Character guide

Cosmo Latham

major

Also known as Cosmo, Mr. Cosmo, Mr. Latham, Latham, Mr. Cosmo Latham, young Latham

Cosmo arrives in Genoa well-connected, well-looked-after, and quietly at loose ends, attended by his father's trusted servant Spire and armed with pistols he has no intention of needing. He seeks men's company and solitude, yet the memory of a fair-haired girl from his Yorkshire childhood pulls him toward the Countess de Montevesso before he has even met her as a woman. His hesitation between curiosity and retreat makes him the perfect hinge for a story about how the past reaches across borders to claim the present.

Madame de Montevesso

major

Also known as Montevesso, Madame

Once a shy refugee girl sheltered in the Latham household, Adèle d'Armand has become a woman whose glow Cosmo finds almost unbearable to look at. She speaks of her girlhood blushes with mockery and bitterness, and of her husband with a resignation that sounds like fate. Her candor about her past and her strange claim on Cosmo's memory make her the emotional center of his stay in Genoa—and the reason he cannot simply leave.

Count de Montevesso

major

Also known as Count Helion, Helion, the Count, M. de Montevesso, Monsieur de Montevesso, Helion de Montevesso

Cosmo first encounters him as a name attached to a woman he is already half in love with, a husband whose arrival is always imminent and never quite welcome. The Count's presence structures the social world of the novel: he is the reason Adèle cannot simply be a remembered girl from Yorkshire, and the reason Cosmo's idleness in Genoa acquires stakes. His authority and his absence alike press on the early chapters, making him the shadow the other characters move within.

Sir Charles Latham

supporting

Also known as Sir Charles Latham of Latham Hall, le chevalier Latham, Charles Latham, the Sir Charles

Sir Charles runs Latham Hall with the same firm hand he once used on Tuscan roads, lending his servant Spire to Cosmo with instructions to keep the pistols loaded and to stay out of the way. His own youthful journey to Italy—and whatever sent him hurrying back—remains a family secret that Spire only half-guesses. He matters because Cosmo is unmistakably his father's son, and because the older man's buried Italian history quietly rhymes with the one his son is about to make.

Attilio

supporting

Also known as the astute Attilio

Attilio belongs to the underground world of Italian conspirators, bound by oath and answerable to men like Cantelucci for the conduct of those he has initiated. His disappearance—perhaps by assassination, perhaps by his own misstep—sets Checca frantic and forces Cantelucci to seek out his old benefactor. He matters because his fate turns private passion into political danger, pulling the English visitors into currents they do not yet understand.

Signor Cantelucci

supporting

Also known as Cantelucci, the motionless Cantelucci, the infuriated Cantelucci

Cantelucci runs his wine-shop as a cover for conspiracy, initiating his own niece into the women's branch of the Carbonari and holding her responsible for conduct that might compromise them all. When she comes to him in tears over Attilio, his rage is political as much as personal—he sees frivolity where the cause demands discipline. His decision to approach his old benefactor with a harassed face and a careful half-truth shows how the novel's private and political plots braid together.

Bernard

supporting

Also known as Mr. Bernard, the faithful Bernard, the sleek Bernard

Bernard belongs to the household world of Sir Charles Latham, one of those unobtrusive presences whose affection is only fully discovered at the moment it feels lost forever. His master's grief over Adèle d'Armand — the French girl he loved as a second daughter and who has married a mysterious upstart — runs through the house like weather, and Bernard is part of the atmosphere that registers it. He matters as the human gauge of Sir Charles's private sorrow, the servant who knows the family's history well enough to feel its losses as his own.

Spire

supporting

Also known as the imperturbable Spire

Spire serves Cosmo Latham in a Genoa inn he plainly distrusts, sleeping on a pallet in the corridor with the carriage fur rug and keeping the primed pistols within reach. His loyalty is practical rather than sentimental: he lies stolidly about a suspicious man's whereabouts to keep ragamuffins away from his master's room, then coolly suggests that the way to arrange a private talk is to make friends with the young woman the fellow was courting. He matters because his wary competence turns Cosmo's vague unease into concrete precautions, and because his suggestion opens the door to the intrigue Cosmo is about to walk into.

The Doctor

supporting

Also known as Doctor Martel, Martel

The doctor moves easily between the innkeeper Cantelucci's anxious confidences and the naval officers at his dining table, taking snuff and turning over the puzzle of a guest who went out for air and never came back. He suspects his own courier of drinking with the missing man's servant, and he dispatches the fellow to the police with instructions to be discreet. He matters because his speculative, unflappable intelligence gives the early mystery a rational counterweight, and because his willingness to probe quietly makes him a natural conduit for information others would rather suppress.

Aglae

supporting

Also known as Miss Aglae

Aglae attends the young woman who will become Madame de Montevesso, the one sent with a message when her mistress locks herself away, and the one who follows when she escapes the house to summon a wealthy general and offer him a marriage of pure gratitude. Her terror during that escapade is the ordinary human reaction against which her mistress's exalted self-sacrifice stands out in stark relief. She matters as the witness who makes the courtship's strangeness visible, a small figure whose fright measures how far her mistress has stepped outside the conventions of her world.

Father Paul

supporting

Also known as Father, Father Paul Carpi, Father Carpi, the priest

Father Carpi has been content merely to exist through hard times for the clergy, but the fall of the Empire has stirred his first ambitions, fixed on the chaplaincy to Count of Montevesso's charitable foundations. He sees plainly that the Count is unhappy, and he knows the unhappy are amenable to obscure influences, yet he is too intelligent to intrude religious consolation or secular advice on a man with a mysterious past. He matters because his patient, watchful discretion makes him a still point in the Count's turbulent household, and because his private calculations give the novel's moral atmosphere a clerical shadow.

Countess de Montevesso

supporting

Also known as the Countess Montevesso, Countess of Montevesso, Madame la Comtesse

Cosmo knew her only as a fair head hovering near his father's armchair, one of the two girls glimpsed in the Park during school holidays, and he cannot picture her grown, married for years, the daughter of an ambassador. She remembers his home and his parents far better than he does, having lived at Latham Hall for three years while he was away at intervals. She matters because her return into Cosmo's life is the hinge on which the novel's Genoese present opens onto its buried past, and because the gap between the child he recalls and the woman he is about to meet is itself the story's central question.

Clelia

supporting

Also known as Signorina Clelia

Clelia lies in a grand, half-furnished room where a priest, a gaunt woman, and Count Helion circle her bed, her flushed cheek and tangled black hair the only signs of life beneath the pulled-up blanket. She answers the Count's questions, orders, coaxings, and even his barbed 'I thought you loved me' with a silence so complete that one eye glittering with tears becomes her sole reply. Her refusal to speak makes her the still center of a household already whispering about possession and old devils.

Adèle

supporting

Also known as Adèle d’Armand, Miss Adèle, Mlle . Adèle, little Adèle, Adèle de Montevesso

Adèle d'Armand spent years in Cosmo's Yorkshire home as a quiet presence near his father's armchair, so woven into the family picture that he took her almost for granted. Now, married into the Montevesso name and seasoned by tragic times abroad, she is a woman of position whose face he cannot quite imagine grown up. His note to her hotel becomes the hinge on which the novel's reunion turns, and his uncertainty about whether she remembers him personally hints at how much of the past she has carried away.

Checca

minor

Also known as This Checca

A local woman, possibly a servant or villager, who interacts with the main cast.

Henrietta Latham

minor

Also known as Henrietta

A member of the Latham family, possibly Cosmo's sister or relative.

Lady Latham

minor

Also known as a rubicund Latham

Cosmo's mother or a senior female Latham, concerned with family matters.

Barbone

minor

Also known as That scoundrel Barbone, That wretch Barbone

A villainous or disreputable character who causes trouble.

Napoleon

minor

Also known as Bonaparte, Napoleon Emperor

The Emperor of the French, referenced as a historical figure influencing events.

Signore

minor

A generic Italian gentleman, possibly a local authority or host.

Monsieur le Marquis

minor

Also known as the Marquis, M. le Marquis

A French nobleman who appears in the social milieu.

Lady William Bentick

minor

Also known as Lady William

A titled lady who appears in social scenes, possibly connected to the English community.

Miss Latham

minor

An unmarried Latham woman, possibly a sister or cousin of Cosmo.

Monsieur Montrond

minor

Also known as Montrond

A Frenchman, possibly a diplomat or acquaintance of the Montevessos.

Old Bubna

minor

Also known as Bubna, Count Bubna, General Count Bubna

An older military or noble figure, possibly Austrian or Russian.

Mr. Wycherley

minor

An English gentleman, possibly a friend or acquaintance of the Lathams.

Lady Jane

minor

A titled woman in the social circle, possibly English.

Prince Talleyrand

minor

Also known as Prince, Talleyrand, The Prince

The French diplomat, referenced as a historical figure in the political background.

Molly Aston

minor

Also known as Miss Aston, Miss Molly Aston, Maria

A young woman, possibly a friend or acquaintance of the Latham family.

Lord Nelson

minor

The British admiral, referenced as a historical figure.

Pozzo di Borgo

minor

Also known as Pozzo

A Corsican diplomat, referenced in the political context.

Cecchina

minor

A local Italian woman, possibly a servant or villager.

Pietro

minor

An Italian man, possibly a servant or local contact.

Abbé

minor

A French cleric, possibly a tutor or chaplain.

Monseigneur

minor

A high-ranking church or noble title, referenced in passing.