Il Conde by Joseph Conrad
"Il Conde" by Joseph Conrad is a short story set in early 1900s Naples, Italy, narrated by an anonymous individual who recounts his encounters with a northern European aristocrat known only as the Count. The story unfolds as the two men bond over art at the National Museum and share three evenings in a refined hotel, where they engage in meaningful conversations. The Count, a middle-aged widower suffering from a debilitating rheumatic disease, has sought solace in the warm climate of Naples, spending only summers with his married daughter in a Bohemian castle.
The narrative takes a darker turn when the Count experiences a traumatic mugging, which leaves him shaken and fearful for his safety. Despite his composed demeanor, this incident catalyzes a deep sense of vulnerability, and he grapples with the consequences of living in a society marked by social tension and criminality. Ultimately, the Count's decision to leave Naples is portrayed as a retreat into the coldness of the north, symbolizing a loss of vitality and hope. Through this encounter, Conrad explores themes of aristocracy, vulnerability, and the psychological impacts of fear in a changing world.
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Il Conde by Joseph Conrad
First published: 1908
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The early 1900's
Locale: Naples, Italy
Principal Characters:
Il Conde (the Count) , the protagonist, an urbane European aristocratThe narrator , his cultured acquaintance
The Story
Set in Naples, Italy, early in the 1900's, "Il Conde" is a tale told by an anonymous narrator about his brief companionship with a northern European aristocrat whom he knows only as the Count. Like the narrator himself, the Count emerges as a man of the world and a person distinguished by cultivated tastes, impeccable manners, and fastidious sensibilities.
The narrator meets the Count while both are viewing art works in Naples's National Museum. After discovering that they both are guests in the same quietly refined Neapolitan hotel, they spend three evenings enjoying pleasant meals together. During their conversations, the narrator learns that three years earlier the Count left northern Europe in order to seek relief from a dangerous rheumatic disease by living in small hotels and villas on the warm Gulf of Naples. A middle-aged widower who is virtually exiled by his affliction, the Count returns home during the summers to visit a married daughter in her Bohemian castle; it is the only hiatus in his pleasant, tastefully subdued, and orderly life. To leave the south for longer periods, he believes, would mean forfeiting his life to his disease.
Called away from Naples to attend a sick friend, the narrator returns ten days later to find the Count shaken and dispirited, although he is not prone to unbalanced emotions. The Count reveals the cause of his distress. After seeing the narrator to his train, the Count walked through a park toward a villa where a public concert was in progress. On reaching a secluded spot, however, he was accosted by a young knife-wielding Neapolitan who demanded his wallet, watch, and rings. The Count had prudently left most of his money safely locked in the hotel, and the watch he wore chanced to be a cheap substitute for a valuable one that was being cleaned. He bravely refused to part with his rings, however, which were gifts from his father and his wife. After closing his eyes, expecting to be stabbed by his outraged assailant, the Count opened them to find that the thief had departed.
Upset and hungry, the Count immediately sought out a café in which to regain his equanimity, only to recognize the mugger among the crowd. When the Count asked a café peddler if he knew the mugger, the peddler identified him as a respectable university student, adding that he was also a leader in the Camorra—a secret criminal organization dedicated to ridding Naples of the taint of aristocracy. As the Count paid the peddler with a forgotten gold piece undiscovered by the mugger, the mugger saw the transaction, cursed the Count for holding out on him, and snarled that he was not through with him yet.
Thoroughly cowed and convinced that he is a marked man, the Count bids farewell to Naples and to the narrator. As the Count's deluxe train pulls away from the station, the narrator recognizes that the aristocrat's return to the cold north is a form of suicide.