The Baron in the Trees: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

For his entire adolescence, Cosimo does little but hunt and fish. He seems to become a lot like an animal or a tree, but Biagio thinks that it’s still clear that he’s a human through and through. Despite this, Cosimo eventually stops attending Mass and it seems like he doesn’t attend Battista’s wedding. Later, Biagio learns that Cosimo was there, watching the festivities through a window. He wonders if Cosimo regretted his choice as he sat and watched.

Cosimo has the opportunity to get to know the cavalier avvocato, and he discovers that his uncle isn’t at all useless. In the summer, the cavalier avvocato goes out in the hottest part of the day. Though Cosimo usually loses track of him, he always sees bees near where his uncle disappeared. It becomes clear that the cavalier avvocato keeps beehives off the property, so that Baron Arminio can’t dip into the earnings or insert himself. Biagio notes that in any case, Baron Arminio is terrified of bees and would never allow hives near the house.

One day in spring, Cosimo notes that the air is roaring with the sound of bees. He shouts for the cavalier avvocato, who calmly says the bees are swarming and fetches a pot and a pan. He bangs them together and walks behind the cloud of bees until the bees all descend onto a pomegranate tree. Cosimo sits at the top until his uncle asks him to shake the branch to dislodge the bees, which fall into the pot. After this, Cosimo and the cavalier avvocato form a kind of friendship. They also work together on hydraulic systems. The cavalier avvocato notices Cosimo drawing water from his gutter system one day, sputters excitedly in Turkish, and eventually conveys his idea of constructing a hanging aqueduct to irrigate an uncultivated part of the valley.

The cavalier avvocato often joins Cosimo in the trees to discuss the plans. They never move on to actually building anything, and Cosimo seems relieved about this. In the present, Biagio notes that the cavalier avvocato could’ve done much more with hydraulics: he was passionate and smart, but unable to accomplish anything. Biagio suspects that his uncle could apply himself to something like beekeeping, which he did in secret, but couldn’t handle working with and being accountable to others. He often began work and directed others, but seldom showed up on the second day of work. He seemed to remember the water systems in Turkey and wanted to recreate them, but he found it impossible to do so in Ombrosa. Biagio suspects that Cosimo found their uncle instructive: he was an example of what could happen when a person separated too much from society.