.

The March on Mount Morco

The ants are attracted to grape skins that Don Ciccio has chewed and spat out. They hurry toward this scrap of food in close order, arriving in groups that are at once disordered and resolute. Their destination is described as a prize to be annexed, while the ants’ shining backs seem to quiver with enthusiasm. The narration imagines an anthem rising from their ranks, making a mundane search for food resemble a public, military procession.

The scene places their advance amid larger signs of conflict and exhaustion: a rabbit has been shot, troops at Gaeta are under fire, and the midday heat is making men doze. Yet the ants continue. Their persistence contrasts with the sleepers around them and makes their tiny expedition appear, for a moment, to be the most energetic campaign in view.

An Insect Republic in Miniature

As the ants proceed, groups of three or four stop to confer. The narrator playfully imagines them praising the past glories and future prosperity of ant hill Number Two under cork-tree Number Four, on the summit of Mount Morco. This invented civic geography and rhetoric of collective destiny transform the ants’ movement into a comic miniature of human political ambition. Their march is not simply compared to an annexation: its confident language makes the insects seem to inhabit a complete imperial project of their own.

The political imagery remains ironic rather than literal. The ants are following food, but their apparent order, consultation, and shared forward movement evoke the grand promises attached to human campaigns. Against a landscape where people and animals lie still, their purposeful activity gives the scene a sharply scaled contrast between the immense ambitions of politics and the small material object that draws a crowd together.

From Ant Activity to the Plebiscite

The ants’ movement prevents Don Fabrizio from sleeping. By association, it brings back the days of the Donnafugata plebiscite, which had left him both astonished and troubled by unanswered questions. The contrast is pointed: the insects seem to pursue their simple business without political uncertainty, while the Prince sees in their activity an opening to reconsider what happened among the townspeople.

Don Fabrizio turns to Don Ciccio Tumeo and asks how he voted on the twenty-first. Tumeo starts and hesitates, caught outside the precautions he normally shares with his fellow townsmen. The ants therefore serve as more than a comic image of empire: their uninterrupted march sets in motion a question about a human vote and the guarded behavior surrounding it. At the close of this episode, the question has been asked, but Tumeo has not yet answered.