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Title: The Charterhouse of Parma Volume 1 (of 2)
Author: Stendhal
Translator: Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff
Contributor: Honoré de Balzac
Release Date: September 25, 2021 [eBook #66374]
Language: English
Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA VOLUME 1
(OF 2) ***
MARIE-HENRI BEYLE
[DE STENDHAL]
THE CHARTERHOUSE
OF PARMA
_Translated from the French by_
C. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF
VOLUME ONE
BONI & LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK MCMXXV
CONTENTS
A STUDY OF M. BEYLE by Honoré De Balzac
BEYLE'S REPLY TO BALZAC
_TO THE READER_
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TRANSLATOR'S DEDICATION
TO MADAME C---- R----
In whom alone survives the spirit of the Sanseverina, to resist tyranny,
to unmask intrigue, to encourage ambition, this story of her
countrywoman is, in the language of her adopted country, dedicated by
C. K. S. M.
Pisa, December, 1924.
A STUDY OF M. BEYLE
By Honoré De Balzac
In our day, literature quite evidently presents three aspects; and, so
far from being a symptom of decadence, this triplicity, to use an
expression coined by M. Cousin in his dislike of the word trinity, seems
to me a natural enough effect of the abundance of literary talent: it is
a tribute to the nineteenth century, which does not offer one sole and
invariable form, like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which
were more or less obedient to the tyranny of a man or of a system.
These three forms, aspects or systems, by whichever name you choose to
call them, exist in nature and correspond to general sympathies which
were bound to declare themselves at a time when literature has seen,
through the spread of knowledge, the number of its appreciators increase
and the practice of reading advance with unparalleled progress.
In all generations and among all peoples there are minds that are
elegiac, meditative, contemplative, minds that attach themselves more
especially to the great imagery, the vast spectacles of nature, and
transpose these into themselves. Hence a whole school to which I should
give the name: the _Literature of Imagery_, to which belong lyrical
writing, the epic and everything that springs from that way of looking
at things.
There are, on the other hand, other active souls who like rapidity,
movement, conciseness, sudden shocks, action, drama, who avoid
discussion, who have little fondness for meditation, and take pleasure
in results. From these, another whole system from which springs what I
should call, in contrast to the former system, the _Literature of
Ideas_.
Finally, certain complete beings, certain _bifrontal_ intelligences
embrace everything, choose both lyricism and action, drama and ode, in
the belief that perfection requires a view of things as a whole. This
school, which may be called _Literary Eclecticism_, demands a
representation of the world as it is: imagery and ideas, the idea in the
image or the image in the idea, movement and meditation. Walter Scott
has entirely satisfied these eclectic natures.
Which party predominates, I do not know. I should not like anyone to
infer from this natural distinction forced consequences. Thus, I do not
mean to say that such and such a poet of the school of imagery is devoid
of ideas, or that some other poet of the school of ideas cannot invent
fine images. These three formulas apply only to the general impression
left by the poets' work, to the mould into which the writer casts his
thought, to the natural tendency of his mind. Every image corresponds to
an idea, or, more precisely, to a _sentiment_ which is a collection of
ideas, and the idea does not always end in an image. The idea demands an
effort in its development which does not come readily to every mind.
Also the image is essentially popular, it is readily understood. Suppose
that M. Hugo's _Notre-Dame de Paris_ were to appear simultaneously with
_Manon Lescaut_, _Notre-Dame_ would seize hold of the masses far more
promptly than Manon, and would seem to have outrivalled it in the eyes
of those who kneel before the _Vox populi_.
And yet, whatever be the kind from which a work proceeds, it will dwell
in the human memory only by obeying the laws of the ideal and those of
form. In literature, imagery and idea correspond nearly enough to what
in painting we call design and colour. Rubens and Raphael are two great
painters; but he would be strangely mistaken who thought that Raphael
was not a colourist; and those who would refuse to Rubens the title of
draughtsman may go and kneel before the painting with which the
illustrious Fleming has adorned the Church of the Jesuits at Genoa, as
an act of homage to design.
M. Beyle, better known by the pseudonym Stendhal, is, in my opinion, one
of the most eminent masters of the _Literature of Ideas_, a school to
which belong MM. Alfred de Musset, Mérimée, Léon Gozlan, Béranger,
Delavigne, Gustave Planche, Madame de Girardin, Alphonse Karr and
Charles Nodier. Henry Monnier belongs to it by the truth of his
proverbs, which are often lacking in a root-idea, but which are
nevertheless full of that naturalness and that accurate observation
which are characteristic of the school.
This school, to which we already owe much fine work, recommends itself
by its abundance of facts, by the sobriety of its imagery, by
conciseness, by clarity, by the _petite phrase_ of Voltaire, by a way of
relating a story which the eighteenth century possessed, and, above all,
by a sense of comedy. M. Beyle and M. Mérimée, despite their profound
seriousness, have something ironical and sly in the manner in which they
state their facts. With them the comedy is kept in reserve. It is the
spark in the flint.
M. Victor Hugo's is undoubtedly the most eminent talent in the
_Literature of Imagery_. M. Lamartine belongs to this school, which M.
de Chateaubriand held over the baptismal font, and the philosophy of
which was created by M. Ballanche. _Obermann_ is another. MM. Auguste
Barbier, Théophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve are others, as are a number of
feeble imitators. In some of the authors whom I have just named, the
sentiment prevails sometimes over the image, as in M. de Sénancour and
M. Sainte-Beuve. By his poetry rather than by his prose, M. de Vigny is
seen to belong to this great school. All these poets have little sense
of comedy, they know nothing of dialogue, with the exception of M.
Gautier, who has a keen sense of it. M. Hugo's dialogue is too much his
own speech, he does not transform himself sufficiently, he puts himself
into his character, instead of becoming that character. But this school
has, like the other, produced some fine work. It is remarkable for the
poetic fulness of its language, for the wealth of its imagery, for the
closeness of its union with nature; the other school is human, and this
one divine in the sense that it tends to raise itself by feeling towards
the very heart of creation. It prefers nature to man. The French
language is indebted to it for a strong dose of poetry which was
necessary, for it has developed the poetic feeling long resisted by the
_positivism_--pardon the word--of our language, and the dryness stamped
on it by the writers of the eighteenth century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre were the instigators of this revolution, which
I regard as fortunate.
The secret of the struggle between the Classics and the Romantics lies
entirely in this quite natural disparity of minds. For two centuries
past, the _Literature of Ideas_ has held exclusive sway, and so the
heirs of the eighteenth century naturally mistook the only system of
literature that they knew for the whole of literature. Let us not blame
them, these defenders of the classic! The Literature of Ideas, full of
facts, closely knit, is part of the genius of France. The _Profession de
foi du vicaire savoyard_, _Candide_, the _Dialogue de Sylla et
d'Eucrate_, the _Considérations sur les causes de la Grandeur et de la
Décadence des Romains_, the _Provinciales_, _Manon Lescaut_, _Gil
Blas_, are more in the French spirit than the works of the Literature of
Imagery. But we owe to this latter the poetry of which the two previous
centuries had not even a suspicion, if we set aside La Fontaine, André
Chénier and Racine. The Literature of Imagery is in its cradle, and
already includes a number of men whose genius is incontestable; but,
when I see how many the other school includes, I believe it to be at the
height rather than in the decline of its dominance over our beautiful
tongue. The struggle ended, one may say that the Romantics have not
invented new methods, that in the theatre, for instance, those who
complain of want of action have made ample use of the _tirade_ and the
soliloquy, and that we have not, so far, either heard the keen and
compact dialogue of Beaumarchais, nor seen again the comedy of Molière,
which will always be based upon reason and ideas. Comedy is the enemy of
meditation and imagery. M. Hugo has gained enormously in this contest.
But men of wide reading remember the war waged on M. de Chateaubriand,
during the Empire; it was fully as savage, and ended sooner because M.
de Chateaubriand stood alone, without the _stipante caterva_ of M. Hugo,
without the antagonism of the press, without the support furnished to
the Romantics by the men of genius of England and Germany, better known
and better appreciated.
As for the third school, which partakes of each of the other two, it has
less chance than they of exciting the masses, who have little taste for
the _mezzo termine_, for composite things, and see in eclecticism an
arrangement that runs counter to their passions in so far as it calms
them. France likes to find war in everything. In time of peace, she is
still fighting. Nevertheless, Walter Scott, Madame de Staël, Cooper,
George Sand seem to me to have distinct genius. As for myself, I take my
stand under the banner of literary eclecticism for the following reason:
I do not believe the portrayal of modern society to be possible by the
severe method of the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The introduction of the dramatic element, of the image, the
picture, of description, of dialogue, seems to me indispensable in
modern literature. Let us confess frankly that _Gil Blas_ is wearisome
as form: in the piling up of events and ideas there is something
sterile. The idea, personified in a character, shews a finer
intelligence. Plato cast his psychological ethics in the form of
dialogue.
_La Chartreuse de Parme_ is of our period and, up to the present, to my
mind, is the masterpiece of the Literature of Ideas, while M. Beyle has
made concessions in it to the two other schools, which are admissible by
fair minds and satisfactory to both camps.
If I have so long delayed, in spite of its importance, in speaking of
this book, you must understand that it was difficult for me to acquire a
sort of impartiality. Even now I am not certain that I can retain it, so
extraordinary, after a third, leisurely and thoughtful reading, do I
find this work.
I can imagine all the mockery which my admiration for it will provoke.
There will be an outcry, of course, at my infatuation, when I am simply
still filled with enthusiasm after the point at which enthusiasm should
have died. Men of imagination, it will be said, conceive as promptly as
they forget their affection for certain works of which the common herd
arrogantly and ironically protest that they can understand nothing.
Simple-minded, or even intelligent persons who with their proud gaze
sweep the surface of things, will say that I amuse myself with paradox,
that I have, like M. Sainte-Beuve, my _chers inconnus_. I am incapable
of compromise with the truth, that is all.
M. Beyle has written a book in which sublimity glows from chapter after
chapter. He has produced, at an age when men rarely find monumental
subjects and after having written a score of extremely intelligent
volumes, a work which can be appreciated only by minds and men that are
truly superior. In short, he has written _The Prince up to date_, the
novel that Machiavelli would write if he were living banished from Italy
in the nineteenth century.
And so the chief obstacle to the renown which M. Beyle deserves lies in
the fact that _La Chartreuse de Parme_ can find readers fitted to enjoy
it only among diplomats, ministers, observers, the leaders of society,
the most distinguished artists; in a word, among the twelve or fifteen
hundred persons who are at the head of things in Europe. Do not be
surprised, therefore, if, in the ten months since this surprising work
was published, there has not been a single journalist who has either
read, or understood, or studied it, who has announced, analysed and
praised it, who has even alluded to it. I, who, I think, have some
understanding of the matter, I have read it for the third time in the
last few days: I have found the book finer even than before, and have
felt in my heart the kind of happiness that comes from the opportunity
of doing a good action.
Is it not doing a good action to try to do justice to a man of immense
talent, who will appear to have genius only in the eyes of a few
privileged beings and whom the transcendency of his ideas deprives of
that immediate but fleeting popularity which the courtiers of the public
seek and which great souls despise? If the mediocre knew that they had a
chance of raising themselves to the level of the sublime by
understanding them, _La Chartreuse de Parme_ would have as many readers
as _Clarissa Harlowe_ had on its first appearance.
There are in admiration that is made legitimate by conscience ineffable
delights. Therefore all that I am going to say here I address to the
pure and noble hearts which, in spite of certain pessimistic
declamations, exist in every country, like undiscovered pleiads, among
the families of minds devoted to the worship of art. Has not humanity,
from generation to generation, has it not here below its constellations
of souls, its heaven, its angels, to use the favourite expression of the
great Swedish prophet, Swedenborg, a chosen people for whom true artists
work and whose judgments make them ready to accept privation, the
insolence of upstarts and the indifference of governments?
You will pardon me, I hope, what malevolent persons will call
_longueurs_. In the first place, I am firmly convinced, the analysis of
so curious and so interesting a work as this will give more pleasure to
the most fastidious reader than he would derive from the unpublished
novel whose place it fills. Besides, any other critic would require at
least three articles of the length of this, if he sought to give an
adequate explanation of this novel, which often contains a whole book in
a single page, and which cannot be explained save by a man to whom the
North of Italy is fairly familiar. Finally, let me assure you that, with
the help of M. Beyle, I am going to try to make myself instructive
enough to be read with pleasure to the end.
A sister of the Marchese del Dongo, named Gina, the abbreviation of
Angelina, whose early character, as a young girl, would have a certain
similarity, could an Italian woman ever resemble a Frenchwoman, to the
character of Madame de Lignolle in _Faublas_, marries at Milan, against
the will of her brother, who wishes to marry her to an old man, noble,
rich and Milanese, a certain Conte Pietranera, poor and without a penny.
The Conte and Contessa support the French party, and are the ornament of
the Court of Prince Eugène. We are in the days of the Kingdom of Italy,
when the story begins.
The Marchese del Dongo, a Milanese attached to Austria and her spy,
spends fourteen years waiting for the fall of the Emperor Napoleon.
Moreover, this Marchese, the brother of Gina Pietranera, does not live
at Milan: he occupies his castle of Grianta, on the Lake of Como: he
there brings up his elder son in the love of Austria and on sound
principles; but he has a younger son, named Fabrizio, to whom Signora
Pietranera is passionately devoted: Fabrizio is a cadet of the family;
like her, he will be left without a penny in the world. Who is not
familiar with the fondness of noble hearts for the disinherited? Also,
she wishes to make something of him. Then, fortunately, Fabrizio is a
charming boy; she obtains leave to put him to school at Milan, where,
playing truant, she makes him see something of the viceregal court.
Napoleon falls for the first time. While he is on the Island of Elba, in
the course of the reaction at Milan, which the Austrians have
reoccupied, an insult offered to the Armies of Italy in the presence of
Pietranera, who takes it up, is the cause of his death: he is killed in
a duel.
A lover of the Contessa refuses to avenge her husband, Gina humiliates
him by one of those acts of vengeance, magnificent south of the Alps,
which would be thought stupid in Paris. This is her revenge:
Although she despises, in _petto_, this lover who has been adoring her
at a distance and without reward for the last six years, she pays
certain attentions to the wretch, and, when he is in a paroxysm of
suspense, writes to him:
"Will you act for once like a man of spirit? Please to imagine that you
have never known me. I am, with a touch of contempt, your servant,
GINA PIETRANERA."
Then, to increase still further the desperation of this rich man, with
his income of two hundred thousand lire, she _ginginates_ (_ginginare_
is a Milanese verb meaning everything that passes at a distance between
a pair of lovers before they have spoken; the verb has its noun: one is
a _gingino_. It is the first stage in love). Well, she ginginates for a
moment with a fool whom she soon abandons; then she retires, with a
pension of fifteen hundred francs, to a third floor apartment where all
Milan of the day comes to see her and admires her.
Her brother, the Marchese, invites her to return to the ancestral castle
on the Lake of Como. She goes there, to see once more and to protect her
charming nephew, Fabrizio, to comfort her sister-in-law and to plan her
own future amid the sublime scenery of the Lake of Como, her native soil
and the native soil of this nephew whom she has made her son: she has no
children. Fabrizio, who loves Napoleon, learns of his landing from the
Gulf of Juan and wishes to go to serve the sovereign of his uncle
Pietranera. His mother, who, the wife of a rich Marchese with an income
of five hundred thousand lire, has not a penny to call her own, his aunt
Gina, who has nothing, give him their diamonds: Fabrizio is in their
eyes a hero.
The inspired volunteer crosses Switzerland, arrives in Paris, takes part
in the battle of Waterloo, then returns to Italy, where, for having
dabbled in the conspiracy of 1815 against the peace of Europe, he is
disowned by his father and the Austrian government place him on their
index. For him, to return to Milan would be to enter the Spielberg. From
this point Fabrizio, in trouble, persecuted for his heroism, this
sublime boy becomes everything in the world to Gina.
The Contessa returns to Milan, she obtains a promise from Bubna and from
the men of character whom Austria at this period has put in authority
there, not to persecute Fabrizio, whom, following the advice of an
extremely shrewd Canon, she keeps in concealment at Novara. Meanwhile,
with all these things happening, no money. But Gina is of a sublime
beauty, she is the type of that Lombard beauty (_bellezza folgorante_)
which can be realised only at Milan and in the Scala when you see
assembled there the thousand beautiful women of Lombardy. The events of
this troubled life have developed in her the most magnificent Italian
character: she has intellect, shrewdness, the Italian grace, the most
charming conversation, an astonishing command of herself; in short, the
Contessa is at one and the same time Madame de Montespan, Catherine de'
Medici, Catherine II, too, if you like: the most audacious political
genius and the most consummate feminine genius, hidden beneath a
marvellous beauty. Having watched over her nephew, despite the hatred of
the elder brother who is jealous of him, despite the hatred and
indifference of the father, having snatched him from these perils,
having been one of the queens of the court of the Viceroy Eugène, and
then nothing; all these crises have enriched her natural forces,
exercised her faculties and awakened the instincts numbed in the depths
of her being by her early prosperity, by a marriage the joys of which
have been rare, owing to the continual absence of Napoleon's devoted
servant. Everyone sees or can divine in her the thousand treasures of
passion, the resources and the refulgence of the most perfect feminine
heart.
The old Canon, whom she has seduced, sends Fabrizio to Novara, a small
town in Piedmont, under the tutelage of a parish priest. This priest
puts a step to the inquiries of the police by his description of
Fabrizio: "a younger son who feels wronged because he is not the
eldest." When Gina, who had dreamed of Fabrizio's becoming aide-de-camp
to Napoleon, sees Napoleon banished to St. Helena, she realises that
Fabrizio, his name inscribed in the black book of the Milanese police,
is lost to her for ever.
During the uncertainties which prevailed throughout Europe at the time
of the battle of Waterloo, Gina has made the acquaintance of Conte Mosca
della Rovere, the Minister of the famous Prince of Parma,
Ranuccio-Ernesto IV.
Let us pause at this point.
Certainly, after having read the book, it is impossible not to
recognise, in Conte Mosca, the most remarkable portrait that anyone
could ever make of Prince Metternich, but of a Metternich transported
from the great Chancellory of the Austrian Empire to the modest State of
Parma. The State of Parma and Ernesto IV seem to me similarly to be the
Duke of Modena and his Duchy. M. Beyle says of Ernesto IV that he is one
of the richest Princes in Europe: the wealth of the Duke of Modena is
famous. In seeking to avoid personalities the author has expended more
ingenuity than Walter Scott required to construct the plot of
Kenilworth. Indeed, these two similarities are vague enough, outwardly,
to be denied, and so real inwardly that the well-informed reader cannot
be mistaken. M. Beyle has so exalted the sublime character of the Prime
Minister of the State of Parma that it is doubtful whether Prince
Metternich be so great a man as Mosca, although the heart of that
celebrated statesman does offer, to those who know his life well, one or
two examples of passions of a compass at least equal to that of Mosca's.
It is not slandering the Austrian Minister to believe him capable of all
the secret greatnesses of Mosca. As for what Mosca is throughout the
book, as for the conduct of the man whom Gina regards as the greatest
diplomat in Italy, it took genius to create the incidents, the events
and the innumerable and recurring plots in the midst of which this
immense character unfolds. All that M. de Metternich has done during his
long career is not more extraordinary than what you see done by Mosca.
When one comes to think that the author has invented it all, ravelled
all the plot and then unravelled it, as things do ravel and unravel
themselves at a court, the most daring mind, a mind to which the
conception of ideas is a familiar process, is left dazed, stupefied
before so huge a task. As for myself, I suspect some literary
Aladdin's-lamp. To have dared to put on the stage a man of the genius
and force of M. de Choiseul, Potemkin, M. de Metternich, to create him,
to justify the creation by the actions of the creature himself, to make
him move in an environment which is appropriate to him and in which his
faculties have full play, is the work not of a man but of a fairy, a
wizard. Bear in mind that the most skilfully complicated plots of Walter
Scott do not arrive at the admirable simplicity which prevails in the
recital of these events, so numerous, so _thickly foliaged_, to borrow
the famous expression of Diderot.
Here is the portrait of Mosca. We are in 1816, remember.
"He might have been forty or forty-five: he had strongly marked
features, with no trace of self-importance, and a simple and
light-hearted manner which told in his favour; he would have looked very
well indeed, if a whim on the part of his Prince had not obliged him to
wear powder on his hair as a proof of his soundness in politics."
And so the powder which M. de Metternich wears, and which softens a face
already so gentle, is justified in Mosca by the will of his master. In
spite of the prodigious efforts of M. Beyle, who, on page after page,
naturalises in this State marvellous inventions to deceive his reader
and blunt the point of his allusions, the mind is at Modena and will on
no account consent to remain at Parma. Whoever has seen, known, met M.
de Metternich, thinks that he hears him speaking through the mouth of
Mosca, lends Mosca his voice and clothes him in his manners. Although,
in the book, Ernesto IV dies, and the Duke of Modena is still living,
one is often reminded of that Prince _so notorious for his severities_,
_which the Liberals of Milan called cruelties_. Such are the expressions
used by the author in speaking of the Prince of Parma.
In these two portraits, begun with a satirical intention, there is,
however, nothing that can wound, nothing that reeks of vengeance.
Although M. Beyle has no cause to thank M. de Metternich, who refused
him his _exequatur_ for the Trieste Consulate, and although the Duke of
Modena has never been able to look with pleasure on the author of _Rome,
Naples et Florence_, of the _Promenades en Rome_, and of certain other
works, these two figures are portrayed with great taste and the utmost
propriety.
This is what, no doubt, occurred during the actual work of these two
creations. Carried away by the enthusiasm necessary to him who handles
clay and scalpel, the brush and colours, the pen and the treasures of
man's moral nature, M. Beyle, who had started out to depict a little
court in Italy and a diplomat, ended with the type PRINCE and the type
PRIME MINISTER. The resemblance, began with the fantasy of a satirical
mind, ceased where the genius of the arts appeared to the artist.
This convention of masks once admitted, the reader, keenly interested,
accepts the admirable Italian scene which the author paints, the town
and all the buildings necessary to his story, which, in many places, has
the magical quality of an Oriental tale.
This long parenthesis was indispensable. Let us continue.
Mosca is smitten with love, but with a love immense, eternal, boundless,
for Gina, absolutely like M. de Metternich and his Leykam. He lets her,
at the risk of compromising himself, have the latest diplomatic news
before anyone else. The presence at Milan of this Minister of the State
of Parma is perfectly accounted for later on.
To give you an idea of this famous Italian love, I must relate to you a
distinctly curious incident. On their departure, in 1799, the Austrians
saw as they left Milan, on the Bastion, a certain Contessa B----nini who
was driving with a Canon, both heedless of revolutions and war: they
were in love. The Bastion is a magnificent avenue which starts from the
Eastern Gate (Porta Renza) and corresponds to the Champs-Elysées in
Paris, with this slight difference that on the left extends the Duomo,
"that mountain of gold transmuted into marble," as Francis II, who had a
gift of expression, called it; and on the right the snowy fringe, the
sublime chasms of the Alps. On their return in 1814 the first thing the
Austrians saw was the Contessa and the Canon, sitting in the same
carriage and saying, perhaps, the same things, at the same point on the
Bastion. I have seen, in that city, a young man who became ill if he
went more than a certain number of streets away from the house of his
mistress. When a woman gives an Italian sensations, he never leaves her.
"In spite of his frivolous air and his polished manners. Mosca," says M.
Beyle, "was not blessed with a soul of the French type; he could not
_forget_ the things that annoyed him. When there was a thorn in his
pillow, he would blunt it by repeated stabbings of his throbbing limbs."
This superior man guesses the superior mind of the Contessa, he falls in
love with her to the point of behaving like a schoolboy.
"After all," the Minister said to himself, "old age is only being
incapable of indulging in these delicious timidities."
The Contessa one evening remarks the fine, benevolent gaze of Mosca.
(The gaze with which M. de Metternich would deceive the Deity.)
"At Parma," she says to him, "if you were to look like that, you would
give them the hope that they might escape hanging."
In the end the diplomat, having realised how essential this woman is to
his happiness, and after three months of inward struggle, arrives with
three different plans, devised to secure his happiness, and makes her
agree to the wisest of them.
In Mosca's eyes, Fabrizio is a child: the excessive interest which the
Contessa takes in her nephew seems to him one of those elective
maternities which, until love comes to reign there, beguile the hearts
of noble-hearted women.
Mosca, unfortunately, is married. Accordingly he brings to Milan the
Duca Sanseverina-Taxis. Let me, in this analysis, introduce a few
quotations which will give you examples of the vivid, free, sometimes
faulty style of M. Beyle, and will enable me to make myself be read with
pleasure.
The Duca is a handsome little old man of sixty-eight, dapple-grey, very
polished, very neat, immensely rich, but not quite as noble as he ought
to have been. Apart from this, the Duca is by no means an absolute
idiot, says the Conte: "he gets his clothes and wigs from Paris. He is
not the sort of man who would do anything _deliberately_ mean, he
seriously believes that honour consists in having a Grand Cordon, and he
is ashamed of his riches. He wants an Embassy. Marry him, he will give
you a hundred thousand scudi, a magnificent jointure, his _palazzo_ and
the most superb existence in Parma. On these conditions, I make the
Prince appoint him Ambassador, he will have his Grand Cordon, and he
will start the day after his marriage; you become Duchessa Sanseverina,
and we live happily. Everything is settled with the Duca, who will be
made the happiest man in the world by our arrangement: he will never
shew his face again in Parma. If this life does not appeal to you, I
have four hundred thousand francs, I hand in my resignation and we go
and live at Naples."
"Do you know that what you and your Duca are proposing is highly
immoral?" says the Contessa.
"No more immoral than what is done at every court," the Minister
answers. "Absolute Power has this advantage, that it justifies
everything. Every year we shall be afraid of a 1798, and everything that
can reduce that fear will be supremely moral. You shall hear the
speeches I make on the subject at my receptions. The Prince has
consented, and you will have a brother in the Duca, who has not dared to
hope for such a marriage, which saves his face; he thinks himself ruined
because he lent twenty-five napoleons to the great Ferrante Palla, a
Republican, a poet and something of a genius, whom we have sentenced to
death, fortunately in his absence."
Gina accepts. We next see her Duchessa Sanseverina-Taxis, astonishing
the court of Parma by her affability, by the noble serenity of her mind.
Her house is the most attractive in the town, she reigns there, she is
the glory of this little court.
The portrait of Ernesto IV, his reception of the Duchessa, her
introduction to each member in turn of the Reigning House, all these
details are marvels of wit, depth, succinctness. Never have the hearts
of Princes, Ministers, courtiers and women been so depicted. The reader
will find it hard to lay the book down.
When the Duchessa's nephew fled from Austrian persecution and was on his
way from the Lake of Como to Novara under the protection of his
confessor and the parish priest, he met Fabio Conti, General of the
Armies of the State of Parma, one of the most curious figures of this
court and of the book, a general who thinks of nothing but whether His
Highness's soldiers ought to have seven buttons on their uniform or
nine; but this comic general possesses an entrancing daughter, Clelia
Conti. Fabrizio and Clelia, both trying to escape from the police, have
exchanged a few words. Clelia is the most beautiful creature in Parma.
As soon as the Prince sees the effect produced in his court by the
Sanseverina, he thinks of counter-balancing that beauty by bringing
Clelia to light. A great difficulty! Girls are not received at court: he
therefore has her created a Canoness.
The Prince has of course a mistress. One of his weaknesses is to ape
Louis XIV. So, to be in the picture, he has provided himself with a La
Vallière, one Contessa Balbi, who dips her fingers into every
money-bag, and is not forgotten when any government contract is made.
Ernesto IV would be in despair if the Balbi were not slightly grasping:
the scandalous fortune of his mistress is a sign of royal power. He is
lucky, the Contessa is a miser!
"She received me," the Duchessa tells Mosca, "as though she expected me
to give her a _buona mancia_ (a tip)."
But, to the great grief of Ernesto IV, the Contessa, who has no brains,
cannot be compared for a moment to the Duchessa; this humiliates him, a
first source of irritation. His mistress is thirty, and a model of
Italian _leggiadria_.
She had still the finest eyes in the world and the most graceful little
hands;[1] but her skin was netted with countless fine little wrinkles
which made her look like a young grandmother. As she was obliged to
smile at everything the Prince said, and sought to make him think, by
this ironical smile, that she understood him, Conte Mosca used to say
that these suppressed yawns had in course of time produced her wrinkles.
The Duchessa parries the first blow aimed at her by His Highness by
making a friend of Clelia, who, fortunately, is an innocent creature.
From motives of policy, the Prince allows to exist at Parma a sort of
Party, called Liberal (God knows what sort of Liberals!). A Liberal is a
man who has the great men of Italy, Dante, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Leo X
painted welcoming Monti on a ceiling. This passes as an epigram against
the power which has no longer any great men. This Liberal Party has as
its chief a Marchesa Raversi, an ugly and mischievous woman, as
irritating as an Opposition. Fabio Conti, the General, belongs to this
Party. The Prince, who hangs agitators, has his reasons for allowing a
Liberal Party.
Ernesto IV rejoices in a Laubardemont, his Fiscal General or Chief
Justice, named Rassi. This Rassi, full of natural intelligence, is one
of the most horribly comic or comically horrible personages that can be
imagined: he laughs and has people hanged, he makes a game of his
justice. He is necessary, indispensable to the Prince. Rassi is a blend
of Fouché, Fouquier-Tinville, Merlin, Triboulet and Scapin. You call
the Prince a _tyrant_: he says that this is conspiracy and he hangs you.
He has already hanged two Liberals. Since this execution, notorious
throughout Italy, the Prince, who is brave when on the field of battle
and has led armies, the Prince, though a man of spirit, lives in fear.
This Rassi becomes something terrible, he attains to gigantic
proportions while still remaining grotesque: he embodies all the justice
of this little State.
And now for the inevitable effects at court of the Duchessa's triumphs.
The Conte and the Duchessa, that pair of eagles caged in this tiny
capital, soon begin to offend the Prince. In the first place the
Duchessa is sincerely attached to the Conte, the Conte is more in love
every day, and this happiness irritates a bored Prince. Mosca's talents
are indispensable to the Cabinet of Parma. Ranuccio-Ernesto and his
Minister are attached to one another like the Siamese twins. Indeed,
they have between them contrived the impossible plan ("impossible" is a
rhetorical precaution on M. Beyle's part) of making a single State of
Northern Italy. Beneath his mask of absolutism, the Prince is intriguing
to become the Sovereign of this Constitutional Kingdom. He is dying of
envy to ape Louis XVIII, to give a Charter and Two Chamber government to
Northern Italy. He regards himself as a great politician, he has his
ambition: he redeems in his own eyes his subordinate position by this
plan with which Mosca is fully acquainted; he has control of his
treasury! The more need he has of Mosca and the more he recognises his
Minister's talent, the more reasons there are in the depths of this
princely heart for an unconfessed jealousy. Life at court is boring, at
the _palazzo_ Sanseverina it is amusing. What means remain to him of
demonstrating his power to himself? The chance of tormenting his
Minister. And he torments him cruelly! The Prince tries first of all, in
a friendly way, to secure the Duchessa as his mistress, she refuses;
there are blows to self-esteem the elements of which may easily be
guessed from this brief analysis. Presently, the Prince reaches the
stage of wishing to attack his Minister through the Duchessa, and he
then seeks out ways of making her suffer.
All this part of the novel is of a remarkable literary solidity. This
painting has the magnitude of a canvas fifty feet by thirty, and at the
same time the manner, the execution is Dutch in its minuteness. We come
to the drama, and to a drama the most complete, the most gripping, the
strangest, the truest, the most profoundly explored in the human heart
that has ever been invented, but one that has existed, undoubtedly, at
many periods, and will reappear at courts where it will be enacted
again, as Louis XIII and Richelieu, as Francis II and Prince Metternich,
as Louis XV, the du Barry and M. de Choiseul have enacted it in the
past.
The prospect which, in this new setting, has most attracted the Duchessa
is that of the possibility of making a career for her hero, for this
child of her heart, for Fabrizio her nephew. Fabrizio will owe his
fortune to the genius of Mosca. The love which she has conceived for the
child she continues to feel for the youth. I may tell you now,
beforehand, that this love is to become later on, at first without
Gina's knowledge, then consciously, a passion that will reach the
sublime. Nevertheless she will always be the wife of the great diplomat,
to whom she will never have committed any other act of infidelity than
that of the passionate impulses of her heart towards this young idol;
she will not deceive this man of genius, she will always make him happy
and proud; she will make him aware of her least emotions, he will endure
the most horrible rages of jealousy, and will never have any grounds for
complaint. The Duchessa will be frank, artless, sublime, resigned,
moving as a play of Shakespeare, beautiful as poetry, and the most
severe reader will have no fault to find. I doubt if any poet has ever
solved such a problem with as much felicity as has M. Beyle in this bold
work. The Duchessa is one of those magnificent statues which make us at
once admire the art that created them and inveigh against Nature which
is so sparing of such models. Gina, when you have read the book, will
remain before your eyes like a sublime statue: it will be neither the
Venus de Milo, nor the Venus de' Medici; it will be Diana with the
voluptuousness of Venus, with the suavity of Raphael's Virgins, and the
movement of Italian passion. Above all, there is nothing French in the
Duchessa. Yes, the Frenchman who has modelled, chiselled, wrought this
marble, has left nothing on it of his native soil. _Corinne_, you must
realise, is a miserable sketch compared with this living, ravishing
creature. You will find her great, intellectual, passionate, always true
to life, and yet the author has carefully concealed her sensual aspect.
There is not in the work a single word that can make one think of the
pleasures of love or can inspire them. Although the Duchessa, Mosca,
Fabrizio, the Prince and his son, Clelia, although the book and its
characters are, in their different ways, passion with all its furies;
although it is Italy as it is, with its shrewdness, its dissimulation,
its cunning, its coolness, its tenacity, its higher policy in every
connexion. _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is more chaste than the most
puritanical of the novels of Walter Scott. To make a noble, majestic,
almost irreproachable character of a duchess who makes a Mosca happy,
and keeps nothing from him, is not that a masterpiece of fiction? The
_Phèdre_ of Racine, that sublime creation of the French stage, which
Jansenism did not venture to condemn, is not so beautiful, nor so
complete, nor so animated.
Well, at the moment when everything is smiling on the Duchessa, when she
is amusing herself with this court life where a sudden storm is always
to be feared, when she is most tenderly attached to the Conte, who,
literally, is mad with happiness; when he has the patent and receives
the honours of Prime Minister _which come very near to those paid to the
Sovereign himself_, she says to him one day:
"And Fabrizio?"
The Conte then offers to obtain for her, from Austria, a pardon for this
dear nephew.
"But, if he is somewhat superior to the young men who ride their English
thoroughbreds about the streets of Milan, what a life, at eighteen, to
be doing nothing with no prospect of ever having anything to do! If,"
says Mosca, "heaven had endowed him with a real passion, were it only
for angling, I should respect it; but what is he to do at Milan, even
after he has obtained his pardon?"
"I should like him to be an officer," says the Duchessa.
"Would you advise a Sovereign," says Mosca, "to entrust a post which, at
a given date, may be of some importance, to a young man who has shown
enthusiasm, who, from Como, has gone to join Napoleon at Waterloo? A del
Dongo cannot be a merchant, nor a barrister, nor a doctor. You will cry
out in protest, but you will come in the end to agree with me. If
Fabrizio wishes it, he can quickly become Archbishop of Parma, one of
the highest dignities in Italy, and from that Cardinal. We have had at
Parma three del Dongo Archbishops, the Cardinal who wrote a book in
sixteen-something, Fabrizio in 1700 and Ascanio in 1750. Only, shall I
remain Minister long enough? That is the sole objection."
After two months spent in discussion, the Duchessa, defeated on every
point by the Conte's observations, and rendered desperate by the
precarious position of a younger son of a Milanese family, utters one
day this profound Italian saying to her friend:
"Prove to me again that every other career is impossible for Fabrizio."
The Conte proves it.
The Duchessa, susceptible to the thought of fame, sees no other way of
salvation, here below, for her dear Fabrizio, than the Church and its
high dignities, for the future of Italy lies in Rome, and nowhere else.
To anyone who has studied Italy carefully, it is clear that the unity of
government in that country, that its nationality will never be
re-established save by the hand of a Sixtus V. The Pope alone has the
power to stir and to reconstitute Italy. And so we see with what pains
the Austrian court has watched, for the last thirty years, the elections
of Popes, what aged imbeciles she has allowed to don the Triple Crown.
"Perish Catholicism sooner than my domination!" seems to be her guiding
motto. Miserly Austria would spend a million to prevent the election of
a Pope with French ideas. And then, if some fine Italian genius employed
sufficient dissimulation to put on the white cassock, he might die like
Ganganelli. There perhaps is to be found the secret of the refusals of
the Court of Rome, which has not chosen to accept the invigorating
potion, the elixir offered to it by men of fine ecclesiastical genius
from France: Borgia would not have failed to make them take their seat
among his devoted Cardinals. The author of the Bull _In coena Domini_
would have understood the great Gallican idea, Catholic Democracy, he
would have adapted it to the circumstances. M. de Lamennais, that fallen
angel, would not then, in his Breton obstinacy, have abandoned the
Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.
So the Duchessa adopts this plan of the Conte. In this great woman there
is, as in great politicians, a moment of uncertainty, of hesitation
before a plan; but she never goes back upon her resolutions. The
Duchessa is always right in wishing what she has wished. Her
persistency, that strong quality of her imperious character, imparts an
element of terror to all the scenes of this fertile drama.
Nothing could be more clever than the initiation of Fabrizio into his
future destiny. The lovers display to Fabrizio the chances of his life.
Fabrizio, a boy of astonishing intelligence, grasps everything at once
and has a vision of the tiara. The Conte does not pretend to make a
priest of him of the sort one sees everywhere in Italy. Fabrizio is a
great gentleman, he can remain perfectly ignorant if it seems good to
him, and will none the less become Archbishop. Fabrizio refuses to lead
the life of the caffè, he has a horror of poverty, and realises that he
cannot be a soldier. When he speaks of going and becoming an American
citizen (we are in 1817), he has explained to him the dulness of life in
America, without smartness, without music, without love affairs, without
war, the cult of the god Dollar, and the respect due to artisans, to the
masses who by their votes decide everything. Fabrizio has a horror of
_mobocracy_.
At the voice of the great diplomat, who shows him life as it really is,
the young man's illusions take flight. He had not understood what is
incomprehensible to young people, the "_Surtout pas de zèle_!" of M. de
Talleyrand.
"Remember," Mosca says to him, "that a proclamation, a caprice of the
heart flings the enthusiast into the bosom of the party opposed to his
own future sympathies."
What a phrase![2]
The instructions given by the Minister to the neophyte who is to return
to Parma only as a _Monsignore_, in violet stockings, and whom he sends
to Naples to complete his studies with letters of recommendation to the
Archbishop there, one of his clever friends; these instructions, given
in the Duchessa's drawing-room, during a game of cards, are admirable. A
single quotation will show you the fineness of the perceptions, the
science of life which the author gives to this great character.
"Believe or not, as you choose, what they teach you, _but never raise
any objection_. Imagine that they are teaching you the rules of the game
of whist; would you raise any objection to the rules of whist? And once
you knew and had adopted those rules, would you not wish to win? Do not
fall into the vulgar habit of speaking with horror of Voltaire, Diderot,
Raynal and all those harebrained Frenchmen who have brought us that
foolish government by Two Chambers. Speak of them with a calm irony,
they are people who have long since been refuted. You will be forgiven a
little amorous intrigue, if it is done in the proper way, but they would
take note of your objections: age stifles intrigue but encourages doubt.
Believe everything, do not yield to the temptation to shine; be morose:
discerning eyes will see your cleverness in yours and it will be time
enough to be witty when you are an Archbishop!"
The astonishing and fine superiority of Mosca is never lacking, either
in action or in speech; it makes this book one as profound, from page to
page, as the _Maxims_ of La Rochefoucauld. And observe that their
passion leads the Conte and Duchessa to make mistakes, they are obliged
to bring their talent into play to atone for them. To another man who
had consulted him, the Conte would have explained the misfortunes that
would await him at Parma after the death of Ernesto IV. But his passion
has made him completely blind to his own interests. Talent alone can
make you discover this poignant touch of comedy for yourself. Great
politicians are nothing more, after all, than equilibrists who, if they
do not take care, see their finest edifice come crashing to the ground.
Richelieu was only saved from his peril, on the Day of the Dupes, by the
broth of the Queen Mother, who refused to go to Saint-Germain without
having taken the _lait de poule_ which preserved her complexion. The
Duchessa and Mosca live by a perpetual expenditure of all their
faculties; and so the reader who follows the spectacle of their life is
kept in a trance, through chapter after chapter, so well are the
difficulties of this existence set before him, so cleverly are they
explained. Finally, let us note well, these crises, these terrible
scenes are woven into the substance of the book: the flowers are not
stitched on, they are of the same substance as the rest.
"We must keep our love secret," the Duchessa says sadly to her lover, on
the day on which she has guessed that his struggle with the Prince has
begun.
When, to outact his acting, she lets Ernesto IV gather that she is only
moderately in love with the Conte, she gives him a day of happiness; but
the Prince is shrewd, he sees sooner or later that he has been tricked.
And his disappointment adds violence to the storm brought about by her
ill-wishers.
This great work could not have been conceived or executed save by a man
of fifty, in the full vigour of his age and in the maturity of all his
talents. One sees perfection in every detail. The character of the
Prince is drawn by the hand of a master, and is, as I have told you,
_The Prince_. One conceives him admirably, as a man and as sovereign.
This man might be at the head of the Russian Empire, he would be capable
of ruling it, he would be great; but the man would remain what he is,
liable to vanity, to jealousy, to passion. In the seventeenth-century,
at Versailles, he would be Louis XIV and would avenge himself on the
Duchessa, as did Louis XIV on Fouquet. Criticism can find no fault in
the greatest or in the smallest character; they are all what they ought
to be. There is life and especially the life of courts, not drawn in
caricature, as Hoffmann has tried to draw it, but seriously and
ironically. Finally, this book explains to you admirably all that Louis
XIII's _camarilla_ made Richelieu suffer. This work applied to vast
interests like those of the cabinet of Louis XIV, of Pitt's cabinet, of
Napoleon's cabinet or of the Russian cabinet, would have been impossible
owing to the prolixities and explanations which so many veiled interests
would have required; whereas you get a comprehensive view of the State
of Parma; and Parma enables you to understand, _mutato nomine_, the
intrigues of the most exalted court. Things were like this tinder the
Borgia Pope, at the court of Tiberius, at the court of Philip II: they
must be like this also at the court of Peking!
Let us enter into the terrible Italian drama which has been slowly and
logically preparing itself in a charming manner. I spare you the details
of the court and its original figures; the Princess who thinks it her
duty to be unhappy, because the Prince has his Pompadour; the Heir
Apparent who is kept caged; the Princess Isotta, the Chamberlain, the
Minister of the Interior, the Governor of the Citadel, Fabio Conti. One
cannot afford to take the least thing lightly. If, like the Duchessa,
Fabrizio and Mosca, you accept the court of Parma, you play your game of
whist and your interests are at stake. When the Prime Minister thinks
that he has fallen from power, he says quite seriously:
"When our guests have gone, we can decide on a way of barricading
ourselves for the night; the best plan would be to set off while they're
dancing for your place at Sacca, by the Po, from where in twenty minutes
one can get into Austria."
Indeed the Duchessa, the Minister, every Parmesan subject is liable to
end his days in the citadel.
When the Prince confesses his desires to the Duchessa and she in reply
asks him:
"How should we ever lode Mosca in the face again, that man of genius and
heart?"
"I have thought of that," says the Prince: "we should never look him in
the face again! The citadel waits."
The Sanseverina does not fail to repeat this saying to Mosca, who puts
his affairs in order.
Four years elapse.
The Minister, who has not allowed Fabrizio to come to Parma during these
four years, permits him to reappear there when the Pope has created him
Monsignore, a kind of dignity which entitles him to wear violet
stockings. Fabrizio has nobly answered the expectations of his political
master. At Naples he has had mistresses, he has had the passion for
archeology, he has sold his horses to make excavations, he has behaved
well, he has aroused no jealousy, he may become Pope. What delights him
most about his return to Parma is the thought of being delivered from
the attentions of the charming Duchessa d'A----. His governor, who has
made him an educated man, receives a Cross and a pension. Fabrizio's
first appearance at Parma, his arrival, his various presentations at
court, form the highest comedy of manners, character and intrigue that
one can read anywhere. At more than one point, the better class of
reader will lay down this book on his table to say to himself:
"Heavens! How good this is, how exquisitely arranged, how deep!"
He will meditate upon words like the following, for instance, upon which
Princes ought to meditate well for their own good: _People with brains
who are born on the throne or at the foot of it soon lose all fineness
of touch; they proscribe, in their immediate circle, freedom of
conversation which seems to them coarseness, they refuse to look at
anything but masks and pretend to judge the beauty of complexions; the
amusing part of it is that they imagine their touch to be of the
finest_.
Here begin the Duchessa's ingenuous passion for Fabrizio, and Mosca's
torments. Fabrizio is a diamond that has lost nothing by being polished.
Gina, who had sent him to Naples a devil-may-care young rough-rider,
whose horsewhip seemed to be an inherent part of his person, sees him
now with a noble and confident bearing before strangers, and in private
the same fire of youth.
"This nephew," Mosca tells his mistress, "is made to adorn all the
exalted posts." But the great diplomat, attentive at first to Fabrizio,
turns to look at the Duchessa and notices _a curious look in her eyes_.
"I am in my fifties," he reflects.
The Duchessa is so happy that she does not give the Conte a thought.
This profound effect, made on Mosca by a single glance, is irremediable.
When Ranuccio-Ernesto IV guesses that the aunt loves the nephew a little
more warmly than the laws of consanguinity permit, which at Parma is
incest, he is at the pinnacle of happiness. He writes his Minister an
anonymous letter on the subject. When he is sure that Mosca has read it,
he sends for him, without giving him time to call first on the Duchessa,
and keeps him on the rack throughout a conversation full of princely
friendliness and hypocrisy. Certainly the pangs of love causing a fine
heart to bleed always make an effective scene; but this heart is
Italian, this is the heart of a man of genius, and I know nothing that
grips me so as the chapter on Mosca's jealousy.
Fabrizio does not love his aunt; he adores her as an aunt, she inspires
no longing in him as a woman; nevertheless, in their Conversations, a
gesture, a word may make youth break out, the least thing may then make
his aunt leave Parma, because riches, honours are nothing to her who,
once already, before the eyes of all Milan, has managed to live on a
third floor, with an income of fifteen hundred francs. The future
Archbishop sees an abyss open before him. The Prince is as happy as a
king, while waiting for a catastrophe to destroy the private happiness
of his dear Minister. Mosca, the great Mosca, weeps like a child. The
prudence of this dear Fabrizio, who understands Mosca and understands
his aunt, prevents any disaster. The Monsignore makes himself fall in
love with a little Marietta, an actress of the lowest grade, a columbine
who has her harlequin, a certain Giletti, formerly one of Napoleon's
dragoons, and a fencing master, a man horrible in mind and body, who
devours Marietta, beats her, steals her blue shawls and all her
earnings.
Mosca breathes again. The Prince is uneasy, his prey is escaping, he
could hold the Sanseverina by her nephew, and now the nephew turns out a
profound politician! In spite of Marietta, the Duchessa's passion is so
artless, her familiarities are so dangerous, that Fabrizio, to restore
tranquillity, proposes to the Conte, who also is an antiquarian and is
engaged on excavations, to go down to the country and superintend the
work. The Minister adores Fabrizio. The company which includes Marietta,
her _mammaccia_--a figure drawn in four pages with an astounding truth
and depth of character--and Giletti, the whole motley crew, leave Parma.
This trio, Giletti, the _mammaccia_ and Marietta come along the road
while Fabrizio is shooting. There follows an encounter between the
dragoon, who seeks, in an access of Italian vanity, to kill the
_black-frock_, and Fabrizio, who is amazed at seeing Marietta on the
road. This accidental duel becomes serious when Fabrizio sees that
Giletti, who has only one eye, is trying to disfigure him: he kills him.
Giletti was plainly the aggressor, the workmen engaged on the
excavations saw everything, Fabrizio realises all the capital that the
Raversi faction and the Liberals will make out of this ridiculous
adventure against himself, the Ministers, his aunt; he takes flight, he
crosses the Po. Thanks to the clever assistance of Lodovico, an old
servant of the Sanseverina household, a fellow who writes sonnets, he
finds shelter and reaches Bologna, where he sees Marietta again.
Lodovico becomes fanatically attached to Fabrizio. This retired coachman
is one of the most complete of the figures of the second magnitude.
Fabrizio's flight, the scenery by the Po, the descriptions of famous
places through which the young prelate passes, his adventures during his
exile from Parma, his correspondence with the Archbishop, another
character admirably drawn, the smallest details are of a literary
execution that bears the hall-mark of genius. And all is so Italian as
to make one take the coach and fly to Italy, there to seek this drama
and this poetry. The reader becomes Fabrizio.
During this absence, Fabrizio goes to revisit his native scenes, the
Lake of Como and the paternal castle, despite the dangers of his
position with regard to Austria, at that time very strict. We are in
1821, a time when a passport was not to be treated lightly. The prelate
recognised as Fabrizio del Dongo may be sent to the Spielberg. In this
part of the book the author completes the portrait of a fine head, that
of a Priore Blanès, a simple village curate, who adores Fabrizio and
cultivates the study of judicial astrology. This portrait is done so
seriously, there shines from it so great a faith in the occult sciences,
that the satire of which those sciences--to which we shall return and
which do not rest, as has been supposed, upon false foundations--might
naturally be the object dies away on the lips of the incredulous. I do
not know what the author's opinion may be, but he justifies that of the
Priore Blanès. Priore Blanès is a character who is true in Italy. The
truth of him can be felt, just as one can tell whether one of Titian's
heads is the portrait of a Venetian gentleman or a fancy.
The Prince orders the preparation of the case against Fabrizio, and in
this task the genius of Rassi is revealed. The Fiscal General sends the
witnesses for the defence out of the country, purchases evidence for the
prosecution, and, as he impudently informs the Prince, produces out of
this foolish affair--the death inflicted on a Giletti by a del Dongo, in
self-defence, by a del Dongo who had received the first blow!--a
sentence of detention for twenty years in the fortress. The Prince would
have liked a death sentence, in order to exercise clemency and so
humiliate the Sanseverina.
"But," says Rassi, "I have done better than that, I have broken his
neck, his career is barred to him for ever. The Vatican can do nothing
more for a murderer."
So the Prince holds the Sanseverina in his clutches at last! Ah! It is
then that the Duchessa becomes superb, that the court of Parma is
agitated, that the lights go up on the drama, which assumes gigantic
proportions. One of the finest scenes in modern fiction is, certainly,
that in which the Sanseverina comes to pay her farewell to the Sovereign
and presents him with an ultimatum. The scene of Elizabeth, Amy and
Leicester in _Kenilworth_ is no greater, more dramatic nor more
terrible. The tiger is braved in his den: the serpent is caught, in vain
does he writhe his coils and beg for pity, the woman crushes him. Gina
desires, dictates, obtains from the Prince a rescript annulling the
proceedings. She does not seek a pardon, the Prince will state that the
proceedings are unjust and shall have no consequences in the future,
which is an absurd thing to expect of an absolute Sovereign. This
absurdity she demands, she obtains it. Mosca is magnificent in this
scene where the lovers are alternately saved, lost, in peril for a
gesture, a word, a glance!
In every walk of life, artists have an invincible self-respect, a sense
of their art, a professional conscience which is ineradicable from the
man. One does not corrupt, one never succeeds in buying this conscience.
The actor who wishes most harm to his theatre or to an author will never
play a part badly. The chemist, called in to look for arsenic in a body,
will find it if there is any there. The writer, the painter, are always
faithful to their genius, even at the foot of the scaffold. This does
not exist in woman. The universe is the stepping-stone of her passion.
And so woman is greater and finer than man in this respect. Woman is
passion; man is action. If this were not so, man would not adore woman.
And so it is in the social circle of the court, which gives the greatest
flight to her passion, that woman sheds her most brilliant radiance. Her
finest stage is the world of Absolute Power. That is why there are no
longer any women in France. Now Conte Mosca suppresses, from a trace of
ministerial self-respect, in the Prince's rescript, the words on which
the Duchessa depends. The Prince imagines that his Minister considers
him before the Sanseverina, and casts a glance at him which the reader
intercepts. Mosca, like a true statesman, will not countersign a stupid
thing, that is all: the Prince is mistaken. In the intoxication of her
triumph, rejoicing that she has saved Fabrizio, the Duchessa, who trusts
in Mosca, does not peruse the rescript. She was thought to be ruined,
she had made all preparations for her departure in the face of Parma,
she returns from the court having effected a revolution. Mosca was
thought to be in disgrace. Fabrizio's sentence was taken as an insult by
the Prince to the Duchessa and Minister. Not at all, the Raversi is
banished. The Prince laughs, he is holding his vengeance in reserve:
this woman who has humiliated him, he is going to make die of grief.
The Marchesa Raversi, instead of composing Ovidian _Tristia_, like
everyone who is banished from a court where he or she handled the reins
of power, sets to work. She guesses what has happened in the Prince's
cabinet, she extracts his secrets from Rassi, who allows her to do so;
he is aware of the Prince's intentions. The Marchesa has some letters
written by the Duchessa, she sends her lover to the galleys at Genoa to
get a letter forged from the Duchessa to Fabrizio, telling him of her
triumph, and appointing a meeting at her country house. Sacca, close to
the Po, a delicious spot where the Duchessa always spends the summer.
Poor Fabrizio hastens there, he is caught, they put handcuffs on him, he
is shut up in the citadel, and while they are shutting him up, he
recognises the daughter of the governor, Fabio Conti, the lovely and
sublime Clelia, for whom he is to feel that eternal love that gives no
respite.
Fabrizio del Dongo, her nephew, he whom she adores, in the most
honourable fashion, in the citadel! . . . Imagine the Duchessa's
feelings! She learns of Mosca's mistake. She will not see Mosca again.
There is only Fabrizio now in the world! Once inside that terrible
fortress, he may die there, die there by poison!
This is the Prince's system: a fortnight of terror, a fortnight of hope.
And he will handle this fiery steed, this proud soul, this Sanseverina
whose triumphs and happiness, though necessary to the brilliance of his
court, were insulting to his inner man. Played on in this way, the
Sanseverina will become thin, old and ugly: he will knead her like
dough.
This terrible duel in which the Duchessa has inflicted the first wound,
piercing her adversary to the heart but without killing him, in which
she will receive for the next year a fresh wound daily, is the most
powerful thing that the genius of the modern novel has invented.
Let us turn now to Fabrizio in prison, and so come to my analysis of
that chapter, which is one of the diamonds on this crown.
The episode of the robbers in Lewis's _Monk_, his _Anaconda_, which is
his best book, the interest of the last volumes by Mrs. Radcliffe, the
thrilling vicissitudes in the Red Indian romances of Cooper, all the
extraordinary things I know in the narratives of travels and prisoners,
none of these can compare with the confinement of Fabrizio in the
fortress of Parma, three hundred and something feet above the ground.
This terrifying abode is a Vaucluse: he makes love there to Clelia, he
is happy there, he displays the ingenuity of prisoners, and he prefers
his prison to the most enchanting spot that the world has to offer. The
Bay of Naples is beautiful only through the eyes of Lamartine's Elvire;
but, in the eyes of a Clelia, in the trills of her voice, there are
whole universes. The author depicts, as he knows how to depict, by
little incidents which have the eloquence of Shakespearean action, the
progress of the love between these two fair creatures, amid the dangers
of an imminent death by poison. This part of the book will be read with
halting breath, straining throat, avid eyes by all those readers who
have imagination, or simply hearts. Everything in it is perfect, rapid,
real, without any improbability or strain. There you find passion in all
its glory, its rendings, its hopes, its melancholies, its returns, its
abatements, its inspirations, the only ones that equal those of genius.
Nothing has been forgotten. You will read there an encyclopædia of all
the resources of the prisoner; his marvellous languages for which he
makes use of nature, the means by which he gives life to a song and
meaning to a sound. Read in prison, this book is capable of killing a
prisoner, or of making him tunnel through his walls.
While Fabrizio is inspiring love and feeling it, during the most
engrossing scenes of the drama inside the prison, there is, you must
understand, a fight to the death going on outside the fortress. The
Prince, the governor, Rassi, attempt to poison him. Fabrizio's death is
determined upon at a moment when the Prince's vanity is mortally
wounded. The charming Clelia, the most delicious figure you could see in
a dream, then reveals the extent of her love by helping Fabrizio to
escape, although his rescuers have nearly killed her father, the
General.
At this crisis in the book, we understand all the incidents that have
gone before. Without those adventures in which we have seen the people,
in which we have watched them acting, nothing would be intelligible,
everything would seem false and impossible.
Let us return to the Duchessa. The courtiers, the Raversi party triumph
in the griefs of this noble woman. Her calm is killing the Prince, and
no one can explain it to him. Mosca himself does not understand it.
Here, we see that Mosca, great as he is, is inferior to this woman who,
at this moment, seems to you to be the genius of Italy. Profound is her
dissimulation, bold are her plans. As for her revenge, it will be
complete. The Prince has been too greatly offended, she sees him
implacable: between them, the duel is to the death; but the Duchessa's
vengeance would be impotent, imperfect, if she allowed Ranuccio-Ernesto
IV to take Fabrizio from her by poison. Fabrizio must be set at liberty.
This attempt seems literally impossible to every reader, so carefully
has tyranny taken its precautions, so deeply has it involved the
governor, Fabio Conti, whose honour is at stake if he does not guard his
prisoners.
There is in this man something of Hudson Lowe, but of a Hudson Lowe
magnified to the tenth degree; he is Italian, and wishes to avenge the
Raversi for the disgrace that the Duchessa has brought on her. Gina
fears nothing. This is why:
"The lover thinks more often of penetrating to his mistress's chamber
than the husband of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of
escaping than the gaoler of shutting his door; therefore, in spite of
the obstacles in their way, the lover and the prisoner must succeed in
the end."
She will help him! Oh, what a fine painting of this Italian in despair,
who cannot flee from this abhorrent court! "Come," she says to herself,
"_forward, unhappy woman_" (we weep as we read this great feminine
utterance), "do your duty, pretend to forget Fabrizio!" "_Forget him_!"
the word saves her: she has not been able to shed a tear until this
word. Then the Duchessa conspires, she conspires with the Prime
Minister, whom she has ostensibly banished in disgrace, but who would
set Parma on fire and deluge it with blood for her, who would kill
everyone, the Prince even. This true lover realises that he is in the
wrong, he is the most wretched of men. Alas! What a feeble excuse! He
did not believe his master to be so false, so cowardly, so cruel. And so
he admits that his mistress is entitled to be implacable. He finds it
natural that Fabrizio should be, at this moment, everything in the world
to her, he has that weakness of great men for their mistresses which
leads them to understand even the infidelity which may mean their death.
The enamoured veteran is sublime! He says but one word to himself, in
the scene when Gina has made him come to her for their rupture. A single
night has ravaged the Duchessa.
"Great God!" exclaims Mosca to himself, "she looks all her forty years
to-day!"
What a book is this in which one finds these cries of passion, these
profound diplomatic sayings, and on every page. Note this as well: you
will not meet in this book those extra flourishes, so aptly named
_tartines_. No, the characters act, reflect, feel, and always the drama
sweeps on. Never does the poet, a dramatist in his ideas, stoop in his
path to pick the smallest flower, everything has the rapidity of a
dithyramb.
Let us proceed! The Duchessa is ravishing in her admissions to Mosca,
and sublime in her despair. Finding her so changed, he supposes her to
be ill, and wishes to send for Razori, the leading doctor in Parma and
in Italy.
"Is that the counsel of a traitor or of a friend?" she asks. "You wish
to convey to a stranger the measure of my despair!"
"I am lost," thinks the Conte, "she no longer includes me even among the
common men of honour."
"Bear in mind," the Duchessa tells him with the most imperious air,
"that I am not distressed by the capture of Fabrizio, that I have not
the least shadow of a desire to go away, that I am full of respect for
the Prince. As for yourself: I intend to have the entire control of my
own behaviour, I wish to part from you as an old and good friend.
Consider that I have reached sixty, the young woman is dead. With
Fabrizio in prison, I am incapable of love. Finally, I should be the
unhappiest woman in the world were I to compromise your future. If you
see me making a show of having a young lover, do not let yourself be
distressed by that. I can swear to you, by Fabrizio's future happiness,
that I have never been guilty of the slightest infidelity towards you,
and that in five whole years . . . that is a long time!" she says,
trying to smile. "I swear to you that I have never either planned or
wished such a thing. Now you understand that, leave me."
The Conte goes, he spends two days and two nights in thought.
"Great heavens!" he at length exclaims, "the Duchessa never said a word
to me about an escape; can she have been wanting in sincerity for once
in her life, and is the motive of her quarrel only a desire that I
should betray the Prince? No sooner said than done."
Did I not tell you that this book was a masterpiece, and can you not see
it for yourself, merely from this rough analysis?
The Minister, after this discovery, treads the ground as if he were a
boy of fifteen, takes a new lease of life. He is going to seduce Rassi
from the Prince, and make him his own creature.
"Rassi," he says to himself, "is paid by his master to carry out the
sentences that disgrace us throughout Europe, but he will not refuse to
let himself be paid by me to betray his master's secrets. He has a
mistress and a confessor. The mistress is of so low an order that the
market woman would know the whole story by to-morrow morning."
He goes to say his prayers at the cathedral and to find the Archbishop.
"What sort of man is Dugnani, the Vicar of San Paolo?" he asks him.
"A small mind with great ambition, few scruples and extreme poverty; for
we too have our vices!" says the Archbishop, raising his eyes to heaven.
The Minister cannot help laughing at the analytical depth reached by
true piety combined with honesty. He sends for the priest and says to
him only:
"You direct the conscience of my friend the Fiscal General; are you sure
he has nothing to tell me?"
The Conte is prepared to stake everything: there is only one thing that
he wishes to know, the moment at which Fabrizio will be in danger of
death, and he does not propose to interfere with the Duchessa's plans.
His interview with Rassi is a capital scene. This is how the Conte
begins, adopting the tone of the most lofty impertinence:
"What, sir, you carry off from Bologna a conspirator who is under my
protection; more than that, you propose to cut off his head, and you say
nothing to me about it. Do you know the name of my successor? Is it
General Conti or yourself?"
The Minister and Fiscal agree upon a plan which allows them to retain
their respective positions. I must leave to you the pleasure of reading
the admirable details of this continuous web in which the author drives
a hundred characters abreast without being more embarrassed than a
skilful coachman is by the reins of a ten-horse coach. Everything is in
its place, there is not the slightest confusion. You see everything, the
town and the court. The drama is amazing in its skill, its execution,
its clearness. The air plays over the picture, not a character is
superfluous. Lodovico, who on many occasions has proved that he is an
honest Figaro, is the Duchessa's right arm. He plays a fine part, he
will be well rewarded.
The time has now come to speak to you of one of the subordinate
characters who is shown in colossal proportions, and to whom frequent
reference is made in the book, namely Ferrante Palla, a Liberal doctor
under sentence of death who is wandering through Italy, where he
performs his task of propaganda.
Ferrante Palla is a great poet, like Silvio Pellico, but he is what
Pellico is not, a Radical Republican. Let us not concern ourselves with
the faith of this man. He has faith, he is the Saint Paul of the
Republic, a martyr of Young Italy, he is a sublime work of art like the
_Saint Bartholomew_ at Milan, like Foyatier's _Spartacus_, like Marius
pondering over the ruins of Carthage. Everything that he does,
everything that he says is sublime. He has the conviction, the grandeur,
the passion of the believer. However high you may place, in execution,
in conception, in reality, the Prince, the Minister, the Duchessa,
Ferrante Palla, this superb statue, set in a corner of the picture,
commands your gaze, compels your admiration. In spite of your opinions,
constitutional, monarchical or religious, he subjugates you. Greater
than his own misfortunes, preaching Italy from the hollow shelter of his
caves, without bread for his mistress and their five children;
committing highway robbery to maintain them, and keeping a note of the
sums stolen and the persons robbed so as to restore to them this forced
loan to the Republic when he shall have the power to do so; stealing
moreover in order to print his pamphlets entitled: _The necessity for a
budget in Italy_! Ferrante Palla is the type of a family of minds to be
found in Italy, sincere but misguided, full of talent but ignorant of
the fatal results of their doctrine. Send them with plenty of gold to
France and to the United States, as Ministers of Absolute Princes!
Instead of persecuting them, let them acquire enlightenment, these true
men, full of great and exquisite qualities. They will say like Alfieri
in 1793: "Little men, at work, reconcile me to the great."
I praise with all the more enthusiasm this creation of Ferrante Palla,
having caressed the same figure myself. If I have the trifling advantage
over M. Beyle of priority, I am inferior to him in execution. I have
perceived this inward drama, so great, so powerful, of the stern and
conscientious Republican in love with a Duchess who holds to Absolute
Power. My Michel Chrestien, in love with the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
could not stand out with the relief of Ferrante Palla, a lover after the
style of Petrarch of the Duchessa Sanseverina. Italy and its customs,
Italy and its scenery, the perils, the starvation of Ferrante Palla are
far more attractive than the meagre details of Parisian civilisation.
Although Michel Chrestien dies at Saint-Merry and Ferrante Palla escapes
to the United States after his crimes, Italian passion is far superior
to French passion, and the events of this episode add to their Apennine
savour an interest with which it is useless to compete. In a period when
everything is levelled more easily under the uniform of the National
Guard and the _Bourgeois_ law than under the steel triangle of the
Republic, literature is essentially lacking, in France, in those great
obstacles between lovers which used to be the source of fresh beauties,
of new situations, and which made subjects dramatic. And so it was
difficult for the serious paradox of the passion of a Radical for a
great lady to escape trained pens.
In no book, unless it be _Old Mortality_, is there to be found a figure
of an energy comparable to that which M. Beyle has given to Ferrante
Palla, whose name exercises a sort of compulsion over the imagination.
Between Balfour of Burley and Ferrante Palla, I have no hesitation, I
choose Ferrante Palla; the design is the same; but Walter Scott, great
colourist as he may be, has not the thrilling, warm colour, as of
Titian, which M. Beyle has spread over his character. Ferrante Palla is
a whole poem in himself, a poem superior to Lord Byron's _Corsair_. "Ah!
That is how people love!" is what all M. Beyle's feminine readers will
say to themselves on reading this sublime and most reprehensible
episode.
Ferrante Palla has the most impenetrable of retreats in the
neighbourhood of Sacca. He has often seen the Duchessa, he has fallen
passionately in love with her. The Duchessa has met him, has been moved.
Ferrante Palla has told her everything, as though in the presence of
God. He knows that the Duchessa loves Mosca, his own love therefore is
hopeless. There is something touching in the Italian grace with which
the Duchessa lets him give himself the pleasure of kissing the white
hands of a woman with blue blood. He has not clasped a white hand for
seven years, and this poet adores beautiful white hands. His mistress,
whom he no longer loves, does the heavy work, makes clothes for the
children, and he cannot desert a woman who will not leave him,
notwithstanding the most appalling poverty. These obligations of an
honest man become apparent. The Duchessa has compassion for everything,
like a true Madonna. She has offered him his pardon! Ah, but Ferrante
Palla has, like Carl Sand, his own little sentences to enforce; he has
his preaching, his journeyings to rekindle the zeal of Young Italy.
"All those scoundrels, who do so much harm to the people, would live for
long years," he says, "and whose fault would that be? What would my
father say when I meet him in heaven!"
She then proposes to provide for the needs of the woman and her
children, and give him an undiscoverable hiding-place in the _palazzo_
Sanseverina.
The _palazzo_ Sanseverina includes an immense reservoir, built in the
middle ages with a view to prolonged sieges, and capable of supplying
the town with water for a year. Part of the _palazzo_ is built over this
immense structure. The dapple-grey Duca spent the night after their
marriage in telling his wife the secret of the reservoir and of its
hiding-place. An enormous stone which moves on a pivot will let all the
water escape and flood the streets of Parma. In one of the thick walls
of the reservoir there is a chamber without light and without much air,
which no one would ever suspect; you would have to pull down the
reservoir to find it.
Ferrante Palla accepts the hiding-place for evil days, and refuses the
Duchessa's money; he has made a vow never to have more than a hundred
francs on him. At the moment when she offers him her sequins, he has
money; but he lets himself go so far as to accept one sequin.
"I take this sequin, because I love you," he says; "but I am on the
wrong side of my hundred by five francs, and, if they were to hang me
this minute, I should feel remorse."
"He does really love," the Duchessa says to herself.
Is not that the simplicity of Italy, taken from life? Molière, writing
a novel to describe this people, the only one except the Arabs that has
preserved its reverence for vows, could do nothing finer.
Ferrante Palla becomes the Duchessa's other arm in her conspiracy, and
is a terrible weapon, his energy makes one shudder! Here is the scene
that occurs one evening in the _palazzo_ Sanseverina. The lion of the
people has emerged from his retreat. He enters for the first time rooms
ablaze with regal splendour. He finds there his mistress, his idol, the
idol whom he has set above Young Italy, above the Republic and the
welfare of humanity; he sees her distressed, tears in her eyes! The
Prince has snatched from her him whom she loves best in the world, he
has basely deceived her, and this _tyrant_ holds the sword of Damocles
over the beloved head.
"What is happening here," says this sublime Republican Don Quixote, "is
an injustice of which the Tribune of the People ought to take note. On
the other hand, as a private citizen, I can give the Signora Duchessa
Sanseverina nothing but my life, and I lay it at her feet. The creature
you see at your feet is not a puppet of the court, he is a man.--She has
wept in my presence," he says to himself, "she is less unhappy."
"Think of the risk you are running," says the Duchessa.
"The Tribune will answer you: 'What is life when the voice of duty
speaks?' The man will say to you: 'Here is a body of iron and a heart
that fears nothing in the world but your displeasure.'"
"If you speak to me of your feelings," says the Duchessa, "I shall not
see you again."
Ferrante Palla departs sadly.
Am I mistaken? Are they not as fine as Corneille, these dialogues? And,
remember, such passages abound, they are all, after their kind, at the
same high level. Struck by the beauty of this character, the Duchessa
prepares a written document providing for the future of Ferrante's
mistress and his five children, without saying anything to him, for she
is afraid that he may let himself be killed on learning that his
dependents have had this provision made for them.
Finally, on the day when the whole of Parma is discussing the probable
death of Fabrizio, the Tribune braves every danger. He enters the
_palazzo_ at night, he arrives disguised as a Capuchin in the Duchessa's
presence; he finds her drowned in tears and voiceless: she greets him
with her hand and points to a chair. Palla prostrates himself, prays to
God, so divine does her beauty seem to him, and breaks off his prayer to
say:
"Once again _he_ offers his life."
"Think of what you are saying!" cries the Duchessa with that haggard eye
which shews more clearly than sobs that anger is mastering affection.
"He offers his life to place all obstacle in the way of Fabrizio's fate
or to avenge it."
"If I were to accept!" she says, gazing at him.
She sees the joy of martyrdom flash in Palla's eye. She rises, goes to
look for the deed of gift prepared a month back, for Ferrante's mistress
and children.
"Read this!"
He reads it and falls on his knees, he sobs, he almost dies of joy.
"Give me back the paper," says the Duchessa.
She burns it over a candle.
"My name," she tells him, "must not appear. If you are taken and
executed, if you are weak, I may be also, and Fabrizio would be in
danger. I wish you to sacrifice yourself."
"I will perform the task faithfully, punctually and prudently."
"If I am discovered and convicted," the Duchessa goes on proudly, "I
do not wish to be accused of having corrupted you. Do not put him to
death until I give the signal. That signal will be the flooding of the
streets of Parma, of which you are bound to hear."
Ferrante, delighted by the Duchessa's tone of authority, takes his
leave. When he has gone, the Duchessa calls him back.
"Ferrante, sublime man!"
He returns.
"And your children?"
"Bah! You will provide for them."
"Look, here are my diamonds."
And she gives him a little olive-wood box.
"They are worth fifty thousand francs."
"Oh! Signora!" says Ferrante with a start of horror, "I may perhaps not
see you again. Take them, it is my wish."
Ferrante leaves her. The door closes behind him, the Duchessa again
calls him back. He sees her standing there, he comes back uneasily. The
great Sanseverina throws herself into his arms. Ferrante is on the point
of fainting. She allows him to kiss her, frees herself from his embrace
when he threatens to become disrespectful, and shews him the door.
She remains standing for some time and says to herself.
"That is the one man who has understood me; Fabrizio would be like that
if he could only know me."
I cannot lay too much stress on the merit of this scene. M. Beyle is not
in the least a preacher. He does not urge you on to regicide, he gives
you a fact, states it as it occurred. No one, not even a Republican,
feels the desire to kill a tyrant on reading it. It is the play of
private passions, that is all. It is a question of a duel which requires
extraordinary, but equally matched arms. The Duchessa makes use of Palla
to poison the Prince as the Prince makes use of one of Fabrizio's
enemies to poison Fabrizio. One can avenge oneself on a king, Coriolanus
avenged himself well on his country, Beaumarchais and Mirabeau avenged
themselves well on their period which despised them. This is not moral,
but the author has told you of it, and washes his hands of it as Tacitus
washes his of the crimes of Tiberius. "I am inclined to believe," he
says, "that the immoral delight in taking revenge which one finds in
Italy springs from the strength of imagination of that race; other races
do not forgive, they forget." Thus the moralist explains this energetic
people among whom we find so many inventors, who have the richest, the
finest imagination, with its accompanying drawbacks. This reflexion is
more profound than it appears at a first reading, it explains the
rhetorical stupidities which weigh down the Italians, the only race that
is comparable to the French, a race superior to the Russians or the
English, whose genius has the feminine fibre, that delicacy, that
majesty which make it in many respects superior to all other races. From
this point the Duchessa regains her advantage over the Prince. Hitherto,
she was weak and tricked in this great duel; Mosca, prompted by his
courtier's spirit, had been acting as second to the Prince. Now that her
revenge is assured, Gina feels her strength. Each step that her thoughts
take gives her happiness, she can play her part. The Tribune's courage
heightens hers. Lodovico is electrified by her. These three
conspirators, on whom Mosca shuts his eyes, while leaving his police
free to act against them if they notice anything, arrive at the most
extraordinary result.
The Minister has been the dupe of his mistress, he fully believed
himself to be in disgrace, as he deserved. If he had not been thoroughly
taken in, he could never have played the part of a forlorn lover, for
happiness admits of no concealment. That fire of the heart has its
smoke. But, after the fascination of Ferrante by the Duchessa, her joy
enlightens the Minister, he at last guesses her purpose, without knowing
how far she has gone.
Fabrizio's escape borders on the miraculous. It has required so much
physical strength and such an exercise of intelligence, that the dear
boy is on the point of death: the scent of his aunt's clothing and
handkerchief revives him. This slight detail, which is not forgotten
among a thousand other incidents, will delight those who are in love: it
is placed, as might be placed in a finale a melody which recalls the
sweetest elements of the life of love. All precautions have been
carefully taken, there is no indiscretion: Conte Mosca, who is present
in person at the expedition with more than two dozen spies, does not
receive a single report of it as Minister.
"Now I'm committing high treason," he says to himself, blind with joy.
Everyone has understood his orders without a word said, and escapes in
his own way. The business finished, each head has to think of and for
itself. Lodovico is the courier, he crosses the Po. Ah! When Fabrizio is
out of the reach of his crowned assassin, the Duchessa, who until then
had been crouching like a jaguar, coiled like a serpent hidden in the
undergrowth, flat as one of Cooper's Indians in the mud, supple as a
slave and feline as a deceitful woman, rises to her full height: the
panther shews her claws, the serpent is going to sting, the Indian to
utter his yell of triumph, she leaps for joy, she is mad. Lodovico, who
knows nothing of Ferrante Palla, who says of him in the common phrase:
"He is a poor man persecuted because of Napoleon!" Lodovico is afraid
that his mistress is going out of her mind. She gives him the small
property of Ricciarda. He trembles on receiving this regal gift. What
has he done to deserve it? "Conspire, and for Monsignore, why that is a
pleasure."
It is then, the author tells us, that the Duchessa allows herself to
commit an act not only horrible in the eyes of morality, but fatal to
the tranquillity of her life. We suppose, of course, that in this hour
of bliss, she will forgive the Prince. No.
"If you wish to acquire the property, you must do two things," she tells
Lodovico, "and without exposing yourself. You must go back at once
across the Po, illuminate my house at Sacca in such a way as to make
people think it is on fire. I have prepared everything for this
festivity, in case we succeeded. There are lamps and oil in the cellars.
Here is a line to my agent. Let the whole population of Sacca drink
themselves drunk, empty all my barrels and all my bottles. By the
Madonna! If I find one full bottle, one barrel with two fingers of wine
left in it, you lose Ricciarda! When that is done, return to Parma and
let the water out of the reservoir. Wine for my dear people at Sacca,
water for the town of Parma!"
This makes one shudder. It is the Italian spirit, which M. Hugo has
perfectly reproduced when he makes Lucrezia Borgia say: "You have given
me a ball at Venice, I offer you in return a supper at Ferrara." The two
speeches are equivalent. Lodovico sees in this nothing more than a
magnificent insolence and an exquisite joke. He repeats: "Wine for the
people of Sacca, water for the people of Parma!" Lodovico returns after
having carried out the Duchessa's orders, establishes her at Belgirate,
and takes Fabrizio, who has still the Austrian police to fear, to
Locarno, in Switzerland.
Fabrizio's escape, the illumination of Sacca throw the State of Parma
into utter confusion. Little attention is paid to the flooding of the
town. A similar event occurred at the time of the French invasion. A
horrible punishment awaits the Duchessa. She sees Fabrizio dying of love
for Clelia, resentful of being First Grand Vicar to the Archbishop and
so unable to marry his beloved.
In the arms of his aunt and on Lake Maggiore, he dreams of his dear
prison. What then are the sufferings of this woman who has ordered a
crime, who has so to speak brought down the moon from the sky by taking
this beloved boy out of prison, and who sees him so artless and simple,
thinking of other things, refusing to perceive anything, and not
allowing himself to succumb to what he had so wisely fled from in the
company of his Gina, his mother, his sister, his aunt, his friend who
longed to be something more than a friend to him, all this torture is
unspeakable; but, in the book, it is felt, it is seen. We are pained by
Fabrizio's desertion of the Sanseverina, although we are conscious that
the gratification of her love would be criminal. Fabrizio is not even
grateful. The ex-prisoner, like a Minister in retirement who dreams of
coalitions which will restore him to power, thinks only of his prison;
he sends for pictures of Parma, that city abhorrent to his aunt; he puts
one of the fortress in his bedroom. Finally, he writes a letter of
apology to General Conti for having escaped, so as to be able to say to
Clelia that he finds no happiness in liberty without her, and you can
imagine what effect this letter (it is taken as a masterpiece of
ecclesiastical irony) produces on the General: he swears that he will be
avenged. The Duchessa, terrified and brought back to a sense of
self-preservation by the futility of her revenge, takes a boatman from
each of the villages on Lake Maggiore; she makes them row her out to the
middle of the lake; then she tells them that a search may be made for
Fabrizio, who served under Napoleon at Waterloo, and bids them keep a
sharp watch; she makes herself loved, and obeyed; she pays well, and so
has a spy in every village; she gives each of them permission to enter
her room at any hour, even at night when she is asleep. One evening, at
Locarno, during a party, she hears of the death of the Prince of Parma.
She looks at Fabrizio.
"I have done this for him; I would have done things a thousand times
worse," she says to herself, "and look at him there, silent,
indifferent, dreaming about another!"
At this thought she faints. This fainting-fit may be her ruin. The
company gathers round her, Fabrizio thinks of Clelia: she sees him, she
shudders, she finds herself surrounded by all these curious people, an
archpriest, the local authorities, and so forth. She recovers the calm
of a great lady, and says:
"He was a great Prince, who was vilely slandered; it is an immense loss
for us.--Ah!" she says to herself, when she is alone, "it is now that I
have to pay for the transports of happiness and childish joy that I felt
in my _palazzo_ at Parma when I welcomed Fabrizio there on his return
from Naples. If I had said a word, all would have been over, I should
have left Mosca. Once he was with me, Clelia would never have meant
anything to Fabrizio. Clelia wins, she is twenty. I am almost twice her
age. I must die! _A woman of forty is no longer anything save for the
men who have loved her in her youth_!"
It is for this reflexion, profound in its shrewdness, suggested by grief
and almost entirely true, that I quote this passage. The Duchessa's
soliloquy is interrupted by a noise outside, at midnight.
"Good," she says, "they are coming to arrest me; so much the better, it
will occupy my mind, fighting them for my head."
It is nothing of the sort. Conte Mosca has sent her their most faithful
courier to inform her, before the rest of Europe, of recent events at
Parma, and of the details of the death of Ranuccio-Ernesto IV: there has
been a revolution, the Tribune Ferrante Palla has been on the verge of
triumph, he has spent the fifty thousand francs, the price of the
diamonds, on the cause of his dear Republic instead of giving them to
his children; the rising has been suppressed by Mosca, who served under
Napoleon in Spain, and who has displayed the courage of a soldier and
the coolness of a statesman; he has saved Rassi, which he will bitterly
repent; finally, he gives details of the accession to the throne of
Ranuccio-Ernesto V, a young prince who is enamoured of Signora
Sanseverina. The Duchessa is free to return. The Princess Dowager, who
adores her for reasons which the reader knows and has gathered from the
intrigues of the court at the time when the Duchessa reigned there,
writes her a charming letter, creates her Duchessa in her own right, and
Grand Mistress. It would not, however, be prudent for Fabrizio to return
at present, the sentence must be quashed by a retrial of the case.
The Duchessa conceals Fabrizio at Sacca, and returns to Parma
triumphant. Thus the subject revives of its own accord without effort,
without monotony. There is not the slightest resemblance between the
early favour enjoyed by the innocent Sanseverina, under Ranuccio-Ernesto
IV, and the favour enjoyed by the Duchessa who has had him poisoned,
under Ranuccio-Ernesto V. The young twenty-year-old Prince is madly in
love with her, the peril incurred by the criminal is balanced by the
boundless power enjoyed by the Dowager's Grand Mistress. This Louis XIII
on a small scale finds his Richelieu in Mosca. The great Minister,
during the riots, carried away by a lingering trace of zeal, of
enthusiasm, has called him a boy. The word has remained in the Prince's
heart, it has hurt him. Mosca is useful to him; but the Prince, who is
only twenty years old in politics, is fifty in self-esteem. Rassi is
working in secret, he searches among the people and through all Italy,
and learns that Ferrante Palla, who is as poor as Job, has sold nine or
ten diamonds at Genoa. During the underground burrowings of the Fiscal
General joy reigns at court. The Prince, a shy young man like all shy
young men, attacks the woman of forty, grows frenzied in his pursuit of
her; it is true that Gina, more beautiful than ever, does not look more
than thirty, she is happy, she is making Mosca thoroughly happy,
Fabrizio is saved, he is to be tried again, acquitted, and will be, when
his sentence is quashed. Coadjutor to the Archbishop, who is
seventy-eight years old, with the right of eventual succession.
Clelia alone causes the Duchessa any misgivings. As for the Prince, she
is amused by him. They act plays at court (those _commedie dell' arte_
in which each character invents the dialogue as he goes on, the outline
of the plot being posted up in the wings--a sort of glorified charade).
The Prince takes the lovers' parts, and Gina is always the leading lady.
Literally, the Grand Mistress is dancing upon a volcano. This part of
the work is charming. In the very middle of one of these plays, this is
what happens. Rassi has said to the Prince: "Does Your Highness choose
to pay a hundred thousand francs to find out the exact manner of His
august father's death?" He has had the hundred thousand francs, because
the Prince is a boy. Rassi has tried to corrupt the Duchessa's head
maid, this maid has told Mosca everything. Mosca has told her to let
herself be corrupted. Rassi requires one thing only, to have the
Duchessa's diamonds examined by two jewellers. Mosca posts counter-spies
and learns that one of these inquisitive jewellers is Rassi's brother.
Mosca appears, between the acts of the play, to warn the Duchessa, whom
he finds in the highest spirits.
"I have very little time," she says to Mosca, "but let us go into the
guard-room."
There she says with a laugh to her friend the Minister:
"You always scold me when I tell you unnecessary secrets; very well, it
was I who called Ernesto V to the throne; it was a case of avenging
Fabrizio, whom I loved far more than I love him to-day, though always
quite innocently. You will scarcely believe in my innocence, but that
does not matter, since you love me in spite of my crimes! Very well,
there is one crime in my life: Ferrante Palla had my diamonds. I did
worse, I let myself be kissed by him so that he should poison the man
who wished to poison our Fabrizio. Where is the harm?"
"And you tell me this in the guard-room?" says the Conte, _slightly
taken aback_!
This last expression is charming.
"It is because I am in a hurry," she says, "Rassi is on the track: but I
have never spoken of insurrection, I abhor Jacobins. Think it over, and
give me your advice after the play."
"I will give it you now," replies Mosca without hesitation. "You will
buttonhole the Prince behind the scenes, make him lose his head, but
without doing anything dishonourable, you understand."
The Duchessa is called to go on the stage, and returns behind the
scenes.
Ferrante Palla's farewell to his idol is one of the finest things in
this book, where there are so many fine things; but we come now to the
capital scene, to the scene which crowns the work, to the burning of the
papers in the case drawn up by Rassi, which the Grand Mistress obtains
from Ranuccio-Ernesto V and the Princess Dowager, a terrible scene, in
which she is now lost, now saved, at the whim of the mother and son who
feel themselves overpowered by the force of character of this sort of
Princesse des Ursins. This scene occupies only eight pages, but it is
without parallel in the art of literature. There is nothing analogous to
which it can be compared, it is unique. I say nothing of it, it is
sufficient to draw attention to it. The Duchessa triumphs, she destroys
the proofs and even carries away one of the documents for Mosca, who
takes note of the names of some of the witnesses and cries: "It was high
time, they were getting warm!" Rassi is in despair: the Prince has given
orders for a retrial of Fabrizio's case. Fabrizio, instead of making
himself a prisoner, as Mosca wishes, in the town prison, which is under
the Prime Minister's orders, returns at once to his beloved citadel,
where the General, who thought that his honour had been tarnished by the
escape, rigorously confines him with the intention of getting rid of
him. Mosca would have answered for him, with his life, in the town
prison; but in the citadel Fabrizio is helpless.
This news comes as a bolt from the blue to the Duchessa: she remains
speechless and unhearing. Fabrizio's love for Clelia bringing him back
to the place where death lies in wait for him and where the girl will
give him a moment's happiness for which he must pay with his life--the
thought of this crushes her, and Fabrizio's imminent danger is the last
straw.
This danger exists already, it is not created to fit the scene, it is
the result of the passions aroused by Fabrizio during his former
imprisonment, by his escape, by the fury of Rassi who has been forced to
sign the order for a fresh trial. And so, even in the most minute
details, the author loyally obeys the laws of the poetry of the novel.
This exact observation of the rules, whether it come from the
calculation, meditation, and natural deduction of a well chosen, well
developed and fruitful subject, or from the instinct peculiar to talent,
produces this powerful and permanent interest which we find in great, in
fine works of art.
Mosca, in despair, makes the Duchessa understand the impossibility of
getting a young Prince to believe that a prisoner can be poisoned in his
State, and offers to get rid of Rassi.
"But," he tells her, "you know how squeamish I am about that sort of
thing. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I still think of those two
spies whom I had shot in Spain."
"Rassi owes his life, then," replies the Duchessa, "to the fact that I
care more for you than for Fabrizio; I do not wish to poison the
evenings of the old age which we shall have to spend together."
The Duchessa hastens to the fortress, and is there convinced of
Fabrizio's peril; she goes to the Prince. The Prince is a boy who, as
the Minister has foreseen, does not understand the danger that can
threaten an innocent person in his State Prison. He declines to
dishonour himself, to pass judgment on his own justice. Finally, in view
of the imminence of the peril (the poison has been given), the Duchessa
wrests from him the order to set Fabrizio at liberty in exchange for a
promise to yield to this young Prince's desires. This scene has an
originality of its own after that of the burning of the papers. At that
time, Gina's only thought was for herself, now it is for Fabrizio.
Fabrizio once acquitted and appointed Coadjutor to the Archbishop with
the right of eventual succession, which is tantamount to being made
Archbishop, the Duchessa finds a way to elude the consequences of her
promise by one of those dilemmas which women who are not in love can
always find with a maddening coolness. She is to the end the woman of
great character whose career started as you have read. There follows a
change in the Ministry. Mosca leaves Parma with his wife, for the
Duchessa and he, both widowed, have now married. But nothing goes well,
and at the end of a year the Prince recalls Conte and Contessa Mosca.
Fabrizio is Archbishop and in high favour.
There follows the love of Clelia and Archbishop Fabrizio, which ends in
the death of Clelia, in that of a beloved child, and in the resignation
and withdrawal of the Archbishop, who dies, doubtless after a long
expiation, in the Charterhouse of Parma.
I explain this ending to you in a few words, since, in spite of
beautiful details, it is sketched rather than finished. If the author
had had to develop the romance of the end like that of the beginning, it
would have been difficult to know where to stop. Is there not a whole
drama in the love of a celibate priest? So there is a whole drama in the
love of the Coadjutor and Clelia. Book upon book!
Had M. Beyle some woman in his mind when he drew his Sanseverina? I
fancy so. For this statue, as for the Prince and the Prime Minister,
there must necessarily have been some model. Is she at Milan? Is she at
Rome, at Naples, at Florence? I cannot say. Although I am quite
convinced that there do exist women like the Sanseverina, though in very
small numbers, and that I know some myself, I believe also that the
author has perhaps enlarged the model and has completely idealised her.
In spite of this labour, which removes all similarity, one may find in
the Princesse B---- certain traits of the Sanseverina. Is she not
Milanese? Has she not passed through good and adverse fortune? Is she
not shrewd and witty?
You know now the framework of this immense edifice, and I have taken you
round it. My hasty analysis, bold, believe me, for it requires boldness
to undertake to give you an idea of a novel constructed out of incidents
as closely compressed as are those of _La Chartreuse de Parme_; my
analysis, dry as it may be, has outlined the masses for you, and you can
judge whether my praise is exaggerated. But it is difficult to enumerate
to you in detail the fine and delicate sculptures that enrich this solid
structure, to stop before the statuettes, the paintings, the landscapes,
the bas-reliefs which decorate it. This is what happened to me. At the
first reading, which took me quite by surprise, I found faults in the
book. On my reading it again, the _longueurs_ vanished, I saw the
necessity for the detail which, at first, had seemed ta me too long or
too diffuse. To give you a good account of it, I ran through the book
once more. Captivated then by the execution, I spent more time than I
had intended in the contemplation of this fine book, and everything
struck me as most harmonious, connected naturally or by artifice but
concordantly.
Here, however, are the errors which I pick out, not so much from the
point of view of art as in view of the sacrifices which every author
must learn to make to the majority.
If I found confusion on first reading the bode, my impression will be
that of the public, and therefore evidently this book is lacking in
method. M. Beyle has indeed disposed the events as they happened, or as
they ought to have happened; but he has committed, in his arrangement of
the facts, a mistake which many authors commit, by taking a subject true
in nature which is not true in art. When he sees a landscape, a great
painter takes care not to copy it slavishly, he has to give us not so
much its letter as its spirit. So, in his simple, artless and unstudied
manner of telling his story, M. Beyle has run the risk of appearing
confused. Merit which requires to be studied is in danger of remaining
unperceived. And so I could wish, in the interest of the book, that the
author had begun with his magnificent sketch of the battle of Waterloo,
that he had reduced everything which precedes it to some account given
by Fabrizio or about Fabrizio while he is lying in the village in
Flanders where he arrives wounded. Certainly, the work would gain in
lightness. The del Dongo father and son, the details about Milan, all
these things are not part of the book: the drama is at Parma, the
principal characters are the Prince and his son. Mosca, Rassi, the
Duchessa, Ferrante Palla, Lodovico, Clelia, her father, the Raversi,
Giletti, Marietta. Skilled advisers or friends endowed with simple
common sense might have procured the development of certain portions
which the author has not supposed to be as interesting as they are, and
would have called for the excision of several details, superfluous in
spite of their fineness. For instance, the work would lose nothing if
the Priore Blanès were to disappear entirely.
I will go farther, and will make no compromise, in favour of this fine
work, over the true principles of art. The law which governs everything
is that of unity in composition; whether you place this unity in the
central idea or in the plan of the book, without it there can be only
confusion. So, in spite of its title, the work is ended when Conte and
Contessa Mosca return to Parma and Fabrizio is Archbishop. The great
comedy of the court is finished. It is so well finished, and the author
has so clearly felt this, that it is in this place that he sets his
Moral, as our forerunners used to do at the end of their fables.
"One can conclude with this moral," he says: "the man who comes to a
court risks his happiness, if he is happy; and in any case makes his
future depend upon the intrigues of a chambermaid.
"On the other hand, in America, in the Republic, one has to waste one's
whole time paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street and
becoming as stupid as themselves; and there, there is no Opera."
If, beneath the Roman purple and with a mitre on his head, Fabrizio
loves Clelia, become Marchesa Crescenzi, and if you were telling us
about it, you would then wish to make the life of this young man the
subject of your book. But if you wished to describe the whole of
Fabrizio's life, you ought, being a man of such sagacity, to call your
book Fabrizio, or the Italian in the Nineteenth Century. In launching
himself upon such a career, Fabrizio ought not to have found himself
outshone by figures so typical, so poetical as are those of the two
Princes, the Sanseverina, Mosca, Ferrante Palla. Fabrizio ought to have
represented the young Italian of to-day. In making this young man the
principal figure of the drama, the author was under an obligation to
give him a large mind, to endow him with a feeling which would make him
superior to the men of genius who surround him, and which he lacks.
Feeling, in short, is equivalent to talent. _To feel_ is the rival of
_to understand as to act_ is the opposite of _to think_. The friend of a
man of genius can raise himself to his level by affection, by
understanding. In matters of the heart, an inferior man may prevail over
the greatest artist. There lies the justification of those women who
fall in love with imbeciles. So, in a drama, one of the most ingenious
resources of the artist is (in the case in which we suppose M. Beyle to
be) to make a hero superior by his feeling when he cannot by genius
compete with the people among whom he is placed. In this respect,
Fabrizio's part requires recasting. The genius of Catholicism ought to
urge him with its divine hand towards the _Charterhouse of Parma_, and
that genius ought from time to time to overwhelm him with the tidings of
heavenly grace. But then the Priore Blanès could not perform this part,
for it is impossible to cultivate judicial astrology and to be a saint
according to the Church. The book ought therefore to be either shorter
or longer.
Possibly the slowness of the beginning, possibly that ending which
begins a new book and in which the subject is abruptly strangled, will
damage its success, possibly they have already damaged it. M. Beyle has
moreover allowed himself certain repetitions, perceptible only to those
who know his earlier books; but such readers themselves are necessarily
connoisseurs, and so fastidious. M. Beyle, keeping in mind that great
principle: "Unlucky in love, as in the arts, who says too much!" ought
not to repeat himself, he, always concise and leaving much to be
guessed. In spite of his sphinx-like habit, he is less enigmatic here
than in his other works, and his true friends will congratulate him on
this.
The portraits are brief. A few words are enough for M. Beyle, who paints
his characters both by action and by dialogue; he does not weary one
with descriptions, he hastens to the drama and arrives at it by a word,
by a thought. His landscapes, traced with a somewhat dry touch which,
however, is suited to the country, are lightly done. He takes his stand
by a tree, on the spot where he happens to be; he shews you the lines of
the Alps which on all sides enclose the scene of action, and the
landscape is complete. The book is particularly valuable to travellers
who have strolled by the Lake of Como, over the Brianza, who have passed
under the outermost bastions of the Alps and crossed the plains of
Lombardy. The spirit of those scenes is finely revealed, their beauty is
well felt. One can see them.
The weak part of this book is the style, in so far as the arrangement of
the words goes, for the thought, which is eminently French, sustains the
sentences. The mistakes that M. Beyle makes are purely grammatical; he
is careless, incorrect, after the manner of seventeenth-century writers.
The quotations I have made shew what sort of faults he lets himself
commit. In one place, a discord of tenses between verbs, sometimes the
absence of a verb; here, again, sequences of _c'est_, of _ce que_, of
_que_, which weary the reader, and have the effect on his mind of a
journey in a badly hung carriage over a French road. These quite glaring
faults indicate a scamping of work. But, if the French language is a
varnish spread over thought, we ought to be as indulgent towards those
in whom it covers fine paintings as we are severe to those who shew
nothing but the varnish. If, in M. Beyle, this varnish is a little
yellow in places and inclined to scale off in others, he does at least
let us see a sequence of thoughts which are derived from one another
according to the laws of logic. His long sentence is ill constructed,
his short sentence lacks polish. He writes more or less in the style of
Diderot, who was not a writer; but the conception is great and strong;
the thought is original, and often well rendered. This system is not one
to be imitated. It would be too dangerous to allow authors to imagine
themselves to be profound thinkers.
M. Beyle is saved by the deep feeling that animates his thought. All
those to whom Italy is dear, who have studied or understood her, will
read _La Chartreuse de Parme_ with delight. The spirit, the genius, the
customs, the soul of that beautiful country live in this long drama that
is always engaging, in this vast fresco so well painted, so strongly
coloured, which moves the heart profoundly and satisfies the most
difficult, the most exacting mind. The Sanseverina is the Italian woman,
a figure as happily portrayed as Carlo Dolci's famous head of _Poetry_,
Allori's _Judith_, or Guercino's _Sibyl_ in the Manfredini gallery. In
Mosca he paints the man of genius in politics at grips with love. It is
indeed love without speech (the speeches are the weak point in
_Clarisse_), active love, always true to its own type, love stronger
than the call of duty, love, such as women dream of, such as gives an
additional interest to the least things in life. Fabrizio is quite the
young Italian of to-day at grips with the distinctly clumsy despotism
which suppresses the imagination of that fine country; but, as I have
said above, the dominant thought or the feeling which urges him to lay
aside his dignities and to end his life in a Charterhouse needs
development. This book is admirably expressive of love as it is felt in
the South. Obviously, the North does not love in this way. All these
characters have a heat, a fever of the blood, a vivacity of hand, a
rapidity of mind which is not to be found in the English nor in the
Germans nor in the Russians, who arrive at the same results only by
processes of revery, by the reasonings of a smitten heart, by the slow
rising of their sap. M. Beyle has in this respect given this book the
profound meaning, the feeling which guarantees the survival of a
literary conception. But unfortunately it is almost a secret doctrine,
which requires laborious study. _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is placed at
such a height, it requires in the reader so perfect a knowledge of the
court, the place, the people that I am by no means astonished at the
absolute silence with which such a book has been greeted. That is the
lot that awaits all books in which there is nothing vulgar. The secret
ballot in which vote one by one and slowly the superior minds who make
the name of such works, is not counted until long afterwards. Besides,
M. Beyle is not a courtier, he has the most profound horror of the
press. From largeness of character or from the sensitiveness of his
self-esteem, as soon as his book appears, he takes flight, leaves Paris,
travels two hundred and fifty leagues in order not to hear it spoken of.
He demands no articles, he does not haunt the footsteps of the
reviewers. He has behaved thus after the publication of each of his
books. I admire this pride of character or this sensitiveness of
self-esteem. Excuses there may be for mendicity, there can be none for
that quest for praise and articles on which modern authors go begging.
It is the mendicity, the pauperism of the mind. There are no great works
of art that have fallen into oblivion. The lies, the complacencies of
the pen cannot give life to a worthless book.
After the courage to criticise comes the courage to praise. Certainly it
is time someone did justice to M. Beyle's merit. Our age owes him much:
was it not he who first revealed to us Rossini, the finest genius in
music? He has pleaded constantly for that glory which France had not the
intelligence to make her own. Let us in turn plead for the writer who
knows Italy best, who avenges her for the calumnies of her conquerors,
who has so well explained her spirit and her genius.
I had met M. Beyle twice in society, in twelve years, before the day
when I took the liberty of congratulating him on _La Chartreuse de
Parme_ on meeting him in the Boulevard des Italiens. On each occasion,
his conversation has fully maintained the opinion I had formed of him
from his works. He tells stories with the spirit and grace which M.
Charles Nodier and M. de Latouche possess in a high degree. Indeed he
recalls the latter gentleman by the irresistible charm of his speech,
although his physique--for he is extremely stout--seems at first sight
to preclude refinement, elegance of manners; but he instantly disproves
this suspicion, like Dr. Koreff, the friend of Hoffmann. He has a fine
forehead, a keen and piercing eye, a sardonic mouth; in short, he has
altogether the physiognomy of his talent. He retains in conversation
that enigmatic turn, that eccentricity which leads him never to sign the
already illustrious name of Beyle, to call himself one day Cotonnet,
another Frédéric. He is, I am told, the nephew of the famous and
industrious Daru, one of the strong arms of Napoleon. M. Beyle was
naturally in the Emperor's service; 1815 tore him, necessarily, from his
career, he passed from Berlin to Milan, and it is to the contrast
between the life of the North and that of the South, which impressed
him, that we are indebted for this writer. M. Beyle is one of the
superior men of our time. It is difficult to explain how this observer
of the first order, this profound diplomat who, whether in his writings
or in his speech, has furnished so many proofs of the loftiness of his
ideas and the extent of his practical knowledge should find himself
nothing more than Consul at Civita-vecchia. No one could be better
qualified to represent France at Rome. M. Mérimée knew M. Beyle
early and takes after him; but the master is more elegant and has more
ease. M. Beyle's works are many in number and are remarkable for
fineness of observation and for the abundance of their ideas. Almost all
of them deal with Italy. He was the first to give us exact information
about the terrible case of the Cenci; but he has not sufficiently
explained the causes of the execution, which was independent of the
trial, and due to factional clamour, to the demands of avarice. His book
_De l'amour_ is superior to M. de Sénancour's, he shews affinity to the
great doctrines of Cabanis and the School of Paris; but he fails by the
lack of method which, as I have already said, spoils _La Chartreuse de
Parme_. He has ventured, in this treatise, upon the word
_crystallisation_ to explain the phenomenon of the birth of this
sentiment, a word which has been taken as a joke, but will survive on
account of its profound accuracy. M. Beyle has been writing since 1817.
He began with a certain show of Liberalism; but I doubt whether this
great calculator can have let himself be taken in by the stupidities of
Dual Chamber government. _La Chartreuse de Parme_ has an underlying bias
which is certainly not against Monarchy. He finds fault with what he
admires, he is a Frenchman.
M. de Chateaubriand said, in a preface to the eleventh edition of
_Atala_, that his book in no way resembled the previous editions, so
thoroughly had he revised it. M. le Comte de Maistre admits having
rewritten _Le Lépreux de la vallée d'Aoste_ seventeen times. I hope
that M. Beyle also will set to work going over, polishing _La Chartreuse
de Parme_, and will stamp it with the imprint of perfection, the emblem
of irreproachable beauty which MM. de Chateaubriand and de Maistre have
given to their precious books.
[Footnote 1: So Balzac, reading _les petites mains les plus gracieuses_.
Stendhal's words are _les petites mines_, and he makes the lady a
Marchesa. Balzac's quotations are not, as a rule, textually accurate,
but his analysis of the story is admirable.
C. K. S. M.]
[Footnote 2: What a phrase, indeed. But it is the Duchessa, not Mosca,
who gives this advice to Fabrizio, at Piacenza, and it is the party
"opposite to the one he has served all his life" that he is to be flung
into.
C. K. S. M.]
This article opened the third and concluding number of Balzac's _Revue
Parisienne_, dated September 25, 1840. Each of the earlier numbers had
opened with a story, viz.; _Z. Marcas_ and _Les Fantaisies de Claudine_
(_Un Prince de la Bohème_) afterwards embodied in the _Comédie
Humaine_. This _Etude sur M. Beyle_ will be found in _Œuvres complètes
de H. de Balzac--XXIII--Œuvres diverses--septième partie--Essais
historiques et politiques_--Paris, Michel Lévy Frères, Editeurs, &c.,
873, pages 687 to 738. It is also reprinted in Lévy's 1853 edition of
_La Chartreuse de Parme_.
BEYLE'S REPLY TO BALZAC
On receiving the _Revue Parisienne_, Beyle at once wrote to Balzac the
letter a translation of which follows. This letter he seems to have
entrusted to his friend Romain Colomb, afterwards his literary executor,
in whose hands it still remained six months later. As published by
Colomb, the letter includes the text actually addressed to Balzac and
the draft here appended to it, and it so figures in _Stendhal: Œuvres
Posthumes: Correspondance Inédite précédée d'une Introduction par
Prosper Mérimée de l'Académie Française_: Vol. II, pp. 293-299
(Calmann-Lévy). The correct text was established by M. Paul Arbelet in
the _Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France_, Oct.-Dec., 1917, pp.
548 sqq. _La véritable lettre de Stendhal_, and reprinted by MM. G.
Grès & Cie. in their edition of _La Chartreuse de Parme_ (1922).
Civita-vecchia, 30th October, 1840.
Last night, Sir, I received a great surprise. No one, I think, has ever
been so well treated in a Review, and by the best judge of the subject.
You have taken pity on an orphan left wandering in the street. I have
made a fitting response to this kindness, I read the review last night,
and this morning I have cut down to four or five pages the fifty-four
opening pages[3] of the work which you have introduced to the world.
The confection of literature would have disgusted me with all pleasure
in writing; I have dismissed all rejoicings over the printed page, to a
time twenty or thirty years hence. Some literary rag-picker may make the
discovery of the works whose merit you so strangely exaggerate.
Your illusion goes a long way, _Phèdre_, for instance. I may admit to
you that I was shocked, I who am quite well-disposed towards the author.
Since you have taken the trouble to read this novel three times, I shall
have a number of questions to ask you at our next meeting on the
boulevard.
1. Am I allowed to call Fabrizio _our_ hero? It was a question of not
repeating the name Fabrizio too often.
2. Ought I to suppress the episode of _Fausta_, which has turned out
unduly long? Fabrizio seizes the opportunity that is offered him to shew
to the Duchessa that he is not susceptible to _love_.
3. The fifty-four opening pages seem to me a graceful introduction. I
did indeed feel some misgivings when correcting the proofs, but I
thought of those boring first half-volumes of Walter Scott, and of the
endless preamble to the divine _Princesse de Clèves_.
I abhor an involved style, and I must admit to you that many pages of
the _Chartreuse_ were printed from my original dictation. As children
say: I shall not return to it again. I think, however, that since the
destruction of the court, in 1792, the part played by form becomes more
exiguous daily. Were M. Villemain, whom I cite as the most distinguished
of our Academicians, to translate the _Chartreuse_ into French, he would
require three volumes to express what I have given in two. The majority
of scoundrels being emphatic and eloquent, people will take a dislike to
the declamatory tone. At seventeen I came near to fighting a duel over
the "indeterminate crest of the forests" of M. de Chateaubriand, who
numbered many admirers in the 6th Dragoons. I have never read _La
Chaumière indienne_, I cannot abide M. de Maistre.
My Homer is the _Memoirs_ of Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr. Montesquieu and
Fénelon's _Dialogues_ strike me as well written. Except for Madame de
Mortsauf and her companions, I have read nothing of what has been
printed in the last thirty years. I read Ariosto, whose stories I love.
The Duchessa is copied from Correggio. I see the future history of
French literature in the history of painting. We have reached the stage
of the pupils of Pietro da Cortona, who worked rapidly and strained all
his expressions, like Madame Cottin who makes the hewn stones of the
Borromean Islands walk. After this novel, I have no . . .[4] While
composing the Chartreuse, to acquire the tone, I used to read every
morning two or three pages of the _Code Civil_.
Permit a coarse expression: I do not wish to b---- the heart of the
reader. This, poor reader lets ambitious phrases pass, such as "the wind
that uproots the waves," but they come back to him after the moment of
emotion. I wish on the other hand that, if the reader thinks of Conte
Mosca, he shall find nothing to cut down.
4. I am going to introduce, in the _foyer_ of the Opera, Bassi and
Riscara, sent to Paris as spies after Waterloo by Ranuccio-Ernesto IV.
Fabrizio returning from Amiens will be struck by their Italian
appearance and clipped Milanese, which these watchers imagine to be
understood by no one. Everyone tells me that I must announce my
characters. I shall greatly reduce the good Priore Blanès. I thought
that the story needed characters who do nothing, and only touch the
heart of the reader and dispel the air of romance.
You are going to think me a monster of pride. What, your inward sense
will say, this creature, not content with what I have done for him, a
thing without parallel in this century, still wishes to be praised for
his style!
I see but one rule: _to be clear_. If I am not clear, all my world
crumbles to nothing. I wish to speak of what is occurring in the heart
of Mosca, of the Duchessa, of Clelia. It is a country into which hardly
penetrates the gaze of the newly rich, such as the Latinist Master of
the Mint, M. le Comte Roy, M. Laffitte, etc., etc., etc., the gaze of
the grocer, the worthy paterfamilias, etc., etc.
If, to the obscurity of the matter, I add the obscurities of style of M.
Villemain, of Madame Sand, etc. (supposing me to have the rare privilege
of being able to write like those _choregi_ of good style), if I add to
the difficulty of the subject the obscurities of this vaunted style, no
one in the world will understand the struggle between the Duchessa and
Ernesto IV. The style of M. de Chateaubriand and M. de Villemain seems
to me to say: 1. a number of pleasant little things, but things not
worth saying (like the style of Ausonius, Claudian, etc.); 2. a number
of little _insincerities_, pleasant to listen to. These great
Academicians would have seen the public go mad over their writings, had
they been given to the world in 1780; their chance of greatness depended
upon the old _régime_.
In proportion as the semi-intelligent become more numerous, the part
played by form decreases. If the _Chartreuse_ were translated into
French by Madame Sand, she would make it a success, but, in order to
express what there is in my two volumes, she would need three or four.
Weigh this excuse.
The semi-intelligent puts above everything else the verse of Racine, for
he can understand what is meant by an unfinished line; but every day his
verse becomes a less important factor in Racine's merit. The public, as
it grows more numerous, less sheeplike, requires a greater quantity of
_little actual facts_, as to a passion, a situation in real life, etc.
How often do we find Voltaire, Racine, etc., all of them in fact except
Corneille, obliged to _cap_ their lines for the sake of the rhyme; well,
these capping lines occupy the place that should properly be filled by
little actual facts.
In fifty years' time M. Bignan, and the Bignans who write in prose will
have so wearied their public with productions that are elegant and
devoid of any other merit, that the semi-intelligent will be in great
difficulties; their vanity requiring them always to speak of literature
and to make a pretence of thought, what will become of them when they
can no longer attach themselves to form? They will end by making their
god of Voltaire. Wit lasts no more than two centuries; in 1978, Voltaire
will be Voiture; but _Le Père Goriot_ will still be _Le Père Goriot_.
Perhaps the semi-intelligent will be so distressed at no longer having
their beloved rules to admire that it is highly possible that they will
grow disgusted with literature and take to religion. All political
rascals having a declamatory and eloquent tone, people will have grown
sick of this in 1880. Then perhaps they will read the _Chartreuse_.
[The following passage occurs among the Beyle manuscripts at Grenoble,
and was added to the printed text of the letter by Colomb. It appears
rather to be alternative to some of the preceding paragraphs.]
The part played by _form_ becomes more exiguous daily. Take Hume;
imagine a History of France from 1780 to 1840, written with Hume's sound
sense; it would be read, even if it were written in patois; it[5] is
written like the _Code Civil_. I am going to correct the style of the
_Chartreuse_, since it hurts you, but I shall find it most difficult. I
do not admire the style now in fashion, I have no patience with it. I
see Claudians, Senecas, Ausoniuses. I have been told for the last year
that one ought now and then to relax the reader's attention by
describing scenery, dresses. These things have bored me so in other
writers! I shall try.
As for immediate success, of which I should never have thought but for
the _Revue Parisienne_, it is quite fifteen years since I said to
myself: I should become a candidate for the Academy if I won the hand of
Mademoiselle Bertin, who would have my praises sung three times weekly.
When society is no longer tainted with common upstarts, valuing above
everything else nobility, just because they are ignoble, it will no
longer be on its knees before the press of the aristocracy. Before 1793
good company was the true judge of books, now it is haunted by the fear
of another 1793, it is frightened, it is no longer a judge. Look at the
catalogue which a little bookseller near Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin (Rue du
Bac, about No. 110) supplies to the nobility, his neighbours. It is the
argument that has most convinced me of the impossibility of pleasing
these timid creatures, stupefied by idleness.
I have not in the least copied M. de Metternich, whom I have not seen
since 1810, at Saint-Cloud, when he wore a bracelet of the hair of
Caroline Murat, who was such a beauty then. I feel no regret for all
that is destined not to happen. I am a fatalist, and hide from it. I
imagine that I shall perhaps have a little success about 1860 or '80.
Then there will be very little said of M. de Metternich, and even less
of the petty Prince. Who was Prime Minister of England in the time of
Malherbe? If I have not the misfortune to hit upon a Cromwell, I am sure
of a nonentity.
Death makes us change places with these people. They can do anything
with our bodies during their lives, but, at the moment of death,
oblivion enwraps them for ever. Who will speak of M. de Villèle, of M.
de Martignac, in a hundred years' time? M. de Talleyrand himself will be
preserved only by his _Memoirs_, if he has left good ones, while _Le
Roman comique_ is to-day what _Le Père Goriot_ will be in 1980. It is
Scarron who makes known the name of the Rothschild of his day, M. de
Montauron, who was also, to the extent of fifty louis, the protector of
Corneille.
You have well felt, Sir, with the tact of a man who has acted, that the
_Chartreuse_ could not deal with a great State, such as France, Spain,
Vienna, on account of the administrative detail. I was left with the
petty Princes of Germany and Italy.
But the Germans are so much on their knees before a riband, they are
such fools! I spent several years among them, and have forgotten their
language, out of contempt for them. You can easily see that my
characters could not be Germans. If you follow this idea, you will find
that I have been led by the hand to an extinct dynasty, to a Farnese,
the least obscure of these _extinct_ personages, on account of the
Generals, his grandsires.
I take a character well-known to myself, I leave him the habits he has
contracted in the art of going out every morning in pursuit of pleasure,
then I give him more intelligence. I have never seen Signora di
Belgiojoso. Rassi was a German; I have talked to him hundreds of times.
I picked up the Prince while staying at Saint-Cloud in 1810 and 1811.
Ouf! I hope that you will have read this treatise three times. You say,
Sir, that you do not know English: you have in Paris the _bourgeois_
style of Walter Scott in the heavy prose of M. Delécluze, editor of the
_Débats_, and author of a _Mademoiselle de Liron_ which has something
in it. Walter Scott's prose is inelegant and above all pretentious. One
sees a dwarf who is determined not to lose an inch of his stature.
This astounding article, such as no writer has ever received from
another, I have read, I now make bold to confess to you, with shouts of
laughter, whenever I came to an encomium that was at all strong, and I
met them at every turn. I could see the expression on the faces of my
friends as they read it.
For instance the Minister d'Argout, being then Auditor to the Council of
State, was my equal and, moreover, what is known as a friend; 1830
comes, he is a Minister, his clerks, whom I do not know, think that
there are at least thirty artists. . . .
[Footnote 3: _i.e._, Chapters I and II.
C. K. S. M.]
[Footnote 4: This sentence is left unfinished at the foot of a page, the
next page beginning with "While composing," etc.]
[Footnote 5: This seems to refer to the _Chartreuse_.
C. K. S. M.]
_THE WORKS OF STENDHAL_
I
THE CHARTERHOUSE
OF PARMA
VOLUME ONE
_TO THE READER_
It was in the winter of 1830 and three hundred leagues from Paris that
this tale was written; thus it contains no allusion to the events of
1839.
Many years before 1830, at the time when our Armies were overrunning
Europe, chance put me in possession of a billeting order on the house of
a Canon: this was at Padua, a charming town in Italy; my stay being
prolonged, we became friends.
Passing through Padua again towards the end of 1830, I hastened to the
house of the good Canon: he himself was dead, that I knew, but I wished
to see once again the room in which we had passed so many pleasant
evenings, evenings on which I had often looked back since. I found there
the Canon's nephew and his wife who welcomed me like an old friend.
Several people came in, and we did not break up until a very late hour;
the nephew sent out to the Caffè Pedrocchi for an excellent _zabaione_.
What more than anything kept us up was the story of the Duchessa
Sanseverina, to which someone made an allusion, and which the nephew was
good enough to relate from beginning to end, in my honour.
"In the place to which I am going," I told my friends, "I am not likely
to find evenings like this, and, to while away the long hours of
darkness, I shall make a novel out of your story."
"In that case," said the nephew, "let me give you my uncle's journal,
which, under the heading Parma, mentions several of the intrigues of
that court, in the days when the Duchessa's word was law there; but,
have a care! this story is anything but moral, and now that you pride
yourselves in France on your gospel purity, it may win you the
reputation of an _assassin_."
I publish this tale without any alteration from the manuscript of 1830,
a course which may have two drawbacks:
The first for the reader: the characters being Italians will perhaps
interest him less, hearts in that country differing considerably from
hearts in France: the Italians are sincere, honest folk and, not taking
offence, say what is in their minds; it is only when the mood seizes
them that they shew any vanity; which then becomes passion, and goes by
the name of _puntiglio_. Lastly, poverty is not, with them, a subject
for ridicule.
The second drawback concerns the author.
I confess that I have been so bold as to leave my characters with their
natural asperities; but, on the other hand--this I proclaim aloud--I
heap the most moral censure upon many of their actions. To what purpose
should I give them the exalted morality and other graces of French
characters, who love money above all things, and sin scarcely ever from
motives of hatred or love? The Italians in this tale are almost the
opposite. Besides, it seems to me that, whenever one takes a stride of
two hundred leagues from South to North, the change of scene that occurs
is tantamount to a fresh tale. The Canon's charming niece had known and
indeed had been greatly devoted to the Duchessa Sanseverina, and begs me
to alter nothing in her adventures, which are reprehensible.
23rd January, 1839.
THE CHARTERHOUSE
OF PARMA
CHAPTER ONE
On the 15th of May, 1796, General Bonaparte made his entry into Milan at
the head of that young army which had shortly before crossed the Bridge
of Lodi and taught the world that after all these centuries Cæsar and
Alexander had a successor. The miracles of gallantry and genius of which
Italy was a witness in the space of a few months aroused a slumbering
people; only a week before the arrival of the French, the Milanese still
regarded them as a mere rabble of brigands, accustomed invariably to
flee before the troops of His Imperial and Royal Majesty; so much at
least was reported to them three times weekly by a little news-sheet no
bigger than one's hand, and printed on soiled paper.
In the Middle Ages the Republicans of Lombardy had given proof of a
valour equal to that of the French, and deserved to see their city rased
to the ground by the German Emperors. Since they had become _loyal
subjects_, their great occupation was the printing of sonnets upon
handkerchiefs of rose-coloured taffeta whenever the marriage occurred of
a young lady belonging to some rich or noble family. Two or three years
after that great event in her life, the young lady in question used to
engage a devoted admirer: sometimes the name of the _cicisbeo_ chosen by
the husband's family occupied an honourable place in the marriage
contract. It was a far cry from these effeminate ways to the profound
emotions aroused by the unexpected arrival of the French army. Presently
there sprang up a new and passionate way of life. A whole people
discovered, on the 15th of May, 1796, that everything which until then
it had respected was supremely ridiculous, if not actually hateful. The
departure of the last Austrian regiment marked the collapse of the old
ideas: to risk one's life became the fashion. People saw that in order
to be really happy after centuries of cloying sensations, it was
necessary to love one's country with a real love and to seek out heroic
actions. They had been plunged in the darkest night by the continuation
of the jealous despotism of Charles V and Philip II; they overturned
these monarchs' statues and immediately found themselves flooded with
daylight. For the last half-century, as the _Encyclopædia_ and Voltaire
gained ground in France, the monks had been dinning into the ears of the
good people of Milan that to learn to read, or for that matter to learn
anything at all was a great waste of labour, and that by paying one's
exact tithe to one's parish priest and faithfully reporting to him all
one's little misdeeds, one was practically certain of having a good
place in Paradise. To complete the debilitation of this people once so
formidable and so rational, Austria had sold them, on easy terms, the
privilege of not having to furnish any recruits to her army.
_MILAN IN 1796_
In 1796, the Milanese army was composed of four and twenty rapscallions
dressed in scarlet, who guarded the town with the assistance of four
magnificent regiments of Hungarian Grenadiers. Freedom of morals was
extreme, but passion very rare; otherwise, apart from the inconvenience
of having to repeat everything to one's parish priest, on pain of ruin
even in this world, the good people of Milan were still subjected to
certain little monarchical interferences which could not fail to be
vexatious. For instance, the Archduke, who resided at Milan and governed
in the name of the Emperor, his cousin, had had the lucrative idea of
trading in corn. In consequence, an order prohibiting the peasants from
selling their grain until His Highness had filled his granaries.
In May, 1796, three days after the entry of the French, a young painter
in miniature, slightly mad, named Gros, afterwards famous, who had come
with the army, overhearing in the great Caffè dei Servi (which was then
in fashion) an account of the exploits of the Archduke, who moreover was
extremely stout, picked up the list of ices which was printed on a sheet
of coarse yellow paper. On the back of this he drew the fat Archduke; a
French soldier was stabbing him with his bayonet in the stomach, and
instead of blood there gushed out an incredible quantity of corn. What
we call a lampoon or caricature was unknown in this land of crafty
despotism. The drawing, left by Gros on the table of the Caffè dei
Servi, seemed a miracle fallen from heaven; it was engraved and printed
during the night, and next day twenty thousand copies of it were sold.
The same day, there were posted up notices of a forced loan of six
millions, levied to supply the needs of the French army which, having
just won six battles and conquered a score of provinces, wanted nothing
now but shoes, breeches, jackets and caps.
The mass of prosperity and pleasure which burst into Lombardy in the
wake of these French ragamuffins was so great that only the priests and
a few nobles were conscious of the burden of this levy of six millions,
shortly to be followed by a number of others. These French soldiers
laughed and sang all day long; they were all under twenty-five years of
age, and their Commander in Chief, who had reached twenty-seven, was
reckoned the oldest man in his army. This gaiety, this youthfulness,
this irresponsibility furnished a jocular reply to the furious
preachings of the monks, who, for six months, had been announcing from
the pulpit that the French were monsters, obliged, upon pain of death,
to burn down everything and to cut off everyone's head. With this
object, each of their regiments marched with a guillotine at its head.
In the country districts one saw at the cottage doors the French soldier
engaged in dandling the housewife's baby in his arms, and almost every
evening some drummer, scraping a fiddle, would improvise a ball. Our
country dances proving a great deal too skilful and complicated for the
soldiers, who for that matter barely knew them themselves, to be able to
teach them to the women of the country, it was the latter who shewed the
young Frenchmen the _Monferrina_, _Salterello_ and other Italian dances.
The officers had been lodged, as far as possible, with the wealthy
inhabitants; they had every need of comfort. A certain lieutenant, for
instance, named Robert, received a billeting order on the _palazzo_ of
the Marchesa del Dongo. This officer, a young conscript not
over-burdened with scruples, possessed as his whole worldly wealth, when
he entered this _palazzo_, a scudo of six francs which he had received
at Piacenza. After the crossing of the Bridge of Lodi he had taken from
a fine Austrian officer, killed by a ball, a magnificent pair of nankeen
pantaloons, quite new, and never did any garment come more opportunely.
His officer's epaulettes were of wool, and the cloth of his tunic was
stitched to the lining of the sleeves so that its scraps might hold
together; but there was something even more distressing; the soles of
his shoes were made out of pieces of soldiers' caps, likewise picked up
on the field of battle, somewhere beyond the Bridge of Lodi. These
makeshift soles were tied on over his shoes with pieces of string which
were plainly visible, so that when the majordomo appeared at the door
of Lieutenant Robert's room bringing him an invitation to dine with the
Signora Marchesa, the officer was thrown into the utmost confusion. He
and his orderly spent the two hours that divided him from this fatal
dinner in trying to patch up the tunic a little and in dyeing black,
with ink, those wretched strings round his shoes. At last the dread
moment arrived. "Never in my life did I feel more ill at ease,"
Lieutenant Robert told me; "the ladies expected that I would terrify
them, and I was trembling far more than they were. I looked down at my
shoes and did not know how to walk gracefully. The Marchesa del Dongo,"
he went on, "was then in the full bloom of her beauty: you have seen her
for yourself, with those lovely eyes of an angelic sweetness, and the
dusky gold of her hair which made such a perfect frame for the oval of
that charming face. I had in my room a _Herodias_ by Leonardo da Vinci,
which might have been her portrait. Mercifully, I was so overcome by her
supernatural beauty that I forgot all about my clothes. For the last two
years I had been seeing nothing that was not ugly and wretched, in the
mountains behind Genoa: I ventured to say a few words to her to express
my delight.
"But I had too much sense to waste any time upon compliments. As I was
turning my phrases I saw, in a dining-room built entirely of marble, a
dozen flunkeys and footmen dressed in what seemed to me then the height
of magnificence. Just imagine, the rascals had not only good shoes on
their feet, but silver buckles as well. I could see them all, out of the
corner of my eye, staring stupidly at my coat and perhaps at my shoes
also, which cut me to the heart. I could have frightened all these
fellows with a word; but how was I to put them in their place without
running the risk of offending the ladies? For the Marchesa, to fortify
her own courage a little, as she has told me a hundred times since, had
sent to fetch from the convent where she was still at school Gina del
Dongo, her husband's sister, who was afterwards that charming Contessa
Pietranera: no one, in prosperity, surpassed her in gaiety and sweetness
of temper, just as no one surpassed her in courage and serenity of soul
when fortune turned against her.
"Gina, who at that time might have been thirteen but looked more like
eighteen, a lively, downright girl, as you know, was in such fear of
bursting out laughing at the sight of my costume that she dared not eat;
the Marchesa, on the other hand, loaded me with constrained civilities;
she could see quite well the movements of impatience in my eyes. In a
word, I cut a sorry figure, I chewed the bread of scorn, a thing which
is said to be impossible for a Frenchman. At length, a heaven-sent idea
shone in my mind: I set to work to tell the ladies of my poverty and of
what we had suffered for the last two years in the mountains behind
Genoa where we were kept by idiotic old Generals. There, I told them, we
were paid in _assignats_ which were not legal tender in the country, and
given three ounces of bread daily. I had not been speaking for two
minutes before there were tears in the good Marchesa's eyes, and Gina
had grown serious.
"'What, Lieutenant,' she broke in, 'three ounces of bread!'
"'Yes, Signorina; but to make up for that the issue ran short three days
in the week, and as the peasants on whom we were billeted were even
worse off than ourselves, we used to hand on some of our bread to them.'
"On leaving the table, I offered the Marchesa my arm as far as the door
of the drawing-room, then hurried back and gave the servant who had
waited upon me at dinner that solitary scudo of six francs upon the
spending of which I had built so many castles in the air.
"A week later," Robert went on, "when it was satisfactorily established
that the French were not guillotining anyone, the Marchese del Dongo
returned from his castle of Grianta on the Lake of Como, to which he had
gallantly retired on the approach of the army, abandoning to the
fortunes of war his young and beautiful wife and his sister. The hatred
that this Marchese felt for us was equal to his fear, that is to say
immeasurable: his fat face, pale and pious, was an amusing spectacle
when he was being polite to me. On the day after his return to Milan, I
received three ells of cloth and two hundred francs out of the levy of
six millions; I renewed my wardrobe, and became cavalier to the ladies,
for the season of balls was beginning."
Lieutenant Robert's story was more or less that of all the French
troops; instead of laughing at the wretched plight of these poor
soldiers, people were sorry for them and came to love them.
This period of unlooked-for happiness and wild excitement lasted but two
short years; the frenzy had been so excessive and so general that it
would be impossible for me to give any idea of it, were it not for this
historical and profound reflexion: these people had been living in a
state of boredom for the last hundred years.
The thirst for pleasure natural in southern countries had prevailed in
former times at the court of the Visconti and Sforza, those famous Dukes
of Milan. But from the year 1524, when the Spaniards conquered the
Milanese, and conquered them as taciturn, suspicious, arrogant masters,
always in dread of revolt, gaiety had fled. The subject race, adopting
the manners of their masters, thought more of avenging the least insult
by a dagger-blow than of enjoying the fleeting hour.
This frenzied joy, this gaiety, this thirst for pleasure, this tendency
to forget every sad or even reasonable feeling were carried to such a
pitch, between the 15th of May, 1796, when the French entered Milan, and
April, 1799, when they were driven out again after the battle of
Cassano, that instances have been cited of old millionaire merchants,
old money-lenders, old scriveners who, during this interval, quite
forgot to pull long faces and to amass money.
At the most it would have been possible to point to a few families
belonging to the higher ranks of the nobility, who had retired to their
palaces in the country, as though in a sullen revolt against the
prevailing high spirits and the expansion of every heart. It is true
that these noble and wealthy families had been given a distressing
prominence in the allocation of the forced loans exacted for the French
army.
The Marchese del Dongo, irritated by the spectacle of so much gaiety,
had been one of the first to return to his magnificent castle of
Grianta, on the farther side of Como, whither his ladies took with them
Lieutenant Robert. This castle, standing in a position which is perhaps
unique in the world, on a plateau one hundred and fifty feet above that
sublime lake, a great part of which it commands, had been originally a
fortress. The del Dongo family had constructed it in the fifteenth
century, as was everywhere attested by marble tablets charged with their
arms; one could still see the drawbridges and deep moats, though the
latter, it must be admitted, had been drained of their water; but with
its walls eighty feet in height and six in thickness, this castle was
safe from assault, and it was for this reason that it was dear to the
timorous Marchese. Surrounded by some twenty-five or thirty retainers
whom he supposed to be devoted to his person, presumably because he
never opened his mouth except to curse them, he was less tormented by
fear than at Milan.
This fear was not altogether groundless: he was in most active
correspondence with a spy posted by Austria on the Swiss frontier three
leagues from Grianta, to contrive the escape of the prisoners taken on
the field of battle; conduct which might have been viewed in a serious
light by the French Generals.
The Marchese had left his young wife at Milan; she looked after the
affairs of the family there, and was responsible for providing the sums
levied on the _casa del Dongo_ (as they say in Italy); she sought to
have these reduced, which obliged her to visit those of the nobility who
had accepted public office, and even some highly influential persons who
were not of noble birth. A great event now occurred in this family. The
Marchese had arranged the marriage of his young sister Gina with a
personage of great wealth and the very highest birth; but he powdered
his hair; in virtue of which, Gina received him with shouts of laughter,
and presently took the rash step of marrying the Conte Pietranera. He
was, it is true, a very fine gentleman, of the most personable
appearance, but ruined for generations past in estate, and to complete
the disgrace of the match, a fervent supporter of the new ideas.
Pietranera was a sub-lieutenant in the Italian Legion; this was the last
straw for the Marchese.
After these two years of folly and happiness, the Directory in Paris,
giving itself the airs of a sovereign firmly enthroned, began to shew a
mortal hatred of everything that was not commonplace. The incompetent
Generals whom it imposed on the Army of Italy lost a succession of
battles in those same plains of Verona, which had witnessed two years
before the prodigies of Arcole and Lonato. The Austrians again drew near
to Milan; Lieutenant Robert, who had been promoted to the command of a
battalion and had been wounded at the battle of Cassano, came to lodge
for the last time in the house of his friend the Marchesa del Dongo.
Their parting was a sad one; Robert set forth with Conte Pietranera who
followed the French in their retirement on Novi. The young Contessa, to
whom her brother refused to pay her marriage portion, followed the army,
riding in a cart.
Then began that period of reaction and a return to the old ideas, which
the Milanese call _i tredici mesi_ (the thirteen months), because as it
turned out their destiny willed that this return to stupidity should
endure for thirteen months only, until Marengo. Everyone who was old,
bigoted, morose, reappeared at the head of affairs, and resumed the
leadership of society; presently the people who had remained faithful to
the sound doctrines published a report in the villages that Napoleon had
been hanged by the Mamelukes in Egypt, as he so richly deserved.
Among these men who had retired to sulk on their estates and came back
now athirst for vengeance, the Marchese del Dongo distinguished himself
by his rabidity; the extravagance of his sentiments carried him
naturally to the head of his party. These gentlemen, quite worthy people
when they were not in a state of panic, but who were always trembling,
succeeded in getting round the Austrian General: a good enough man at
heart, he let himself be persuaded that severity was the best policy,
and ordered the arrest of one hundred and fifty patriots: quite the best
men to be found in Italy at the time.
They were speedily deported to the Bocche di Cattaro, and, flung into
subterranean caves, the moisture, and above all the want of bread did
prompt justice to each and all of these rascals.
The Marchese del Dongo had an exalted position, and, as he combined with
a host of other fine qualities a sordid avarice, he would boast publicly
that he never sent a scudo to his sister, the Contessa Pietranera: still
madly in love, she refused to leave her husband, and was starving by his
side in France. The good Marchesa was in despair; finally she managed to
abstract a few small diamonds from her jewel case, which her husband
took from her every evening to stow away under his bed, in an iron
coffer: the Marchesa had brought him a dowry of 800,000 francs, and
received 80 francs monthly for her personal expenses. During the
thirteen months in which the French were absent from Milan, this most
timid of women found various pretexts and never went out of mourning.
We must confess that, following the example of many grave authors, we
have begun the history of our hero a year before his birth. This
essential personage is none other than Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del
Dongo, as the style is at Milan.[6] He had taken the trouble to be born
just when the French were driven out, and found himself, by the accident
of birth, the second son of that Marchese del Dongo who was so great a
gentleman, and with whose fat, pasty face, false smile and unbounded
hatred for the new ideas the reader is already acquainted. The whole of
the family fortune was already settled upon the elder son, Ascanio del
Dongo, the worthy image of his father. He was eight years old and
Fabrizio two when all of a sudden that General Bonaparte, whom everyone
of good family understood to have been hanged long ago, came down from
the Mont Saint-Bernard. He entered Milan: that moment is still unique in
history; imagine a whole populace madly in love. A few days later,
Napoleon won the battle of Marengo. The rest needs no telling. The
frenzy of the Milanese reached its climax; but this time it was mingled
with ideas of vengeance: these good people had been taught to hate.
Presently they saw arrive in their midst all that remained of the
patriots deported to the Bocche di Cattaro; their return was celebrated
with a national _festa_. Their pale faces, their great startled eyes,
their shrunken limbs were in strange contrast to the joy that broke out
on every side. Their arrival was the signal for departure for the
families most deeply compromised. The Marchese del Dongo was one of the
first to flee to his castle of Grianta. The heads of the great families
were filled with hatred and fear; but their wives, their daughters,
remembered the joys of the former French occupation, and thought with
regret of Milan and those gay balls, which, immediately after Marengo,
were organised afresh at the _casa Tanzi_. A few days after the victory,
the French General responsible for maintaining order in Lombardy
discovered that all the farmers on the noblemen's estates, all the old
wives in the villages, so far from still thinking of this astonishing
victory at Marengo, which had altered the destinies of Italy and
recaptured thirteen fortified positions in a single day, had their minds
occupied only by a prophecy of San Giovita, the principal Patron Saint
of Brescia. According to this inspired utterance, the prosperity of
France and of Napoleon was to cease just thirteen weeks after Marengo.
What does to some extent excuse the Marchese del Dongo and all the
nobles sulking on their estates is that literally and without any
affectation they believed in the prophecy. Not one of these gentlemen
had read as many as four volumes in his life; quite openly they were
making their preparations to return to Milan at the end of the thirteen
weeks; but time, as it went on, recorded fresh successes for the cause
of France. Returning to Paris, Napoleon, by wise decrees, saved the
country from revolution at home as he had saved it from its foreign
enemies at Marengo. Then the Lombard nobles, in the safe shelter of
their castles, discovered that at first they had misinterpreted the
prophecy of the holy patron of Brescia; it was a question not of
thirteen weeks, but of thirteen months. The thirteen months went by, and
the prosperity of France seemed to increase daily.
We pass lightly over ten years of progress and happiness, from 1800 to
1810. Fabrizio spent the first part of this decade at the castle of
Grianta, giving and receiving an abundance of fisticuffs among the
little _contadini_ of the village, and learning nothing, not even how to
read. Later on, he was sent to the Jesuit College at Milan. The
Marchese, his father, insisted on his being shewn the Latin tongue, not
on any account in the works of those ancient writers who are always
talking about Republics, but in a magnificent volume adorned with more
than a hundred engravings, a masterpiece of seventeenth-century art;
this was the Lathi genealogy of the Valserra, Marchesi del Dongo,
published in 1650 by Fabrizio del Dongo, Archbishop of Parma. The
fortunes of the Valserra being pre-eminently military, the engravings
represented any number of battles, and everywhere one saw some hero of
the name dealing mighty blows with his sword. This book greatly
delighted the young Fabrizio. His mother, who adored him, obtained
permission, from time to time, to pay him a visit at Milan; but as her
husband never offered her any money for these journeys, it was her
sister-in-law, the charming Contessa Pietranera, who lent her what she
required. After the return of the French, the Contessa had become one of
the most brilliant ladies at the court of Prince Eugène, the Viceroy of
Italy.
When Fabrizio had made his First Communion, she obtained leave from the
Marchese, still in voluntary exile, to invite him out, now and again,
from his college. She found him unusual, thoughtful, very serious, but a
nice-looking boy and not at all out of place in the drawing-room of a
lady of fashion; otherwise, as ignorant as one could wish, and barely
able to write. The Contessa, who carried her impulsive character into
everything, promised her protection to the head of the establishment
provided that her nephew Fabrizio made astounding progress and carried
off a number of prizes at the end of the year. So that he should be in a
position to deserve them, she used to send for him every Saturday
evening, and often did not restore him to his masters until the
following Wednesday or Thursday. The Jesuits, although tenderly
cherished by the Prince Viceroy, were expelled from Italy by the laws of
the Kingdom, and the Superior of the College, an able man, was conscious
of all that might be made out of his relations with a woman all-powerful
at court. He never thought of complaining of the absences of Fabrizio,
who, more ignorant than ever, at the end of the year was awarded five
first prizes. This being so, the Contessa, escorted by her husband, now
the General commanding one of the Divisions of the Guard, and by five or
six of the most important personages at the viceregal court, came to
attend the prize-giving at the Jesuit College. The Superior was
complimented by his chiefs.
The Contessa took her nephew with her to all those brilliant festivities
which marked the too brief reign of the sociable Prince Eugène. She had
on her own authority created him an officer of hussars, and Fabrizio,
now twelve years old, wore that uniform. One day the Contessa, enchanted
by his handsome figure, besought the Prince to give him a post as page,
a request which implied that the del Dongo family was coming round. Next
day she had need of all her credit to secure the Viceroy's kind consent
not to remember this request, which lacked only the consent of the
prospective page's father, and this consent would have been emphatically
refused. After this act of folly, which made the sullen Marchese
shudder, he found an excuse to recall young Fabrizio to Grianta. The
Contessa had a supreme contempt for her brother, she regarded him as a
melancholy fool, and one who would be troublesome if ever it lay in his
power. But she was madly fond of Fabrizio, and, after ten years of
silence, wrote to the Marchese reclaiming her nephew; her letter was
left unanswered.
On his return to this formidable palace, built by the most bellicose of
his ancestors, Fabrizio knew nothing in the world except how to drill
and how to sit on a horse. Conte Pietranera, as fond of the boy as was
his wife, used often to put him on a horse and take him with him on
parade.
On reaching the castle of Grianta, Fabrizio, his eyes still red with the
tears that he had shed on leaving his aunt's fine rooms, found only the
passionate caresses of his mother and sisters. The Marchese was closeted
in his study with his elder son, the Marchesino Ascanio; there they
composed letters in cipher which had the honour to be forwarded to
Vienna; father and son appeared in public only at meal-times. The
Marchese used ostentatiously to repeat that he was teaching his natural
successor to keep, by double entry, the accounts of the produce of each
of his estates. As a matter of fact, the Marchese was too jealous of his
own power ever to speak of these matters to a son, the necessary
inheritor of all these entailed properties. He employed him to cipher
despatches of fifteen or twenty pages which two or three times weekly he
had conveyed into Switzerland, where they were put on the road for
Vienna. The Marchese claimed to inform his rightful Sovereign of the
internal condition of the Kingdom of Italy, of which he himself knew
nothing, and his letters were invariably most successful, for the
following reason. The Marchese would have a count taken on the high
road, by some trusted agent, of the number of men in a certain French or
Italian regiment that was changing its station, and in reporting the
fact to the court of Vienna would take care to reduce by at least a
quarter the number of the troops on the march. These letters, in other
respects absurd, had the merit of contradicting others of greater
accuracy, and gave pleasure. And so, a short time before Fabrizio's
arrival at the castle, the Marchese had received the star of a famous
order: it was the fifth to adorn his Chamberlain's coat. As a matter of
fact, he suffered from the chagrin of not daring to sport this garment
outside his study; but he never allowed himself to dictate a despatch
without first putting on the gold-laced coat, studded with all his
orders. He would have felt himself to be wanting in respect had he acted
otherwise.
The Marchesa was amazed by her son's graces. But she had kept up the
habit of writing two or three times every year to General Comte d'A----,
which was the title now borne by Lieutenant Robert. The Marchesa had a
horror of lying to the people to whom she was attached; she examined her
son and was appalled by his ignorance.
"If he appears to me to have learned little," she said to herself, "to
me who know nothing, Robert, who is so clever, would find that his
education had been entirely neglected; and in these days one must have
merit." Another peculiarity, which astonished her almost as much, was
that Fabrizio had taken seriously all the religious teaching that had
been instilled into him by the Jesuits. Although very pious herself, the
fanaticism of this child made her shudder; "If the Marchese has the
sense to discover this way of influencing him, he will take my son's
affection from me." She wept copiously, and her passion for Fabrizio was
thereby increased.
Life in this castle, peopled by thirty or forty servants, was extremely
dull; accordingly Fabrizio spent all his days in pursuit of game or
exploring the lake in a boat. Soon he was on intimate terms with the
coachmen and grooms; these were all hot supporters of the French, and
laughed openly at the pious valets, attached to the person of the
Marchese or to that of his elder son. The great theme for wit at the
expense of these solemn personages was that, in imitation of their
masters, they powdered their heads.
[Footnote 6: By the local custom, borrowed from Germany, this title is
given to every son of a Marchese; _Contino_ to the son of a Conte,
_Contessina_ to the daughter of a Conte, etc.]
CHAPTER TWO
. . . _Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos
yeux,
Tout épris d'avenir, je contemple les cieux,
En qui Dieu nous escrit, par notes non obscures.
Les sorts et les destins de toutes créatures.
Car lui, du fond des deux regardant un
humain.
Parfois mû de pitié, lui montre le chemin;
Par les astres du ciel qui sont ses caractères,
Les choses nous prédit et bonnes et contraires;
Mais les hommes chargés de terre et de trépas,
Méprisent tel écrit, et ne le lisent pas._
RONSARD.
The Marchese professed a vigorous hatred of enlightenment: "It is
ideas," he used to say, "that have ruined Italy"; he did not know quite
how to reconcile this holy horror of instruction with his desire to see
his son Fabrizio perfect the education so brilliantly begun with the
Jesuits. In order to incur the least possible risk, he charged the good
Priore Blanès, parish priest of Grianta, with the task of continuing
Fabrizio's Latin studies. For this it was necessary that the priest
should himself know that language; whereas it was to him an object of
scorn; his knowledge in the matter being confined to the recitation, by
heart, of the prayers in his missal, the meaning of which he could
interpret more or less to his flock. But this priest was nevertheless
highly respected and indeed feared throughout the district; he had
always said that it was by no means in thirteen weeks, nor even in
thirteen months that they would see the fulfilment of the famous
prophecy of San Giovita, the patron saint of Brescia. He added, when he
was speaking to friends whom he could trust, that this number _thirteen_
was to be interpreted in a fashion which would astonish many people, if
it were permitted to say all that one knew (1813).
_PRIORE BLANÈS_
The fact was that the Priore Blanès, a man whose honesty and virtue
were primitive, and a man of parts as well, spent all his nights up in
his belfry; he was mad on astrology. After using up all his days in
calculating the conjunctions and positions of the stars, he would devote
the greater part of his nights to following their course in the sky.
Such was his poverty, he had no other instrument than a long telescope
with pasteboard tubes. One may imagine the contempt that was felt for
the study of languages by a man who spent his time discovering the
precise dates of the fall of empires and the revolutions that change the
face of the world. "What more do I know about a horse," he asked
Fabrizio, "when I am told that in Latin it is called _equus_?"
The _contadini_ looked upon Priore Blanès with awe as a great magician:
for his part, by dint of the fear that his nightly stations in the
belfry inspired, he restrained them from stealing. His clerical brethren
in the surrounding parishes, intensely jealous of his influence,
detested him; the Marchese del Dongo merely despised him, because he
reasoned too much for a man of such humble station. Fabrizio adored him:
to gratify him he sometimes spent whole evenings in doing enormous sums
of addition or multiplication. Then he would go up to the belfry: this
was a great favour and one that Priore Blanès had never granted to
anyone; but he liked the boy for his simplicity. "If you do not turn out
a hypocrite," he would say to him, "you will perhaps be a man."
Two or three times in a year, Fabrizio, intrepid and passionate in his
pleasures, came within an inch of drowning himself in the lake. He was
the leader of all the great expeditions made by the young _contadini_ of
Grianta and Cadenabbia. These boys had procured a number of little keys,
and on very dark nights would try to open the padlocks of the chains
that fastened the boats to some big stone or to a tree growing by the
water's edge. It should be explained that on the Lake of Como the
fishermen in the pursuit of their calling put out night-lines at a great
distance from the shore. The upper end of the line is attached to a
plank kept afloat by a cork keel, and a supple hazel twig, fastened to
this plank, supports a little bell which rings whenever a fish, caught
on the line, gives a tug to the float.
The great object of these nocturnal expeditions, of which Fabrizio was
commander in chief, was to go out and visit the night-lines before the
fishermen had heard the warning note of the little bells. They used to
choose stormy weather, and for these hazardous exploits would embark in
the early morning, an hour before dawn. As they climbed into the boat,
these boys imagined themselves to be plunging into the greatest dangers;
this was the finer aspect of their behaviour; and, following the example
of their fathers, would devoutly repeat a _Hail, Mary_. Now it
frequently happened that at the moment of starting, and immediately
after the _Hail, Mary_, Fabrizio was struck by a foreboding. This was
the fruit which he had gathered from the astronomical studies of his
friend Priore Blanès, in whose predictions he had no faith whatsoever.
According to his youthful imagination, this foreboding announced to him
infallibly the success or failure of the expedition; and, as he had a
stronger will than any of his companions, in course of time the whole
band had so formed the habit of having forebodings that if, at the
moment of embarking, one of them caught sight of a priest on the shore,
or if someone saw a crow fly past on his left, they would hasten to
replace the padlock on the chain of the boat, and each would go off to
his bed. Thus Priore Blanès had not imparted his somewhat difficult
science to Fabrizio; but, unconsciously, had infected him with an
unbounded confidence in the signs by which the future can be foretold.
_MILAN_
The Marchese felt that any accident to his ciphered correspondence might
put him at the mercy of his sister; and so every year, at the feast of
Sant'Angela, which was Contessa Pietranera's name-day, Fabrizio was
given leave to go and spend a week at Milan. He lived through the year
looking hopefully forward or sadly back to this week. On this great
occasion, to carry out this politic mission, the Marchese handed over to
his son four scudi, and, in accordance with his custom, gave nothing to
his wife, who took the boy. But one of the cooks, six lackeys and a
coachman with a pair of horses, started for Como the day before, and
every day at Milan the Marchesa found a carriage at her disposal and a
dinner of twelve covers.
The sullen sort of life that was led by the Marchese del Dongo was
certainly by no means entertaining, but it had this advantage that it
permanently enriched the families who were kind enough to sacrifice
themselves to it. The Marchese, who had an income of more than two
hundred thousand lire, did not spend a quarter of that sum; he was
living on hope. Throughout the thirteen years from 1800 to 1813, he
constantly and firmly believed that Napoleon would be overthrown within
six months. One may judge of his rapture when, at the beginning of 1813,
he learned of the disasters of the Beresima! The taking of Paris and the
fall of Napoleon almost made him lose his head; he then allowed himself
to make the most outrageous remarks to his wife and sister. Finally,
after fourteen years of waiting, he had that unspeakable joy of seeing
the Austrian troops re-enter Milan. In obedience to orders issued from
Vienna, the Austrian General received the Marchese del Dongo with a
consideration akin to respect; they hastened to offer him one of the
highest posts in the government; and he accepted it as the payment of a
debt. His elder son obtained a lieutenancy in one of the smartest
regiments of the Monarchy, but the younger repeatedly declined to accept
a cadetship which was offered him. This triumph, in which the Marchese
exulted with a rare insolence, lasted but a few months, and was followed
by a humiliating reverse. Never had he had any talent for business, and
fourteen years spent in the country among his footmen, his lawyer and
his doctor, added to the crustiness of old age which had overtaken him,
had left him totally incapable of conducting business in any form. Now
it is not possible, in an Austrian country, to keep an important place
without having the kind of talent that is required by the slow and
complicated, but highly reasonable administration of that venerable
Monarchy. The blunders made by the Marchese del Dongo scandalised the
staff of his office, and even obstructed the course of public business.
His ultra-monarchist utterances irritated the populace which the
authorities sought to lull into a heedless slumber. One fine day he
learned that His Majesty had been graciously pleased to accept the
resignation which he had submitted of his post in the administration,
and at the same time conferred on him the place of _Second Grand
Majordomo Major_ of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. The Marchese was
furious at the atrocious injustice of which he had been made a victim;
he printed an open letter to a friend, he who so inveighed against the
liberty of the press. Finally, he wrote to the Emperor that his
Ministers were playing him false, and were no better than Jacobins.
These things accomplished, he went sadly back to his castle of Grianta.
He had one consolation. After the fall of Napoleon, certain powerful
personages at Milan planned an assault in the streets on Conte Prina, a
former Minister of the King of Italy, and a man of the highest merit.
Conte Pietranera risked his own life to save that of the Minister, who
was killed by blows from umbrellas after five hours of agony. A priest,
the Marchese del Dongo's confessor, could have saved Prina by opening
the wicket of the church of San Giovanni, in front of which the
unfortunate Minister was dragged, and indeed left for a moment in the
gutter, in the middle of the street; but he refused with derision to
open his wicket, and, six months afterwards, the Marchese was happily
able to secure for him a fine advancement.
_PRINA_
He execrated Conte Pietranera, his brother-in-law, who, not having an
income of 50 louis, had the audacity to be quite content, made a point
of showing himself loyal to what he had loved all his life, and had the
insolence to preach that spirit of justice without regard for persons,
which the Marchese called an infamous piece of Jacobinism. The Conte had
refused to take service in Austria; this refusal was remembered against
him, and, a few months after the death of Prina, the same persons who
had hired the assassins contrived that General Pietranera should be
flung into prison. Whereupon the Contessa, his wife, procured a passport
and sent for post-horses to go to Vienna to tell the Emperor the truth.
Prina's assassins took fright, and one of them, a cousin of Signora
Pietranera, came to her at midnight, an hour before she was to start for
Vienna, with the order for her husband's release. Next day, the Austrian
General sent for Conte Pietranera, received him with every possible mark
of distinction, and assured him that his pension as a retired officer
would be issued to him without delay and on the most liberal scale. The
gallant General Bubna, a man of sound judgment and warm heart, seemed
quite ashamed of the assassination of Prina and the Conte's
imprisonment.
After this brief storm, allayed by the Contessa's firmness of character,
the couple lived, for better or worse, on the retired pay for which,
thanks to General Bubna's recommendation, they were not long kept
waiting.
Fortunately, it so happened that, for the last five or six years, the
Contessa had been on the most friendly terms with a very rich young man,
who was also an intimate friend of the Conte, and never failed to place
at their disposal the finest team of English horses to be seen in Milan
at the time, his box in the theatre _alla Scala_ and his villa in the
country. But the Conte had a sense of his own valour, he was full of
generous impulses, he was easily carried away, and at such times allowed
himself to make imprudent speeches. One day when he was out shooting
with some young men, one of them, who had served under other flags than
his, began to belittle the courage of the soldiers of the Cisalpine
Republic. The Conte struck him, a fight at once followed, and the Conte,
who was without support, among all these young men, was killed. This
species of duel gave rise to a great deal of talk, and the persons who
had been engaged in it took the precaution of going for a tour in
Switzerland.
That absurd form of courage which is called resignation, the courage of
a fool who allows himself to be hanged without a word of protest, was
not at all in keeping with the Contessa's character. Furious at the
death of her husband, she would have liked Limercati, the rich young
man, her intimate friend, to be seized also by the desire to travel in
Switzerland, and there to shoot or otherwise assault the murderer of
Conte Pietranera.
_MILAN_
Limercati thought this plan the last word in absurdity, and the Contessa
discovered that in herself contempt for him had killed her affection.
She multiplied her attentions to Limercati; she sought to rekindle his
love, and then to leave him stranded and so make him desperate. To
render this plan of vengeance intelligible to French readers, I should
explain that at Milan, in a land widely remote from our own, people are
still made desperate by love. The Contessa, who, in her widow's weeds,
easily eclipsed any of her rivals, flirted with all the young men of
rank and fashion, and one of these, Conte N----, who, from the first,
had said that he felt Limercati's good qualities to be rather heavy,
rather starched for so spirited a woman, fell madly in love with her.
She wrote to Limercati:
"Will you for once act like a man of spirit? Please to consider
that you have never known me.
"I am, with a trace of contempt perhaps, your most humble servant,
"GINA PIETRANERA."
After reading this missive, Limercati set off for one of his country
seats, his love rose to a climax, he became quite mad and spoke of
blowing out his brains, an unheard-of thing in countries where hell is
believed in. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in the country, he
had written to the Contessa offering her his hand and his rent-roll of
200,000 francs. She sent him back his letter, with its seal unbroken, by
Conte N----'s groom. Whereupon Limercati spent three years on his
estates, returning every other month to Milan, but without ever having
the courage to remain there, and boring all his friends with his
passionate love for the Contessa and his detailed accounts of the
favours she had formerly bestowed on him. At first, he used to add that
with Conte N---- she was ruining herself, and that such a connexion was
degrading to her.
The fact of the matter was that the Contessa had no sort of love for
Conte N----, and she told him as much when she had made quite sure of
Limercati's despair. The Conte, who was no novice, besought her upon no
account to divulge the sad truth which she had confided to him. "If you
will be so extremely indulgent," he added, "as to continue to receive me
with all the outward distinctions accorded to a reigning lover, I may
perhaps be able to find a suitable position."
After this heroic declaration the Contessa declined to avail herself any
longer either of Conte N----'s horses or of his box. But for the last
fifteen years she had been accustomed to the most fashionable style of
living; she had now to solve that difficult, or rather impossible
problem: how to live in Milan on a pension of 1,500 francs. She left her
_palazzo_, took a pair of rooms on a fifth floor, dismissed all her
servants, including even her own maid whose place she filled with a poor
old woman to do the housework. This sacrifice was as a matter of fact
less heroic and less painful than it appears to us; at Milan poverty is
not a thing to laugh at, and therefore does not present itself to
trembling souls as the worst of evils. After some months of this noble
poverty, besieged by incessant letters from Limercati, and indeed from
Conte N---- who also wished to marry her, it came to pass that the
Marchese del Dongo, miserly as a rule to the last degree, bethought
himself that his enemies might find a cause for triumph in his sister's
plight. What! A del Dongo reduced to living upon the pension which the
court of Vienna, of which he had so many grounds for complaint, grants
to the widows of its Generals!
He wrote to inform her that an apartment and an allowance worthy of his
sister awaited her at the castle of Grianta. The Contessa's volatile
mind embraced with enthusiasm the idea of this new mode of life; it was
twenty years since she had lived in that venerable castle that rose
majestically from among its old chestnuts planted in the days of the
Sforza. "There," she told herself, "I shall find repose, and, at my age,
is not that in itself happiness?" (Having reached one-and-thirty, she
imagined that the time had come for her to retire.) "On that sublime
lake by which I was born, there awaits me at last a happy and peaceful
existence."
_THE LAKE_
I cannot say whether she was mistaken, but one thing certain is that
this passionate soul, which had just refused so lightly the offer of two
vast fortunes, brought happiness to the castle of Grianta. Her two
nieces were wild with joy. "You have renewed the dear days of my youth,"
the Marchesa told her, as she took her in her arms; "before you came, I
was a hundred." The Contessa set out to revisit, with Fabrizio, all
those enchanting spots in the neighbourhood of Grianta, which travellers
have made so famous: the Villa Melzi on the other shore of the lake,
opposite the castle, and commanding a fine view of it; higher up, the
sacred wood of the Sfrondata, and the bold promontory which divides the
two arms of the lake, that of Como, so voluptuous, and the other which
runs towards Lecco, grimly severe: sublime and charming views which the
most famous site in the world, the Bay of Naples, may equal, but does
not surpass. It was with ecstasy that the Contessa recaptured the
memories of her earliest childhood and compared them with her present
sensations. "The Lake of Como," she said to herself, "is not surrounded,
like the Lake of Geneva, by wide tracts of land enclosed and cultivated
according to the most approved methods, which suggest money and
speculation. Here, on every side, I see hills of irregular height
covered with clumps of trees that have grown there at random, which the
hand of man has never yet spoiled and forced to _yield a return_.
Standing among these admirably shaped hills which run down to the lake
at such curious angles, I can preserve all the illusions of Tasso's and
Ariosto's descriptions. All is noble and tender, everything speaks of
love, nothing recalls the ugliness of civilisation. The villages halfway
up their sides are hidden in tall trees, and above the tree-tops rises
the charming architecture of their picturesque belfries. If some little
field fifty yards across comes here and there to interrupt the clumps of
chestnuts and wild cherries, the satisfied eye sees growing on it plants
more vigorous and happier than elsewhere. Beyond these hills, the crests
of which offer one hermitages in all of which one would like to dwell,
the astonished eye perceives the peaks of the Alps, always covered in
snow, and their stern austerity recalls to one so much of the sorrows of
life as is necessary to enhance one's immediate pleasure. The
imagination is touched by the distant sound of the bell of some little
village hidden among the trees: these sounds borne across the waters
which soften their tone, assume a tinge of gentle melancholy and
resignation, and seem to be saying to man: 'Life is fleeting: do not
therefore show yourself so obdurate towards the happiness that is
offered you, make haste to enjoy it.'" The language of these enchanting
spots, which have not their like in the world, restored to the Contessa
the heart of a girl of sixteen. She could not conceive how she could
have spent all these years without revisiting the lake. "Is it then to
the threshold of old age," she asked herself, "that our happiness takes
flight?" She bought a boat which Fabrizio, the Marchesa and she
decorated with their own hands, having no money to spend on anything, in
the midst of this most luxurious establishment; since his disgrace the
Marchese del Dongo had doubled his aristocratic state. For example, in
order to reclaim ten yards of land from the lake, near the famous plane
avenue, in the direction of Cadenabbia, he had an embankment built the
estimate for which ran to 80,000 francs. At the end of this embankment
there rose, from the plans of the famous Marchese Cagnola, a chapel
built entirely of huge blocks of granite, and in this chapel Marchesi,
the sculptor then in fashion at Milan, built him a tomb on which a
number of bas-reliefs were intended to represent the gallant deeds of
his ancestors.
Fabrizio's elder brother, the Marchesino Ascanio, sought to join the
ladies in their excursions; but his aunt flung water over his powdered
hair, and found some fresh dart every day with which to puncture his
solemnity. At length he delivered from the sight of his fat, pasty face
the merry troop who did not venture to laugh in his presence. They
supposed him to be the spy of the Marchese his father, and care had to
be taken in handling that stern despot, always in a furious temper since
his enforced retirement.
Ascanio swore to be avenged on Fabrizio.
There was a storm in which they were all in danger; although they were
infinitely short of money, they paid the two boatmen generously not to
say anything to the Marchese, who already was showing great ill humour
at their taking his two daughters with them. They encountered a second
storm; the storms on this lake are terrible and unexpected: gusts of
wind sweep out suddenly from the two mountain gorges which run down into
it on opposite sides and join battle on the water. The Contessa wished
to land in the midst of the hurricane and pealing thunder; she insisted
that, if she were to climb to a rock that stood up by itself in the
middle of the lake and was the size of a small room, she would enjoy a
curious spectacle; she would see herself assailed on all sides by raging
waves; but in jumping out of the boat she fell into the water. Fabrizio
dived in after her to save her, and both were carried away for some
distance. No doubt it is not a pleasant thing to feel oneself drowning;
but the spirit of boredom, taken by surprise, was banished from the
feudal castle. The Contessa conceived a passionate enthusiasm for the
primitive nature of the Priore Blanès and for his astrology. The little
money that remained to her after the purchase of the boat had been spent
on buying a spy-glass, and almost every evening, with her nieces and
Fabrizio, she would take her stand on the platform of one of the gothic
towers of the castle. Fabrizio was the learned one of the party, and
they spent many hours there very pleasantly, out of reach of the spies.
It must be admitted that there were days on which the Contessa did not
utter a word to anyone; she would be seen strolling under the tall
chestnuts lost in sombre meditations; she was too clever a woman not to
feel at times the tedium of having no one with whom to exchange ideas.
But next day she would be laughing as before: it was the lamentations of
her sister-in-law, the Marchesa, that produced these sombre impressions
on a mind naturally so active.
"Are we to spend all the youth that is left to us in this gloomy
castle?" the Marchesa used to exclaim.
Before the Contessa came, she had not had the courage even to feel these
regrets.
Such was their life during the winter of 1814 and 1815. On two
occasions, in spite of her poverty, the Contessa went to spend a few
days at Milan; she was anxious to see a sublime ballet by Vigano, given
at the Scala, and the Marchese raised no objections to his wife's
accompanying her sister-in-law. They went to draw the arrears of the
little pension, and it was the penniless widow of the Cisalpine General
who lent a few sequins to the millionaire Marchesa del Dongo. These
parties were delightful; they invited old friends to dinner, and
consoled themselves by laughing at everything, just like children. This
Italian gaiety, full of surprise and brio, made them forget the
atmosphere of sombre gloom which the stern faces of the Marchese and his
elder son spread around them at Grianta. Fabrizio, though barely
sixteen, represented the head of the house admirably.
_DEPARTURE_
On the 7th of March, 1815, the ladies had been back for two days after a
charming little excursion to Milan; they were strolling under the fine
avenue of plane trees, then recently extended to the very edge of the
lake. A boat appeared, coming from the direction of Como, and made
strange signals. One of the Marchese's agents leaped out upon the bank:
Napoleon had just landed from the Gulf of Juan. Europe was kind enough
to be surprised at this event, which did not at all surprise the
Marchese del Dongo; he wrote his Sovereign a letter full of the most
cordial effusion; he offered him his talents and several millions of
money, and informed him once again that his Ministers were Jacobins and
in league with the ringleaders in Paris.
On the 8th of March, at six o'clock in the morning, the Marchese,
wearing all his orders, was making his elder son dictate to him the
draft of a third political despatch; he was solemnly occupied in
transcribing this in his fine and careful hand, upon paper that bore the
Sovereign's effigy as a watermark. At the same moment, Fabrizio was
knocking at Contessa Pietranera's door.
"I am off," he informed her, "I am going to join the Emperor who is also
King of Italy; he was such a good friend to your husband! I shall travel
through Switzerland. Last night, at Menaggio, my friend Vasi, the dealer
in barometers, gave me his passport; now you must give me a few
napoleons, for I have only a couple on me; but if necessary I shall go
on foot."
The Contessa wept with joy and grief. "Great Heavens! What can have put
that idea into your head?" she cried, seizing Fabrizio's hands in her
own.
She rose and went to fetch from the linen-cupboard, where it was
carefully hidden, a little purse embroidered with pearls; it was all
that she possessed in the world.
"Take it," she said to Fabrizio; "but, in heaven's name, do not let
yourself be killed. What will your poor mother and I have left, if you
are taken from us? As for Napoleon's succeeding, that, my poor boy, is
impossible; our gentlemen will certainly manage to destroy him. Did you
not hear, a week ago, at Milan the story of the twenty-three plots to
assassinate him, all so carefully planned, from which it was only by a
miracle that he escaped? And at that time he was all-powerful. And you
have seen that it is not the will to destroy him that is lacking in our
enemies; France ceased to count after he left it."
It was in a tone of the keenest emotion that the Contessa spoke to
Fabrizio of the fate in store for Napoleon. "In allowing you to go to
join him, I am sacrificing to him the dearest thing I have in the
world," she said. Fabrizio's eyes grew moist, he shed tears as he
embraced the Contessa, but his determination to be off was never for a
moment shaken. He explained with effusion to this beloved friend all the
reasons that had led to his decision, reasons which we take the liberty
of finding highly attractive.
"Yesterday evening, it wanted seven minutes to six, we were strolling,
you remember, by the shore of the lake along the plane avenue, below the
Casa Sommariva, and we were facing the south. It was there that I first
noticed, in the distance, the boat that was coming from Como, bearing
such great tidings. As I looked at this boat without thinking of the
Emperor, and only envying the lot of those who are free to travel,
suddenly I felt myself seized by a profound emotion. The boat touched
ground, the agent said something in a low tone to my father, who changed
colour, and took us aside to announce the _terrible news_. I turned
towards the lake with no other object but to hide the tears of joy that
were flooding my eyes. Suddenly, at an immense height in the sky and on
my right hand side, I saw an eagle, the bird of Napoleon; he flew
majestically past making for Switzerland, and consequently for Paris.
'And I too,' I said to myself at that moment, 'will fly across
Switzerland with the speed of an eagle, and will go to offer that great
man a very little thing, but the only thing, after all, that I have to
offer him, the support of my feeble arm. He wished to give us a country,
and he loved my uncle.' At that instant, while I was gazing at the
eagle, in some strange way my tears ceased to flow; and the proof that
this idea came from above is that at the same moment, without any
discussion, I made up my mind to go, and saw how the journey might be
made. In the twinkling of an eye all the sorrows that, as you know, are
poisoning my life, especially on Sundays, seemed to be swept away by a
breath from heaven. I saw that mighty figure of Italy raise herself from
the mire in which the Germans keep her plunged;[7] she stretched out her
mangled arms still half loaded with chains towards her King and
Liberator. 'And I,' I said to myself, 'a son as yet unknown to fame of
that unhappy Mother, I shall go forth to die or to conquer with that man
marked out by destiny, who sought to cleanse us from the scorn that is
heaped upon us by even the most enslaved and the vilest among the
inhabitants of Europe.'
"You know," he added in a low tone drawing nearer to the Contessa, and
fastening upon her a pair of eyes from which fire darted, "you know that
young chestnut which my mother, in the winter in which I was born,
planted with her own hands beside the big spring in our forest, two
leagues from here; before doing anything else I wanted to visit it. 'The
spring is not far advanced,' I said to myself, 'very well, if my tree is
in leaf, that shall be a sign for me. I also must emerge from the state
of torpor in which I am languishing in this cold and dreary castle.' Do
you not feel that these old blackened walls, the symbols now as they
were once the instruments of despotism, are a perfect image of the
dreariness of winter? They are to me what winter is to my tree.
"Would you believe it, Gina? Yesterday evening at half past seven I came
to my chestnut; it had leaves, pretty little leaves that were quite big
already! I kissed them, carefully so as not to hurt them. I turned the
soil reverently round the dear tree. At once filled with a fresh
enthusiasm, I crossed the mountain; I came to Menaggio: I needed a
passport to enter Switzerland. The time had flown, it was already one
o'clock in the morning when I found myself at Vasi's door. I thought
that I should have to knock for a long time to arouse him, but he was
sitting up with three of his friends. At the first word I uttered: 'You
are going to join Napoleon' he cried; and he fell on my neck. The others
too embraced me with rapture. 'Why am I married?' I heard one of them
say."
Signora Pietranera had grown pensive. She felt that she must offer a few
objections. If Fabrizio had had the slightest experience of life, he
would have seen quite well that the Contessa herself did not believe in
the sound reasons which she hastened to urge on him. But, failing
experience, he had resolution; he did not condescend even to hear what
those reasons were. The Contessa presently came down to making him
promise that at least he would inform his mother of his intention.
"She will tell my sisters, and those women will betray me without
knowing it!" cried Fabrizio with a sort of heroic grandeur.
"You should speak more respectfully," said the Contessa, smiling through
her tears, "of the sex that will make your fortune; for you will never
appeal to men, you have too much fire for prosaic souls."
The Marchesa dissolved in tears on learning her son's strange plan; she
could not feel its heroism, and did everything in her power to keep him
at home. When she was convinced that nothing in the world, except the
walls of a prison, could prevent him from starting, she handed over to
him the little money that she possessed; then she remembered that she
had also, the day before, received nine or ten small diamonds, worth
perhaps ten thousand francs, which the Marchese had entrusted to her to
take to Milan to be set. Fabrizio's sisters came into their mother's
room while the Contessa was sewing these diamonds into our hero's
travelling coat; he handed the poor women back their humble napoleons.
His sisters were so enthusiastic over his plan, they kissed him with so
clamorous a joy that he took in his hand the diamonds that had still to
be concealed and was for starting off there and then.
"You will betray me without knowing it," he said to his sisters. "Since
I have all this money, there is no need to take clothes; one can get
them anywhere." He embraced these dear ones and set off at once without
even going back to his own room. He walked so fast, afraid of being
followed by men on horseback, that before night he had entered Lugano.
He was now, thank heaven, in a Swiss town, and had no longer any fear of
being waylaid on the lonely road by constables in his father's pay. From
this haven, he wrote him a fine letter, a boyish weakness which gave
strength and substance to the Marchese's anger. Fabrizio took the post,
crossed the Saint-Gothard; his progress was rapid, and he entered France
by Pontarlier. The Emperor was in Paris. There Fabrizio's troubles
began; he had started out with the firm intention of speaking to the
Emperor: it had never occurred to him that this might be a difficult
matter. At Milan, ten times daily he used to see Prince Eugène, and
could have spoken to him had he wished. In Paris, every morning he went
to the courtyard of the Tuileries to watch the reviews held by Napoleon;
but never was he able to come near the Emperor. Our hero imagined all
the French to be profoundly disturbed, as he himself was, by the extreme
peril in which their country lay. At table in the hotel in which he was
staying, he made no mystery about his plans; he found several young men
with charming manners, even more enthusiastic than himself, who, in a
very few days, did not fail to rob him of all the money that he
possessed. Fortunately, out of pure modesty, he had said nothing of the
diamonds given him by his mother. On the morning when, after an orgy
overnight, he found that he had been decidedly robbed, he bought a fine
pair of horses, engaged as servant an old soldier, one of the dealer's
grooms, and, filled with contempt for the young men of Paris with their
fine speeches, set out to join the army. He knew nothing except that it
was concentrated near Maubeuge. No sooner had he reached the frontier
than he felt that it would be absurd for him to stay in a house,
toasting himself before a good fire, when there were soldiers in bivouac
outside. In spite of the remonstrances of his servant, who was not
lacking in common sense, he rashly made his way to the bivouacs on the
extreme frontier, on the road into Belgium. No sooner had he reached the
first battalion that was resting by the side of the road than the
soldiers began to stare at the sight of this young civilian in whose
appearance there was nothing that suggested uniform. Night was falling,
a cold wind blew. Fabrizio went up to a fire and offered to pay for
hospitality. The soldiers looked at one another amazed more than
anything at the idea of payment, and willingly made room for him by the
fire. His servant constructed a shelter for him. But, an hour later, the
_adjudant_ of the regiment happening to pass near the bivouac, the
soldiers went to report to him the arrival of this stranger speaking bad
French. The _adjudant_ questioned Fabrizio, who spoke to him of his
enthusiasm for the Emperor in an accent which aroused grave suspicion;
whereupon this under-officer requested our hero to go with him to the
Colonel, whose headquarters were in a neighbouring farm. Fabrizio's
servant came up with the two horses. The sight of them seemed to make so
forcible an impression upon the _adjudant_ that immediately he changed
his mind and began to interrogate the servant also. The latter, an old
soldier, guessing his questioner's plan of campaign from the first,
spoke of the powerful protection which his master enjoyed, adding that
certainly they would not _bone_ his fine horses. At once a soldier called
by the _adjudant_ put his hand on the servant's collar; another soldier
took charge of the horses, and, with an air of severity, the _adjudant_
ordered Fabrizio to follow him and not to answer back.
_THE BIVOUAC_
After making him cover a good league on foot, in the darkness rendered
apparently more intense by the fires of the bivouacs which lighted the
horizon on every side, the adjutant handed Fabrizio over to an officer
of _gendarmerie_ who, with a grave air, asked for his papers. Fabrizio
showed his passport, which described him as a dealer in barometers
travelling with his wares.
"What fools they are!" cried the officer; "this really is too much."
He put a number of questions to our hero who spoke of the Emperor and of
Liberty in terms of the keenest enthusiasm; whereupon the officer of
_gendarmerie_ went off in peals of laughter.
"Gad! You're no good at telling a tale!" he cried. "It is a bit too much
of a good thing their daring to send us young mugs like you!" And
despite all the protestations of Fabrizio, who was dying to explain that
he was not really a dealer in barometers, the officer sent him to the
prison of B----, a small town in the neighbourhood where our hero
arrived at about three o'clock in the morning, beside himself with rage
and half dead with exhaustion.
Fabrizio, astonished at first, then furious, understanding absolutely
nothing of what was happening to him, spent thirty-three long days in
this wretched prison; he wrote letter after letter to the town
commandant, and it was the gaoler's wife, a handsome Fleming of
six-and-thirty, who undertook to deliver them. But as she had no wish to
see so nice-looking a boy shot, and as moreover he paid well, she put
all these letters without fail in the fire. Late in the evening, she
would deign to come in and listen to the prisoner's complaints; she had
told her husband that the young greenhorn had money, after which the
prudent gaoler allowed her a free hand. She availed herself of this
licence and received several gold napoleons in return, for the
_adjudant_ had taken only the horses, and the officer of _gendarmerie_
had confiscated nothing at all. One afternoon in the month of June,
Fabrizio heard a violent cannonade at some distance. So they were
fighting at last! His heart leaped with impatience. He heard also a
great deal of noise in the town; as a matter of fact a big movement of
troops was being effected; three divisions were passing through B----.
When, about eleven o'clock, the gaoler's wife came in to share his
griefs, Fabrizio was even more friendly than usual; then, seizing hold
of her hands:
"Get me out of here, I swear on my honour to return to prison as soon as
they have stopped fighting."
"Stuff and nonsense! Have you the _quibus_?" He seemed worried; he did
not understand the word _quibus_. The gaoler's wife, noticing his
dismay, decided that he must be in low water, and instead of talking in
gold napoleons as she had intended talked now only in francs.
_WAR_
"Listen," she said to him, "if you can put down a hundred francs, I will
place a double napoleon on each eye of the corporal who comes to change
the guard during the night. He won't be able to see you breaking out of
prison, and if his regiment is to march to-morrow he will accept."
The bargain was soon struck. The gaoler's wife even consented to hide
Fabrizio in her own room, from which he could more easily make his
escape in the morning.
Next day, before dawn, the woman who was quite moved said to Fabrizio:
"My dear boy, you are still far too young for that dirty trade; take my
advice, don't go back to it."
"What!" stammered Fabrizio, "is it a crime then to wish to defend one's
country?"
"Enough said. Always remember that I saved your life; your case was
clear, you would have been shot. But don't say a word to anyone, or you
will lose my husband and me our job; and whatever you do, don't go about
repeating that silly tale about being a gentleman from Milan disguised
as a dealer in barometers, it's too stupid. Listen to me now, I'm going
to give you the uniform of a hussar who died the other day in the
prison; open your mouth as little as you possibly can; but if a serjeant
or an officer asks you questions so that you have to answer, say that
you've been lying ill in the house of a peasant who took you in out of
charity when you were shivering with fever in a ditch by the roadside.
If that does not satisfy them, you can add that you are going back to
your regiment. They may perhaps arrest you because of your accent; then
say that you were born in Piedmont, that you're a conscript who was left
in France last year, and all that sort of thing."
For the first time, after thirty-three days of blind fury, Fabrizio
grasped the clue to all that had happened. They took him for a spy. He
argued with the gaoler's wife, who, that morning, was most affectionate;
and finally, while armed with a needle she was taking in the hussar's
uniform to fit him, he told his whole story in so many words to the
astonished woman. For an instant she believed him; he had so innocent an
air, and looked so nice dressed as a hussar.
"Since you have such a desire to fight," she said to him at length half
convinced, "what you ought to have done as soon as you reached Paris was
to enlist in a regiment. If you had paid for a serjeant's drink, the
whole thing would have been settled." The gaoler's wife added much good
advice for the future, and finally, at the first streak of dawn, let
Fabrizio out of the house, after making him swear a hundred times over
that he would never mention her name, whatever happened. As soon as
Fabrizio had left the little town, marching boldly with the hussar's
sabre under his arm, he was seized by a scruple. "Here I am," he said to
himself, "with the clothes and the marching orders of a hussar who died
in prison, where he was sent, they say, for stealing a cow and some
silver plate! I have, so to speak, inherited his identity . . . and
without wishing it or expecting it in any way! Beware of prison! The
omen is clear, I shall have much to suffer from prisons!"
Not an hour had passed since Fabrizio's parting from his benefactress
when the rain began to fall with such violence that the new hussar was
barely able to get along, hampered by a pair of heavy boots which had
not been made for him. Meeting a peasant mounted upon a sorry horse, he
bought the animal, explaining by signs what he wanted; the gaoler's wife
had recommended him to speak as little as possible, in view of his
accent.
That day the army, which had just won the battle of Ligny, was marching
straight on Brussels. It was the eve of the battle of Waterloo. Towards
midday, the rain still continuing to fall in torrents, Fabrizio heard
the sound of the guns; this joy made him completely oblivious of the
fearful moments of despair in which so unjust an imprisonment had
plunged him. He rode on until late at night, and, as he was beginning to
have a little common sense, went to seek shelter in a peasant's house a
long way from the road. This peasant wept and pretended that everything
had been taken from him; Fabrizio gave him a crown, and he found some
barley. "My horse is no beauty," Fabrizio said to himself, "but that
makes no difference, he may easily take the fancy of some _adjudant_,"
and he went to lie down in the stable by its side. An hour before dawn
Fabrizio was on the road, and, by copious endearments, succeeded in
making his horse trot. About five o'clock, he heard the cannonade: it
was the preliminaries of Waterloo.
[Footnote 7: The speaker is carried away by passion; he is rendering
in prose some lines of the famous Monti.]
CHAPTER THREE
Fabrizio soon came upon some _vivandières_, and the extreme gratitude
that he felt for the gaoler's wife of B---- impelled him to address
them; he asked one of them where he would find the 4th Hussar Regiment,
to which he belonged.
"You would do just as well not to be in such a hurry, young soldier,"
said the _cantinière_, touched by Fabrizio's pallor and glowing eyes.
"Your wrist is not strong enough yet for the sabre-thrusts they'll be
giving to-day. If you had a musket, I don't say, maybe you could let off
your round as well as any of them."
This advice displeased Fabrizio; but however much he urged on his horse,
he could go no faster than the _cantinière_ in her cart. Every now and
then the sound of the guns seemed to come nearer and prevented them from
hearing each other speak, for Fabrizio was so beside himself with
enthusiasm and delight that he had renewed the conversation. Every word
uttered by the _cantinière_ intensified his happiness by making him
understand it. With the exception of his real name and his escape from
prison, he ended by confiding everything to this woman who seemed such a
good soul. She was greatly surprised and understood nothing at all of
what this handsome young soldier was telling her.
"I see what it is," she exclaimed at length with an air of triumph.
"You're a young gentleman who has fallen in love with the wife of some
captain in the 4th Hussars. Your mistress will have made you a present
of the uniform you're wearing, and you're going after her. As sure as
God's in heaven, you've never been a soldier; but, like the brave boy
you are, seeing your regiment's under fire, you want to be there too,
and not let them think you a chicken."
_WAR_
Fabrizio agreed with everything; it was his only way of procuring good
advice. "I know nothing of the ways of these French people," he said to
himself, "and if I am not guided by someone I shall find myself being
put in prison again, and they'll steal my horse."
"First of all, my boy," said the _cantinière_, who was becoming more
and more of a friend to him, "confess that you're not one-and-twenty: at
the very most you might be seventeen."
This was the truth, and Fabrizio admitted as much with good grace.
"Then, you aren't even a conscript; it's simply because of Madame's
pretty face that you're going to get your bones broken. Plague it, she
can't be particular. If you've still got some of the _yellow-boys_ she
sent you, you must first of all buy yourself another horse; look how
your screw pricks up his ears when the guns sound at all near; that's a
peasant's horse, and will be the death of you as soon as you reach the
line. That white smoke you see over there above the hedge, that's the
infantry firing, my boy. So prepare for a fine fright when you hear the
bullets whistling over you. You'll do as well to eat a bit while there's
still time."
Fabrizio followed this advice and, presenting a napoleon to the
_vivandière_, asked her to accept payment.
"It makes one weep to see him!" cried the woman; "the poor child doesn't
even know how to spend his money! It would be no more than you deserve
if I pocketed your napoleon and put Cocotte into a trot; damned if your
screw could catch me up. What would you do, stupid, if you saw me go
off? Bear in mind, when the _brute_ growls, never to show your gold.
Here," she went on, "here's 18 francs, 50 centimes, and your breakfast
costs you 30 sous. Now, we shall soon have some horses for sale. If the
beast is a small one, you'll give ten francs, and, in any case, never
more than twenty, not if it was the horse of the Four Sons of Aymon."
The meal finished, the _vivandière_, who was still haranguing, was
interrupted by a woman who had come across the fields and passed them on
the road.
"Hallo there, hi!" this woman shouted. "Hallo, Margot! Your 6th Light
are over there on the right."
"I must leave you, my boy," said the _vivandière_ to our hero; "but
really and truly I pity you; I've taken quite a fancy to you, upon my
word I have. You don't know a thing about anything, you're going to get
a wipe in the eye, as sure as God's in heaven! Come along to the 6th
Light with me."
"I quite understand that I know nothing," Fabrizio told her, "but I want
to fight, and I'm determined to go over there towards that white smoke."
"Look how your horse is twitching his ears! As soon as he gets over
there, even if he's no strength left, he'll take the bit in his teeth
and start galloping, and heaven only knows where he'll land you. Will
you listen to me now? As soon as you get to the troops, pick up a musket
and a cartridge-pouch, get down among the men and copy what you see them
do, exactly the same: But, good heavens, I'll bet you don't even know
how to open a cartridge."
Fabrizio, stung to the quick, admitted nevertheless to his new friend
that she had guessed aright.
"Poor boy! He'll be killed straight away; sure as God! It won't take
long. You've got to come with me, absolutely," went on the _cantinière_
in a tone of authority.
"But I want to fight."
"You shall fight too; why, the 6th Light are famous fighters, and
there's fighting enough to-day for everyone."
"But shall we come soon to the regiment?"
"In a quarter of an hour at the most."
"With this honest woman's recommendation," Fabrizio told himself, "my
ignorance of everything won't make them take me for a spy, and I shall
have a chance of fighting." At this moment the noise of the guns
redoubled, each explosion coming straight on top of the last. "It's like
a Rosary," said Fabrizio.
"We're beginning to hear the infantry fire now," said the _vivandière_,
whipping up her little horse, which seemed quite excited by the firing.
The _cantinière_ turned to the right and took a side road that ran
through the fields; there was a foot of mud in it; the little cart
seemed about to be stuck fast: Fabrizio pushed the wheel. His horse fell
twice; presently the road, though with less water on it, was nothing
more than a bridle path through the grass. Fabrizio had not gone five
hundred yards when his nag stopped short: it was a corpse, lying across
the path, which terrified horse and rider alike.
Fabrizio's face, pale enough by nature, assumed a markedly green tinge;
the _cantinière_, after looking at the dead man, said, as though speaking
to herself: "That's not one of our Division." Then, raising her eyes to
our hero, she burst out laughing.
"Aha, my boy! There's a titbit for you!" Fabrizio sat frozen. What
struck him most of all was the dirtiness of the feet of this corpse
which had already been stripped of its shoes and left with nothing but
an old pair of trousers all clotted with blood.
"Come nearer," the _cantinière_ ordered him, "get off your horse,
you'll have to get accustomed to them; look," she cried, "he's stopped
one in the head."
A bullet, entering on one side of the nose, had gone out at the opposite
temple, and disfigured the corpse in a hideous fashion. It lay with one
eye still open.
"Get off your horse then, lad," said the _cantinière_, "and give him a
shake of the hand to see if he'll return it."
Without hesitation, although ready to yield up his soul with disgust,
Fabrizio flung himself from his horse and took the hand of the corpse
which he shook vigorously; then he stood still as though paralysed. He
felt that he had not the strength to mount again. What horrified him
more than anything was that open eye.
"The _vivandière_ will think me a coward," he said to himself bitterly.
But he felt the impossibility of making any movement; he would have
fallen. It was a frightful moment; Fabrizio was on the point of being
physically sick. The _vivandière_ noticed this, jumped lightly down
from her little carriage, and held out to him, without saying a word, a
glass of brandy which he swallowed at a gulp; he was able to mount his
screw, and continued on his way without speaking. The _vivandière_
looked at him now and again from the corner of her eye.
"You shall fight to-morrow, my boy," she said at length; "to-day you're
going to stop with me. You can see now that you've got to learn the
business before you can become a soldier."
"On the contrary, I want to start fighting at once," exclaimed our hero
with a sombre air which seemed to the _vivandière_ to augur well. The
noise of the guns grew twice as loud and seemed to be coming nearer. The
explosions began to form a continuous bass; there was no interval
between one and the next, and above this running bass, which suggested
the roar of a torrent in the distance, they could make out quite plainly
the rattle of musketry.
At this point the road dived down into a clump, of trees. The
_vivandière_ saw three or four soldiers of our army who were coming
towards her as fast as their legs would carry them; she jumped nimbly
down from her cart and ran into cover fifteen or twenty paces from the
road. She hid herself in a hole which had been left where a big tree had
recently been uprooted. "Now," thought Fabrizio, "we shall see whether I
am a coward!" He stopped by the side of the little cart which the woman
had abandoned, and drew his sabre. The soldiers paid no attention to him
and passed at a run along the wood, to the left of the road.
"They're ours," said the _vivandière_ calmly, as she came back, quite
breathless, to her little cart. . . . "If your horse was capable of
galloping, I should say: push ahead as far as the end of the wood, and
see if there's anyone on the plain." Fabrizio did not wait to be told
twice, he tore off a branch from a poplar, stripped it and started to
lash his horse with all his might; the animal broke into a gallop for a
moment, then fell back into its regular slow trot. The _vivandière_ had
put her horse into a gallop. "Stop, will you, stop!" she called after
Fabrizio. Presently both were clear of the wood. Coming to the edge of
the plain, they heard a terrifying din, guns and muskets thundered on
every side, right, left, behind them. And as the clump of trees from
which they emerged grew on a mound rising nine or ten feet above the
plain, they could see fairly well a corner of the battle; but still
there was no one to be seen in the meadow beyond the wood. This meadow
was bordered, half a mile away, by a long row of willows, very bushy;
above the willows appeared a white smoke which now and again rose
eddying into the sky.
"If I only knew where the regiment was," said the _cantinière_, in some
embarrassment. "It won't do to go straight ahead over this big field. By
the way," she said to Fabrizio, "if you see one of the enemy, stick him
with the point of your sabre, don't play about with the blade."
At this moment, the _cantinière_ caught sight of the four soldiers whom
we mentioned a little way back; they were coming out of the wood on to
the plain to the left of the road. One of them was on horseback.
"There you are," she said to Fabrizio. "Hallo there!" she called to the
mounted man, "come over here and have a glass of brandy." The soldiers
approached.
"Where are the 6th Light?" she shouted.
"Over there, five minutes away, across that canal that runs along by the
willows; why, Colonel Macon has just been killed."
"Will you take five francs for your horse, you?"
"Five francs! That's not a bad one, _ma_! An officer's horse I can sell
in ten minutes for five napoleons."
"Give me one of your napoleons," said the _vivandière_ to Fabrizio.
Then going up to the mounted soldier: "Get off, quickly," she said to
him, "here's your napoleon."
The soldier dismounted, Fabrizio sprang gaily on to the saddle, the
_vivandière_ unstrapped the little portmanteau which was on his old
horse.
"Come and help me, all of you!" she said to the soldiers, "is that the
way you leave a lady to do the work?"
But no sooner had the captured horse felt the weight of the portmanteau
than he began to rear, and Fabrizio, who was an excellent horseman, had
to use all his strength to hold him.
"A good sign!" said the _vivandière_, "the gentleman is not accustomed
to being tickled by portmanteaus."
"A general's horse," cried the man who had sold it, "a horse that's
worth ten napoleons if it's worth a liard."
"Here are twenty francs," said Fabrizio, who could not contain himself
for joy at feeling between his legs a horse that could really move.
At that moment a shot struck the line of willows, through which it
passed obliquely, and Fabrizio had the curious spectacle of all those
little branches flying this way and that as though mown down by a stroke
of the scythe.
"Look, there's the _brute_ advancing," the soldier said to him as he
took the twenty francs. It was now about two o'clock.
Fabrizio was still under the spell of this strange spectacle when a
party of generals, followed by a score of hussars, passed at a gallop
across one corner of the huge field on the edge of which he had halted:
his horse neighed, reared several times in succession, then began
violently tugging the bridle that was holding him. "All right, then,"
Fabrizio said to himself.
The horse, left to his own devices, dashed off hell for leather to join
the escort that was following the generals. Fabrizio counted four
gold-laced hats. A quarter of an hour later, from a few words said by
one hussar to the next, Fabrizio gathered that one of these generals was
the famous Marshal Ney. His happiness knew no bounds; only he had no way
of telling which of the four generals was Marshal Ney; he would have
given everything in the world to know, but he remembered that he had
been told not to speak. The escort halted, having to cross a wide ditch
left full of water by the rain overnight; it was fringed with tall trees
and formed the left hand boundary of the field at the entrance to which
Fabrizio had bought the horse. Almost all the hussars had dismounted;
the bank of the ditch was steep and very slippery and the water lay
quite three or four feet below the level of the field. Fabrizio,
distracted with joy, was thinking more of Marshal Ney and of glory than
of his horse, which, being highly excited, jumped into the canal, thus
splashing the water up to a considerable height. One of the generals was
soaked to the skin by the sheet of water, and cried with an oath: "Damn
the f---- brute!" Fabrizio felt deeply hurt by this insult. "Can I ask
him to apologise?" he wondered. Meanwhile, to prove that he was not so
clumsy after all, he set his horse to climb the opposite bank of the
ditch; but it rose straight up and was five or six feet high. He had to
abandon the attempt; then he rode up stream, his horse being up to its
head in water, and at last found a sort of drinking-place. By this
gentle slope he was easily able to reach the field on the other side of
the canal. He was the first man of the escort to appear there; he
started to trot proudly down the bank; below him, in the canal, the
hussars were splashing about, somewhat embarrassed by their position,
for in many places the water was five feet deep. Two or three horses
took fright and began to swim, making an appalling mess. A serjeant
noticed the manœuvre that this youngster, who looked so very unlike a
soldier, had just carried out.
"Up here! There is a watering-place on the left!" he shouted, and in
time they all crossed.
On reaching the farther bank, Fabrizio had found the generals there by
themselves; the noise of the guns seemed to him to have doubled; and it
was all he could do to hear the general whom he had given such a good
soaking and who now shouted in his ear:
"Where did you get that horse?"
Fabrizio was so much upset that he answered in Italian:
"_L'ho comprato poco fa._ (I bought it just now.)"
"What's that you say?" cried the general.
But the din at that moment became so terrific that Fabrizio could not
answer him. We must admit that our hero was very little of a hero at
that moment. However, fear came to him only as a secondary
consideration; he was principally shocked by the noise, which hurt his
ears. The escort broke into a gallop; they crossed a large batch of
tilled land which lay beyond the canal. And this field was strewn with
dead.
"Red-coats! red-coats!" the hussars of the escort exclaimed joyfully,
and at first Fabrizio did not understand; then he noticed that as a
matter of fact almost all these bodies wore red uniforms. One detail
made him shudder with horror; he observed that many of these unfortunate
red-coats were still alive; they were calling out, evidently asking for
help, and no one stopped to give it them. Our hero, being most humane,
took every possible care that his horse should not tread upon any of the
red-coats. The escort halted; Fabrizio, who was not paying sufficient
attention to his military duty, galloped on, his eyes fixed on a wounded
wretch in front of him.
"Will you halt, you young fool!" the serjeant shouted after him.
Fabrizio discovered that he was twenty paces on the generals' right
front, and precisely in the direction in which they were gazing through
their glasses. As he came back to take his place behind the other
hussars, who had halted a few paces in rear of them, he noticed the
biggest of these generals who was speaking to his neighbour, a general
also, in a tone of authority and almost of reprimand; he was swearing.
Fabrizio could not contain his curiosity; and, in spite of the warning
not to speak, given him by his friend the gaoler's wife, he composed a
short sentence in good French, quite correct, and said to his neighbour:
"Who is that general who is chewing up the one next to him?"
"Gad, it's the Marshal!"
"What Marshal?"
"Marshal Ney, you fool! I say, where have you been serving?"
Fabrizio, although highly susceptible, had no thought of resenting this
insult; he was studying, lost in childish admiration, the famous Prince
de la Moskowa, the "Bravest of the Brave."
Suddenly they all moved off at full gallop. A few minutes later Fabrizio
saw, twenty paces ahead of him, a ploughed field the surface of which
was moving in a singular fashion. The furrows were full of water and the
soil, very damp, which formed the ridges between these furrows kept
flying off in little black lumps three or four feet into the air.
Fabrizio noticed as he passed this curious effect; then his thoughts
turned to dreaming of the Marshal and his glory. He heard a sharp cry
close to him; two hussars fell struck by shot; and, when he looked back
at them, they were already twenty paces behind the escort. What seemed
to him horrible was a horse streaming with blood that was struggling on
the ploughed land, its hooves caught in its own entrails; it was trying
to follow the others: its blood ran down into the mire.
"Ah! So I am under fire at last!" he said to himself. "I have seen shots
fired!" he repeated with a sense of satisfaction. "Now I am a real
soldier." At that moment, the escort began to go hell for leather, and
our hero realised that it was shot from the guns that was making the
earth fly up all round him. He looked vainly in the direction from which
the balls were coming, he saw the white smoke of the battery at an
enormous distance, and, in the thick of the steady and continuous rumble
produced by the artillery fire, he seemed to hear shots discharged much
closer at hand: he could not understand in the least what was happening.
At that moment, the generals and their escort dropped into a little road
filled with water which ran five feet below the level of the fields.
The Marshal halted and looked again through his glasses. Fabrizio, this
time, could examine him at his leisure. He found him to be very fair,
with a big red face. "We don't have any faces like that in Italy," he
said to himself. "With my pale cheeks and chestnut hair, I shall never
look like that," he added despondently. To him these words implied: "I
shall never be a hero." He looked at the hussars; with a solitary
exception, all of them had yellow moustaches. If Fabrizio was studying
the hussars of the escort, they were all studying him as well. Their
stare made him blush, and, to get rid of his embarrassment, he turned
his head towards the enemy. They consisted of widely extended lines of
men in red, but, what greatly surprised him, these men seemed to be
quite minute. Their long files, which were regiments or divisions,
appeared no taller than hedges. A line of red cavalry were trotting in
the direction of the sunken road along which the Marshal and his escort
had begun to move at a walk, splashing through the mud. The smoke made
it impossible to distinguish anything in the direction in which they
were advancing; now and then one saw men moving at a gallop against this
background of white smoke.
Suddenly, from the direction of the enemy, Fabrizio saw four men
approaching hell for leather. "Ah! We are attacked," he said to himself;
then he saw two of these men speak to the Marshal. One of the generals
on the latter's staff set off at a gallop towards the enemy, followed by
two hussars of the escort and by the four men who had just come up.
After a little canal which they all crossed, Fabrizio found himself
riding beside a serjeant who seemed a good-natured fellow. "I must speak
to this one," he said to himself, "then perhaps they'll stop staring at
me." He thought for a long time.
"Sir, this is the first time that I have been present at a battle," he
said at length to the serjeant. "But is this a real battle?"
"Something like. But who are you?"
"I am the brother of a captain's wife."
"And what is he called, your captain?"
Our hero was terribly embarrassed; he had never anticipated this
question. Fortunately, the Marshal and his escort broke into a gallop.
"What French name shall I say?" he wondered. At last he remembered the
name of the innkeeper with whom he had lodged in Paris; he brought his
horse up to the serjeant's, and shouted to him at the top of his voice:
"Captain Meunier!" The other, not hearing properly in the roar of the
guns, replied: "Oh, Captain Teulier? Well, he's been killed."
"Splendid," thought Fabrizio. "Captain Teulier; I must look sad."
"Good God!" he cried; and assumed a piteous mien. They had left the
sunken road and were crossing a small meadow, they were going hell for
leather, shots were coming over again, the Marshal headed for a division
of cavalry. The escort found themselves surrounded by dead and wounded
men; but this sight had already ceased to make any impression on our
hero; he had other things to think of.
While the escort was halted, he caught sight of the little cart of a
_cantinière_, and his affection for this honourable corps sweeping
aside every other consideration, set off at a gallop to join her.
"Stay where you are, curse you," the serjeant shouted after him.
"What can he do to me here?" thought Fabrizio, and he continued to
gallop towards the _cantinière_. When he put spurs to his horse, he had
had some hope that it might be his good _cantinière_ of the morning;
the horse and the little cart bore a strong resemblance, but their owner
was quite different, and our hero thought her appearance most
forbidding. As he came up to her, Fabrizio heard her say: "And he was
such a fine looking man, too!" A very ugly sight awaited the new
recruit; they were sawing off a cuirassier's leg at the thigh, a
handsome young fellow of five feet ten. Fabrizio shut his eyes and drank
four glasses of brandy straight off.
"How you do go for it, you boozer!" cried the _cantinière_. The brandy
gave him an idea: "I must buy the goodwill of my comrades, the hussars
of the escort."
"Give me the rest of the bottle," he said to the _vivandière_.
"What do you mean," was her answer, "what's left there costs ten francs,
on a day like this."
As he rejoined the escort at a gallop:
"Ah! You're bringing us a drop of drink," cried the serjeant. "That was
why you deserted, was it? Hand it over."
The bottle went round, the last man to take it flung it in the air after
drinking. "Thank you, chum!" he cried to Fabrizio. All eyes were
fastened on him kindly. This friendly gaze lifted a hundredweight from
Fabrizio's heart; it was one of those hearts of too delicate tissue
which require the friendship of those around it. So at last he had
ceased to be looked at askance by his comrades; there was a bond between
them! Fabrizio breathed a deep sigh of relief, then in a bold voice said
to the serjeant:
"And if Captain Teulier has been killed, where shall I find my sister?"
He fancied himself a little Machiavelli to be saying Teulier so
naturally instead of Meunier.
"That's what you'll find out to-night," was the serjeant's reply.
The escort moved on again and made for some divisions of infantry.
Fabrizio felt quite drunk; he had taken too much brandy, he was rolling
slightly in his saddle: he remembered most opportunely a favourite
saying of his mother's coachman: "When you've been lifting your elbow,
look straight between your horse's ears, and do what the man next you
does." The Marshal stopped for some time beside a number of cavalry
units which he ordered to charge; but for an hour or two our hero was
barely conscious of what was going on round about him. He was feeling
extremely tired, and when his horse galloped he fell back on the saddle
like a lump of lead.
Suddenly the serjeant called out to his men: "Don't you see the Emperor,
curse you!" Whereupon the escort shouted: "_Vive l'Empereur_!" at the
top of their voices. It may be imagined that our hero stared till his
eyes started out of his head, but all he saw was some generals
galloping, also followed by an escort. The long floating plumes of
horsehair which the dragoons of the bodyguard wore on their helmets
prevented him from distinguishing their faces. "So I have missed seeing
the Emperor on a field of battle, all because of those cursed glasses of
brandy!" This reflexion brought him back to his senses.
They went down into a road filled with water, the horses wished to
drink.
"So that was the Emperor who went past then?" he asked the man next to
him.
"Why, surely, the one with no braid on his coat. How is it you didn't
see him?" his comrade answered kindly. Fabrizio felt a strong desire to
gallop after the Emperor's escort and embody himself in it. What a joy
to go really to war in the train of that hero! It was for that he
had come to France. "I am quite at liberty to do it," he said to
himself, "for after all I have no other reason for being where I am but
the will of my horse, which started galloping after these generals."
What made Fabrizio decide to stay where he was was that the hussars, his
new comrades, seemed so friendly towards him; he began to imagine
himself the intimate friend of all the troopers with whom he had been
galloping for the last few hours. He saw arise between them and himself
that noble friendship of the heroes of Tasso and Ariosto. If he were to
attach himself to the Emperor's escort, there would be fresh
acquaintances to be made, perhaps they would look at him askance, for
these other horsemen were dragoons, and he was wearing the hussar
uniform like all the rest that were following the Marshal. The way in
which they now looked at him set our hero on a pinnacle of happiness; he
would have done anything in the world for his comrades; his mind and
soul were in the clouds. Everything seemed to have assumed a new aspect
now that he was among friends; he was dying to ask them various
questions. "But I am still a little drunk," he said to himself, "I must
bear in mind what the gaoler's wife told me." He noticed on leaving the
sunken road that the escort was no longer with Marshal Ney; the general
whom they were following was tall and thin, with a dry face and an
awe-inspiring eye.
This general was none other than Comte d'A----, the Lieutenant Robert of
the 15th of May, 1796. How delighted he would have been to meet Fabrizio
del Dongo!
It was already some time since Fabrizio had noticed the earth flying off
in black crumbs on being struck by shot; they came in rear of a regiment
of cuirassiers, he could hear distinctly the rattle of the grapeshot
against their breastplates, and saw several men fall.
The sun was now very low and had begun to set when the escort, emerging
from a sunken road, mounted a little bank three or four feet high to
enter a ploughed field. Fabrizio heard an odd little sound quite close
to him: he turned his head, four men had fallen with their horses; the
general himself had been unseated, but picked himself up, covered in
blood. Fabrizio looked at the hussars who were lying on the ground:
three of them were still making convulsive movements, the fourth cried:
"Pull me out!" The serjeant and two or three men had dismounted to
assist the general who, leaning upon his aide-de-camp, was attempting to
walk a few steps; he was trying to get away from his horse, which lay on
the ground struggling and kicking out madly.
The serjeant came up to Fabrizio. At that moment our hero heard a voice
say behind him and quite close to his ear: "This is the only one that
can still gallop." He felt himself seized by the feet; they were taken
out of the stirrups at the same time as someone caught him underneath
the arms; he was lifted over his horse's tail and then allowed to slip
to the ground, where he landed sitting.
The aide-de-camp took Fabrizio's horse by the bridle; the general, with
the help of the serjeant, mounted and rode off at a gallop; he was
quickly followed by the six men who were left of the escort. Fabrizio
rose up in a fury, and began to run after them shouting: "_Ladri!
Ladri_! (Thieves! Thieves!)" It was an amusing experience to run after
horse-stealers across a battlefield.
The escort and the general, Comte d'A----, disappeared presently behind
a row of willows. Fabrizio, blind with rage, also arrived at this line
of willows; he found himself brought to a halt by a canal of
considerable depth which he crossed. Then, on reaching the other side,
he began swearing again as he saw once more, but far away in the
distance, the general and his escort vanishing among the trees.
"Thieves! Thieves!" he cried, in French this time. In desperation, not
so much at the loss of his horse as at the treachery to himself, he let
himself sink down on the side of the ditch, tired out and dying of
hunger. If his fine horse had been taken from him by the enemy, he would
have thought no more about it; but to see himself betrayed and robbed by
that serjeant whom he liked so much and by those hussars whom he
regarded as brothers! That was what broke his heart. He could find no
consolation for so great an infamy, and, leaning his back against a
willow, began to shed hot tears. He abandoned one by one all those
beautiful dreams of a chivalrous and sublime friendship, like that of
the heroes of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. To see death come to one was
nothing, surrounded by heroic and tender hearts, by noble friends who
clasp one by the hand as one yields one's dying breath! But to retain
one's enthusiasm surrounded by a pack of vile scoundrels! Like all angry
men Fabrizio exaggerated. After a quarter of an hour of this melting
mood, he noticed that the guns were beginning to range on the row of
trees in the shade of which he sat meditating. He rose and tried to find
his bearings. He scanned those fields bounded by a wide canal and the
row of pollard willows: he thought he knew where he was. He saw a body
of infantry crossing the ditch and marching over the fields, a quarter
of a league in front of him. "I was just falling asleep," he said to
himself; "I must see that I'm not taken prisoner." And he put his best
foot foremost. As he advanced, his mind was set at rest; he recognized
the uniforms, the regiments by which he had been afraid of being cut off
were French. He made a right incline so as to join them.
After the moral anguish of having been so shamefully betrayed and
robbed, there came another which, at every moment, made itself felt more
keenly; he was dying of hunger. It was therefore with infinite joy that
after having walked, or rather run for ten minutes, he saw that the
column of infantry, which also had been moving very rapidly, was halting
to take up a position. A few minutes later, he was among the nearest of
the soldiers.
"Friends, could you sell me a mouthful of bread?"
"I say, here's a fellow who thinks we're bakers!"
This harsh utterance and the general guffaw that followed it had a
crushing effect on Fabrizio. So war was no longer that noble and
universal uplifting of souls athirst for glory which he had imagined it
to be from Napoleon's proclamations! He sat down, or rather let himself
fall on the grass; he turned very pale. The soldier who had spoken to
him, and who had stopped ten paces off to clean the lock of his musket
with his handkerchief, came nearer and flung him a lump of bread; then,
seeing that he did not pick it up, broke off a piece which he put in our
hero's mouth. Fabrizio opened his eyes, and ate the bread without having
the strength to speak. When at length he looked round for the soldier to
pay him, he found himself alone; the men nearest to him were a hundred
yards off and were marching. Mechanically he rose and followed them. He
entered a wood; he was dropping with exhaustion, and already had begun
to look round for a comfortable resting-place; but what was his delight
on recognising first of all the horse, then the cart, and finally the
_cantinière_ of that morning! She ran to him and was frightened by his
appearance.
"Still going, my boy," she said to him; "you're wounded then? And
where's your fine horse?" So saying she led him towards the cart, upon
which she made him climb, supporting him under the arms. No sooner was
he in the cart than our hero, utterly worn out, fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nothing could awaken him, neither the muskets fired close to the cart
nor the trot of the horse which the _cantinière_ was flogging with all
her might. The regiment, attacked unexpectedly by swarms of Prussian
cavalry, after imagining all day that they were winning the battle, was
beating a retreat or rather fleeing in the direction of France.
The colonel, a handsome young man, well turned out, who had succeeded
Macon, was sabred; the battalion commander who took his place, an old
man with white hair, ordered the regiment to halt. "Damn you," he cried
to his men, "in the days of the Republic we waited till we were forced
by the enemy before running away. Defend every inch of ground, and get
yourselves killed!" he shouted, and swore at them. "It is the soil of
the Fatherland that these Prussians want to invade now!"
The little cart halted; Fabrizio awoke with a start. The sun had set
some time back; he was quite astonished to see that it was almost night.
The troops were running in all directions in a confusion which greatly
surprised our hero; they looked shame-faced, he thought.
"What is happening?" he asked the _cantinière_.
"Nothing at all. Only that we're in the soup, my boy; it's the Prussian
cavalry mowing us down, that's all. The idiot of a general thought at
first they were our men. Come, quick, help me to mend Cocotte's trace:
it's broken."
Several shots were fired ten yards off. Our hero, cool and composed,
said to himself: "But really, I haven't fought at all, the whole day; I
have only escorted a general.--I must go and fight," he said to the
_cantinière_.
"Keep calm, you shall fight, and more than you want! We're done for.
"Aubry, my lad," she called out to a passing corporal, "keep an eye on
the little cart now and then."
"Are you going to fight?" Fabrizio asked Aubry.
"Oh, no, I'm putting my pumps on to go to a dance!"
"I shall follow you."
"I tell you, he's all right, the little hussar," cried the
_cantinière_. "The young gentleman has a stout heart." Corporal Aubry
marched on without saying a word. Eight or nine soldiers ran up and
joined him; he led them behind a big oak surrounded by brambles. On
reaching it he posted them along the edge of the wood, still without
uttering a word, on a widely extended front, each man being at least ten
paces from the next.
"Now then, you men," said the corporal, opening his mouth for the first
time, "don't fire till I give the order: remember you've only got three
rounds each."
"Why, what is happening?" Fabrizio wondered. At length, when he found
himself alone with the corporal, he said to him: "I have no musket."
"Will you hold your tongue? Go forward there: fifty paces in front of
the wood you'll find one of the poor fellows of the Regiment who've been
sabred; you will take his cartridge-pouch and his musket. Don't strip a
wounded man, though; take the pouch and musket from one who's properly
dead, and hurry up or you'll be shot in the bade by our fellows."
Fabrizio set off at a run and returned the next minute with a musket and
a pouch.
"Load your musket and stick yourself behind this tree, and whatever you
do don't fire till you get the order from me. . . . Great God in
heaven!" the corporal broke off, "he doesn't even know how to load!" He
helped Fabrizio to do this while going on with his instructions. "If one
of the enemy's cavalry gallops at you to cut you down, dodge round your
tree and don't fire till he's within three paces: wait till your
bayonet's practically touching his uniform.
_WAR_
"Throw that great sabre away," cried the corporal. "Good God, do you
want it to trip you up? Fine sort of soldiers they're sending us these
days!" As he spoke he himself took hold of the sabre which he flung
angrily away.
"You there, wipe the flint of your musket with your handkerchief. Have
you never fired a musket?"
"I am a hunter."
"Thank God for that!" went on the corporal with a loud sigh. "Whatever
you do, don't fire till I give the order." And he moved away.
Fabrizio was supremely happy. "Now I'm going to do some real fighting,"
he said to himself, "and kill one of the enemy. This morning they were
sending cannonballs over, and I did nothing but expose myself and risk
getting killed; that's a fool's game." He gazed all round him with
extreme curiosity. Presently he heard seven or eight shots fired quite
close at hand. But receiving no order to fire he stood quietly behind
his tree. It was almost night; he felt he was in a _look-out_,
bear-shootings on the mountain of Tramezzina, above Grianta. A hunter's
idea came to him: he took a cartridge from his pouch and removed the
ball. "If I see him," he said, "it won't do to miss him," and he slipped
this second ball into the barrel of his musket. He heard shots fired
close to his tree; at the same moment he saw a horseman in blue pass in
front of him at a gallop, going from right to left. "It is more than
three paces," he said to himself, "but at that range I am certain of my
mark." He kept the trooper carefully sighted with his musket and finally
pressed the trigger: the trooper fell with his horse. Our hero imagined
he was stalking game: he ran joyfully out to collect his bag. He was
actually touching the man, who appeared to him to be dying, when, with
incredible speed, two Prussian troopers charged down on him to sabre
him. Fabrizio dashed back as fast as he could go to the wood; to gain
speed he flung his musket away. The Prussian troopers were not more than
three paces from him when he reached another plantation of young oaks,
as thick as his arm and quite upright, which fringed the wood. These
little oaks delayed the horsemen for a moment, but they passed them and
continued their pursuit of Fabrizio along a clearing. Once again they
were just overtaking him when he slipped in among seven or eight big
trees. At that moment his face was almost scorched by the flame of five
or six musket shots fired from in front of him. He ducked his head; when
he raised it again he found himself face to face with the corporal.
"Did you kill your man?" Corporal Aubry asked him.
"Yes; but I've lost my musket."
"It's not muskets we're short of. You're not a bad b----; though you do
look as green as a cabbage you've won the day all right, and these men
here have just missed the two who were chasing you and coming straight
at them. I didn't see them myself. What we've got to do now is to get
away at the double; the Regiment must be half a mile off, and there's a
bit of a field to cross, too, where we may find ourselves surrounded."
As he spoke, the corporal marched off at a brisk pace at the head of his
ten men. Two hundred yards farther on, as they entered the little field
he had mentioned, they came upon a wounded general who was being carried
by his aide-de-camp and an orderly.
"Give me four of your men," he said to the corporal in a faint voice,
"I've got to be carried to the ambulance; my leg is shattered."
"Go and f---- yourself!" replied the corporal, "you and all your
generals. You've all of you betrayed the Emperor to-day."
"What," said the general, furious, "you dispute my orders. Do you know
that I am General Comte B----, commanding your Division," and so on. He
waxed rhetorical. The aide-de-camp flung himself on the men. The
corporal gave him a thrust in the arm with his bayonet, then made off
with his party at the double. "I wish they were all in your boat," he
repeated with an oath; "I'd shatter their arms and legs for them. A pack
of puppies! All of them bought by the Bourbons, to betray the Emperor!"
Fabrizio listened with a thrill of horror to this frightful accusation.
About ten o'clock that night the little party overtook their regiment on
the outskirts of a large village which divided the road into several
very narrow streets; but Fabrizio noticed that Corporal Aubry avoided
speaking to any of the officers. "We can't get on," he called to his
men. All these streets were blocked with infantry, cavalry, and, worst
of all, by the limbers and wagons of the artillery. The corporal tried
three of these streets in turn; after advancing twenty yards he was
obliged to halt. Everyone was swearing and losing his temper.
"Some traitor in command here, too!" cried the corporal: "if the enemy
has the sense to surround the village, we shall all be caught like rats
in a trap. Follow me, you." Fabrizio looked round; there were only six
men left with the corporal. Through a big gate which stood open they
came into a huge courtyard; from this courtyard they passed into a
stable, the back door of which let them into a garden. They lost their
way for a moment and wandered blindly about. But finally, going through
a hedge, they found themselves in a huge field of buckwheat. In less
than half an hour, guided by the shouts and confused noises, they had
regained the high road on the other side of the village. The ditches on
either side of this road were filled with muskets that had been thrown
away; Fabrizio selected one: but the road, although very broad, was so
blocked with stragglers and transport that in the next half-hour the
corporal and Fabrizio had not advanced more than five hundred yards at
the most; they were told that this road led to Charleroi. As the village
clock struck eleven:
"Let us cut across the fields again," said the corporal. The little
party was reduced now to three men, the corporal and Fabrizio. When they
had gone a quarter of a league from the high road: "I'm done," said one
of the soldiers.
"Me, too!" said another.
"That's good news! We're all in the same boat," said the corporal; "but
do what I tell you and you'll get through all right." His eye fell on
five or six trees marking the line of a little ditch in the middle of an
immense cornfield. "Make for the trees!" he told his men; "lie down," he
added when they had reached the trees, "and not a sound, remember. But
before you go to sleep, who's got any bread?"
"I have," said one of the men.
"Give it here," said the corporal in a tone of authority. He divided the
bread into five pieces and took the smallest himself.
"A quarter of an hour before dawn," he said as he ate it, "you'll have
the enemy's cavalry on your backs. You've got to see you're not sabred.
A man by himself is done for with cavalry after him on these big plains,
but five can get away; keep in close touch with me, don't fire till
they're at close range, and to-morrow evening I'll undertake to get you
to Charleroi." The corporal roused his men an hour before daybreak and
made them recharge their muskets. The noise on the high road still
continued; it had gone on all night: it was like the sound of a torrent
heard from a long way off.
"They're like a flock of sheep running away," said Fabrizio with a
guileless air to the corporal.
"Will you shut your mouth, you young fool!" said the corporal, greatly
indignant. And the three soldiers who with Fabrizio composed his whole
force scowled angrily at our hero as though he had uttered blasphemy. He
had insulted the nation.
"That is where their strength lies!" thought our hero. "I noticed it
before with the Viceroy at Milan; they are not running away, oh, no!
With these Frenchmen you must never speak the truth if it shocks their
vanity. But as for their savage scowls, they don't trouble me, and I
must let them understand as much." They kept on their way, always at an
interval of five hundred yards from the torrent of fugitives that
covered the high road. A league farther on, the corporal and his party
crossed a road running into the high road in which a number of soldiers
were lying. Fabrizio purchased a fairly good horse which cost him forty
francs, and among all the sabres that had been thrown down everywhere
made a careful choice of one that was long and straight. "Since I'm told
I've got to stick them," he thought, "this is the best." Thus equipped,
he put his horse into a gallop and soon overtook the corporal who had
gone on ahead. He sat up in his stirrups, took hold with his left hand
of the scabbard of his straight sabre, and said to the four Frenchmen:
"Those people going along the high road look like a flock of sheep . . .
they are running like frightened sheep. . . ."
In spite of his dwelling upon the word _sheep_, his companions had
completely forgotten that it had annoyed them an hour earlier. Here we
see one of the contrasts between the Italian character and the French;
the Frenchman is no doubt the happier of the two; he glides lightly over
the events of life and bears no malice afterwards.
We shall not attempt to conceal the fact that Fabrizio was highly
pleased with himself after using the word _sheep_. They marched on,
talking about nothing in particular. After covering two leagues more,
the corporal, still greatly astonished to see no sign of the enemy's
cavalry, said to Fabrizio:
"You are our cavalry; gallop over to that farm on the little hill; ask
the farmer if he will _sell_ us breakfast: mind you tell him there are
only five of us. If he hesitates, put down five francs of your money in
advance; but don't be frightened, we'll take the dollar back from him
after we've eaten."
Fabrizio looked at the corporal; he saw in his face an imperturbable
gravity and really an air of moral superiority; he obeyed. Everything
fell out as the commander in chief had anticipated; only, Fabrizio
insisted on their not taking back by force the five francs he had given
to the farmer.
"The money is mine," he said to his friends; "I'm not paying for you,
I'm paying for the oats he's given my horse."
Fabrizio's French accent was so bad that his companions thought they
detected in his words a note of superiority; they were keenly annoyed,
and from that moment a duel began to take shape in their minds for the
end of the day. They found him very different from themselves, which
shocked them; Fabrizio, on the contrary, was beginning to feel a warm
friendship towards them.
They had marched without saying a word for a couple of hours when the
corporal, looking across at the high road, exclaimed in a transport of
joy: "There's the Regiment!" They were soon on the road; but, alas,
round the eagle were mustered not more than two hundred men. Fabrizio's
eye soon caught sight of the _vivandière_: she was going on foot, her
eyes were red and every now and again she burst into tears. Fabrizio
looked in vain for the little cart and Cocotte.
"Stripped, ruined, robbed!" cried the _vivandière_, in answer to our
hero's, inquiring glance. He, without a word, got down from his horse,
took hold of the bridle and said to the _vivandière_: "Mount!" She did
not have to be told twice.
"Shorten the stirrups for me," was her only remark.
As soon as she was comfortably in the saddle she began to tell Fabrizio
all the disasters of the night. After a narrative of endless length but
eagerly drunk in by our hero who, to tell the truth, understood nothing
at all of what she said but had a tender feeling for the _vivandière_,
she went on:
"And to think that they were Frenchmen who robbed me, beat me, destroyed
me. . . ."
"What! It wasn't the enemy?" said Fabrizio with an air of innocence
which made his grave, pale face look charming.
"What a fool you are, you poor boy!" said the _vivandière_, smiling
through her tears; "but you're very nice, for all that."
"And such as he is, he brought down his Prussian properly," said
Corporal Aubry, who, in the general confusion round them, happened to be
on the other side of the horse on which the _cantinière_ was sitting.
"But he's proud," the corporal went on. . . . Fabrizio made an impulsive
movement. "And what's your name?" asked the corporal; "for if there's a
report going in I should like to mention you."
"I'm called Vasi," replied Fabrizio, with a curious expression on his
face. "Boulot, I mean," he added, quickly correcting himself.
Boulot was the name of the late possessor of the marching orders which
the gaoler's wife at B-had given him; on his way from B---- he had
studied them carefully, for he was beginning to think a little and was
no longer so easily surprised. In addition to the marching orders of
Trooper Boulot, he had stowed away in a safe place the precious Italian
passport according to which he was entitled to the noble appellation of
Vasi, dealer in barometers. When the corporal had charged him with being
proud, it had been on the tip of his tongue to retort: "I proud! I,
Fabrizio Volterra, Marchesino del Dongo, who consent to go by the name
of a Vasi, dealer in barometers!"
While he was making these reflexions and saying to himself: "I must not
forget that I am called Boulot, or look-out for the prison fate
threatens me with," the corporal and the _cantinière_ had been
exchanging a few words with regard to him.
"Don't say I'm inquisitive," said the _cantinière_, ceasing to address
him in the second person singular, "it's for your good I ask you these
questions. Who are you, now, really?"
Fabrizio did not reply at first. He was considering that never again
would he find more devoted friends to ask for advice, and he was in
urgent need of advice from someone. "We are coming into a fortified
place, the governor will want to know who I am, and ware prison if I let
him see by my answers that I know nobody in the 4th Hussar Regiment
whose uniform I am wearing!" In his capacity as an Austrian subject,
Fabrizio knew all about the importance to be attached to a passport.
Various members of his family, although noble and devout, although
supporters of the winning side, had been in trouble a score of times
over their passports; he was therefore not in the least put out by the
question which the _cantinière_ had addressed to him. But as, before
answering, he had to think of the French words which would express his
meaning most clearly, the _cantinière_, pricked by a keen curiosity,
added, to induce him to speak: "Corporal Aubry and I are going to give
you some good advice."
"I have no doubt you are," replied Fabrizio. "My name is Vasi and I come
from Genoa; my sister, who is famous for her beauty, is married to a
captain. As I am only seventeen, she made me come to her to let me see
something of France, and form my character a little; not finding her in
Paris, and knowing that she was with this army, I came on here. I've
searched for her everywhere and haven't found her. The soldiers, who
were puzzled by my accent, had me arrested. I had money then, I gave
some to the _gendarme_, who let me have some marching orders and a
uniform, and said to me: 'Get away with you, and swear you'll never
mention my name.'
"What was he called?" asked the _cantinière_.
"I've given my word," said Fabrizio.
"He's right," put in the corporal, "the _gendarme_ is a sweep, but our
friend ought not to give his name. And what is the other one called,
this captain, your sister's husband? If we knew his name, we could try
to find him."
"Teulier, Captain in the 4th Hussars," replied our hero.
"And so," said the corporal, with a certain subtlety, "from your foreign
accent the soldiers took you for a spy?"
"That's the abominable word!" cried Fabrizio, his eyes blazing. "I who
love the Emperor so and the French people! And it was that insult that
annoyed me more than anything."
"There's no insult about it; that's where you're wrong; the soldiers'
mistake was quite natural," replied Corporal Aubry gravely.
And he went on to explain in the most pedantic manner that in the army
one must belong to some corps and wear a uniform, failing which it was
quite simple that people should take one for a spy. "The enemy sends us
any number of them; everybody's a traitor in this war." The scales fell
from Fabrizio's eyes; he realised for the first time that he had been in
the wrong in everything that had happened to him during the last two
months.
"But make the boy tell us the whole story," said the _cantinière_, her
curiosity more and more excited. Fabrizio obeyed. When he had finished:
"It comes to this," said the _cantinière_, speaking in a serious tone
to the corporal, "this child is not a soldier at all; we're going to
have a bloody war now that we've been beaten and betrayed. Why should he
go and get his bones broken free, gratis and for nothing?"
"Especially," put in the corporal, "as he doesn't even know how to load
his musket, neither by numbers, nor in his own time. It was I put in the
shot that brought down the Prussian."
"Besides, he lets everyone see the colour of his money," added the
_cantinière_; "he will be robbed of all he has as soon as he hasn't got
us to look after him."
"The first cavalry non-com he comes across," said the corporal, "will
take it from him to pay for his drink, and perhaps they'll enlist him
for the enemy; they're all traitors. The first man he meets will order
him to follow, and he'll follow him; he would do better to join our
Regiment."
"No, please, if you don't mind, corporal!" Fabrizio exclaimed with
animation; "I am more comfortable on a horse. And, besides, I don't know
how to load a musket, and you have seen that I can manage a horse."
Fabrizio was extremely proud of this little speech. We need not report
the long discussion that followed between the corporal and the
_cantinière_ as to his future destiny. Fabrizio noticed that in
discussing him these people repeated three or four times all the
circumstances of his story: the soldiers' suspicions, the _gendarme_
selling him marching orders and a uniform, the accident by which, the
day before, he had found himself forming part of the Marshal's escort,
the glimpse of the Emperor as he galloped past, the horse that had been
_scoffed_ from him, and so on indefinitely.
With feminine curiosity the _cantinière_ kept harking back incessantly
to the way in which he had been dispossessed of the good horse which she
had made him buy.
"You felt yourself seized by the feet, they lifted you gently over your
horse's tail, and sat you down on the ground!" "Why repeat so often,"
Fabrizio said to himself, "what all three of us know perfectly well?" He
had not yet discovered that this is how, in France, the lower orders
proceed in quest of ideas.
"How much money have you?" the _cantinière_ asked him suddenly.
Fabrizio had no hesitation in answering. He was sure of the nobility of
the woman's nature; that is the fine side of France.
"Altogether, I may have got left thirty napoleons in gold, and eight or
nine five-franc pieces."
"In that case, you have a clear field!" exclaimed the _cantinière_.
"Get right away from this rout of an army; clear out, take the first
road with ruts on it that you come to on the right; keep your horse
moving and your back to the army. At the first opportunity, buy some
civilian clothes. When you've gone nine or ten leagues and there are no
more soldiers in sight, take the mail-coach, and go and rest for a week
and eat beefsteaks in some nice town. Never let anyone know that you've
been in the army, or the police will take you up as a deserter; and,
nice as you are, my boy, you're not quite clever enough yet to stand up
to the police. As soon as you've got civilian clothes on your back, tear
up your marching orders into a thousand pieces and go back to your real
name: say that you're Vasi. And where ought he to say he comes from?"
she asked the corporal.
"From Cambrai on the Scheldt: it's a good town and quite small, if you
know what I mean. There's a cathedral there, and Fénelon."
"That's right," said the _cantinière_. "Never let on to anyone that
you've been in battle, don't breathe a word about B----, or the
_gendarme_ who sold you the marching orders. When you're ready to go
back to Paris, make first for Versailles, and pass the Paris barrier
from that side in a leisurely way, on foot, as if you were taking a
stroll. Sew up your napoleons inside your breeches, and remember, when
you have to pay for anything, shew only the exact sum that you want to
spend. What makes me sad is that they'll take you and rob you and strip
you of everything you have. And whatever will you do without money, you
that don't know how to look after yourself . . ." and so on.
The good woman went on talking for some time still; the corporal
indicated his support by nodding his head, not being able to get a word
in himself. Suddenly the crowd that was packing the road first of all
doubled its pace, then, in the twinkling of an eye, crossed the little
ditch that bounded the road on the left and fled helter-skelter across
country. Cries of "The Cossacks! The Cossacks!" rose from every side.
"Take back your horse!" the _cantinière_ shouted.
"God forbid!" said Fabrizio. "Gallop! Away with you! I give him to you.
Do you want something to buy another cart with? Half of what I have is
yours."
"Take back your horse, I tell you!" cried the _cantinière_ angrily; and
she prepared to dismount. Fabrizio drew his sabre. "Hold on tight!" he
shouted to her, and gave two or three strokes with the flat of his sabre
to the horse, which broke into a gallop and followed the fugitives.
Our hero stood looking at the road; a moment ago, two or three thousand
people had been jostling along it, packed together like peasants at the
tail of a procession. After the shout of: "Cossacks!" he saw not a soul
on it; the fugitives had cast away shakoes, muskets, sabres, everything.
Fabrizio, quite bewildered, climbed up into a field on the right of the
road and twenty or thirty feet above it; he scanned the line of the road
in both directions, and the plain, but saw no trace of the Cossacks.
"Funny people, these French!" he said to himself. "Since I have got to
go to the right," he thought, "I may as well start off at once; it is
possible that these people have a reason for running away that I don't
know." He picked up a musket, saw that it was charged, shook up the
powder in the priming, cleaned the flint, then chose a cartridge-pouch
that was well filled and looked round him again in all directions; he
was absolutely alone in the middle of this plain which just now had been
so crowded with people. In the far distance he could see the fugitives
who were beginning to disappear behind the trees, and were still
running. "That's a very odd thing," he said to himself, and remembering
the tactics employed by the corporal the night before, he went and sat
down in the middle of a field of corn. He did not go farther because he
was anxious to see again his good friends the _cantinière_ and Corporal
Aubry.
In this cornfield, he made the discovery that he had no more than
eighteen napoleons, instead of thirty as he had supposed; but he still
had some small diamonds which he had stowed away in the lining of the
hussar's boots, before dawn, in the gaoler's wife's room at B----. He
concealed his napoleons as best he could, pondering deeply the while on
the sudden disappearance of the others. "Is that a bad omen for me?" he
asked himself. What distressed him most was that he had not asked
Corporal Aubry the question: "Have I really taken part in a battle?" It
seemed to him that he had, and his happiness would have known no bounds
could he have been certain of this.
"But even if I have," he said to himself, "I took part in it bearing the
name of a prisoner, I had a prisoner's marching orders in my pocket,
and, worse still, his coat on my back! That is the fatal threat to my
future: what would the Priore Blanès say to it? And that wretched
Boulot died in prison. It is all of the most sinister augury; fate will
lead me to prison." Fabrizio would have given anything in the world to
know whether Trooper Boulot had really been guilty; when he searched his
memory, he seemed to recollect that the gaoler's wife had told him that
the hussar had been taken up not only for the theft of silver plate but
also for stealing a cow from a peasant and nearly beating the peasant to
death: Fabrizio had no doubt that he himself would be sent to prison
some day for a crime which would bear some relation to that of Trooper
Boulot. He thought of his friend the _parroco_ Blanès: what would he
not have given for an opportunity of consulting him! Then he remembered
that he had not written to his aunt since leaving Paris. "Poor Gina!" he
said to himself. And tears stood in his eyes, when suddenly he heard a
slight sound quite close to him: a soldier was feeding three horses on
the standing corn; he had taken the bits out of their mouths and they
seemed half dead with hunger; he was holding them by the snaffle.
Fabrizio got up like a partridge; the soldier seemed frightened. Our
hero noticed this, and yielded to the pleasure of playing the hussar for
a moment.
"One of those horses belongs to me, f---- you, but I don't mind giving
you five francs for the trouble you've taken in bringing it here."
"What are you playing at?" said the soldier. Fabrizio took aim at him
from a distance of six paces.
"Let go the horse, or I'll blow your head off."
The soldier had his musket slung on his back; he reached over his
shoulder to seize it.
"If you move an inch, you're a dead man!" cried Fabrizio, rushing upon
him.
"All right, give me the five francs and take one of the horses," said
the embarrassed soldier, after casting a rueful glance at the high road,
on which there was absolutely no one to be seen. Fabrizio, keeping his
musket raised in his left hand, with the right flung him three five
franc pieces.
"Dismount, or you're a dead man. Bridle the black, and go farther off
with the other two. . . . If you move, I fire."
The soldier looked savage but obeyed. Fabrizio went up to the horse and
passed the rein over his left arm, without losing sight of the soldier,
who was moving slowly away; when our hero saw that he had gone fifty
paces, he jumped nimbly on to the horse. He had barely mounted and was
feeling with his foot for the off stirrup when he heard a bullet whistle
past close to his head; it was the soldier who had fired at him.
Fabrizio, beside himself with rage, started galloping after the soldier
who ran off as fast as his legs could carry him, and presently Fabrizio
saw him mount one of his two horses and gallop away. "Good, he's out of
range now," he said to himself. The horse he had just bought was a
magnificent animal, but seemed half starved. Fabrizio returned to the
high road, where there was still not a living soul; he crossed it and
put his horse into a trot to reach a little fold in the ground on the
left, where he hoped to find the _cantinière_; but when he was at the
top of the little rise he could see nothing save, more than a league
away, a few scattered troops. "It is written that I shall not see her
again," he said to himself with a sigh, "the good, brave woman!" He came
to a farm which he had seen in the distance on the right of the road.
Without dismounting, and after paying for it in advance, he made the
farmer produce some oats for his poor horse, which was so famished that
it began to gnaw the manger. An hour later, Fabrizio was trotting along
the high road, still in the hope of meeting the _cantinière_, or at any
rate Corporal Aubry. Moving all the time and keeping a look-out all
round him, he came to a marshy river crossed by a fairly narrow wooden
bridge. Between him and the bridge, on the right of the road, was a
solitary house bearing the sign of the White Horse. "There I shall get
some dinner," thought Fabrizio. A cavalry officer with his arm in a
sling was guarding the approach to the bridge; he was on horseback and
looked very melancholy; ten paces away from him, three dismounted
troopers were filling their pipes.
"There are some people," Fabrizio said to himself, "who look to me very
much as though they would like to buy my horse for even less than he
cost me." The wounded officer and the three men on foot watched him
approach and seemed to be waiting for him. "It would be better not to
cross by this bridge, but to follow the river bank to the right; that
was the way the _cantinière_ advised me to take to get clear of
difficulties. . . . Yes," thought our hero, "but if I take to my heels
now, to-morrow I shall be thoroughly ashamed of myself; besides, my
horse has good legs, the officer's is probably tired; if he tries to
make me dismount I shall gallop." Reasoning thus with himself, Fabrizio
pulled up his horse and moved forward at the slowest possible pace.
"Advance, you, hussar!" the officer called to him with an air of
authority.
Fabrizio went on a few paces and then halted.
"Do you want to take my horse?" he shouted.
"Not in the least; advance."
Fabrizio examined the officer; he had a white moustache, and looked the
best fellow in the world; the handkerchief that held up his left arm was
drenched with blood, and his right hand also was bound up in a piece of
bloodstained linen. "It is the men on foot who are going to snatch my
bridle," thought Fabrizio; but, on looking at them from nearer, he saw
that they too were wounded.
"On your honour as a soldier," said the officer, who wore the epaulettes
of a colonel, "stay here on picket, and tell all the dragoons, chasseurs
and hussars that you see that Colonel Le Baron is in the inn over there,
and that I order them to come and report to me." The old colonel had the
air of a man broken by suffering; with his first words he had made a
conquest of our hero, who replied with great good sense:
"I am very young, sir, to make them listen to me; I ought to have a
written order from you."
"He is right," said the colonel, studying him closely; "make out the
order, La Rose, you've got the use of your right hand."
Without saying a word, La Rose took from his pocket a little parchment
book, wrote a few lines, and, tearing out a leaf, handed it to Fabrizio;
the colonel repeated the order to him, adding that after two hours on
duty he would be relieved, as was right and proper, by one of the three
wounded troopers he had with him. So saying he went into the inn with
his men. Fabrizio watched them go and sat without moving at the end of
his wooden bridge, so deeply impressed had he been by the sombre, silent
grief of these three persons. "One would think they were under a spell,"
he said to himself. At length he unfolded the paper and read the order,
which ran as follows:
"Colonel Le Baron, 6th Dragoons, Commanding the 2nd Brigade of the 1st
Cavalry Division of the XIV Corps, orders all cavalrymen, dragoons,
chasseurs and hussars, on no account to cross the bridge, and to report
to him at the White Horse Inn, by the bridge, which is his headquarters.
"Headquarters, by the bridge of La Sainte, June 19, 1815.
"For Colonel Le Baron, wounded in the right arm,
and by his orders,
"LA ROSE, _Serjeant_."
Fabrizio had been on guard at the bridge for barely half an hour when he
saw six chasseurs approaching him mounted, and three on foot; he
communicated the colonel's order to them. "We're coming back," said four
of the mounted men, and crossed the bridge at a fast trot. Fabrizio then
spoke to the other two. During the discussion, which grew heated, the
three men on foot crossed the bridge. Finally, one of the two mounted
troopers who had stayed behind asked to see the order again, and carried
it off, with:
"I am taking it to the others, who will come back without fail; wait for
them here." And off he went at a gallop; his companion followed him. All
this had happened in the twinkling of an eye.
Fabrizio was furious, and called to one of the wounded soldiers, who
appeared at a window of the White Horse. This soldier, on whose arm
Fabrizio saw the stripes of a cavalry serjeant, came down and shouted to
him: "Draw your sabre, man, you're on picket." Fabrizio obeyed, then
said: "They've carried off the order."
"They're out of hand after yesterday's affair," replied the other in a
melancholy tone. "I'll let you have one of my pistols; if they force
past you again, fire it in the air; I shall come, or the colonel himself
will appear."
Fabrizio had not failed to observe the serjeant's start of surprise on
hearing of the theft of the order. He realised that it was a personal
insult to himself, and promised himself that he would not allow such a
trick to be played on him again.
Armed with the serjeant's horse-pistol, Fabrizio had proudly resumed his
guard when he saw coming towards him seven hussars, mounted. He had
taken up a position that barred the bridge; he read them the colonel's
order, which seemed greatly to annoy them; the most venturesome of them
tried to pass. Fabrizio, following the wise counsel of his friend the
_vivandière_, who, the morning before, had told him that he must thrust
and not slash, lowered the point of his long, straight sabre and made as
though to stab with it the man who was trying to pass him.
"Oh, so he wants to kill us, the baby!" cried the hussars, "as if we
hadn't been killed quite enough yesterday!" They all drew their sabres
at once and fell on Fabrizio: he gave himself up for dead; but he
thought of the serjeant's surprise, and was not anxious to earn his
contempt again. Drawing back on to his bridge, he tried to reach them
with his sabre-point. He looked so absurd when he tried to wield this
huge, straight heavy-dragoon sabre, a great deal too heavy for him, that
the hussars soon saw with what sort of soldier they had to deal; they
then endeavoured not to wound him but to slash his clothing. In this way
Fabrizio received three or four slight sabre-cuts on his arms. For his
own part, still faithful to the _cantinière's_ precept, he kept
thrusting the point of his sabre at them with all his might. As ill luck
would have it, one of these thrusts wounded a hussar in the hand: highly
indignant at being touched by so raw a recruit, he replied with a
downward thrust which caught Fabrizio in the upper part of the thigh.
What made this blow effective was that our hero's horse, so far from
avoiding the fray, seemed to take pleasure in it and to be flinging
himself on the assailants. These, seeing Fabrizio's blood streaming
along his right arm, were afraid that they might have carried the game
too far, and, pushing him against the left hand parapet of the bridge,
crossed at a gallop. As soon as Fabrizio had a moment to himself he
fired his pistol in the air to warn the colonel.
Four mounted hussars and two on foot, of the same regiment as the
others, were coming towards the bridge and were still two hundred yards
away from it when the pistol went off. They had been paying close
attention to what was happening on the bridge, and, imagining that
Fabrizio had fired at their comrades, the four mounted men galloped upon
him with raised sabres: it was a regular cavalry charge. Colonel Le
Baron, summoned by the pistol-shot, opened the door of the inn and
rushed on to the bridge just as the galloping hussars reached it, and
himself gave them the order to halt.
"There's no colonel here now!" cried one of them, and pressed on his
horse. The colonel in exasperation broke off the reprimand he was giving
them, and with his wounded right hand seized the rein of this horse on
the off side.
"Halt! You bad soldier," he said to the hussar; "I know you, you're in
Captain Henriot's squadron."
"Very well, then! The captain can give me the order himself! Captain
Henriot was killed yesterday," he added with a snigger, "and you can go
and f---- yourself!"
So saying, he tried to force a passage, and pushed the old colonel who
fell in a sitting position on the roadway of the bridge. Fabrizio, who
was a couple of yards farther along upon the bridge, but facing the inn,
pressed his horse, and, while the breast-piece of the assailant's
harness threw down the old colonel who never let go the off rein,
Fabrizio, indignant, bore down upon the hussar with a driving thrust.
Fortunately the hussar's horse, feeling itself pulled towards the ground
by the rein which the colonel still held, made a movement sideways, with
the result that the long blade of Fabrizio's heavy-cavalry sabre slid
along the hussar's jacket, and the whole length of it passed beneath his
eyes. Furious, the hussar turned round and, using all his strength,
dealt Fabrizio a blow which cut his sleeve and went deep into his arm:
our hero fell.
One of the dismounted hussars, seeing the two defenders of the bridge on
the ground, seized the opportunity, jumped on to Fabrizio's horse and
tried to make off with it by starting at a gallop across the bridge.
The serjeant, as he hurried from the inn, had seen his colonel fall, and
supposed him to be seriously wounded. He ran after Fabrizio's horse and
plunged the point of his sabre into the thief's entrails; he fell. The
hussars, seeing no one now on the bridge but the serjeant, who was on
foot, crossed at a gallop and rapidly disappeared. The one on foot
bolted into the fields.
The serjeant came up to the wounded men. Fabrizio was already on his
feet; he was not in great pain, but was bleeding profusely. The colonel
got up more slowly; he was quite stunned by his fall, but had received
no injury. "I feel nothing," he said to the serjeant, "except the old
wound in my hand."
The hussar whom the serjeant had wounded was dying.
"The devil take him!" exclaimed the colonel. "But," he said to the
serjeant and the two troopers who came running out, "look after this
young man whose life I have risked, most improperly. I shall stay on the
bridge myself and try to stop these madmen. Take the young man to the
inn and tie up his arm. Use one of my shirts."
CHAPTER FIVE
The whole of this adventure had not lasted a minute. Fabrizio's wounds
were nothing; they tied up his arm with bandages torn from the colonel's
shirt. They wanted to make up a bed for him upstairs in the inn.
"But while I am tucked up here on the first floor," said Fabrizio to the
serjeant, "my horse, who is down in the stable, will get bored with
being left alone and will go off with another master."
"Not bad for a conscript!" said the serjeant. And they deposited
Fabrizio on a litter of clean straw in the same stall as his horse.
Then, as he was feeling very weak, the serjeant brought him a bowl of
mulled wine and talked to him for a little. Several compliments included
in this conversation carried our hero to the seventh heaven.
Fabrizio did not wake until dawn on the following day; the horses were
neighing continuously and making a frightful din; the stable was filled
with smoke. At first Fabrizio could make nothing of all this noise, and
did not even know where he was: finally, half-stifled by the smoke, it
occurred to him that the house was on fire; in the twinkling of an eye
he was out of the stable and in the saddle. He raised his head; smoke
was belching violently from the two windows over the stable; and the
roof was covered by a black smoke which rose curling into the air. A
hundred fugitives had arrived during the night at the White Horse; they
were all shouting and swearing. The five or six whom Fabrizio could see
close at hand seemed to him to be completely drunk; one of them tried to
stop him and called out to him: "Where are you taking my horse?"
_WAR_
When Fabrizio had gone a quarter of a league, he turned his head. There
was no one following him; the building was in flames. Fabrizio caught
sight of the bridge; he remembered his wound, and felt his arm
compressed by bandages and very hot. "And the old colonel, what has
become of him? He gave his shirt to tie up my arm." Our hero was this
morning the coolest man in the world; the amount of blood he had shed
had liberated him from all the romantic element in his character.
"To the right!" he said to himself, "and no time to lose." He began
quietly following the course of the river which, after passing under the
bridge, ran to the right of the road. He remembered the good
_cantinière's_ advice. "What friendship!" he said to himself, "what an
open nature!"
After riding for an hour he felt very weak. "Oho! Am I going to faint?"
he wondered. "If I faint, someone will steal my horse, and my clothes,
perhaps, and my money and jewels with them." He had no longer the
strength to hold the reins, and was trying to keep his balance in the
saddle when a peasant who was digging in a field by the side of the high
road noticed his pallor and came up to offer him a glass of beer and
some bread.
"When I saw you look so pale, I thought you must be one of the wounded
from the great battle," the peasant told him. Never did help come more
opportunely. As Fabrizio was munching the piece of bread his eyes began
to hurt him when he looked straight ahead. When he felt a little better
he thanked the man. "And where am I?" he asked. The peasant told him
that three quarters of a league farther on he would come to the township
of Zonders, where he would be very well looked after. Fabrizio reached
the town, not knowing quite what he was doing and thinking only at every
step of not falling off his horse. He saw a big door standing open; he
entered. It was the Woolcomb Inn. At once there ran out to him the good
lady of the house, an enormous woman; she called for help in a voice
that throbbed with pity. Two girls came and helped Fabrizio to dismount;
no sooner had his feet touched the ground than he fainted completely. A
surgeon was fetched, who bled him. For the rest of that day and the days
that followed Fabrizio scarcely knew what was being done to him; he
slept almost without interruption.
The sabre wound in his thigh threatened to form a serious abscess. When
his mind was clear again, he asked them to look after his horse, and
kept on repeating that he would pay them well, which shocked the good
hostess and her daughters. For a fortnight he was admirably looked after
and he was beginning to be himself again when he noticed one evening
that his hostesses seemed greatly upset. Presently a German officer came
into his room: in answering his questions they used a language which
Fabrizio did not understand, but he could see that they were speaking
about him; he pretended to be asleep. A little later, when he thought
that the officer must have gone, he called his hostesses.
"That officer came to put my name on a list, and make me a prisoner,
didn't he?" The landlady assented with tears in her eyes.
"Very well, there is money in my dolman!" he cried, sitting up in bed;
"buy me some civilian clothes and to-night I shall go away on my horse.
You have already saved my life once by taking me in just as I was going
to drop down dead in the street; save it again by giving me the means of
going back to my mother."
At this point the landlady's daughters began to dissolve in tears; they
trembled for Fabrizio; and, as they barely understood French, they came
to his bedside to question him. They talked with their mother in
Flemish; but at every moment pitying eyes were turned on our hero; he
thought he could make out that his escape might compromise them
seriously, but that they would gladly incur the risk. A Jew in the town
supplied a complete outfit, but when he brought it to the inn about ten
o'clock that night, the girls saw, on comparing it with Fabrizio's
dolman, that it would require an endless amount of alteration. At once
they set to work; there was no time to lose. Fabrizio showed them where
several napoleons were hidden in his uniform, and begged his hostesses
to stitch them into the new garments. With these had come a fine pair of
new boots. Fabrizio had no hesitation in asking these kind girls to slit
open the hussar's boots at the place which he shewed them, and they hid
the little diamonds in the lining of the new pair.
One curious result of his loss of blood and the weakness that followed
from it was that Fabrizio had almost completely forgotten his French; he
used Italian to address his hostesses, who themselves spoke a Flemish
dialect, so that their conversation had to be conducted almost entirely
in signs. When the girls, who for that matter were entirely
disinterested, saw the diamonds, their enthusiasm for Fabrizio knew no
bounds; they imagined him to be a prince in disguise. Aniken, the
younger and less sophisticated, kissed him without ceremony. Fabrizio,
for his part, found them charming, and towards midnight, when the
surgeon had allowed him a little wine in view of the journey he had to
take, he felt almost inclined not to go. "Where could I be better off
than here?" he asked himself. However, about two o'clock in the morning,
he rose and dressed. As he was leaving the room, his good hostess
informed him that his horse had been taken by the officer who had come
to search the house that afternoon.
"Ah! The swine!" cried Fabrizio with an oath, "robbing a wounded man!"
He was not enough of a philosopher, this young Italian, to bear in mind
the price at which he himself had acquired the horse.
Aniken told him with tears that they had hired a horse for him. She
would have liked him not to go. Their farewells were tender. Two big
lads, cousins of the good landlady, helped Fabrizio into the saddle:
during the journey they supported him on his horse, while a third, who
walked a few hundred yards in advance of the little convoy, searched the
roads for any suspicious patrol. After going for a couple of hours, they
stopped at the house of a cousin of the landlady of the Woolcomb. In
spite of anything that Fabrizio might say, the young men who accompanied
him refused absolutely to leave him; they claimed that they knew better
than anyone the hidden paths through the woods.
"But to-morrow morning, when my flight becomes known, and they don't see
you anywhere in the town, your absence will make things awkward for
you," said Fabrizio.
They proceeded on their way. Fortunately, when day broke at last, the
plain was covered by a thick fog. About eight o'clock in the morning
they came in sight of a little town. One of the young men went on ahead
to see if the post-horses there had been stolen. The postmaster had had
time to make them vanish and to raise a team of wretched screws with
which he had filled his stables. Grooms were sent to find a pair of
horses in the marshes where they were hidden, and three hours later
Fabrizio climbed into a little cabriolet which was quite dilapidated but
had harnessed to it a pair of good post-horses. He had regained his
strength. The moment of parting with the young men, his hostess's
cousins, was pathetic in the extreme; on no account, whatever friendly
pretext Fabrizio might find, would they consent to take any money.
"In your condition, sir, you need it more than we do," was the
invariable reply of these worthy young fellows. Finally they set off
with letters in which Fabrizio, somewhat emboldened by the agitation of
the journey, had tried to convey to his hostesses all that he felt for
them. Fabrizio wrote with tears in his eyes, and there was certainly
love in the letter addressed to little Aniken.
In the rest of the journey there was nothing out of the common. He
reached Amiens in great pain from the cut he had received in his thigh;
it had not occurred to the country doctor to lance the wound, and in
spite of the bleedings an abscess had formed. During the fortnight that
Fabrizio spent in the inn at Amiens, kept by an obsequious and
avaricious family, the Allies were invading France, and Fabrizio became
another man, so many and profound were his reflexions on the things that
had happened to him. He had remained a child upon one point only: what
he had seen, was it a battle; and, if so, was that battle Waterloo? For
the first time in his life he found pleasure in reading; he was always
hoping to find in the newspapers, or in the published accounts of the
battle, some description which would enable him to identify the ground
he had covered with Marshal Ney's escort, and afterwards with the other
general. During his stay at Amiens he wrote almost every day to his good
friends at the Woolcomb. As soon as his wound was healed, he came to
Paris. He found at his former hotel a score of letters from his mother
and aunt, who implored him to return home as soon as possible. The last
letter from Contessa Pietranera had a certain enigmatic tone which made
him extremely uneasy; this letter destroyed all his tender fancies. His
was a character to which a single word was enough to make him readily
anticipate the greatest misfortunes; his imagination then stepped in and
depicted these misfortunes to him with the most horrible details.
"Take care never to sign the letters you write to tell us what you are
doing," the Contessa warned him. "On your return you must on no account
come straight to the Lake of Como. Stop at Lugano, on Swiss soil." He
was to arrive in this little town under the name of Cavi; he would find
at the principal inn the Contessa's footman, who would tell him what to
do. His aunt ended her letter as follows: "Take every possible
precaution to keep your mad escapade secret, and above all do not carry
on you any printed or written document; in Switzerland you will be
surrounded by the friends of Santa Margherita.[8] If I have enough
money," the Contessa told him, "I shall send someone to Geneva, to the
Hôtel des Balances, and you shall have particulars which I cannot put
in writing but which you ought to know before coming here. But, in
heaven's name, not a day longer in Paris; you will be recognised there
by our spies." Fabrizio's imagination set to work to construct the
wildest hypotheses, and he was incapable of any other pleasure save that
of trying to guess what the strange information could be that his aunt
had to give him. Twice on his passage through France he was arrested,
but managed to get away; he was indebted, for these unpleasantnesses, to
his Italian passport and to that strange description of him as a dealer
in barometers, which hardly seemed to tally with his youthful face and
the arm which he carried in a sling.
Finally, at Geneva, he found a man in the Contessa's service, who gave
him a message from her to the effect that he, Fabrizio, had been
reported to the police at Milan as having gone abroad to convey to
Napoleon certain proposals drafted by a vast conspiracy organised in the
former Kingdom of Italy. If this had not been the object of his journey,
the report went on, why should he have gone under an assumed name? His
mother was endeavouring to establish the truth, as follows:
1st, that he had never gone beyond Switzerland.
2ndly, that he had left the castle suddenly after a quarrel with his
elder brother.
On hearing this story Fabrizio felt a thrill of pride. "I am supposed to
have been a sort of ambassador to Napoleon," he said to himself; "I
should have had the honour of speaking to that great man: would to God I
had!" He recalled that his ancestor seven generations back, a grandson
of him who came to Milan in the train of the Sforza, had had the honour
of having his head cut off by the Duke's enemies, who surprised him as
he was on his way to Switzerland to convey certain proposals to the Free
Cantons and to raise troops there. He saw in his mind's eye the print
that illustrated this exploit in the genealogy of the family. Fabrizio,
questioning the servant, found him shocked by a detail which finally he
allowed to escape him, despite the express order, several times repeated
to him by the Contessa, not to reveal it. It was Ascanio, his elder
brother, who had reported him to the Milan police. This cruel news
almost drove our hero out of his mind. From Geneva, in order to go to
Italy, one must pass through Lausanne; he insisted on setting off at
once on foot, and thus covering ten or twelve leagues, although the mail
from Geneva to Lausanne was starting in two hours' time. Before leaving
Geneva he picked a quarrel in one of the melancholy cafés of the place
with a young man who, he said, stared at him in a singular fashion.
Which was perfectly true: the young Genevan, phlegmatic, rational and
interested only in money, thought him mad; Fabrizio on coming in had
glared furiously in all directions, then had upset the cup of coffee
that was brought to him over his breeches. In this quarrel Fabrizio's
first movement was quite of the sixteenth century: instead of proposing
a duel to the young Genevan, he drew his dagger and rushed upon him to
stab him with it. In this moment of passion, Fabrizio forgot everything
he had ever learned of the laws of honour and reverted to instinct, or,
more properly speaking, to the memories of his earliest childhood.
The confidential agent whom he found at Lugano increased his fury by
furnishing him with fresh details. As Fabrizio was beloved at Grianta,
no one there had mentioned his name, and, but for his brother's kind
intervention, everyone would have pretended to believe that he was at
Milan, and the attention of the police in that city would not have been
drawn to his absence.
"I expect the _doganieri_ have a description of you," his aunt's envoy
hinted, "and if we keep to the main road, when you come to the frontier
of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, you will be arrested."
Fabrizio and his party were familiar with every footpath over the
mountain that divides Lugano from the Lake of Como; they disguised
themselves as hunters, that is to say as poachers, and as they were
three in number and had a fairly resolute bearing, the _doganieri_ whom
they passed gave them a greeting and nothing more. Fabrizio arranged
things so as not to arrive at the castle until nearly midnight; at that
hour his father and all the powdered footmen had long been in bed. He
climbed down without difficulty into the deep moat and entered the
castle by the window of a cellar: it was there that his mother and aunt
were waiting for him; presently his sisters came running in. Transports
of affection alternated with tears for some time, and they had scarcely
begun to talk reasonably when the first light of dawn came to warn these
people who thought themselves so unfortunate that time was flying.
_THE CONSTABLES_
"I hope your brother won't have any suspicion of your being here,"
Signora Pietranera said to him; "I have scarcely spoken to him since
that fine escapade of his, and his vanity has done me the honour of
taking offence. This evening, at supper, I condescended to say a few
words to him; I had to find some excuse to hide my frantic joy, which
might have made him suspicious. Then, when I noticed that he was quite
proud of this sham reconciliation, I took advantage of his happiness to
make him drink a great deal too much, and I am certain he will never
have thought of taking any steps to carry on his profession of spying."
"We shall have to hide our hussar in your room," said the Marchesa, "he
can't leave at once; we haven't sufficient command of ourselves at
present to make plans, and we shall have to think out the best way of
putting those terrible Milan police off the track."
This plan was adopted; but the Marchese and his elder son noticed, next
day, that the Marchesa was constantly in her sister-in-law's room. We
shall not stop to depict the transports of affection and joy which
continued, all that day, to convulse these happy creatures. Italian
hearts are, far more than ours in France, tormented by the suspicions
and wild ideas which a burning imagination presents to them, but on the
other hand their joys are far more intense and more lasting. On the day
in question the Contessa and Marchesa were literally out of their minds;
Fabrizio was obliged to begin all his stories over again; finally they
decided to go away and conceal their general joy at Milan, so difficult
did it appear to be to keep it hidden any longer from the scrutiny of
the Marchese and his son Ascanio.
They took the ordinary boat of the household to go to Como; to have
acted otherwise would have aroused endless suspicions. But on arriving
at the harbour of Como the Marchesa remembered that she had left behind
at Grianta papers of the greatest importance: she hastened to send the
boatmen back for them, and so these men could give no account of how the
two ladies were spending their time at Como. No sooner had they arrived
in the town than they selected haphazard one of the carriages that ply
for hire near that tall mediæval tower which rises above the Milan
gate. They started off at once, without giving the coachman time to
speak to anyone. A quarter of a league from the town they found a young
sportsman of their acquaintance who, out of courtesy to them as they had
no man with them, kindly consented to act as their escort as far as the
gates of Milan, whither he was bound for the shooting. All went well,
and the ladies were conversing in the most joyous way with the young
traveller when, at a bend which the road makes to pass the charming hill
and wood of San Giovanni, three constables in plain clothes sprang at
the horses' heads. "Ah! My husband has betrayed us," cried the Marchesa,
and fainted away. A serjeant who had remained a little way behind came
staggering up to the carriage and said, in a voice that reeked of the
_trattoria_:
"I am sorry, sir, but I must do my duty and arrest you, General Fabio
Conti."
Fabrizio thought that the serjeant was making a joke at his expense when
he addressed him as "General." "You shall pay for this!" he said to
himself. He examined the men in plain clothes and watched for a
favourable moment to jump down from the carriage and dash across the
fields.
The Contessa smiled--a smile of despair, I fancy--then said to the
serjeant:
"But, my dear serjeant, is it this boy of sixteen that you take for
General Conti?"
"Aren't you the General's daughter?" asked the serjeant.
"Look at my father," said the Contessa, pointing to Fabrizio. The
constables went into fits of laughter.
"Show me your passports and don't argue the point," said the serjeant,
stung by the general mirth.
"These ladies never take passports to go to Milan," said the coachman
with a calm and philosophical air: "they are coming from their castle of
Grianta. This lady is the Signora Contessa Pietranera; the other is the
Signora Marchesa del Dongo."
The serjeant, completely disconcerted, went forward to the horses' heads
and there took counsel with his men. The conference had lasted for fully
five minutes when the Contessa asked if the gentlemen would kindly allow
the carriage to be moved forward a few yards and stopped in the shade;
the heat was overpowering, though it was only eleven o'clock in the
morning. Fabrizio, who was looking out most attentively in all
directions, seeking a way of escape, saw coming out of a little path
through the fields and on to the high road a girl of fourteen or
fifteen, who was crying timidly into her handkerchief. She came forward
walking between two constables in uniform, and, three paces behind her,
also between constables, stalked a tall, lean man who assumed an air of
dignity, like a Prefect following a procession.
"Where did you find them?" asked the serjeant, for the moment completely
drunk.
"Running away across the fields, with not a sign of a passport about
them."
The serjeant appeared to lose his head altogether; he had before him
five prisoners, instead of the two that he was expected to have. He went
a little way off, leaving only one man to guard the male prisoner who
put on the air of majesty, and another to keep the horses from moving.
"Wait," said the Contessa to Fabrizio, who had already jumped out of the
carriage. "Everything will be settled in a minute."
They heard a constable exclaim: "What does it matter! If they have no
passports, they're fair game whoever they are." The serjeant seemed not
quite so certain; the name of Contessa Pietranera made him a little
uneasy: he had known the general, and had not heard of his death. "The
General is not the man to let it pass, if I arrest his wife without good
reason," he said to himself.
During this deliberation, which was prolonged, the Contessa had entered
into conversation with the girl, who was standing on the road, and in
the dust by the side of the carriage; she had been struck by her beauty.
"The sun will be bad for you, Signorina. This gallant soldier," she went
on, addressing the constable who was posted at the horses' heads, "will
surely allow you to get into the carriage."
Fabrizio, who was wandering round the vehicle, came up to help the girl
to get in. Her foot was already on the step, her arm supported by
Fabrizio, when the imposing man, who was six yards behind the carriage,
called out in a voice magnified by the desire to preserve his dignity:
"Stay in the road; don't get into a carriage that does not belong to
you!"
Fabrizio had not heard this order; the girl, instead of climbing into
the carriage, tried to get down again, and, as Fabrizio continued to
hold her up, fell into his arms. He smiled; she blushed a deep crimson;
they stood for a moment looking at one another after the girl had
disengaged herself from his arms.
"She would be a charming prison companion," Fabrizio said to himself.
"What profound thought lies behind that brow! She would know how to
love."
The serjeant came up to them with an air of authority: "Which of these
ladies is named Clelia Conti?"
"I am," said the girl.
"And I," cried the elderly man, "am General Fabio Conti, Chamberlain to
H.S.H. the Prince of Parma; I consider it most irregular that a man in
my position should be hunted down like a thief."
"The day before yesterday, when you embarked at the harbour of Como, did
you not tell the police inspector who asked for your passport to go
away? Very well, his orders to-day are that you are not to go away."
"I had already pushed off my boat, I was in a hurry, there was a storm
threatening, a man not in uniform shouted to me from the quay to put
back into harbour, I told him my name and went on."
"And this morning you escaped from Como."
"A man like myself does not take a passport when he goes from Milan to
visit the lake. This morning, at Como, I was told that I should be
arrested at the gate. I left the town on foot with my daughter; I hoped
to find on the road some carriage that would take me to Milan, where the
first thing I shall do will certainly be to call on the General
Commanding the Province and lodge a complaint."
A heavy weight seemed to have been lifted from the serjeant's mind.
"Very well, General, you are under arrest and I shall take you to Milan.
And you, who are you?" he said to Fabrizio.
"My son," replied the Contessa; "Ascanio, son of the Divisional General
Pietranera."
"Without a passport, Signora Contessa?" said the serjeant, in a much
gentler tone.
"At his age, he has never had one; he never travels alone, he is always
with me."
During this colloquy General Conti was standing more and more on his
dignity with the constables.
"Not so much talk," said one of them; "you are under arrest, that's
enough!"
"You will be glad to hear," said the serjeant, "that we allow you to
hire a horse from some _contadino_; otherwise, never mind all the dust
and the heat and the Chamberlain of Parma, you would have to put your
best foot foremost to keep pace with our horses."
The General began to swear.
"Will you kindly be quiet!" the constable repeated. "Where is your
general's uniform? Anybody can come along and say he's a general."
The General grew more and more angry. Meanwhile things were looking much
brighter in the carriage.
The Contessa kept the constables running about as if they had been her
servants. She had given a scudo to one of them to go and fetch wine,
and, what was better still, cold water from a cottage that was visible
two hundred yards away. She had found time to calm Fabrizio, who was
determined, at all costs, to make a dash for the wood that covered the
hill. "I have a good brace of pistols," he said. She obtained the
infuriated General's permission for his daughter to get into the
carriage. On this occasion the General, who loved to talk about himself
and his family, told the ladies that his daughter was only twelve years
old, having been born in 1803, on the 27th of October, but that, such
was her intelligence, everyone took her to be fourteen or fifteen.
"A thoroughly common man," the Contessa's eyes signalled to the
Marchesa. Thanks to the Contessa, everything was settled, after a
colloquy that lasted an hour. A constable, who discovered that he had
some business to do in the neighbouring village, lent his horse to
General Conti, after the Contessa had said to him: "You shall have ten
francs." The serjeant went off by himself with the General; the other
constables stayed behind under a tree, accompanied by four huge bottles
of wine, almost small demi-johns, which the one who had been sent to the
cottage had brought back, with the help of a _contadino_, Clelia Conti
was authorised by the proud Chamberlain to accept, for the return
journey to Milan, a seat in the ladies' carriage, and no one dreamed of
arresting the son of the gallant General Pietranera. After the first few
minutes had been devoted to an exchange of courtesies and to remarks on
the little incident that had just occurred, Clelia Conti observed the
note of enthusiasm with which so beautiful a lady as the Contessa spoke
to Fabrizio; certainly, she was not his mother. The girl's attention was
caught most of all by repeated allusions to something heroic, bold,
dangerous to the last degree, which he had recently done; but for all
her cleverness little Clelia could not discover what this was.
_THE POLICE_
She gazed with astonishment at this young hero whose eyes seemed to be
blazing still with all the fire of action. For his part, he was somewhat
embarrassed by the remarkable beauty of this girl of twelve, and her
steady gaze made him blush.
A league outside Milan Fabrizio announced that he was going to see his
uncle, and took leave of the ladies.
"If I ever get out of my difficulties," he said to Clelia, "I shall pay
a visit to the beautiful pictures at Parma, and then will you deign to
remember the name: Fabrizio del Dongo?"
"Good!" said the Contessa, "that is how you keep your identity secret.
Signorina, deign to remember that this scapegrace is my son, and is
called Pietranera, and not del Dongo."
That evening, at a late hour, Fabrizio entered Milan by the Porta Renza,
which leads to a fashionable gathering-place. The dispatch of their two
servants to Switzerland had exhausted the very modest savings of the
Marchesa and her sister-in-law; fortunately, Fabrizio had still some
napoleons left, and one of the diamonds, which they decided to sell.
The ladies were highly popular, and knew everyone in the town. The most
important personages in the Austrian and religious party went to speak
on behalf of Fabrizio to Barone Binder, the Chief of Police. These
gentlemen could not conceive, they said, how anyone could take seriously
the escapade of a boy of sixteen who left the paternal roof after a
dispute with an elder brother.
"My business is to take everything seriously," replied Barone Binder
gently; a wise and solemn man, he was then engaged in forming the Milan
police, and had undertaken to prevent a revolution like that of 1746,
which drove the Austrians from Genoa. This Milan police, since rendered
so famous by the adventures of Silvio Pellico and M. Andryane, was not
exactly cruel; it carried out, reasonably and without pity, harsh laws.
The Emperor Francis II wished these overbold Italian imaginations to be
struck by terror.
"Give me, day by day," repeated Barone Binder to Fabrizio's protectors,
"a _certified_ account of what the young Marchesino del Dongo has been
doing; let us follow him from the moment of his departure on the 8th of
March to his arrival last night in this city, where he is hidden in one
of the rooms of his mother's apartment, and I am prepared to treat him
as the most well-disposed and most frolicsome young man in town. If you
cannot furnish me with the young man's itinerary during all the days
following his departure from Grianta, however exalted his birth may be,
however great the respect I owe to the friends of his family, obviously
it is my duty to order his arrest. Am I not bound to keep him in prison
until he has furnished me with proofs that he did not go to convey a
message to Napoleon from such disaffected persons as may exist in
Lombardy among the subjects of His Imperial and Royal Majesty? Note
farther, gentlemen, that if young del Dongo succeeds in justifying
himself on this point, he will still be liable to be charged with having
gone abroad without a passport properly issued to himself, and also with
assuming a false name and deliberately making use of a passport issued
to a common workman, that is to say to a person of a class greatly
inferior to that to which he himself belongs."
This declaration, cruelly reasonable, was accompanied by all the marks
of deference and respect which the Chief of Police owed to the high
position of the Marchesa del Dongo and of the important personages who
were intervening on her behalf.
The Marchesa was in despair when Barone Binder's reply was communicated
to her.
"Fabrizio will be arrested," she sobbed, "and once he is in prison, God
knows when he will get out! His father will disown him!"
Signora Pietranera and her sister-in-law took counsel with two or three
intimate friends, and, in spite of anything these might say, the
Marchesa was absolutely determined to send her son away that very night.
"But you can see quite well," the Contessa pointed out to her, "that
Barone Binder knows that your son is here; he is not a bad man."
"No; but he is anxious to please the Emperor Francis."
"But, if he thought it would lead to his promotion to put Fabrizio in
prison, the boy would be there now; it is showing an insulting defiance
of the Barone to send him away."
"But his admission to us that he knows where Fabrizio is, is as much as
to say: 'Send him away!' No, I shan't feel alive until I can no longer
say to myself: 'In a quarter of an hour my son may be within prison
walls.' Whatever Barone Binder's ambition may be," the Marchesa went on,
"he thinks it useful to his personal standing in this country to make
certain concessions to oblige a man of my husband's rank, and I see a
proof of this in the singular frankness with which he admits that he
knows where to lay hands on my son. Besides, the Barone has been so kind
as to let us know the two offences with which Fabrizio is charged, at
the instigation of his unworthy brother; he explains that each of these
offences means prison: is not that as much as to say that if we prefer
exile it is for us to choose?"
"If you choose exile," the Contessa kept on repeating, "we shall never
set eyes on him again as long as we live." Fabrizio, who was present at
the whole conversation, with an old friend of the Marchesa, now a
counsellor on the tribunal set up by Austria, was strongly inclined to
take the key of the street and go; and, as a matter of fact, that same
evening he left the _palazzo_, hidden in the carriage that was taking
his mother and aunt to the Scala theatre. The coachman, whom they
distrusted, went as usual to wait in an _osteria_, and while the
footmen, on whom they could rely, were looking after the horses,
Fabrizio, disguised as a _contadino_, slipped out of the carriage and
escaped from the town. Next morning he crossed the frontier with equal
ease, and a few hours later had established himself on a property which
his mother owned in Piedmont, near Novara, to be precise, at Romagnano,
where Bayard was killed.
It may be imagined how much attention the ladies, on reaching their box
in the Scala, paid to the performance. They had gone there solely to be
able to consult certain of their friends who belonged to the Liberal
party and whose appearance at the _palazzo_ del Dongo might have been
misconstrued by the police. In the box it was decided to make a fresh
appeal to Barone Binder. There was no question of offering a sum of
money to this magistrate who was a perfectly honest man; moreover, the
ladies were extremely poor; they had forced Fabrizio to take with him
all the money that remained from the sale of the diamond.
_THE CANON_
It was of the utmost importance that they should be kept constantly
informed of the Barone's latest decisions. The Contessa's friends
reminded her of a certain Canon Borda, a most charming young man who at
one time had tried to make advances to her, in a somewhat violent
manner; finding himself unsuccessful he had reported her friendship for
Limercati to General Pietranera, whereupon he had been dismissed from
the house as a rascal. Now, at present this Canon was in the habit of
going every evening to play _tarocchi_ with Baronessa Binder, and was
naturally the intimate friend of her husband. The Contessa made up her
mind to take the horribly unpleasant step of going to see this Canon;
and the following morning, at an early hour, before he had left the
house, she sent in her name.
When the Canon's one and only servant announced: "Contessa Pietranera,"
his master was so overcome as to be incapable of speech; he made no
attempt to repair the disorder of a very scanty attire.
"Shew her in, and leave us," he said in faint accents. The Contessa
entered the room; Borda fell on his knees.
"It is in this position that an unhappy madman ought to receive your
orders," he said to the Contessa who that morning, in a plain costume
that was almost a disguise, was irresistibly attractive. Her intense
grief at Fabrizio's exile, the violence that she was doing to her own
feelings in coming to the house of a man who had behaved treacherously
towards her, all combined to give an incredible brilliance to her eyes.
"It is in this position that I wish to receive your orders," cried the
Canon, "for it is obvious that you have some service to ask of me,
otherwise you would not have honoured with your presence the poor
dwelling of an unhappy madman; once before, carried away by love and
jealousy, he behaved towards you like a scoundrel, as soon as he saw
that he could not win your favour."
These words were sincere, and all the more handsome in that the Canon
now enjoyed a position of great power; the Contessa was moved to tears
by them; humiliation and fear had frozen her spirit; now in a moment
affection and a gleam of hope took their place. From a most unhappy
state she passed in a flash almost to happiness.
"Kiss my hand," she said, as she held it out to the Canon, "and rise."
(She used the second person singular, which in Italy, it must be
remembered, indicates a sincere and open friendship just as much as a
more tender sentiment.) "I have come to ask your favour for my nephew
Fabrizio. This is the whole truth of the story without the slightest
concealment, as one tells it to an old friend. At the age of sixteen and
a half he has done an intensely stupid thing. We were at the castle of
Grianta on the Lake of Como. One evening at seven o'clock we learned by
a boat from Como of the Emperor's landing on the shore of the Gulf of
Juan. Next morning Fabrizio went off to France, after borrowing the
passport of one of his plebeian friends, a dealer in barometers, named
Vasi. As he does not exactly resemble a dealer in barometers, he had
hardly gone ten leagues into France when he was arrested on sight; his
outbursts of enthusiasm in bad French seemed suspicious. After a
time he escaped and managed to reach Geneva; we sent to meet him
at Lugano. . . ."
"That is to say, Geneva," put in the Canon with a smile.
The Contessa finished her story.
"I will do everything for you that is humanly possible," replied the
Canon effusively; "I place myself entirely at your disposal. I will even
do imprudent things," he added. "Tell me, what am I to do as soon as
this poor parlour is deprived of this heavenly apparition which marks an
epoch in the history of my life?"
"You must go to Barone Binder and tell him that you have loved Fabrizio
ever since he was born, that you saw him in his cradle when you used to
come to our house, and that accordingly, in the name of the friendship
he has shown for you, you beg him to employ all his spies to discover
whether, before his departure for Switzerland, Fabrizio was in any sort
of communication whatsoever with any of the Liberals whom he has under
supervision. If the Barone's information is of any value, he is bound to
see that there is nothing more in this than a piece of boyish folly. You
know that I used to have, in my beautiful apartment in the _palazzo_
Dugnani, prints of the battles won by Napoleon: it was by spelling out
the legends engraved beneath them that my nephew learned to read. When
he was five years old, my poor husband used to explain these battles to
him; we put my husband's helmet on his head, the boy strutted about
trailing his big sabre. Very well, one fine day he learns that my
husband's god, the Emperor, has returned to France, he starts out to
join him, like a fool, but does not succeed in reaching him. Ask your
Barone with what penalty he proposes to punish this moment of folly?"
"I was forgetting one thing," said the Canon, "you shall see that I am
not altogether unworthy of the pardon that you grant me. Here," he said,
looking on the table among his papers, "here is the accusation by that
infamous _collo-torto_" (that is, hypocrite), "see, signed Ascanio
Valserra del Dongo, which gave rise to the whole trouble; I found it
yesterday at the police headquarters, and went to the Scala in the hope
of finding someone who was in the habit of going to your box, through
whom I might be able to communicate it to you. A copy of this document
reached Vienna long ago. There is the enemy that we have to fight." The
Canon read the accusation through with the Contessa, and it was agreed
that in the course of the day he would let her have a copy by the hand
of some trustworthy person. It was with joy in her heart that the
Contessa returned to the _palazzo_ del Dongo.
"No one could possibly be more of a gentleman than that reformed rake,"
she told the Marchesa. "This evening at the Scala, at a quarter to
eleven by the theatre clock, we are to send everyone away from our box,
put out the candles, and shut our door, and at eleven the Canon himself
will come and tell us what he has managed to do. We decided that this
would be the least compromising course for him."
This Canon was a man of spirit; he was careful to keep the appointment;
he shewed when he came a complete good nature and an unreserved openness
of heart such as are scarcely to be found except in countries where
vanity does not predominate over every other sentiment. His denunciation
of the Contessa to her husband, General Pietranera, was one of the great
sorrows of his life, and he had now found a means of getting rid of that
remorse.
That morning, when the Contessa had left his room, "So she's in love
with her nephew, is she," he had said to himself bitterly, for he was by
no means cured. "With her pride, to have come to me! . . . After that
poor Pietranera died, she repulsed with horror my offers of service,
though they were most polite and admirably presented by Colonel Scotti,
her old lover. The beautiful Pietranera reduced to living on fifteen
hundred francs!" the Canon went on, striding vigorously up and down the
room. "And then to go and live in the castle of Grianta, with an
abominable _seccatore_ like that Marchese del Dongo! . . . I can see it
all now! After all, that young Fabrizio is full of charm, tall, well
built, always with a smile on his face . . . and, better still, a
deliciously voluptuous expression in his eye . . . a Correggio face,"
the Canon added bitterly.
"The difference in age . . . not too great . . . Fabrizio born after the
French came, about '98, I fancy; the Contessa might be twenty-seven or
twenty-eight: no one could be better looking, more adorable. In this
country rich in beauties, she defeats them all, the Marini, the
Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua, she is far and away above
any of them. They were living happily together, hidden away by that
beautiful Lake of Como, when the young man took it into his head to join
Napoleon. . . . There are still souls in Italy! In spite of everything!
Dear country! No," went on this heart inflamed by jealousy, "impossible
to explain in any other way her resigning herself to vegetating in the
country, with the disgusting spectacle, day after day, at every meal, of
that horrible face of the Marchese del Dongo, as well as that
unspeakable pasty physiognomy of the Marchesino Ascanio, who is going to
be worse than his father! Well, I shall serve her faithfully. At least I
shall have the pleasure of seeing her otherwise than through an
opera-glass."
Canon Borda explained the whole case very clearly to the ladies. At
heart, Binder was as well-disposed as they could wish; he was delighted
that Fabrizio should have taken the key of the street before any orders
could arrive from Vienna; for Barone Binder had no power to make any
decision, he awaited orders in this case as in every other. He sent
every day to Vienna an exact copy of all the information that reached
him; then he waited.
It was necessary that, in his exile at Romagnano, Fabrizio
(1) Should hear mass daily without fail, take as his confessor a man of
spirit, devoted to the cause of the Monarchy, and should confess to him,
at the tribunal of penitence, only the most irreproachable sentiments.
(2) Should consort with no one who bore any reputation for intelligence,
and, were the need to arise, must speak of rebellion with horror as a
thing that no circumstances could justify.
(3) Must never let himself be seen in the _caffè_, must never read any
newspaper other than the official _Gazette_ of Turin and Milan; in
general he should shew a distaste for reading, and never open any book
printed later than 1720, with the possible exception of the novels of
Walter Scott.
(4) "Finally" (the Canon added with a touch of malice), "it is most
important that he should pay court openly to one of the pretty women of
the district, of the noble class, of course; this will shew that he has
not the dark and dissatisfied mind of an embryo conspirator."
Before going to bed, the Contessa and the Marchesa each wrote Fabrizio
an endless letter, in which they explained to him with a charming
anxiety all the advice that had been given them by Borda.
_THE POLICE_
Fabrizio had no wish to be a conspirator: he loved Napoleon, and, in his
capacity as a young noble, believed that he had been created to be
happier than his neighbour, and thought the middle classes absurd. Never
had he opened a book since leaving school, where he had read only texts
arranged by the Jesuits. He established himself at some distance from
Romagnano, in a magnificent _palazzo_, one of the masterpieces of the
famous architect Sanmicheli; but for thirty years it had been
uninhabited, so that the rain came into every room and not one of the
windows would shut. He took possession of the agent's horses, which he
rode without ceremony at all hours of the day; he never spoke, and he
thought about things. The recommendation to take a mistress from an
_ultra_ family appealed to him, and he obeyed it to the letter. He chose
as his confessor a young priest given to intrigue who wished to become a
bishop (like the confessor of the Spielberg[9]); but he went three
leagues on foot and wrapped himself in a mystery which he imagined to be
impenetrable, in order to read the _Constitutionnel_, which he thought
sublime. "It is as fine as Alfieri and Dante!" he used often to exclaim.
Fabrizio had this in common with the young men of France, that he was
far more seriously taken up with his horse and his newspaper than with
his politically _sound_ mistress. But there was no room as yet for
_imitation of others_ in this simple and sturdy nature, and he made no
friends in the society of the large country town of Romagnano; his
simplicity passed as arrogance: no one knew what to make of his
character. "_He is a younger son who feels himself wronged because he is
not the eldest_" was the _parroco's_ comment.
[Footnote 8: Silvio Pellico has given this name a European notoriety:
it is that of the street in Milan in which the police headquarters
and prisons are situated.]
[Footnote 9: See the curious Memoirs of M. Andryane, as entertaining
as a novel, and as lasting as Tacitus.]
CHAPTER SIX
Let us admit frankly that Canon Borda's jealousy was not altogether
unfounded: on his return from France, Fabrizio appeared to the eyes of
Contessa Pietranera like a handsome stranger whom she had known well in
days gone by. If he had spoken to her of love she would have loved him;
had she not already conceived, for his conduct and his person, a
passionate and, one might say, unbounded admiration? But Fabrizio
embraced her with such an effusion of innocent gratitude and
good-fellowship that she would have been horrified with herself had she
sought for any other sentiment in this almost filial friendship. "After
all," she said to herself, "some of my friends who knew me six years
ago, at Prince Eugène's court, may still find me good-looking and even
young, but for him I am a respectable woman--and, if the truth must be
told without any regard for my vanity, a woman of a certain age." The
Contessa was under an illusion as to the period of life at which she had
arrived, but it was not the illusion of common women. "Besides, at his
age," she went on, "boys are apt to exaggerate the ravages of time. A
man with more experience of life . . ."
The Contessa, who was pacing the floor of her drawing-room, stopped
before a mirror, then smiled. It must be explained that, some months
since, the heart of Signora Pietranera had been attacked in a serious
fashion, and by a singular personage. Shortly after Fabrizio's departure
for France, the Contessa who, without altogether admitting it to
herself, was already beginning to take a great interest in him, had
fallen into a profound melancholy. All her occupations seemed to her to
lack pleasure, and, if one may use the word, savour; she told herself
that Napoleon, wishing to secure the attachment of his Italian peoples,
would take Fabrizio as his aide-de-camp. "He is lost to me!" she
exclaimed, weeping, "I shall never see him again; he will write to me,
but what shall I be to him in ten years' time?"
_MELANCHOLY_
It was in this frame of mind that she made an expedition to Milan; she
hoped to find there some more immediate news of Napoleon, and, for all
she knew, incidentally news of Fabrizio. Without admitting it to
herself, this active soul was beginning to be very weary of the
monotonous life she was leading in the country. "It is a postponement of
death," she said to herself, "it is not life." Every day to see those
powdered heads, her brother, her nephew Ascanio, their footmen! What
would her excursions on the lake be without Fabrizio? Her sole
consolation was based on the ties of friendship that bound her to the
Marchesa. But for some time now this intimacy with Fabrizio's mother, a
woman older than herself and with no hope left in life, had begun to be
less attractive to her.
Such was the singular position in which Signora Pietranera was placed:
with Fabrizio away, she had little hope for the future. Her heart was in
need of consolation and novelty. On arriving in Milan she conceived a
passion for the fashionable opera; she would go and shut herself up
alone for hours on end, at the Scala, in the box of her old friend
General Scotti. The men whom she tried to meet in order to obtain news
of Napoleon and his army seemed to her vulgar and coarse. Going home,
she would improvise on her piano until three o'clock in the morning. One
evening, at the Scala, in the box of one of her friends to which she had
gone in search of news from France, she made the acquaintance of Conte
Mosca, a Minister from Parma; he was an agreeable man who spoke of
France and Napoleon in a way that gave her fresh reasons for hope or
fear. She returned to the same box the following evening; this
intelligent man reappeared and throughout the whole performance she
talked to him with enjoyment. Since Fabrizio's departure she had not
found any evening so lively. This man who amused her, Conte Mosca della
Rovere Sorezana, was at that time Minister of Police and Finance to that
famous Prince of Parma, Ernesto IV, so notorious for his severities,
which the Liberals of Milan called cruelties. Mosca might have been
forty or forty-five; he had strongly marked features, with no trace of
self-importance, and a simple and light-hearted manner which was greatly
in his favour; he would have looked very well indeed, if a whim on the
part of his Prince had not obliged him to wear powder on his hair as a
proof of his soundness in politics. As people have little fear of
wounding one another's vanity, they quickly arrive in Italy at a tone of
intimacy, and make personal observations. The antidote to this practice
is not to see the other person again if one's feelings have been hurt.
"Tell me, Conte, why do you powder your hair?" Signora Pietranera asked
him at their third meeting. "Powder! A man like you, attractive, still
young, who fought on our side in Spain!"
"Because, in the said Spain, I stole nothing, and one must live. I was
athirst for glory; a flattering word from the French General, Gouvion
Saint-Cyr, who commanded us, was everything to me then. When Napoleon
fell, it so happened that while I was eating up my patrimony in his
service, my father, a man of imagination, who pictured me as a general
already, had been building me a _palazzo_ at Parma. In 1813 I found that
my whole worldly wealth consisted of a huge _palazzo_, half-finished,
and a pension."
_A MINISTER_
"A pension: 3,500 francs, like my husband's?"
"Conte Pietranera commanded a Division. My pension, as a humble squadron
commander, has never been more than 800 francs, and even that has been
paid to me only since I became Minister of Finance."
As there was nobody else in the box but the lady of extremely liberal
views to whom it belonged, the conversation continued with the same
frankness. Conte Mosca, when questioned, spoke of his life at Parma. "In
Spain, under General Saint-Cyr, I faced the enemy's fire to win a cross
and a little glory besides, now I dress myself up like an actor in a
farce to win a great social position and a few thousand francs a year.
Once I had started on this sort of political chessboard, stung by the
insolence of my superiors, I determined to occupy one of the foremost
posts; I have reached it. But the happiest days of my life will always
be those which, now and again, I manage to spend at Milan; here, it
seems to me, there still survives the spirit of your Army of Italy."
The frankness, the _disinvoltura_ with which this Minister of so dreaded
a Prince spoke pricked the Contessa's curiosity; from his title she had
expected to find a pedant filled with self-importance; what she saw was
a man who was ashamed of the gravity of his position. Mosca had promised
to let her have all the news from France that he could collect; this was
a grave indiscretion at Milan, during the month that preceded Waterloo;
the question for Italy at that time was to be or not to be; everyone at
Milan was in a fever, a fever of hope or fear. Amid this universal
disturbance, the Contessa started to make inquiries about a man who
spoke thus lightly of so coveted a position, and one which, moreover,
was his sole means of livelihood.
Certain curious information of an interesting oddity was reported to
Signora Pietranera. "Conte Mosca della Rovere Sorezana," she was told,
"is on the point of becoming Prime Minister and declared favourite of
Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, the absolute sovereign of Parma and one of the
wealthiest Princes in Europe to boot. The Conte would already have
attained to this exalted position if he had cared to shew a more solemn
face: they say that the Prince often lectures him on this failing.
"'What do my manners matter to Your Highness,' he answers boldly, 'so
long as I conduct his affairs?'
"This favourite's bed of roses," her informant went on, "is not without
its thorns. He has to please a Sovereign, a man of sense and
intelligence, no doubt, but a man who, since his accession to an
absolute throne, seems to have lost his head altogether and shews, for
instance, suspicions worthy of an old woman.
"Ernesto IV is courageous only in war. On the field of battle he has
been seen a score of times leading a column to the attack like a gallant
general; but after the death of his father Ernesto III, on his return to
his States, where, unfortunately for him, he possesses unlimited power,
he set to work to inveigh in the most senseless fashion against Liberals
and liberty. Presently he began to imagine that he was hated; finally,
in a moment of ill temper, he had two Liberals hanged, who may or may
not have been guilty, acting on the advice of a wretch called Rassi, a
sort of Minister of Justice.
"From that fatal moment the Prince's life changed; we find him tormented
by the strangest suspicions. He is not fifty, and fear has so reduced
him, if one may use the expression, that whenever he speaks of Jacobins,
and the plans of the Central Committee in Paris, his face becomes like
that of an old man of eighty; he relapses into the fantastic fears of
childhood. His favourite Rassi, the Fiscal General (or Chief Justice),
has no influence except through his master's fear; and whenever he is
alarmed for his own position, he makes haste to discover some fresh
conspiracy of the blackest and most fantastic order. Thirty rash fellows
have banded themselves together to read a number of the
_Constitutionnel_, Rassi declares them to be conspirators, and sends
them off to prison in that famous Citadel of Parma, the terror of the
whole of Lombardy. As it rises to a great height, a hundred and eighty
feet, people say, it is visible from a long way off in the middle of
that immense plain; and the physical outlines of the prison, of which
horrible things are reported, makes it the queen, governing by fear, of
the whole of that plain, which extends from Milan to Bologna."
"Would you believe," said another traveller to the Contessa, "that at
night, on the third floor of his palace, guarded by eighty sentinels who
every quarter of an hour cry aloud a whole sentence, Ernesto IV trembles
in his room. All the doors fastened with ten bolts, and the adjoining
rooms, above as well as below him, packed with soldiers, he is afraid of
the Jacobins. If a plank creaks in the floor, he snatches up his pistols
and imagines there is a Liberal hiding under his bed. At once all the
bells in the castle are set ringing, and an aide-de-camp goes to awaken
Conte Mosca. On reaching the castle, the Minister of Police takes good
care not to deny the existence of any conspiracy; on the contrary, alone
with the Prince, and armed to the teeth, he inspects every corner of the
rooms, looks under the beds, and, in a word, gives himself up to a whole
heap of ridiculous actions worthy of an old woman. All these precautions
would have seemed highly degrading to the Prince himself in the happy
days when he used to go to war and had never killed anyone except in
open combat. As he is a man of infinite spirit, he is ashamed of these
precautions; they seem to him ridiculous, even at the moment when he is
giving way to them, and the source of Conte Mosca's enormous reputation
is that he devotes all his skill to arranging that the Prince shall
never have occasion to blush in his presence. It is he, Mosca, who, in
his capacity as Minister of Police, insists upon looking under the
furniture, and, so people say in Parma, even in the cases in which the
musicians keep their double-basses. It is the Prince who objects to this
and teases his Minister over his excessive punctiliousness. 'It is a
challenge,' Conte Mosca replies; 'think of the satirical sonnets the
Jacobins would shower on us if we allowed you to be killed. It is not
only your life that we are defending, it is our honour.' But it appears
that the Prince is only half taken in by this, for if anyone in the town
should take it into his head to remark that they have passed a sleepless
night at the castle, the Grand Fiscal Rassi sends the impertinent fellow
to the citadel, and once in that lofty abode, and in the _fresh air_, as
they say at Parma, it is a miracle if anyone remembers the prisoner's
existence. It is because he is a soldier, and in Spain got away a score
of times, pistol in hand, from a tight corner, that the Prince prefers
Conte Mosca to Rassi, who is a great deal more flexible and baser. Those
unfortunate prisoners in the citadel are kept in the most rigorously
secret confinement, and all sorts of stories are told about them. The
Liberals assert that (and this, they say, is one of Rassi's ideas) the
gaolers and confessors are under orders to assure them, about once a
month, that one of them is being led out to die. That day the prisoners
have permission to climb to the platform of the huge tower, one hundred
and eighty feet high, and from there they see a procession file along
the plain with some spy who plays the part of a poor devil going to his
death."
These stories and a score of others of the same nature and of no less
authenticity keenly interested Signora Pietranera: on the following day
she asked Conte Mosca, whom she rallied briskly, for details. She found
him amusing, and maintained to him that at heart he was a monster
without knowing it. One day as he went back to his inn the Conte said to
himself: "Not only is this Contessa Pietranera a charming woman; but
when I spend the evening in her box I manage to forget certain things at
Parma the memory of which cuts me to the heart."--This Minister, in
spite of his frivolous air and his polished manners, was not blessed
with a soul of the French type; he could not _forget_ the things that
annoyed him. When there was a thorn in his pillow, he was obliged to
break it off and to blunt its point by repeated stabbings of his
throbbing limbs. (I must apologise for the last two sentences, which are
translated from the Italian.) On the morrow of this discovery, the Conte
found that, notwithstanding the business that had summoned him to Milan,
the day spun itself out to an enormous length; he could not stay in one
place, he wore out his carriage-horses. About six o'clock he mounted his
saddle-horse to ride to the _Corso_; he had some hope of meeting Signora
Pietranera there; seeing no sign of her, he remembered that at eight
o'clock the Scala Theatre opened; he entered it, and did not see ten
persons in that immense auditorium. He felt somewhat ashamed of himself
for being there. "Is it possible," he asked himself, "that at forty-five
and past I am committing follies at which a sub-lieutenant would blush?
Fortunately nobody suspects them." He fled, and tried to pass the time
by strolling up and down the attractive streets that surround the Scala.
They are lined with _caffè_ which at that hour are filled to overflowing
with people. Outside each of these _caffè_ crowds of curious idlers
perched on chairs in the middle of the street sip ices and criticise the
passers-by. The Conte was a passer-by of importance; at once he had the
pleasure of being recognised and addressed. Three or four importunate
persons of the kind that one cannot easily shake off seized this
opportunity to obtain an audience of so powerful a Minister. Two of them
handed him petitions; the third was content with pouring out a stream of
long-winded advice as to his political conduct.
"One does not sleep," he said to himself, "when one has such a brain;
one ought not to walk about when one is so powerful." He returned to the
theatre, where it occurred to him that he might take a box in the third
tier; from there his gaze could plunge, unnoticed by anyone, into the
box in the second tier in which he hoped to see the Contessa arrive. Two
full hours of waiting did not seem any too long to this lover; certain
of not being seen he abandoned himself joyfully to the full extent of
his folly. "Old age," he said to himself, "is not that, more than
anything else, the time when one is no longer capable of these delicious
puerilities?"
Finally the Contessa appeared. Armed with his glasses, he studied her
with rapture: "Young, brilliant, light as a bird," he said to himself,
"she is not twenty-five. Her beauty is the least of her charms: where
else could one find that soul always sincere, which never acts _with
prudence_, which abandons itself entirely to the impression of the
moment, which asks only to be carried away towards some new goal? I can
understand Conte Nani's foolish behaviour."
The Conte supplied himself with excellent reasons for behaving
foolishly, so long as he was thinking only of capturing the happiness
which he saw before his eyes. He did not find any quite so satisfactory
when he came to consider his age and the anxieties, sometimes of the
saddest nature, that burdened his life. "A man of ability, whose spirit
has been destroyed by fear, gives me a sumptuous life and plenty of
money to be his Minister; but were he to dismiss me to-morrow, I should
be left old and poor, that is to say everything that the world despises
most; there's a fine partner to offer the Contessa!" These thoughts were
too dark, he came back to Signora Pietranera; he could not tire of
gazing at her, and, to be able to think of her better, did not go down
to her box. "Her only reason for taking Nani, they tell me, was to put
that imbecile Limercati in his place when he could not be prevailed upon
to run a sword, or to hire someone else to stick a dagger into her
husband's murderer. I would fight for her twenty times over!" cried the
Conte in a transport of enthusiasm. Every moment he consulted the
theatre clock which, with illuminated figures upon a black background,
warned the audience every five minutes of the approach of the hour at
which it was permissible for them to visit a friend's box. The Conte
said to himself: "I cannot spend more than half an hour at the most in
the box, seeing that I have known her so short a time; if I stay longer,
I shall attract attention, and, thanks to my age and even more to this
accursed powder on my hair, I shall have all the bewitching allurements
of a Cassandra." But a sudden thought made up his mind once and for all.
"If she were to leave that box to pay someone else a visit, I should be
well rewarded for the avarice with which I am hoarding up this
pleasure." He rose to go down to the box in which he could see the
Contessa; all at once he found that he had lost almost all his desire to
present himself to her.
"Ah! this is really charming," he exclaimed with a smile at his own
expense, and coming to a halt on the staircase; "an impulse of genuine
shyness! It must be at least five and twenty years since an adventure of
this sort last came my way."
He entered the box, almost with an effort to control himself; and,
making the most, like a man of spirit, of the condition in which he
found himself, made no attempt to appear at ease, or to display his wit
by plunging into some entertaining story; he had the courage to be shy,
he employed his wits in letting his disturbance be apparent without
making himself ridiculous. "If she should take it amiss," he said to
himself, "I am lost for ever. What! Shy, with my hair covered with
powder, hair which, without the disguise of the powder, would be visibly
grey! But, after all, it is a fact; it cannot therefore be absurd unless
I exaggerate it or make a boast of it." The Contessa had spent so many
weary hours at the castle of Grianta, facing the powdered heads of her
brother and nephew, and of various politically _sound_ bores of the
neighbourhood, that it never occurred to her to give a thought to her
new adorer's style in hairdressing.
The Contessa's mind having this protection against the impulse to laugh
on his entry, she paid attention only to the news from France which
Mosca always had for her in detail, on coming to her box; no doubt he
used to invent it. As she discussed this news with him, she noticed this
evening the expression in his eyes, which was good and kindly.
"I can imagine," she said to him, "that at Parma, among your slaves, you
will not wear that friendly expression; it would ruin everything and
give them some hope of not being hanged!"
The entire absence of any sense of self-importance in a man who passed
as the first diplomat in Italy, seemed strange to the Contessa; she even
found a certain charm in it. Moreover, as he talked well and with
warmth, she was not at all displeased that he should have thought fit to
take upon himself for one evening, without ulterior consequences, the
part of squire of dames.
It was a great step forward, and highly dangerous; fortunately for the
Minister, who, at Parma, never met a cruel fair, the Contessa had
arrived from Grianta only a few days before: her mind was still stiff
with the boredom of a country life. She had almost forgotten how to make
fun; and all those things that appertain to a light and elegant way of
living had assumed in her eyes as it were a tint of novelty which made
them sacred; she was in no mood to laugh at anyone, even a lover of
forty-five, and shy. A week later, the Conte's temerity might have met
with a very different sort of welcome.
At the Scala, it is not usual to prolong for more than twenty minutes or
so these little visits to one's friends' boxes; the Conte spent the
whole evening in the box in which he had been so fortunate as to meet
Signora Pietranera. "She is a woman," he said to himself, "who revives
in me all the follies of my youth!" But he was well aware of the danger.
"Will my position as an all-powerful Bashaw in a place forty leagues
away induce her to pardon me this stupid behaviour? I get so bored at
Parma!" Meanwhile, every quarter of an hour, he registered a mental vow
to get up and go.
"I must explain to you, Signora," he said to the Contessa with a laugh,
"that at Parma I am bored to death, and I ought to be allowed to drink
my fill of pleasure when the cup comes my way. So, without involving you
in anything and simply for this evening, permit me to play the part of
lover in your company. Alas, in a few days I shall be far away from this
box which makes me forget every care and indeed, you will say, every
convention."
A week after this monstrous visit to the Contessa's box, and after a
series of minor incidents the narration of which here would perhaps seem
tedious, Conte Mosca was absolutely mad with love, and the Contessa had
already begun to think that his age need offer no objection if the
suitor proved attractive in other ways. They had reached this stage when
Mosca was recalled by a courier from Parma. One would have said that his
Prince was afraid to be left alone. The Contessa returned to Grianta;
her imagination no longer serving to adorn that lovely spot, it appeared
to her a desert. "Should I be attached to this man?" she asked herself.
Mosca wrote to her, and had not to play a part; absence had relieved him
of the source of all his anxious thoughts; his letters were amusing,
and, by a little piece of eccentricity which was not taken amiss, to
escape the comments of the Marchese del Dongo, who did not like having
to pay for the carriage of letters, he used to send couriers who would
post his at Como or Lecco or Varese or some other of those charming
little places on the shores of the lake. This was done with the idea
that the courier might be employed to take back her replies. The move
was successful.
Soon the days when the couriers came were events in the Contessa's life;
these couriers brought her flowers, fruit, little presents of no value,
which amused her, however, and her sister-in-law as well. Her memory of
the Conte was blended with her idea of his great power; the Contessa had
become curious to know everything that people said of him; the Liberals
themselves paid a tribute to his talents.
The principal source of the Conte's reputation for evil was that he
passed as the head of the _Ultra_ Party at the Court of Parma, while the
Liberal Party had at its head an intriguing woman capable of anything,
even of succeeding, the Marchesa Raversi, who was immensely rich. The
Prince made a great point of not discouraging that one of the two
Parties which happened not to be in power; he knew quite well that he
himself would always be the master, even with a Ministry formed in
Signora Raversi's drawing-room. Endless details of these intrigues were
reported at Grianta. The bodily absence of Mosca, whom everyone
described as a Minister of supreme talent and a man of action, made it
possible not to think any more of his powdered head, a symbol of
everything that is dull and sad; it was a detail of no consequence, one
of the obligations of the court at which, moreover, he was playing so
distinguished a part. "It is a ridiculous thing, a court," said the
Contessa to the Marchesa, "but it is amusing; it is a game that it is
interesting to play, but one must agree to the rules. Who ever thought
of protesting against the absurdity of the rules of piquet? And yet,
once you are accustomed to the rules, it is delightful to beat your
adversary with _repique_ and _capot_."
_MILAN_
The Contessa often thought about the writer of these entertaining
letters; the days on which she received them were delightful to her; she
would take her boat and go to read them in one of the charming spots by
the lake, the Pliniana, Belan, the wood of the Sfrondata. These letters
seemed to console her to some extent for Fabrizio's absence. She could
not, at all events, refuse to allow the Conte to be deeply in love; a
month had not passed before she was thinking of him with tender
affection. For his part, Conte Mosca was almost sincere when he offered
to hand in his resignation, to leave the Ministry and to come and spend
the rest of his life with her at Milan or elsewhere. "I have 400,000
francs," he added, "which will always bring us in an income of
15,000."--"A box at the play again, horses, everything," thought the
Contessa; they were pleasant dreams. The sublime beauty of the different
views of the Lake of Como began to charm her once more. She went down to
dream by its shores of this return to a brilliant and distinctive life,
which, most unexpectedly, seemed to be coming within the bounds of
possibility. She saw herself on the Corso, at Milan, happy and gay as in
the days of the Viceroy: "Youth, or at any rate a life of action would
begin again for me."
Sometimes her ardent imagination concealed things from her, but never
did she have those deliberate illusions which cowardice induces. She was
above all things a woman who was honest with herself. "If I am a little
too old to be doing foolish things," she said to herself, "envy, which
creates illusions as love does, may poison my stay in Milan for me.
After my husband's death, my noble poverty was a success, as was my
refusal of two vast fortunes. My poor little Conte Mosca had not a
twentieth part of the opulence that was cast at my feet by those two
worms, Limercati and Nani. The meagre widow's pension which I had to
struggle to obtain, the dismissal of my servants, which made some
sensation, the little fifth floor room which brought a score of
carriages to the door, all went to form at the time a striking
spectacle. But I shall have unpleasant moments, however skilfully I may
handle things, if, never possessing any fortune beyond my widow's
pension, I go back to live at Milan on the snug little middle-class
comfort which we can secure with the 15,000 lire that Mosca will have
left after he retires. One strong objection, out of which envy will
forge a terrible weapon, is that the Conte, although separated long ago
from his wife, is still a married man. This separation is known at
Parma, but at Milan it will come as news, and they will put it down to
me. So, my dear Scala, my divine Lake of Como, adieu! adieu!"
In spite of all these forebodings, if the Contessa had had the smallest
income of her own she would have accepted Mosca's offer to resign his
office. She regarded herself as a middle-aged woman, and the idea of the
court alarmed her; but what will appear in the highest degree improbable
on this side of the Alps is that the Conte would have handed in that
resignation gladly. So, at least, he managed to make his friend believe.
In all his letters he implored, with an ever increasing frenzy, a second
interview at Milan; it was granted him. "To swear that I feel an insane
passion for you," the Contessa said to him one day at Milan, "would be a
lie; I should be only too glad to love to-day at thirty odd as I used to
love at two-and-twenty! But I have seen so many things decay that I had
imagined to be eternal! I have the most tender regard for you, I place
an unbounded confidence in you, and of all the men I know, you are the
one I like best." The Contessa believed herself to be perfectly sincere;
and yet, in the final clause, this declaration embodied a tiny
falsehood. Fabrizio, perhaps, had he chosen, might have triumphed over
every rival in her heart. But Fabrizio was nothing more than a boy in
Conte Mosca's eyes: he himself reached Milan three days after the young
hothead's departure for Novara, and he hastened to intercede on his
behalf with Barone Binder. The Conte considered that his exile was now
irrevocable.
_A RECENT CREATION_
He had not come to Milan alone; he had in his carriage the Duca
Sanseverina-Taxis, a handsome little old man of sixty-eight,
dapple-grey, very polished, very neat, immensely rich but not quite as
noble as he ought to have been. It was his grandfather, only, who had
amassed millions from the office of Farmer General of the Revenues of
the State of Parma. His father had had himself made Ambassador of the
Prince of Parma to the Court of ----, by advancing the following
argument: "Your Highness allots 30,000 francs to his Representative at
the Court of ----, where he cuts an extremely modest figure. Should Your
Highness deign to appoint me to the post, I will accept 6,000 francs as
salary. My expenditure at the Court of ---- will never fall below
100,000 francs a year, and my agent will pay over 20,000 francs every
year to the Treasurer for Foreign Affairs at Parma. With that sum they
can attach to me whatever Secretary of Embassy they choose, and I shall
shew no curiosity to inquire into diplomatic secrets, if there are any.
My object is to shed lustre on my house, which is still a new one, and
to give it the distinction of having filled one of the great public
offices."
The present Duca, this Ambassador's son and heir, had made the stupid
mistake of coming out as a Semi-Liberal, and for the last two years had
been in despair. In Napoleon's time, he had lost two or three millions
owing to his obstinacy in remaining abroad, and even now, after the
re-establishment of order in Europe, he had not managed to secure a
certain Grand Cordon which adorned the portrait of his father. The want
of this Cordon was killing him by inches.
At the degree of intimacy which in Italy follows love, there was no
longer any obstacle in the nature of vanity between the lovers. It was
therefore with the most perfect simplicity that Mosca said to the woman
he adored:
"I have two or three plans of conduct to offer you, all pretty well
thought out; I have been thinking of nothing else for the last three
months.
"First: I hand in my resignation, and we retire to a quiet life at Milan
or Florence or Naples or wherever you please. We have an income of
15,000 francs, apart from the Prince's generosity, which will continue
for some time, more or less.
"Secondly: You condescend to come to the place in which I have some
authority; you buy a property, Sacca, for example, a charming house in
the middle of a forest, commanding the valley of the Po; you can have
the contract signed within a week from now. The Prince then attaches you
to his court. But here I can see an immense objection. You will be well
received at court; no one would think of refusing, with me there;
besides, the Princess imagines she is unhappy, and I have recently
rendered her certain services with an eye to your future. But I must
remind you of one paramount objection: the Prince is a bigoted
churchman, and, as you already know, ill luck will have it that I am a
married man. From which will arise a million minor unpleasantnesses. You
are a widow; it is a fine title which would have to be exchanged for
another, and this brings me to my third proposal.
_THE DUCA SANSEVERINA_
"One might find a new husband who would not be a nuisance. But first of
all he would have to be considerably advanced in years, for why should
you deny me the hope of some day succeeding him? Very well, I have made
this curious arrangement with the Duca Sanseverina-Taxis, who, of
course, does not know the name of his future Duchessa. He knows only
that she will make him an Ambassador and will procure him the Grand
Cordon which his father had and the lack of which makes him the most
unhappy of mortals. Apart from this, the Duca is by no means an absolute
idiot; he gets his clothes and wigs from Paris. He is not in the least
the sort of man who would do anything _deliberately_ mean, he seriously
believes that honour consists in his having a Cordon, and he is ashamed
of his riches. He came to me a year ago proposing to found a hospital,
in order to get this Cordon; I laughed at him then, but he did not by
any means laugh at me when I made him a proposal of marriage; my first
condition was, you can understand, that he must never set foot again in
Parma."
"But do you know that what you are proposing is highly immoral?" said
the Contessa.
"No more immoral than everything else that is done at our court and a
score of others. Absolute Power has this advantage, that it sanctifies
everything in the eyes of the public: what harm can there be in a thing
that nobody notices? Our policy for the next twenty years is going to
consist in fear of the Jacobins--and such fear, too! Every year, we
shall fancy ourselves on the eve of '93. You will hear, I hope, the fine
speeches I make on the subject at my receptions! They are beautiful!
Everything that can in any way reduce this fear will be _supremely
moral_ in the eyes of the nobles and the bigots. And you see, at Parma,
everyone who is not either a noble or a bigot is in prison, or is
packing up to go there; you may be quite sure that this marriage will
not be thought odd among us until the day on which I am disgraced. This
arrangement involves no dishonesty towards anyone; that is the essential
thing, it seems to me. The Prince, on whose favour we are trading, has
placed only one condition on his consent, which is that the future
Duchessa shall be of noble birth. Last year my office, all told, brought
me in 107,000 francs; my total income would therefore be 122,000; I
invested 20,000 at Lyons. Very well, choose for yourself; either, a life
of luxury based on our having 122,000 francs to spend, which, at Parma,
go as far as at least 400,000 at Milan, but with this marriage which
will give you the name of a passable man on whom you will never set eyes
after you leave the altar; or else the simple middle-class existence on
15,000 francs at Florence or Naples, for I am of your opinion, you have
been too much admired at Milan; we should be persecuted here by envy,
which might perhaps succeed in souring our tempers. Our grand life at
Parma will, I hope, have some touches of novelty, even in your eyes
which have seen the court of Prince Eugène; you would be wise to try it
before shutting the door on it for ever. Do not think that I am
seeking to influence your opinion. As for me, my mind is quite made up:
I would rather live on a fourth floor with you than continue that grand
life by myself."
_A MATCH_
The possibility of this strange marriage was debated by the loving
couple every day. The Contessa saw the Duca Sanseverina-Taxis at the
Scala Ball, and thought him highly presentable. In one of their final
conversations, Mosca summed up his proposals in the following words: "We
must take some decisive action if we wish to spend the rest of our lives
in an enjoyable fashion and not grow old before our time. The Prince has
given his approval; Sanseverina is a person who might easily be worse;
he possesses the finest _palazzo_ in Parma, and a boundless fortune; he
is sixty-eight, and has an insane passion for the Grand Cordon; but
there is one great stain on his character: he once paid 10,000 francs
for a bust of Napoleon by Canova. His second sin, which will be the
death of him if you do not come to his rescue, is that he lent 25
napoleons to Ferrante Palla, a lunatic of our country but also something
of a genius, whom we have since sentenced to death, fortunately in his
absence. This Ferrante has written a couple of hundred lines in his time
which are like nothing in the world; I will repeat them to you, they are
as fine as Dante. The Prince then sends Sanseverina to the Court of
----, he marries you on the day of his departure, and in the second year
of his stay abroad, which he calls an Embassy, he receives the Grand
Cordon of the ----, without which he cannot live. You will have in him a
brother who will give you no trouble at all; he signs all the papers I
require in advance, and besides you will see nothing of him, or as
little as you choose. He asks for nothing better than never to shew his
face at Parma, where his grandfather the tax-gatherer and his own
profession of Liberalism stand in his way. Rassi, our hangman, makes out
that the Duca was a secret subscriber to the _Constitutionnel_ through
Ferrante Palla the poet, and this slander was for a long time a serious
obstacle in the way of the Prince's consent."
Why should the historian who follows faithfully all the most trivial
details of the story that has been told him be held responsible? Is it
his fault if his characters, led astray by passions which he,
unfortunately for himself, in no way shares, descend to conduct that is
profoundly immoral? It is true that things of this sort are no longer
done in a country where the sole passion that has outlived all the rest
is that for money, as an excuse for vanity.
Three months after the events we have just related, the Duchessa
Sanseverina-Taxis astonished the court of Parma by her easy affability
and the noble serenity of her mind; her house was beyond comparison the
most attractive in the town. This was what Conte Mosca had promised his
master. Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, the Reigning Prince, and the Princess his
Consort, to whom she was presented by two of the greatest ladies in the
land, gave her a most marked welcome. The Duchessa was curious to see
this Prince, master of the destiny of the man she loved, she was anxious
to please him, and in this was more than successful. She found a man of
tall stature but inclined to stoutness; his hair, his moustache, his
enormous whiskers were of a fine gold, according to his courtiers;
elsewhere they had provoked, by their faded tint, the ignoble word
_flaxen_. From the middle of a plump face there projected to no distance
at all a tiny nose that was almost feminine. But the Duchessa observed
that, in order to notice all these points of ugliness, one had first to
attempt to catalogue the Prince's features separately. Taken as a whole,
he had the air of a man of sense and of firm character. His carriage,
his way of holding himself were by no means devoid of majesty, but often
he sought to impress the person he was addressing; at such times he grew
embarrassed himself, and fell into an almost continuous swaying motion
from one leg to the other. For the rest, Ernesto IV had a piercing and
commanding gaze; his gestures with his arms had nobility, and his speech
was at once measured and concise.
Mosca had warned the Duchessa that the Prince had, in the large cabinet
in which he gave audiences, a full length portrait of Louis XIV, and a
very fine table by Scagliola of Florence. She found the imitation
striking; evidently he sought to copy the gaze and the noble utterance
of Louis XIV, and he leaned upon the Scagliola table so as to give
himself the pose of Joseph II. He sat down as soon as he had uttered his
greeting to the Duchessa, to give her an opportunity to make use of the
_tabouret_ befitting her rank. At this court, duchesses, princesses, and
the wives of Grandees of Spain alone have the right to sit; other women
wait until the Prince or Princess invites them; and, to mark the
difference in rank, these August Personages always take care to allow a
short interval to elapse before inviting the ladies who are not
duchesses to be seated. The Duchessa found that at certain moments the
imitation of Louis XIV was a little too strongly marked in the Prince;
for instance, in his way of smiling good-naturedly and throwing back his
head.
_THE COURT OF PARMA_
Ernesto IV wore an evening coat in the latest fashion, that had come
from Paris; every month he had sent to him from that city, which he
abhorred, an evening coat, a frock coat, and a hat. But by an odd blend
of costume, on the day on which the Duchessa was received he had put on
red breeches, silk stockings and very close-fitting shoes, models for
which might be found in the portraits of Joseph II.
He received Signora Sanseverina graciously; the things he said to her
were shrewd and witty; but she saw quite plainly that there was no
superfluity of warmth in his reception of her.--"Do you know why?" said
Conte Mosca on her return from the audience, "it is because Milan is a
larger and finer city than Parma. He was afraid, had he given you the
welcome that I expected and he himself had led me to hope, of seeming
like a provincial in ecstasies before the charms of a beautiful lady who
has come down from the capital. No doubt, too, he is still upset by a
detail which I hardly dare mention to you; the Prince sees at his court
no woman who can vie with you in _beauty_. Yesterday evening, when he
retired to bed, that was his sole topic of conversation with Pernice,
his principal valet, who is good enough to confide in me. I foresee a
little revolution in etiquette; my chief enemy at this court is a fool
who goes by the name of General Fabio Conti. Just imagine a creature who
has been on active service for perhaps one day in his life, and sets out
from that to copy the bearing of Frederick the Great. In addition to
which, he aims also at copying the noble affability of General La
Fayette, and that because he is the leader, here, of the Liberal Party
(God knows what sort of Liberals!)."
"I know your Fabio Conti," said the Duchessa; "I had a good view of him
once near Como; he was quarrelling with the police." She related the
little adventure which the reader may perhaps remember.
"You will learn one day, Signora, if your mind ever succeeds in
penetrating the intricacies of our etiquette, that young ladies do not
appear at court here until after their marriage. At the same time, the
Prince has, for the superiority of his city of Parma over all others, a
patriotism so ardent that I would wager that he will find some way of
having little Clelia Conti, our La Fayette's daughter, presented to him.
She is charming, upon my soul she is; and was still reckoned, a week
ago, the best-looking person in the States of the Prince.
"I do not know," the Conte went on, "whether the horrors that the
enemies of our Sovereign have disseminated against him, have reached the
castle of Grianta; they make him out a monster, an ogre. The truth is
that Ernesto IV was full of dear little virtues, and one may add that,
had he been invulnerable like Achilles, he would have continued to be
the model of a potentate. But in a moment of boredom and anger, and also
a little in imitation of Louis XIV cutting off the head of some hero or
other of the Fronde, who was discovered living in peaceful solitude on a
plot of land near Versailles, fifty years after the Fronde, one fine day
Ernesto IV had two Liberals hanged. It seems that these rash fellows
used to meet on fixed days to speak evil of the Prince and address
ardent prayers to heaven that the plague might visit Parma and deliver
them from the tyrant. The word _tyrant_ was proved. Rassi called this
conspiracy; he had them sentenced to death, and the execution of one of
them, Conte L----, was atrocious. All this happened before my time.
Since that fatal hour," the Conte went on, lowering his voice, "the
Prince has been subject to fits of panic _unworthy of a man_, but these
are the sole source of the favour that I enjoy. But for this royal fear,
mine would be a kind of merit too abrupt, too harsh for this court,
where idiocy runs rampant. Would you believe that the Prince looks under
the beds in his room before going to sleep, and spends a million, which
at Parma is the equivalent of four millions at Milan, to have a good
police force; and you see before you, Signora Duchessa, the Chief of
that terrible Police. By the police, that is to say by fear, I have
become Minister of War and Finance; and as the Minister of the Interior
is my nominal chief, in so far as he has the police under his
jurisdiction, I have had that portfolio given to Conte Zurla-Contarini,
an imbecile who is a glutton for work and gives himself the pleasure of
writing eighty letters a day. I received one only this morning on which
Conte Zurla-Contarini has had the satisfaction of writing with his own
hand the number 20,715."
The Duchessa Sanseverina was presented to the melancholy Princess of
Parma, Clara-Paolina, who, because her husband had a mistress (quite an
attractive woman, the Marchesa Balbi), imagined herself to be the most
unhappy person in the universe, a belief which had made her perhaps the
most trying. The Duchessa found a very tall and very thin woman, who was
not thirty-six and appeared fifty. A symmetrical and noble face might
have passed as beautiful, though somewhat spoiled by the large round
eyes which could barely see, if the Princess had not herself abandoned
every attempt at beauty. She received the Duchessa with a shyness so
marked that certain courtiers, enemies of Conte Mosca, ventured to say
that the Princess looked like the woman who was being presented and the
Duchessa like the sovereign. The Duchessa, surprised and almost
disconcerted, could find no language that would put her in a place
inferior to that which the Princess assumed for herself. To restore some
self-possession to this poor Princess, who at heart was not wanting in
intelligence, the Duchessa could think of nothing better than to begin,
and keep going, a long dissertation on botany. The Princess was really
learned in this science; she had some very fine hothouses with
quantities of tropical plants. The Duchessa, while seeking simply for a
way out of a difficult position, made a lifelong conquest of Princess
Clara-Paolina, who, from the shy and speechless creature that she had
been at the beginning of the audience, found herself towards the end so
much at her ease, that, in defiance of all the rules of etiquette, this
first audience lasted for no less than an hour and a quarter. Next day,
the Duchessa sent out to purchase some exotic plants, and posed as a
great lover of botany.
The Princess spent all her time with the venerable Father Landriani,
Archbishop of Parma, a man of learning, a man of intelligence even, and
a perfectly honest man, but one who presented a singular spectacle when
he was seated in his chair of crimson velvet (it was the privilege of
his office) opposite the armchair of the Princess, surrounded by her
maids of honour and her two ladies _of company_. The old prelate, with his
flowing white locks, was even more timid, were such a thing possible,
than the Princess; they saw one another every day, and every audience
began with a silence that lasted fully a quarter of an hour. To such a
state had they come that the Contessa Alvizi, one of the ladies of
company, had become a sort of favourite, because she possessed the art
of encouraging them to talk and so breaking the silence.
To end the series of presentations, the Duchessa was admitted to the
presence of H.S.H. the Crown Prince, a personage of taller stature than
his father and more timid than his mother. He was learned in mineralogy,
and was sixteen years old. He blushed excessively on seeing the Duchessa
come in, and was so put off his balance that he could not think of a
word to say to that beautiful lady. He was a fine-looking young man, and
spent his life in the woods, hammer in hand. At the moment when the
Duchessa rose to bring this silent audience to an end:
"My God! Signora, how pretty you are!" exclaimed the Crown Prince; a
remark which was not considered to be in too bad taste by the lady
presented.
The Marchesa Balbi, a young woman of five-and-twenty, might still have
passed for the most perfect type of _leggiadria italiana_, two or three
years before the arrival of the Duchessa Sanseverina at Parma. As it
was, she had still the finest eyes in the world and the most charming
airs, but, viewed close at hand, her skin was netted with countless fine
little wrinkles which made the Marchesa look like a young grandmother.
Seen from a certain distance, in the theatre for instance, in her box,
she was still a beauty, and the people in the pit thought that the
Prince shewed excellent taste. He spent every evening with the Marchesa
Balbi, but often without opening his lips, and the boredom she saw on
the Prince's face had made this poor woman decline into an extraordinary
thinness. She laid claim to an unlimited subtlety, and was always
smiling a bitter smile; she had the prettiest teeth in the world, and in
season and out, having little or no sense, would attempt by an ironical
smile to give some hidden meaning to her words. Conte Mosca said that it
was these continual smiles, while inwardly she was yawning, that gave
her all her wrinkles. The Balbi had a finger in every pie, and the State
never made a contract for 1,000 francs without there being some little
_ricordo_ (this was the polite expression at Parma) for the Marchesa.
Common report would have it that she had invested six millions in
England, but her fortune, which indeed was of recent origin, did not in
reality amount to 1,500,000 francs. It was to be out of reach of her
stratagems, and to have her dependent upon himself, that Conte Mosca had
made himself Minister of Finance. The Marchesa's sole passion was fear
disguised in sordid avarice: "_I shall die on straw_!" she used
occasionally to say to the Prince, who was shocked by such a remark. The
Duchessa noticed that the ante-room, resplendent with gilding, of the
Balbi's _palazzo_, was lighted by a single candle which guttered on a
priceless marble table, and that the doors of her drawing-room were
blackened by the footmen's fingers.
"She received me," the Duchessa told her lover, "as though she expected
me to offer her a gratuity of 50 francs."
The course of the Duchessa's successes was slightly interrupted by the
reception given her by the shrewdest woman of the court, the celebrated
Marchesa Raversi, a consummate intriguer who had established herself at
the head of the party opposed to that of Conte Mosca. She was anxious to
overthrow him, all the more so in the last few months, since she was the
niece of the Duca Sanseverina, and was afraid of seeing her prospects
impaired by the charms of his new Duchessa. "The Raversi is by no means
a woman to be ignored," the Conte told his mistress; "I regard her as so
far capable of sticking at nothing that I separated from my wife solely
because she insisted on taking as her lover Cavaliere Bentivoglio, a
friend of the Raversi." This lady, a tall virago with very dark hair,
remarkable for the diamonds which she wore all day, and the rouge with
which she covered her cheeks, had declared herself in advance the
Duchessa's enemy, and when she received her in her own house made it her
business to open hostilities. The Duca Sanseverina, in the letters he
wrote from ----, appeared so delighted with his Embassy, and above all,
with the prospect of the Grand Cordon, that his family were afraid of
his leaving part of his fortune to his wife, whom he loaded with little
presents. The Raversi, although definitely ugly, had for a lover Conte
Baldi, the handsomest man at court; generally speaking, she was
successful in all her undertakings.
The Duchessa lived in the greatest style imaginable. The _palazzo_
Sanseverina had always been one of the most magnificent in the city of
Parma, and the Duca, to celebrate the occasion of his Embassy and his
future Grand Cordon, was spending enormous sums upon its decoration; the
Duchessa directed the work in person.
The Conte had guessed aright; a few days after the presentation of the
Duchessa, young Clelia Conti came to court; she had been made a
Canoness. In order to parry the blow which this favour might be thought
to have struck at the Conte's influence, the Duchessa gave a party, on
the pretext of throwing open the new garden of her _palazzo_, and by the
exercise of her most charming manners made Clelia, whom she called her
young friend of the Lake of Como, the queen of the evening. Her monogram
was displayed, as though by accident, upon the principal transparencies.
The young Clelia, although slightly pensive, was pleasant in the way in
which she spoke of the little adventure by the Lake, and of her warm
gratitude. She was said to be deeply religious and very fond of
solitude. "I would wager," said the Conte, "that she has enough sense to
be ashamed of her father." The Duchessa made a friend of this girl; she
felt attracted towards her, she did not wish to appear jealous, and
included her in all her pleasure parties; after all, her plan was to
seek to diminish all the enmities of which the Conte was the object.
Everything smiled on the Duchessa; she was amused by this court
existence where a sudden storm is always to be feared; she felt as
though she were beginning life over again. She was tenderly attached to
the Conte, who was literally mad with happiness. This pleasing situation
had bred in him an absolute impassivity towards everything in which only
his professional interests were concerned. And so, barely two months
after the Duchessa's arrival, he obtained the patent and honours of
Prime Minister, honours which come very near to those paid to the
Sovereign himself. The Conte had complete control of his master's will;
they had a proof of this at Parma by which everyone was impressed.
To the southeast, and within ten minutes of the town rises that famous
citadel so renowned throughout Italy, the main tower of which stands one
hundred and eighty feet high and is visible from so far. This tower,
constructed on the model of Hadrian's Tomb, at Rome, by the Farnese,
grandsons of Paul III, in the first half of the sixteenth century, is so
large in diameter that on the platform in which it ends it has been
possible to build a _palazzo_ for the governor of the citadel and a new
prison called the Farnese tower. This prison, erected in honour of the
eldest son of Ranuccio-Ernesto II, who had become the accepted lover of
his stepmother, is regarded as a fine and singular monument throughout
the country. The Duchessa was curious to see it; on the day of her visit
the heat was overpowering in Parma, and up there, in that lofty
position, she found fresh air, which so delighted her that she stayed
for several hours. The officials made a point of throwing open to her
the rooms of the Farnese tower.
The Duchessa met on the platform of the great tower a poor Liberal
prisoner who had come to enjoy the half-hour's outing that was allowed
him every third day. On her return to Parma, not having yet acquired the
discretion necessary in an absolute court, she spoke of this man, who
had told her the whole history of his life. The Marchesa Raversi's
party seized hold of these utterances of the Duchessa and repeated them
broadcast, greatly hoping that they would shock the Prince. Indeed,
Ernesto IV was in the habit of repeating that the essential thing was to
impress the imagination. "_Perpetual_ is a big word," he used to say,
"and more terrible in Italy than elsewhere": accordingly, never in his
life had he granted a pardon. A week after her visit to the fortress the
Duchessa received a letter commuting a sentence, signed by the Prince
and by his Minister, with a blank left for the name. The prisoner whose
name she chose to write in this space would obtain the restoration of
his property, with permission to spend the rest of his days in America.
The Duchessa wrote the name of the man who had talked to her.
Unfortunately this man turned out to be half a rogue, a weak-kneed
creature; it was on the strength of his confessions that the famous
Ferrante Palla had been sentenced to death.
The unprecedented nature of this pardon set the seal upon Signora
Sanseverina's position. Conte Mosca was wild with delight; it was a
great day in his life and one that had a decisive influence on
Fabrizio's destiny. He, meanwhile, was still at Romagnano, near Novara,
going to confession, hunting, reading nothing, and paying court to a
lady of noble birth, as was laid down in his instructions. The Duchessa
was still a trifle shocked by this last essential. Another sign which
boded no good to the Conte was that, while she would speak to him with
the utmost frankness about everyone else, and would think aloud in his
presence, she never mentioned Fabrizio to him without first carefully
choosing her words.
"If you like," the Conte said to her one day, "I will write to that
charming brother you have on the Lake of Como, and I will soon force
that Marchese del Dongo, if I and my friends in a certain quarter apply
a little pressure, to ask for the pardon of your dear Fabrizio. If it be
true, as I have not the least doubt that it is, that Fabrizio is
somewhat superior to the young fellows who ride their English
thoroughbreds about the streets of Milan, what a life, at eighteen, to
be doing nothing with no prospect of ever having anything to do! If
heaven had endowed him with a real passion for anything in the world,
were it only for angling, I should respect it; but what is he to do at
Milan, even after he has obtained his pardon? He will get on a horse,
which he will have had sent to him from England, at a certain hour of
the day; at another, idleness will take him to his mistress, for whom he
will care less than he will for his horse. . . . But, if you say the
word, I will try to procure this sort of life for your nephew."
"I should like him to be an officer," said the Duchessa.
"Would you recommend a Sovereign to entrust a post which, at a given
date, may be of some importance to a young man who, in the first place,
is liable to enthusiasm, and, secondly, has shewn enthusiasm for
Napoleon to the extent of going to join him at Waterloo? Just think
where we should all be if Napoleon had won at Waterloo! We should have
no Liberals to be afraid of, it is true, but the Sovereigns of ancient
Houses would be able to keep their thrones only by marrying the
daughters of his Marshals. And so military life for Fabrizio would be
the life of a squirrel in a revolving cage: plenty of movement with no
progress. He would have the annoyance of seeing himself cut out by all
sorts of plebeian devotion. The essential quality in a young man of the
present day, that is to say for the next fifty years perhaps, so long as
we remain in a state of fear and religion has not been re-established,
is not to be liable to enthusiasm and not to shew any spirit.
"I have thought of one thing, but one that will begin by making you cry
out in protest, and will give me infinite trouble for many a day to
come: it is an act of folly which I am ready to commit for you. But tell
me, if you can, what folly would I not commit to win a smile?"
"Well?" said the Duchessa.
"Well, we have had as Archbishops of Parma three members of your family:
Ascanio del Dongo who wrote a book in sixteen-something, Fabrizio in
1699, and another Ascanio in 1740. If Fabrizio cares to enter the
prelacy, and to make himself conspicuous for virtues of the highest
order, I can make him a Bishop somewhere, and then Archbishop here,
provided that my influence lasts. The real objection is this: shall I
remain Minister for long enough to carry out this fine plan, which will
require several years? The Prince may die, he may have the bad taste to
dismiss me. But, after all, it is the only way open to me of securing
for Fabrizio something that is worthy of you."
They discussed the matter at length: the idea was highly repugnant to
the Duchessa.
"Prove to me again," she said to the Conte, "that every other career is
impossible for Fabrizio." The Conte proved it.
"You regret," he added, "the brilliant uniform; but as to that, I do not
know what to do."
After a month in which the Duchessa had asked to be allowed to think
things over, she yielded with a sigh to the sage views of the Minister.
"Either ride stiffly upon an English horse through the streets of some
big town," repeated the Conte, "or adopt a calling that is not
unbefitting his birth; I can see no middle course. Unfortunately, a
gentleman cannot become either a doctor or a barrister, and this age is
made for barristers.
"Always bear in mind, Signora," the Conte went on, "that you are giving
your nephew, on the streets of Milan, the lot enjoyed by the young men
of his age who pass for the most fortunate. His pardon once procured,
you will give him fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand francs; the amount
does not matter; neither you nor I make any pretence of saving money."
The Duchessa was susceptible to the idea of fame; she did not wish
Fabrizio to be simply a young man living on an allowance; she reverted
to her lover's plan.
"Observe," the Conte said to her, "that I do not pretend to turn
Fabrizio into an exemplary priest, like so many that you see. No, he is
a great gentleman, first and foremost; he can remain perfectly ignorant
if it seems good to him, and will none the less become Bishop and
Archbishop, if the Prince continues to regard me as a useful person.
"If your orders deign to transform my proposal into an immutable
decree," the Conte went on, "our _protégé_ must on no account be seen
in Parma living with modest means. His subsequent promotion will cause a
scandal if people have seen him here as an ordinary priest; he ought not
to appear in Parma until he has his _violet stockings_[10] and a
suitable establishment. Then everyone will assume that your nephew is
destined to be a Bishop, and nobody will be shocked.
"If you will take my advice, you will send Fabrizio to take his theology
and spend three years at Naples. During the vacations of the
Ecclesiastical Academy he can go if he likes to visit Paris and London,
but he must never shew his face in Parma." This sentence made the
Duchessa shudder.
She sent a courier to her nephew, asking him to meet her at Piacenza.
Need it be said that this courier was the bearer of all the means of
obtaining money and all the necessary passports?
Arriving first at Piacenza, Fabrizio hastened to meet the Duchessa, and
embraced her with transports of joy which made her dissolve in tears.
She was glad that the Conte was not present; since they had fallen in
love, it was the first time that she had experienced this sensation.
Fabrizio was profoundly touched, and then distressed by the plans which
the Duchessa had made for him; his hope had always been that, his affair
at Waterloo settled, he might end by becoming a soldier. One thing
struck the Duchessa, and still further increased the romantic opinion
that she had formed of her nephew; he refused absolutely to lead a
_caffè_-haunting existence in one of the big towns of Italy.
"Can't you see yourself on the _Corso_ of Florence or Naples," said the
Duchessa, "with thoroughbred English horses? For the evenings a
carriage, a charming apartment," and so forth. She dwelt with exquisite
relish on the details of this vulgar happiness, which she saw Fabrizio
thrust from him with disdain. "He is a hero," she thought.
"And after ten years of this agreeable life, what shall I have done?"
said Fabrizio; "what shall I be? A young man _of a certain age_, who
will have to move out of the way of the first good-looking boy who makes
his appearance in society, also mounted upon an English horse."
Fabrizio at first utterly rejected the idea of the Church. He spoke of
going to New York, of becoming an American citizen and a soldier of the
Republic.
"What a mistake you are making! You won't have any war, and you'll fall
back into the _caffè_ life, only without smartness, without music,
without love affairs," replied the Duchessa. "Believe me, for you just
as much as for myself, it would be a wretched existence there in
America." She explained to him the cult of the god _Dollar_, and the
respect that had to be shewn to the artisans in the street who by their
votes decided everything. They came back to the idea of the Church.
"Before you fly into a passion," the Duchessa said to him, "just try to
understand what the Conte is asking you to do; there is no question
whatever of your being a poor priest of more or less exemplary and
virtuous life, like Priore Blanès. Remember the example of your uncles,
the Archbishops of Parma; read over again the accounts of their lives in
the supplement to the Genealogy. First and foremost, a man with a name
like yours has to be a great gentleman, noble, generous, an upholder of
justice, destined from the first to find himself at the head of his
order . . . and in the whole of his life doing only one dishonourable
thing, and that a very useful one."
"So all my illusions are shattered," said Fabrizio, heaving a deep sigh;
"it is a cruel sacrifice! I admit, I had not taken into account this
horror of enthusiasm and spirit, even when wielded to their advantage,
which from now onwards is going to prevail amongst absolute monarchs."
_ITALIAN PRUDENCE_
"Remember that a proclamation, a caprice of the heart flings the
enthusiast into the bosom of the opposite party to the one he has served
all his life!"
"I an enthusiast!" repeated Fabrizio; "a strange accusation! I cannot
manage even to be in love!"
"What!" exclaimed the Duchessa.
"When I have the honour to pay my court to a beauty, even if she is of
good birth and sound religious principles, I cannot think about her
except when I see her."
This avowal made a strange impression upon the Duchessa.
"I ask for a month," Fabrizio went on, "in which to take leave of
Signora C----, of Novara, and, what will be more difficult still, of all
the castles I have been building in the air all my life. I shall write
to my mother, who will be so good as to come and see me at Belgirate, on
the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore, and, in thirty-one days from
now, I shall be in Parma incognito."
"No, whatever you do!" cried the Duchessa. She did not wish Conte Mosca
to see her talking to Fabrizio.
The same pair met again at Piacenza. The Duchessa this time was highly
agitated: a storm had broken at court; the Marchesa Raversi's party was
on the eve of a triumph; it was on the cards that Conte Mosca might be
replaced by General Fabio Conti, the leader of what was called at Parma
the _Liberal Party_. Omitting only the name of the rival who was growing
in the Prince's favour, the Duchessa told Fabrizio everything. She
discussed afresh the chances of his future career, even with the
prospect of his losing the all-powerful influence of the Conte.
"I am going to spend three years in the Ecclesiastical Academy at
Naples," exclaimed Fabrizio; "but since I must be before all things a
young gentleman, and you do not oblige me to lead the life of a virtuous
seminarist, the prospect of this stay at Naples does not frighten me in
the least; the life there will be in every way as pleasant as life at
Romagnano; the best society of the neighbourhood was beginning to class
me as a Jacobin. In my exile I have discovered that I know nothing, not
even Latin, not even how to spell. I had planned to begin my education
over again at Novara; I shall willingly study theology at Naples; it is
a complicated science." The Duchessa was overjoyed. "If we are driven
out of Parma," she told him, "we shall come and visit you at Naples. But
since you agree, until further orders, to try for the violet stockings,
the Conte, who knows the Italy of to-day through and through, has given
me an idea to suggest to you. Believe or not, as you choose, what they
teach you, _but never raise any objection_. Imagine that they are teaching
you the rules of the game of whist; would you raise any objection to the
rules of whist? I have told the Conte that you do believe, and he is
delighted to hear it; it is useful in this world and in the next. But,
if you believe, do not fall into the vulgar habit of speaking with
horror of Voltaire, Diderot, Raynal and all those harebrained Frenchmen
who paved the way to the Dual Chamber. Their names should not be allowed
to pass your lips, but if you must mention them, speak of these
gentlemen with a calm irony: they are people who have long since been
refuted and whose attacks are no longer of any consequence. Believe
blindly everything that they tell you at the Academy. Bear in mind that
there are people who will make a careful note of your slightest
objections; they will forgive you a little amorous intrigue if it is
done in the proper way, but not a doubt: age stifles intrigue but
encourages doubt. Act on this principle at the tribunal of penitence.
You shall have a letter of recommendation to a Bishop who is factotum to
the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples: to him alone you should admit your
escapade in France and your presence on the 18th of June in the
neighbourhood of Waterloo. Even then, cut it as short as possible,
confess it only so that they cannot reproach you with having kept it
secret. You were so young at the time!
_THE COURT_
"The second idea which the Conte sends you is this: if there should
occur to you a brilliant argument, a triumphant retort that will change
the course of the conversation, do not give in to the temptation to
shine; remain silent: people of any discernment will see your cleverness
in your eyes. It will be time enough to be witty when you are a Bishop."
Fabrizio began his life at Naples with an unpretentious carriage and
four servants, good Milanese, whom his aunt had sent him. After a year
of study, no one said of him that he was a man of parts: people looked
upon him as a great nobleman, of a studious bent, extremely generous,
but something of a libertine.
That year, amusing enough for Fabrizio, was terrible for the Duchessa.
The Conte was three or four times within an inch of ruin; the Prince,
more timorous than ever, because he was ill that year, believed that by
dismissing him he could free himself from the odium of the executions
carried out before the Conte had entered his service. Rassi was the
cherished favourite who must at all costs be retained. The Conte's
perils won him the passionate attachment of the Duchessa; she gave no
more thought to Fabrizio. To lend colour to their possible retirement,
it appeared that the air of Parma, which was indeed a trifle damp as it
is everywhere in Lombardy, did not at all agree with her. Finally, after
intervals of disgrace which went so far as to make the Conte, though
Prime Minister, spend sometimes twenty whole days without seeing his
master privately, Mosca won; he secured the appointment of General Fabio
Conti, the so-called Liberal, as governor of the citadel in which were
imprisoned the Liberals condemned by Rassi. "If Conti shows any leniency
towards his prisoners," Mosca observed to his lady, "he will be
disgraced as a Jacobin whose political theories have made him forget his
duty as a general; if he shows himself stern and pitiless, and that, to
my mind, is the direction in which he will tend, he ceases to be the
leader of his own party and alienates all the families that have a
relative in the citadel. This poor man has learned how to assume an air
of awed respect on the approach of the Prince; if necessary, he changes
his clothes four times a day; he can discuss a question of etiquette,
but his is not a head capable of following the difficult path by which
alone he can save himself from destruction; and in any case, I am
there."
The day after the appointment of General Fabio Conti, which brought the
ministerial crisis to an end, it was announced that Parma was to have an
ultra-monarchist newspaper.
"What feuds the paper will create!" said the Duchessa.
"This paper, the idea of which is perhaps my masterpiece," replied the
Conte with a smile, "I shall gradually and quite against my will allow
to pass into the hands of the ultra-rabid section. I have attached some
good salaries to the editorial posts. People are coming from all
quarters to beg for employment on it; the excitement will help us
through the next month or two, and people will forget the danger I have
been in. Those seriously minded gentlemen P---- and D---- are already on
the list."
"But this paper will be quite revoltingly absurd."
"I am reckoning on that," replied the Conte. "The Prince will read it
every morning and admire the doctrines taught by myself as its founder.
As to the details, he will approve or be shocked; of the hours which he
devotes every day to work, two will be taken up in this way. The paper
will get itself into trouble, but when the serious complaints begin to
come in, in eight or ten months' time, it will be entirely in the hands
of the ultra-rabids. It will be this party, which is annoying me, that
will have to answer; as for me, I shall raise objections to the paper;
but after all I greatly prefer a hundred absurdities to one hanging. Who
remembers an absurdity two years after the publication of the official
gazette! It is better than having the sons and family of the hanged man
vowing a hatred which will last as long as I shall and may perhaps
shorten my life."
The Duchessa, always passionately interested in something, always
active, never idle, had more spirit than the whole court of Parma put
together; but she lacked the patience and impassivity necessary for
success in intrigue. However, she had managed to follow with passionate
excitement the interests of the various groups, she was beginning even
to establish a certain personal reputation with the Prince.
Clara-Paolina, the Princess Consort, surrounded with honours but a
prisoner to the most antiquated etiquette, looked upon herself as the
unhappiest of women. The Duchessa Sanseverina paid her various
attentions and tried to prove to her that she was by no means so unhappy
as she supposed. It should be explained that the Prince saw his wife
only at dinner: this meal lasted for thirty minutes, and the Prince
would spend whole weeks without saying a word to Clara-Paolina. Signora
Sanseverina attempted to change all this; she amused the Prince, all the
more as she had managed to retain her independence intact. Had she
wished to do so, she could not have succeeded in never hurting any of
the fools who swarmed about this court. It was this utter inadaptability
on her part that led to her being execrated by the common run of
courtiers, all Conti or Marchesi, with an average income of 5,000 lire.
She realised this disadvantage after the first few days, and devoted
herself exclusively to pleasing the Sovereign and his Consort, the
latter of whom was in absolute control of the Crown Prince. The Duchessa
knew how to amuse the Sovereign, and profited by the extreme attention
he paid to her lightest word to put in some shrewd thrusts at the
courtiers who hated her. After the foolish actions that Rassi had made
him commit, and for foolishness that sheds blood there is no reparation,
the Prince was sometimes afraid and was often bored, which had brought
him to a state of morbid envy; he felt that he was deriving little
amusement from life, and grew sombre when he saw other people amused;
the sight of happiness made him furious. "We must keep our love secret,"
she told her admirer, and gave the Prince to understand that she was
only very moderately attached to the Conte, who for that matter was so
thoroughly deserving of esteem.
This discovery had given His Highness a happy day. From time to time,
the Duchessa let fall a few words about the plan she had in her mind of
taking a few months' holiday every year, to be spent in seeing Italy,
which she did not know at all; she would visit Naples, Florence, Rome.
Now nothing in the world was more capable of distressing the Prince than
an apparent desertion of this sort; it was one of his most pronounced
weaknesses, any action that might be interpreted as showing contempt for
his capital city pierced him to the heart. He felt that he had no way of
holding Signora Sanseverina, and Signora Sanseverina was by far the most
brilliant woman in Parma. A thing without parallel in the lazy Italian
character, people used to drive in from the surrounding country to
attend her _Thursdays_; they were regular festivals; almost every week
the Duchessa had something new and sensational to present. The Prince
was dying to see one of these Thursdays for himself; but how was it to
be managed? Go to the house of a private citizen! That was a thing that
neither his father nor he had ever done in their lives!
There came a certain Thursday of cold wind and rain; all through the
evening the Prince heard carriages rattling over the pavement of the
piazza outside the Palace, on their way to Signora Sanseverina's. He
moved petulantly in his chair: other people were amusing themselves, and
he, their sovereign Prince, their absolute master, who ought to find
more amusement than anyone in the world, he was tasting the fruit of
boredom! He rang for his aide-de-camp: he was obliged to wait until a
dozen trustworthy men had been posted in the street that led from the
Royal Palace to the _palazzo_ Sanseverina. Finally, after an hour that
seemed to the Prince an age, during which he had been minded a score of
times to brave the assassins' daggers and to go boldly out without any
precaution, he appeared in the first of Signora Sanseverina's
drawing-rooms. A thunderbolt might have fallen upon the carpet and not
produced so much surprise. In the twinkling of an eye, and as the Prince
advanced through them, these gay and noisy rooms were hushed to a
stupefied silence; every eye, fixed on the Prince, was strained with
attention. The courtiers appeared disconcerted; the Duchessa alone
shewed no sign of surprise. When finally her guests had recovered
sufficient strength to speak, the great preoccupation of all present was
to decide the important question: had the Duchessa been warned of this
visit, or had she like everyone else been taken by surprise?
The Prince was amused, and the reader may now judge of the utterly
impulsive character of the Duchessa, and of the boundless power which
vague ideas of departure, adroitly disseminated, had enabled her to
assume.
As she went to the door with the Prince, who was making her the
prettiest speeches, an odd idea came to her which she ventured to put
into words quite simply, and as though it were the most natural thing in
the world.
"If Your Serene Highness would address to the Princess three or four of
these charming utterances which he lavishes on me, he could be far more
certain of giving me pleasure than by telling me that I am pretty. I
mean that I would not for anything in the world have the Princess look
with an unfriendly eye on the signal mark of his favour with which His
Highness has honoured me this evening."
The Prince looked fixedly at her and replied in a dry tone:
"I was under the impression that I was my own master and could go where
I pleased."
The Duchessa blushed.
"I wished only," she explained, instantly recovering herself, "not to
expose His Highness to the risk of a bootless errand, for this Thursday
will be the last; I am going for a few days to Bologna or Florence."
When she reappeared in the rooms, everyone imagined her to be at the
height of favour, whereas she had just taken a risk upon which, in the
memory of man, no one had ever ventured. She made a sign to the Conte,
who rose from the whist-table and followed her into a little room that
was lighted but empty.
"You have done a very bold thing," he informed her; "I should not have
advised it myself, but when hearts are really inflamed," he added with a
smile, "happiness enhances love, and if you leave to-morrow morning, I
shall follow you to-morrow night. I shall be detained here only by that
burden of a Ministry of Finance which I was stupid enough to take on my
shoulders; but in four hours of hard work, one can hand over a good many
accounts. Let us go back, dear friend, and play at ministerial fatuity
with all freedom and without reserve; it may be the last performance
that we shall give in this town. If he thinks he is being defied, the
man is capable of anything; he will call it _making an example_. When
these people have gone, we can decide on a way of barricading you for
to-night; the best plan perhaps would be to set off without delay for
your house at Sacca, by the Po, which has the advantage of being within
half an hour of Austrian territory."
For the Duchessa's love and self-esteem this was an exquisite moment;
she looked at the Conte, and her eyes brimmed with tears. So powerful a
Minister, surrounded by this swarm of courtiers who loaded him with
homage equal to that which they paid to the Prince himself, to leave
everything for her sake, and with such unconcern!
When she returned to the drawing-room she was beside herself with joy.
Everyone bowed down before her.
"How prosperity has changed the Duchessa!" was murmured everywhere by
the courtiers, "one would hardly recognise her. So that Roman spirit, so
superior to everything in the world, does after all, deign to appreciate
the extraordinary favour that has just been conferred upon her by the
Sovereign!"
Towards the end of the evening the Conte came to her: "I must tell you
the latest news." Immediately the people who happened to be standing
near the Duchessa withdrew.
"The Prince, on his return to the Palace," the Conte went on, "had
himself announced at the door of his wife's room. Imagine the surprise!
'I have come to tell you,' he said to her, 'about a really most
delightful evening I have spent at the Sanseverina's. It was she who
asked me to give you a full description of the way in which she has
decorated that grimy old _palazzo_.' Then the Prince took a seat and
went into a description of each of your rooms in turn.
"He spent more than twenty-five minutes with his wife, who was in tears
of joy; for all her intelligence, she could not think of anything to
keep the conversation going in the light tone which His Highness was
pleased to impart to it."
This Prince was by no means a wicked man, whatever the Liberals of Italy
might say of him. As a matter of fact, he had cast a good number of them
into prison, but that was from fear, and he used to repeat now and then,
as though to console himself for certain unpleasant memories: "It is
better to kill the devil than to let the devil kill you." The day after
the party we have been describing, he was supremely happy; he had done
two good actions: he had gone to the _Thursday_, and he had talked to
his wife. At dinner, he addressed her again; in a word, this _Thursday_
at Signora Sanseverina's brought about a domestic revolution with which
the whole of Parma rang; the Raversi was in consternation, and the
Duchessa doubly delighted: she had contrived to be of use to her lover,
and had found him more in love with her than ever.
"All this owing to a thoroughly rash idea which came into my mind!" she
said to the Conte. "I should be more free, no doubt, in Rome or Naples,
but should I find so fascinating a game to play there? No, indeed, my
dear Conte, and you provide me with all my joy in life."
[Footnote 10: In Italy, young men with influence or brains become
_Monsignori_ and _prelati_, which does not mean bishop; they then wear
violet stockings. A man need not take any vows to become _Monsignore_;
he can discard his violet stockings and marry.]
CHAPTER SEVEN
It is with trifling details of court life as insignificant as those
related in the last chapter that we should have to fill up the history
of the next four years. Every spring the Marchesa came with her
daughters to spend a couple of months at the _palazzo_ Sanseverina or on
the property of Sacca, by the bank of the Po; there they spent some very
pleasant hours and used to talk of Fabrizio, but the Conte would never
allow him to pay a single visit to Parma. The Duchessa and the Minister
had indeed to make amends for certain acts of folly, but on the whole
Fabrizio followed soberly enough the line of conduct that had been laid
down for him: that of a great nobleman who is studying theology and does
not rely entirely on his virtues to bring him advancement. At Naples, he
had acquired a keen interest in the study of antiquity, he made
excavations; this new passion had almost taken the place of his passion
for horses. He had sold his English thoroughbreds in order to continue
his excavations at Miseno, where he had turned up a bust of Tiberius as
a young man which had been classed among the finest relics of antiquity.
The discovery of this bust was almost the keenest pleasure that had come
to him at Naples. He had too lofty a nature to seek to copy the other
young men he saw, to wish for example to play with any degree of
seriousness the part of lover. Of course he never lacked mistresses, but
these were of no consequence to him, and, in spite of his years, one
might say of him that he still knew nothing of love: he was all the more
loved on that account. Nothing prevented him from behaving with the most
perfect coolness, for to him a young and pretty woman was always
equivalent to any other young and pretty woman; only the latest comer
seemed to him the most exciting. One of the most generally admired
ladies in Naples had done all sorts of foolish things in his honour
during the last year of his stay there, which at first had amused him,
and had ended by boring him to tears, so much so that one of the joys of
his departure was the prospect of being delivered from the attentions of
the charming Duchessa d'A----. It was in 1821 that, having
satisfactorily passed all his examinations, his director of studies, or
governor, received a Cross and a gratuity, and he himself started out to
see at length that city of Parma of which he had often dreamed. He was
_Monsignore_, and he had four horses drawing his carriage; at the stage
before Parma he took only two, and on entering the town made them stop
outside the church of San Giovanni. There was to be found the costly
tomb of Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, his great-granduncle, the author
of the Latin genealogy. He prayed beside the tomb, then went on foot to
the _palazzo_ of the Duchessa, who did not expect him until several days
later. There was a large crowd in her drawing-room; presently they were
left alone.
"Well, are you satisfied with me?" he asked her as he flung himself into
her arms; "thanks to you, I have spent four quite happy years at Naples,
instead of eating my head off at Novara with my mistress authorised by
the police."
_THE COURT_
The Duchessa could not get over her astonishment; she would not have
known him had she seen him go by in the street; she discovered him to
be, what as a matter of fact he was, one of the best-looking men in
Italy; his physiognomy in particular was charming. She had sent him to
Naples a devil-may-care young rough-rider; the horsewhip he invariably
carried at that time had seemed an inherent part of his person: now he
had the noblest and most measured bearing before strangers, while in
private conversation she found that he had retained all the ardour of
his boyhood. This was a diamond that had lost nothing by being polished.
Fabrizio had not been in the room an hour when Conte Mosca appeared; he
arrived a little too soon. The young man spoke to him with so apt a
choice of terms of the Cross of Parma that had been conferred on his
governor, and expressed his lively gratitude for certain other benefits
of which he did not venture to speak in so open a fashion, with so
perfect a restraint, that at the first glance the Minister formed an
excellent impression of him. "This nephew," he murmured to the Duchessa,
"is made to adorn all the exalted posts to which you will raise him in
due course." So far, all had gone wonderfully well, but when the
Minister, thoroughly satisfied with Fabrizio, and paying attention so
far only to his actions and gestures, turned to the Duchessa, he noticed
a curious look in her eyes. "This young man is making a strange
impression here," he said to himself. This reflexion was bitter; the
Conte had reached the _fifties_, a cruel word of which perhaps only a
man desperately in love can feel the full force. He was a thoroughly
good man, thoroughly deserving to be loved, apart from his severities as
a Minister. But in his eyes that cruel word _fifties_ threw a dark cloud
over his whole life and might well have made him cruel on his own
account. In the five years since he had persuaded the Duchessa to settle
at Parma, she had often aroused his jealousy, especially at first, but
never had she given him any real grounds for complaint. He believed
indeed, and rightly, that it was with the object of making herself more
certain of his heart that the Duchessa had had recourse to those
apparent bestowals of her favour upon various young _beaux_ of the
court. He was sure, for instance, that she had rejected the offers of
the Prince, who, indeed, on that occasion, had made a significant
utterance.
"But if I were to accept Your Highness's offer," the Duchessa had said
to him with a smile, "how should I ever dare to look the Conte in the
face afterwards?"
"I should be almost as much out of countenance as you. The dear Conte!
My friend! But there is a very easy way out of that difficulty, and I
have thought of it: the Conte would be put in the citadel for the rest
of his days."
At the moment of Fabrizio's arrival, the Duchessa was so beside herself
with joy that she never even thought of the ideas which the look in her
eyes might put into the Conte's head. The effect was profound and the
suspicions it aroused irremediable.
Fabrizio was received by the Prince two hours after his arrival; the
Duchessa, foreseeing the good effect which this impromptu audience would
have on the public, had been begging for it for the last two months;
this favour put Fabrizio beyond all rivalry from the first; the pretext
for it had been that he would only be passing through Parma on his way
to visit his mother in Piedmont. At the moment when a charming little
note from the Duchessa arrived to inform the Prince that Fabrizio
awaited his orders, the Prince was feeling bored. "I shall see," he said
to himself, "a saintly little simpleton, a mean or a sly face." The Town
Commandant had already reported the newcomer's first visit to the tomb
of his archiépiscopal uncle. The Prince saw enter the room a tall young
man whom, but for his violet stockings, he would have taken for some
young officer.
This little surprise dispelled his boredom: "Here is a fellow," he said
to himself, "for whom they will be asking me heaven knows what favours,
everything that I have to bestow. He is just come, he probably feels
nervous: I shall give him a little dose of Jacobin politics; we shall
see how he replies."
_A FIRST AUDIENCE_
After the first gracious words on the Prince's part:
"Well, _Monsignore_," he said to Fabrizio, "and the people of Naples, are
they happy? Is the King loved?"
"Serene Highness," Fabrizio replied without a moment's hesitation, "I
used to admire, when they passed me in the street, the excellent bearing
of the troops of the various regiments of His Majesty the King; the
better classes are respectful towards their masters, as they ought to
be; but I must confess that, all my life, I have never allowed the lower
orders to speak to me about anything but the work for which I am paying
them."
"Plague!" said the Prince, "what a _slyboots_! This is a well-trained
bird, I recognise the Sanseverina touch." Becoming interested, the
Prince employed great skill in leading Fabrizio on to discuss this
scabrous topic. The young man, animated by the danger he was in, was so
fortunate as to hit upon some admirable rejoinders: "It is almost
insolence to boast of one's love for one's King," he said; "it is blind
obedience that one owes to him." At the sight of so much prudence the
Prince almost lost his temper: "Here, it seems, is a man of parts come
among us from Naples, and I don't like _that breed_; a man of parts may
follow the highest principles and even be quite sincere; all the same on
one side or the other he is always first cousin to Voltaire and
Rousseau."
This Prince felt himself almost defied by such correctness of manner and
such unassailable rejoinders coming from a youth fresh from college;
what he had expected never occurred; in an instant he assumed a tone of
good-fellowship and, reverting in a few words to the basic principles of
society and government, repeated, adapting them to the matter in hand,
certain phrases of Fénelon which he had been made to learn by heart in
his boyhood for use in public audiences.
"These principles surprise you, young man," he said to Fabrizio (he had
called him _Monsignore_ at the beginning of the audience, and intended
to give him his _Monsignore_ again in dismissing him, but in the course
of the conversation he felt it to be more adroit, better suited to
moving turns of speech, to address him in an informal and friendly
style). "These principles surprise you, young man. I admit that they
bear little resemblance to the _bread and butter absolutism_" (this was
the expression in use) "which you can read every day in my official
newspaper. . . . But, great heavens, what is the good of my quoting that
to you? Those writers in my newspaper must be quite unknown to you."
"I beg Your Serene Highness's pardon; not only do I read the Parma
newspaper, which seems to me to be very well written, but I hold,
moreover, with it, that everything that has been done since the death of
Louis XIV, in 1715, has been at once criminal and foolish. Man's chief
interest in life is his own salvation, there can be no two ways of
looking at it, and that is a happiness that lasts for eternity. The
words _Liberty_, _Justice_, the _Good of the Greatest Number_, are
infamous and criminal: they form in people's minds the habits of
discussion and want of confidence. A Chamber of Deputies votes _no
confidence_ in what these people call _the Ministry_. This fatal habit
of _want of confidence_ once contracted, human weakness applies it to
everything, man loses confidence in the Bible, the Orders of the Church,
Tradition and everything else; from that moment he is lost. Even upon
the assumption--which is abominably false, and criminal even to
suggest--that this want of confidence in the authority of the Princes by
God _established_ were to secure one's happiness during the twenty or
thirty years of life which any of us may expect to enjoy, what is half a
century, or a whole century even, compared with an eternity of torment?"
And so on.
One could see, from the way in which Fabrizio spoke, that he was seeking
to arrange his ideas so that they should be grasped as quickly as
possible by his listener; it was clear that he was not simply repeating
a lesson.
Presently the Prince lost interest in his contest with this young man
whose simple and serious manner had begun to irritate him.
"Good-bye, _Monsignore_," he said to him abruptly, "I can see that they
provide an excellent education at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Naples,
and it is quite simple when these good precepts fall upon so
distinguished a mind, one secures brilliant results. Good-bye." And he
turned his back on him.
"I have quite failed to please this animal," thought Fabrizio.
"And now, it remains to be seen," said the Prince as soon as he was once
more alone, "whether this fine youngman is capable of passion for
anything; in that case, he would be complete. . . . Could anyone repeat
with more spirit the lessons he has learned from his aunt? I felt I
could hear her speaking; should we have a revolution here, it would be
she that would edit the _Monitore_, as the Sanfelice did at Naples! But
the Sanfelice, in spite of her twenty-five summers and her beauty, got a
bit of a hanging all the same! A warning to women with brains." In
supposing Fabrizio to be his aunt's pupil, the Prince was mistaken:
people with brains who are born on the throne or at the foot of it soon
lose all fineness of touch; they proscribe, in their immediate circle,
freedom of conversation which seems to them coarseness; they refuse to
look at anything but masks and pretend to judge the beauty of
complexions; the amusing part of it is that they imagine their touch to
be of the finest. In this case, for instance, Fabrizio believed
practically everything that we have heard him say; it is true that he
did not think twice in a month of these great principles. He had keen
appetites, he had brains, but he had faith.
The desire for liberty, the fashion and cult of the _greatest good of
the greatest number_, after which the nineteenth century has run mad,
were nothing in his eyes but a heresy which, like other heresies, would
pass away, though not until it had destroyed many souls, as the plague
while it reigns unchecked in a country destroys many bodies. And in
spite of all this Fabrizio read the French, newspapers with keen
enjoyment, even taking rash steps to procure them.
Fabrizio having returned quite flustered from his audience at the
Palace, and having told his aunt of the various attacks launched at him
by the Prince:
"You ought," she told him, "to go at once to see Father Landriani, our
excellent Archbishop; go there on foot; climb the staircase quietly,
make as little noise as possible in the ante-rooms; if you are kept
waiting, so much the better, a thousand times better! In a word, be
_apostolic_!"
"I understand," said Fabrizio, "our man is a Tartuffe."
"Not the least bit in the world, he is virtue incarnate."
"Even after the way he behaved," said Fabrizio in some bewilderment,
"when Conte Palanza was executed?"
_THE ARCHBISHOP_
"Yes, my friend, after the way he behaved: the father of our Archbishop
was a clerk in the Ministry of Finance, a man of humble position, and
that explains everything. Monsignor Landriani is a man of keen,
extensive and deep intelligence; he is sincere, he loves virtue; I am
convinced that if an Emperor Decius were to reappear in the world he
would undergo martyrdom like Polyeuctes in the opera they played last
week. So much for the good side of the medal, now for the reverse: as
soon as he enters the Sovereign's, or even the Prime Minister's
presence, he is dazzled by the sight of such greatness, he becomes
confused, he begins to blush; it is physically impossible for him to say
no. This accounts for the things he has done, things which have won him
that cruel reputation throughout Italy; but what is not generally known
is that, when public opinion had succeeded in enlightening him as to the
trial of Conte Palanza, he set himself the penance of living upon bread
and water for thirteen weeks, the same number of weeks as there are
letters in the name _Davide Palanza_. We have at this court a rascal of
infinite cleverness named _Rassi_, a Chief Justice or Fiscal General,
who at the time of Conte Palanza's death, cast a spell over Father
Landriani. During his thirteen weeks' penance, Conte Mosca, from pity
and also a little out of malice, used to ask him to dinner once and even
twice a week: the good Archbishop, in deference to his host, ate like
everyone else; he would have thought it rebellious and Jacobinical to
make a public display of his penance for an action that had the
Sovereign's approval. But we knew that, for each dinner at which his
duty as a loyal subject had obliged him to eat like everyone else, he
set himself a penance of two days more of bread and water.
"Monsignor Landriani, a man of superior intellect, a scholar of the
first order, has only one weakness: _he likes to be loved_: therefore,
grow affectionate as you look at him, and, on your third visit, shew
your love for him outright. That, added to your birth, will make him
adore you at once. Show no sign of surprise if he accompanies you to the
head of the staircase, assume an air of being accustomed to such
manners: he is a man who was born on his knees before the nobility. For
the rest, be simple, apostolic, no cleverness, no brilliance, no prompt
repartee; if you do not startle him at all, he will be delighted with
you; do not forget that it must be on his own initiative that he makes
you his Grand Vicar. The Conte and I will be surprised and even annoyed
at so rapid an advancement; that is essential in dealing with the
Sovereign."
Fabrizio hastened to the Archbishop's Palace: by a singular piece of
good fortune, the worthy prelate's footman, who was slightly deaf, did
not catch the name _del Dongo_; he announced a young priest named
Fabrizio; the Archbishop happened to be closeted with a parish priest of
by no means exemplary morals, for whom he had sent in order to scold
him. He was in the act of delivering a reprimand, a most painful thing
for him, and did not wish to be distressed by it longer than was
necessary; accordingly he kept waiting for three quarters of an hour the
great-nephew of the Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo.
How are we to depict his apologies and despair when, after having
conducted the priest to the farthest ante-room, and on asking, as he
returned, the man who was waiting _what he could do to serve him_, he
caught sight of the violet stockings and heard the name Fabrizio del
Dongo? This accident seemed to our hero so fortunate that on this first
visit he ventured to kiss the saintly prelate's hand, in a transport of
affection. He was obliged to hear the Archbishop repeat in a tone of
despair: "A del Dongo kept waiting in my ante-room!" The old man felt
obliged, by way of apology, to relate to him the whole story of the
parish priest, his misdeeds, his replies to the charges, and so forth.
"Is it really possible," Fabrizio asked himself as he made his way back
to the _palazzo_ Sanseverina, "that this is the man who hurried on the
execution of that poor Conte Palanza?"
"What is Your Excellency's impression?" Conte Mosca, inquired with a
smile, as he saw him enter the Duchessa's drawing-room. (The Conte would
not allow Fabrizio to address him as Excellency.)
"I have fallen from the clouds; I know nothing at all about human
nature: I would have wagered, had I not known his name, that man
could not bear to see a chicken bleed."
"And you would have won your wager," replied the Conte; "but when he is
with the Prince, or merely with myself, he cannot say no. To be quite
honest, in order for me to create my full effect, I have to slip the
yellow riband of my Grand Cordon over my coat; in plain evening dress he
would contradict me, and so I always put on a uniform to receive him. It
is not for us to destroy the prestige of power, the French newspapers
are demolishing it quite fast enough; it is doubtful whether the _mania
of respect_ will last out our time, and you, my dear nephew, will
outlive respect altogether. You will be simply a fellow-man!"
Fabrizio delighted greatly in the Conte's society; he was the first
superior person who had condescended to talk to him frankly, without
make-believe; moreover they had a taste in common, that for antiquities
and excavations. The Conte, for his part, was flattered by the extreme
attention with which the young man listened to him; but there was one
paramount objection: Fabrizio occupied a set of rooms in the _palazzo_
Sanseverina, spent his whole time with the Duchessa, let it be seen in
all innocence that this intimacy constituted his happiness in life, and
Fabrizio had eyes and a complexion of a freshness that drove the older
man to despair.
For a long time past Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, who rarely encountered a cruel
fair, had felt it to be an affront that the Duchessa's virtue, which was
well known at court, had not made an exception in his favour. As we have
seen, the mind and the presence of mind of Fabrizio had shocked him at
their first encounter. He took amiss the extreme friendship which
Fabrizio and his aunt heedlessly displayed in public; he gave ear with
the closest attention to the remarks of his courtiers, which were
endless. The arrival of this young man and the unprecedented audience
which he had obtained provided the court with news and a sensation for
the next month; which gave the Prince an idea.
He had in his guard a private soldier who carried his wine in the most
admirable way; this man spent his time in the _trattorie_, and reported
the spirit of the troops directly to his Sovereign. Carlone lacked
education, otherwise he would long since have obtained promotion. Well,
his duty was to be in the Palace every day when the strokes of twelve
sounded on the great clock. The Prince went in person a little before
noon to arrange in a certain way the shutters of a _mezzanino_
communicating with the room in which His Highness dressed. He returned
to this _mezzanino_ shortly after twelve had struck, and there found the
soldier; the Prince had in his pocket writing materials and a sheet of
paper; he dictated to the soldier the following letter:
"Your Excellency has great intelligence, doubtless, and it is thanks to
his profound sagacity that we see this State so well governed. But, my
dear Conte, such great success never comes unaccompanied by a little
envy, and I am seriously afraid that people will be laughing a little at
your expense if your sagacity does not discern that a certain handsome
young man has had the good fortune to inspire, unintentionally it may
be, a passion of the most singular order. This happy mortal is, they
say, only twenty-three years old, and, dear Conte, what complicates the
question is that you and I are considerably more than twice that age. In
the evening, at a certain distance, the Conte is charming,
scintillating, a wit, as attractive as possible; but in the morning, in
an intimate scene, all things considered, the newcomer has perhaps
greater attractions. Well, we poor women, we make a great point of this
youthful freshness, especially when we have ourselves passed thirty. Is
there not some talk already of settling this charming youth at our
court, in some fine post? And if so, who is the person who speaks of it
most frequently to Your Excellency?"
_A LETTER_
The Prince took the letter and gave the soldier two scudi.
"This is in addition to your pay," he said in a grim tone. "Not a single
word of this to anyone, or you will find yourself in the dampest dungeon
in the citadel." The Prince had in his desk a collection of envelopes
bearing the addresses of most of the persons at his court, in the
handwriting of this same soldier who was understood to be illiterate,
and never even wrote out his own police reports: the Prince picked out
the one he required.
A few hours later, Conte Mosca received a letter by post; the hour of
its delivery had been calculated, and just as the postman, who had been
seen going in with a small envelope in his hand, came out of the
ministerial palace, Mosca was summoned to His Highness. Never had the
favourite appeared to be in the grip of a blacker melancholy: to enjoy
this at his leisure, the Prince called out to him, as he saw him come
in:
"I want to amuse myself by talking casually to my friend and not working
with my Minister. I have a maddening headache this evening, and all
sorts of gloomy thoughts keep coming into my mind."
I need hardly mention the abominable ill-humour which agitated the Prime
Minister, Conte Mosca della Rovere, when at length he was permitted to
take leave of his august master. Ranuccio-Ernesto IV was a past-master
in the art of torturing a heart, and it would not be unfair at this
point to make the comparison of the tiger which loves to play with its
victim.
The Conte made his coachman drive him home at a gallop; he called out as
he crossed the threshold that not a living soul was to be allowed
upstairs, sent word to the _auditor_ on duty that he might take himself
off (the knowledge that there was a human being within earshot was
hateful to him), and hastened to shut himself up in the great picture
gallery. There at length he could give full vent to his fury; there he
spent an hour without lights, wandering about the room like a man out of
his mind. He sought to impose silence on his heart, to concentrate all
the force of his attention upon deliberating what action he ought to
take. Plunged in an anguish that would have moved to pity his most
implacable enemy, he said to himself: "The man I abhor is living in the
Duchessa's house; he spends every hour of the day with her. Ought I to
try to make one of her women speak? Nothing could be more dangerous; she
is so good to them; she pays them well; she is adored by them (and by
whom, great God, is she not adored?)! The question is," he continued,
raging: "Ought I to let her detect the jealousy that is devouring me, or
not to speak of it?
"If I remain silent, she will make no attempt to keep anything from me.
I know Gina, she is a woman who acts always on the first impulse; her
conduct is incalculable, even by herself; if she tries to plan out a
course in advance, she goes all wrong; invariably, when it is time for
action, a new idea comes into her head which she follows rapturously as
though it were the most wonderful thing in the world, and upsets
everything.
"If I make no mention of my suffering, nothing will be kept back from
me, and I shall see all that goes on. . . .
_NIGHT THOUGHTS_
"Yes, but by speaking I bring about a change of circumstances: I make
her reflect; I give her fair warning of all the horrible things that may
happen. . . . Perhaps she will send him away" (the Conte breathed a sigh
of relief), "then I shall practically have won; even allowing her to be
a little out of temper for the moment, I shall soothe her . . . and a
little ill-temper, what could be more natural? . . . she has loved him
like a son for fifteen years. There lies all my hope: _like a son_ . . .
but she had ceased to see him after his dash to Waterloo; now, on his
return from Naples, especially for her, he is a different man. _A
different man!_" he repeated with fury, "and that man is charming; he
has, apart from everything else, that simple and tender air and that
smiling eye which hold out such a promise of happiness! And those
eyes--the Duchessa cannot be accustomed to see eyes like those at this
court! . . . Our substitute for them is a gloomy or sardonic stare. I
myself, pursued everywhere by official business, governing only by my
influence over a man who would like to turn me to ridicule, what a look
there must often be in mine! Ah! whatever pains I may take to conceal
it, it is in my eyes that age will always shew. My gaiety, does it not
always border upon irony? . . . I will go farther, I must be sincere
with myself; does not my gaiety allow a glimpse to be caught, as of
something quite close to it, of absolute power . . . and
irresponsibility? Do I not sometimes say to myself, especially when
people irritate me: 'I can do what I like!' and indeed go on to say what
is foolish: 'I ought to be happier than other men, since I possess what
others have not, sovereign power in three things out of four . . .?'
Very well, let us be just! The habit of thinking thus must affect my
smile, must give me a selfish, satisfied air. And, how charming his
smile is! It breathes the easy happiness of extreme youth, and engenders
it."
Unfortunately for the Conte, the weather that evening was hot, stifling,
with the threat of a storm in the air; the sort of weather, in short,
that in those parts carries people to extremes. How am I to find space
for all the arguments, all the ways of looking at what was happening to
him which, for three mortal hours on end, kept this impassioned man in
torment? At length the side of prudence prevailed, solely as a result of
this reflexion: "I am in all probability mad; when I think I am
reasoning, I am not, I am simply turning about in search of a less
painful position, I pass by without seeing it some decisive argument.
Since I am blinded by excessive grief, let us obey the rule, approved by
every sensible man, which is called _Prudence_.
"Besides, once I have uttered the fatal word _jealousy_, my course is
traced for me for ever. If on the contrary I say nothing to-day, I can
speak to-morrow, I remain master of the situation." The crisis was too
acute; the Conte would have gone mad had it continued. He was comforted
for a few moments, his attention came to rest on the anonymous letter.
From whose hand could it have come? There followed then a search for
possible names, and a personal judgment of each, which created a
diversion. In the end, the Conte remembered a gleam of malice that had
darted from the eyes of the Sovereign, when it had occurred to him to
say, towards the end of the audience: "Yes, dear friend, let us be
agreed on this point: the pleasures and cares of the most amply rewarded
ambition, even of unbounded power, are as nothing compared with the
intimate happiness that is afforded by relations of affection and love.
I am a man first, and a Prince afterwards, and, when I have the good
fortune to be in love, my mistress speaks to the man and not to the
Prince." The Conte compared that moment of malicious joy with the phrase
in the letter; "It is thanks to your profound sagacity that we see this
State so well governed." "Those are the Prince's words!" he exclaimed,
"in a courtier they would be a gratuitous piece of imprudence; the
letter comes from His Highness."
This problem solved, the faint joy caused by the pleasure of guessing
the solution was soon effaced by the cruel spectre of the charming
graces of Fabrizio, which returned afresh. It was like an enormous
weight that fell back on the heart of the unhappy man. "What does it
matter from whom the anonymous letter comes?" he cried with fury, "does
the fact that it discloses to me exist any the less? This caprice may
alter my whole life," he said, as though to excuse himself for being so
mad. "At the first moment, if she cares for him in a certain way, she
will set off with him for Belgirate, for Switzerland, for the ends of
the earth. She is rich, and besides, even if she had to live on a few
louis a year, what would that matter to her? Did she not admit to me,
not a week ago, that her _palazzo_, so well arranged, so magnificent,
bored her? Novelty is essential to so youthful a spirit! And with what
simplicity does this new form of happiness offer itself! She will be
carried away before she has begun to think of the danger, before she has
begun to think of being sorry for me! And yet I am so wretched!" cried
the Conte, bursting into tears.
He had sworn to himself that he would not go to the Duchessa's that
evening; never had his eyes thirsted so to gaze on her. At midnight he
presented himself at her door; he found her alone with her nephew; at
ten o'clock she had sent all her guests away and had closed her door.
At the sight of the tender intimacy that prevailed between these two
creatures, and of the Duchessa's artless joy, a frightful difficulty
arose before the eyes of the Conte, and one that was quite unforeseen.
He had never thought of it during his long deliberation in the picture
gallery: how was he to conceal his jealousy?
Not knowing what pretext to adopt, he pretended that he had found the
Prince that evening excessively ill-disposed towards him, contradicting
all his assertions, and so forth. He had the distress of seeing the
Duchessa barely listen to him, and pay no attention to these details
which, forty-eight hours earlier, would have plunged her in an endless
stream of discussion. The Conte looked at Fabrizio: never had that
handsome Lombard face appeared to him so simple and so noble! Fabrizio
paid more attention than the Duchessa to the difficulties which he was
relating.
"Really," he said to himself, "that head combines extreme good-nature
with the expression of a certain artless and tender joy which is
irresistible. It seems to be saying: 'Love and the happiness it brings
are the only serious things in this world.' And yet, when one comes to
some detail which requires thought, the light wakes in his eyes and
surprises one, and one is left dumbfoundered.
"Everything is simple in his eyes, because everything is seen from
above. Great God! how is one to fight against an enemy like this? And
after all, what is life without Gina's love? With what rapture she seems
to be listening to the charming sallies of that mind, which is so boyish
and must, to a woman, seem without a counterpart in the world!"
An atrocious thought gripped the Conte like a sudden cramp. "Shall I
stab him here, before her face, and then kill myself?"
He took a turn through the room, his legs barely supporting him, but his
hand convulsively gripping the hilt of his dagger. Neither of the others
paid any attention to what he might be doing. He announced that he was
going to give an order to his servant; they did not even hear him; the
Duchessa was laughing tenderly at something Fabrizio had just said to
her. The Conte went up to a lamp in the outer room, and looked to see
whether the point of his dagger was well sharpened. "One must behave
graciously, and with perfect manners to this young man," he said to
himself as he returned to the other room and went up to them.
He became quite mad; it seemed to him that, as they leaned their heads
together, they were kissing each other, there, before his eyes. "That is
impossible in my presence," he told himself; "my wits have gone astray.
I must calm myself; if I behave rudely, the Duchessa is quite capable,
simply out of injured vanity, of following him to Belgirate; and there,
or on the way there, a chance word may be spoken which will give a name
to what they now feel for one another; and after that, in a moment, all
the consequences.
_CECCHINA_
"Solitude will render that word decisive, and besides, once the Duchessa
has left my side, what is to become of me? And if, after overcoming
endless difficulties on the Prince's part, I go and shew my old and
anxious face at Belgirate, what part shall I play before these people
both mad with happiness?
"Here even what else am I than the _terzo incomodo_?" (That beautiful
Italian language is simply made for love: _Terzo incomodo_, a third
person when two are company.) What misery for a man of spirit to feel
that he is playing that execrable part, and not to be able to muster the
strength to get up and leave the room!
The Conte was on the point of breaking out, or at least of betraying his
anguish by the discomposure of his features. When in one of his circuits
of the room he found himself near the door, he took his flight, calling
out, in a genial, intimate tone: "Good-bye, you two!-- One must avoid
bloodshed," he said to himself.
The day following this horrible evening, after a night spent half in
compiling a detailed sum of Fabrizio's advantages, half in the frightful
transports of the most cruel jealousy, it occurred to the Conte that he
might send for a young servant of his own; this man was keeping company
with a girl named Cecchina, one of the Duchessa's personal maids, and
her favourite. As good luck would have it, this young man was very sober
in his habits, indeed miserly, and was anxious to find a place as porter
in one of the public _institutions_ of Parma. The Conte ordered the man to
fetch Cecchina, his mistress, instantly. The man obeyed, and an hour
later the Conte appeared suddenly in the room where the girl was waiting
with her lover. The Conte frightened them both by the amount of gold
that he gave them, then he addressed these few words to the trembling
Cecchina, looking her straight in the face:
"Is the Duchessa in love with Monsignore?"
"No," said the girl, gaining courage to speak after a moment's silence.
. . . "No, _not yet_, but he often kisses the Signora's hands, laughing,
it is true, but with real feeling."
This evidence was completed by a hundred answers to as many furious
questions from the Conte; his uneasy passion made the poor couple earn
in full measure the money that he had flung them: he ended by believing
what they told him, and was less unhappy. "If the Duchessa ever has the
slightest suspicion of what we have been saying," he told Cecchina, "I
shall send your lover to spend twenty years in the fortress, and when
you see him again his hair will be quite white."
Some days elapsed, during which Fabrizio in turn lost all his gaiety.
"I assure you," he said to the Duchessa, "that Conte Mosca feels an
antipathy for me."
"So much the worse for His Excellency," she replied with a trace of
temper.
This was by no means the true cause of the uneasiness which had made
Fabrizio's gaiety vanish. "The position in which chance has placed me is
not tenable," he told himself. "I am quite sure that she will never say
anything, she would be as much horrified by a too significant word as by
an incestuous act. But if, one evening, after a rash and foolish day,
she should come to examine her conscience, if she believes that I may
have guessed the feeling that she seems to have formed for me, what part
should I then play in her eyes? Nothing more nor less than the _casto
Giuseppe_!" (An Italian expression alluding to the ridiculous part
played by Joseph with the wife of the eunuch Potiphar.)
_UNCERTAINTIES_
"Should I give her to understand by a fine burst of confidence that I am
not capable of serious affection? I have not the necessary strength of
mind to announce such a fact so that it shall not be as like as two peas
to a gross impertinence. The sole resource left to me is a great passion
left behind at Naples; in that case, I should return there for
twenty-four hours: such a course is wise, but is it really worth the
trouble? There remains a minor affair with some one of humble rank at
Parma, which might annoy her; but anything is preferable to the
appalling position of a man who will not see the truth. This course may,
it is true, prejudice my future; I should have, by the exercise of
prudence and the purchase of discretion, to minimise the danger." What
was so cruel an element among all these thoughts was that really
Fabrizio loved the Duchessa far above anyone else in the world. "I must
be very clumsy," he told himself angrily, "to have such misgivings as to
my ability to persuade her of what is so glaringly true!" Lacking the
skill to extricate himself from this position, he grew sombre and sad.
"What would become of me, Great God, if I quarrelled with the one person
in the world for whom I feel a passionate attachment?" From another
point of view, Fabrizio could not bring himself to spoil so delicious a
happiness by an indiscreet word. His position abounded so in charm! The
intimate friendship of so beautiful and attractive a woman was so
pleasant! Under the most commonplace relations of life, her protection
gave him so agreeable a position at this court, the great intrigues of
which, thanks to her who explained them to him, were as amusing as a
play! "But at any moment I may be awakened by a thunderbolt," he said to
himself. "These gay, these tender evenings, passed almost in privacy
with so thrilling a woman, if they lead to something better, she will
expect to find in me a lover; she will call on me for frenzied raptures,
for acts of folly, and I shall never have anything more to offer her
than friendship, of the warmest kind, but without love; nature has not
endowed me with that sort of sublime folly. What reproaches have I not
had to bear on that account! I can still hear the Duchessa d'A----
speaking, and I used to laugh at the Duchessa! She will think that I am
wanting in love for her, whereas it is love that is wanting in me; never
will she make herself understand me. Often after some story about the
court, told by her with that grace, that abandonment which she alone in
the world possesses, and which is a necessary part of my education
besides, I kiss her hand and sometimes her cheek. What is to happen if
that hand presses mine in a certain fashion?"
Fabrizio put in an appearance every day in the most respectable and
least amusing drawing-rooms in Parma. Guided by the able advice of the
Duchessa, he paid a sagacious court to the two Princes, father and son,
to the Princess Clara-Paolina and Monsignore the Archbishop. He met with
successes, but these did not in the least console him for his mortal
fear of falling out with the Duchessa.
CHAPTER EIGHT
So, less than a month after his arrival at court, Fabrizio had tasted
all the sorrows of a courtier, and the intimate friendship which
constituted the happiness of his life was poisoned. One evening,
tormented by these thoughts, he left that drawing-room of the Duchessa
in which he had too much of the air of a reigning lover; wandering at
random through the town, he came opposite the theatre, in which he saw
lights; he went in. It was a gratuitous imprudence in a man of his cloth
and one that he had indeed vowed that he would avoid in Parma, which,
after all, is only a small town of forty thousand inhabitants. It is
true that after the first few days he had got rid of his official
costume; in the evenings, when he was not going into the very highest
society, he used simply to dress in black like a layman in mourning.
At the theatre he took a box on the third tier, so as not to be noticed;
the play was Goldoni's _La Locanderia_. He examined the architecture of
the building, scarcely did he turn his eyes to the stage. But the
crowded audience kept bursting into laughter at every moment; Fabrizio
gave a glance at the young actress who was playing the part of the
landlady, and found her amusing. He looked at her more closely; she
seemed to him quite attractive, and, above all, perfectly natural; she
was a simple-minded young girl who was the first to laugh at the witty
lines Goldoni had put into her mouth, lines which she appeared to be
quite surprised to be uttering. He asked what her name was, and was
told: "Marietta Valserra."
"Ah!" he thought; "she has taken my name; that is odd." In spite of his
intentions he did not leave the theatre until the end of the piece. The
following evening he returned; three days later he knew Marietta
Valserra's address.
On the evening of the day on which, with a certain amount of trouble, he
had procured this address, he noticed that the Conte was looking at him
in the most friendly way. The poor jealous lover, who had all the
trouble in the world in keeping within the bounds of prudence, had set
spies on the young man's track, and this theatrical escapade pleased
him. How are we to depict the Conte's joy when, on the day following
that on which he had managed to bring himself to look amicably at
Fabrizio, he learned that the latter, in the partial disguise, it must
be admitted, of a long blue frock-coat, had climbed to the wretched
apartment which Marietta Valserra occupied on the fourth floor of an old
house behind the theatre? His joy was doubled when he heard that
Fabrizio had presented himself under a false name, and had had the
honour to arouse the jealousy of a scapegrace named Giletti, who in town
played Third Servant, and in the villages danced on the tight rope. This
noble lover of Marietta cursed Fabrizio most volubly and expressed a
desire to kill him.
_THE PHANTOM HARLEQUIN_
Opera companies are formed by an _impresario_ who engages in different
places the artists whom he can afford to pay or has found unemployed,
and the company collected at random remains together for one season or
two at most. It is not so with _comedy companies_; while passing from
town to town and changing their address every two or three months, they
nevertheless form a family of which all the members love or loathe one
another. There are in these companies united couples whom the _beaux_ of
the towns in which the actors appear find it sometimes exceedingly
difficult to sunder. This is precisely what happened to our hero. Little
Marietta liked him well enough, but was horribly afraid of Giletti, who
claimed to be her sole lord and master and kept a close watch over her.
He protested everywhere that he would kill the _Monsignore_, for he had
followed Fabrizio, and had succeeded in discovering his name. This
Giletti was quite the ugliest creature imaginable and the least fitted
to be a lover: tall out of all proportion, he was horribly thin,
strongly pitted by smallpox, and inclined to squint. In addition, being
endowed with all the graces of his profession, he was continually coming
into the wings where his fellow-actors were assembled, turning
cartwheels on his feet and hands or practising some other pretty trick.
He triumphed in those parts in which the actor has to appear with his
face whitened with flour and to give or receive a countless number of
blows with a cudgel. This worthy rival of Fabrizio drew a monthly salary
of 32 francs, and thought himself extremely well off.
Conte Mosca felt himself drawn up from the gate of the tomb when his
watchers gave him the full authority for all these details. His kindly
nature reappeared; he seemed more gay and better company than ever in
the Duchessa's drawing-room, and took good care to say nothing to her of
the little adventure which had restored him to life. He even took steps
to ensure that she should be informed of everything that occurred with
the greatest possible delay. Finally he had the courage to listen to the
voice of reason, which had been crying to him in vain for the last month
that, whenever a lover's lustre begins to fade, it is time for that
lover to travel.
Urgent business summoned him to Bologna, and twice a day cabinet
messengers brought him not so much the official papers of his
departments as the latest news of the love affairs of little Marietta,
the rage of the terrible Giletti and the enterprises of Fabrizio.
One of the Conte's agents asked several times for _Arlecchino fantasma e
pasticcio_, one of Giletti's triumphs (he emerges from the pie at the
moment when his rival Brighella is sticking the knife into it, and gives
him a drubbing); this was an excuse for making him earn 100 francs.
Giletti, who was riddled with debts, took care not to speak of this
windfall, but became astonishing in his arrogance.
Fabrizio's whim changed to a wounded pride (at his age, his anxieties
had already reduced him to the state of having whims!). Vanity led him
to the theatre; the little girl acted in the most sprightly fashion and
amused him; on leaving the theatre, he was in love for an hour. The
Conte returned to Parma on receiving the news that Fabrizio was in real
danger; Giletti, who had served as a trooper in that fine regiment the
Dragoni Napoleone, spoke seriously of killing him, and was making
arrangements for a subsequent flight to Romagna. If the reader is very
young, he will be scandalised by our admiration for this fine mark of
virtue. It was, however, no slight act of heroism on the part of Conte
Mosca, his return from Bologna; for, after all, frequently in the
morning he presented a worn appearance, and Fabrizio was always so
fresh, so serene! Who would ever have dreamed of reproaching him with
the death of Fabrizio, occurring in his absence and from so stupid a
cause? But his was one of those rare spirits which make an everlasting
remorse out of a generous action which they might have done and did not
do; besides, he could not bear the thought of seeing the Duchessa look
sad, and by any fault of his.
He found her, on his arrival, taciturn and gloomy. This is what had
occurred: the little lady's maid, Cecchina, tormented by remorse and
estimating the importance of her crime by the immensity of the sum that
she had received for committing it, had fallen ill. One evening the
Duchessa, who was devoted to her, went up to her room. The girl could
not hold out against this mark of kindness; she dissolved in tears, was
for handing over to her mistress all that she still possessed of the
money she had received, and finally had the courage to confess to her
the questions asked by the Conte and her own replies to them. The
Duchessa ran to the lamp which she blew out, then said to little
Cecchina that she forgave her, but on condition that she never uttered a
word about this strange episode to anyone in the world. "The poor
Conte," she added in a careless tone, "is afraid of being laughed at;
all men are like that."
_REMORSE_
The Duchessa hastened downstairs to her own apartments. No sooner had
she shut the door of her bedroom than she burst into tears; there seemed
to her something horrible in the idea of her making love to Fabrizio
whom she had seen brought into the world; and yet what else could her
behaviour imply?
This had been the primary cause of the black melancholy in which the
Conte found her plunged; on his arrival she suffered fits of impatience
with him, and almost with Fabrizio; she would have liked never to set
eyes on either of them again; she was contemptuous of the part,
ridiculous in her eyes, which Fabrizio was playing with the little
Marietta; for the Conte had told her everything, like a true lover,
incapable of keeping a secret. She could not grow used to this disaster;
her idol had a fault; finally, in a moment of frank friendship, she
asked the Conte's advice; this was for him a delicious instant, and a
fine reward for the honourable impulse which had made him return to
Parma.
"What could be more simple?" said the Conte, smiling. "Young men want to
have every woman they see, and next day they do not give her a thought.
Ought he not to be going to Belgirate, to see the Marchesa del Dongo?
Very well, let him go. During his absence, I shall request the company
of comedians to take their talents elsewhere, I shall pay their
travelling expenses; but presently we shall see him in love with the
first pretty woman that may happen to come his way: it is in the nature
of things, and I should not care to see him act otherwise. . . . If
necessary, get the Marchesa to write to him."
This suggestion, offered with the air of a complete indifference, came
as a ray of light to the Duchessa; she was frightened of Giletti. That
evening, the Conte announced, as though by chance, that one of his
couriers, on his way to Vienna, would be passing through Milan; three
days later Fabrizio received a letter from his mother. He seemed greatly
annoyed at not having yet been able, thanks to Giletti's jealousy, to
profit by the excellent intentions, assurance of which little Marietta
had conveyed to him through a _mammaccia_, an old woman who acted as her
mother.
Fabrizio found his mother and one of his sisters at Belgirate, a large
village in Piedmont, on the right shore of Lake Maggiore; the left shore
belongs to the Milanese, and consequently to Austria. This lake,
parallel to the Lake of Como, and also running from north to south, is
situated some ten leagues farther to the west. The mountain air, the
majestic and tranquil aspect of this superb lake which recalled to him
that other on the shores of which he had spent his childhood, all helped
to transform into a tender melancholy Fabrizio's grief, which was akin
to anger. It was with an infinite tenderness that the memory of the
Duchessa now presented itself to him; he felt that in separation he was
acquiring for her that love which he had never felt for any woman;
nothing would have been more painful to him than to be separated from
her for ever, and, he being in this frame of mind, if the Duchessa had
deigned to have recourse to the slightest coquetry, she could have
conquered this heart by--for instance--presenting it with a rival. But,
far from taking any so decisive a step, it was not without the keenest
self-reproach that she found her thoughts constantly following in the
young traveller's footsteps. She reproached herself for what she still
called a fancy, as though it had been something horrible; she redoubled
her forethought for and attention to the Conte, who, captivated by such
a display of charm, paid no heed to the sane voice of reason which was
prescribing a second visit to Bologna.
_LAKE MAGGIORE_
The Marchesa del Dongo, busy with preparations for the wedding of her
elder daughter, whom she was marrying to a Milanese Duca, could give
only three days to her beloved son; never had she found in him so tender
an affection. Through the cloud of melancholy that was more and more
closely enwrapping Fabrizio's heart, an odd and indeed ridiculous idea
had presented itself, and he had suddenly decided to adopt it. Dare we
say that he wished to consult Priore Blanès? That excellent old man was
totally incapable of understanding the sorrows of a heart torn asunder
by boyish passions more or less equal in strength; besides, it would
have taken a week to make him gather even a faint impression of all the
conflicting interests that Fabrizio had to consider at Parma; but in the
thought of consulting him Fabrizio recaptured the freshness of his
sensations at the age of sixteen. Will it be believed? It was not simply
as to a man full of wisdom, to an old and devoted friend, that Fabrizio
wished to speak to him; the object of this expedition, and the feelings
that agitated our hero during the fifty hours that it lasted are so
absurd that doubtless, in the interests of our narrative, it would have
been better to suppress them. I am afraid that Fabrizio's credulity may
make him forfeit the sympathy of the reader; but after all thus it was;
why flatter him more than another? I have not flattered Conte Mosca, nor
the Prince.
Fabrizio, then, since the whole truth must be told, Fabrizio escorted
his mother as far as the port of Laveno, on the left shore of Lake
Maggiore, the Austrian shore, where she landed about eight o'clock in
the evening. (The lake is regarded as neutral territory, and no passport
is required of those who do not set foot on shore.) But scarcely had
night fallen when he had himself ferried to this same Austrian shore,
and landed in a little wood which juts out into the water. He had hired
a _sediola_, a sort of rustic and fast-moving tilbury, by means of which
he was able, at a distance of five hundred yards, to keep up with his
mother's carriage; he was disguised as a servant of the _casa_ del Dongo,
and none of the many police or customs officials ever thought of asking
him for his passport. A quarter of a league before Como, where the
Marchesa and her daughter were to stop for the night, he took a path to
the left which, making a circuit of the village of Vico, afterwards
joined a little road recently made along the extreme edge of the lake.
It was midnight, and Fabrizio could count upon not meeting any of the
police. The trees of the various thickets into which the little road
kept continually diving traced the black outline of their foliage
against a sky bright with stars but veiled by a slight mist. Water and
sky were of a profound tranquillity. Fabrizio's soul could not resist
this sublime beauty; he stopped, then sat down on a rock which ran out
into the lake, forming almost a little promontory. The universal silence
was disturbed only, at regular intervals, by the faint ripple of the
lake as it lapped on the shore. Fabrizio had an Italian heart; I crave
the reader's pardon for him: this defect, which will render him less
attractive, consisted mainly in this: he had no vanity, save by fits and
starts, and the mere sight of sublime beauty melted him to a tender mood
and took from his sorrows their hard and bitter edge. Seated on his
isolated rock, having no longer any need to be on his guard against the
police, protected by the profound night and the vast silence, gentle
tears moistened his eyes, and he found there, with little or no effort,
the happiest moments that he had tasted for many a day.
_A NIGHT SCENE_
He resolved never to tell the Duchessa any falsehood, and it was because
he loved her to adoration at that moment that he vowed to himself never
to say to her _that he loved her_; never would he utter in her hearing
the word love, since the passion which bears that name was a stranger to
his heart. In the enthusiasm of generosity and virtue which formed his
happiness at that moment, he made the resolution to tell her, at the
first opportunity, everything: his heart had never known love. Once this
courageous plan had been definitely adopted, he felt himself delivered
of an enormous burden. "She will perhaps have something to say to me
about Marietta; very well, I shall never see my little Marietta again,"
he assured himself blithely.
The overpowering heat which had prevailed throughout the day was
beginning to be tempered by the morning breeze. Already dawn was
outlining in a faint white glimmer the Alpine peaks that rise to the
north and east of Lake Como. Their massive shapes, bleached by their
covering of snow, even in the month of June, stand out against the
pellucid azure of a sky which at those immense altitudes is always pure.
A spur of the Alps stretching southwards into smiling Italy separates
the sloping shores of Lake Como from those of the Lake of Garda.
Fabrizio followed with his eye all the branches of these sublime
mountains, the dawn as it grew brighter came to mark the valleys that
divide them, gilding the faint mist which rose from the gorges beneath.
Some minutes since Fabrizio had taken the road again; he passed the hill
that forms the peninsula of Durini, and at length there met his gaze
that _campanile_ of the village of Grianta in which he had so often made
observations of the stars with Priore Blanès. "What bounds were there
to my ignorance in those days? I could not understand," he reminded
himself, "even the ridiculous Latin of those treatises on astrology
which my master used to pore over, and I think I respected them chiefly
because, understanding only a few words here and there, my imagination
stepped in to give them a meaning, and the most romantic sense
imaginable."
Gradually his thoughts entered another channel. "May not there be
something genuine in this science? Why should it be different from the
rest? A certain number of imbeciles and quick-witted persons agree among
themselves that they know (shall we say) _Mexican_; they impose
themselves with this qualification upon society which respects them and
governments which pay them. Favours are showered upon them precisely
because they have no real intelligence, and authority need not fear
their raising the populace and creating an atmosphere of rant by the aid
of generous sentiments! For instance, Father Bari, to whom Ernesto IV
has just awarded a pension of 4,000 francs and the Cross of his Order
for having restored nineteen lines of a Greek dithyramb!
"But, Great God, have I indeed the right to find such things ridiculous?
Is it for me to complain," he asked himself, suddenly, stopping short in
the road, "has not that same Cross just been given to my governor at
Naples?" Fabrizio was conscious of a feeling of intense disgust; the
fine enthusiasm for virtue which had just been making his heart beat
high changed into the vile pleasure of having a good share in the spoils
of a robbery. "After all," he said to himself at length, with the
lustreless eyes of a man who is dissatisfied with himself, "since my
birth gives me the right to profit by these abuses, it would be a signal
piece of folly on my part not to take my share, but I must never let
myself denounce them in public." This reasoning was by no means unsound;
but Fabrizio had fallen a long way from that elevation of sublime
happiness to which he had found himself transported an hour earlier. The
thought of privilege had withered that plant, always so delicate, which
we name happiness.
_PRIVILEGE_
"If we are not to believe in astrology," he went on, seeking to calm
himself; "if this science is, like three quarters of the sciences that
are not mathematical, a collection of enthusiastic simpletons and adroit
hypocrites paid by the masters they serve, how does it come about that
I think so often and with emotion of this fatal circumstance: I did make
my escape from the prison at B----, but in the uniform and with the
marching orders of a soldier who had been flung into prison with good
cause?"
Fabrizio's reasoning could never succeed in penetrating farther; he went
a hundred ways round the difficulty without managing to surmount it. He
was too young still; in his moments of leisure, his mind devoted itself
with rapture to enjoying the sensations produced by the romantic
circumstances with which his imagination was always ready to supply him.
He was far from employing his time in studying with patience the actual
details of things in order to discover their causes. Reality still
seemed to him flat and muddy; I can understand a person's not caring to
look at it, but then he ought not to argue about it. Above all, he ought
not to fashion objections out of the scattered fragments of his
ignorance.
Thus it was that, though not lacking in brains, Fabrizio could not
manage to see that his half-belief in omens was for him a religion, a
profound impression received at his entering upon life. To think of this
belief was to feel, it was a happiness. And he set himself resolutely to
discover how this could be a _proved_, a real science, in the same
category as geometry, for example. He searched his memory strenuously
for all the instances in which omens observed by him had not been
followed by the auspicious or inauspicious events which they seemed to
herald. But all this time, while he believed himself to be following a
line of reasoning and marching towards the truth, his attention kept
coming joyfully to rest on the memory of the occasions on which the
foreboding had been amply followed by the happy or unhappy accident
which it had seemed to him to predict, and his heart was filled with
respect and melted; and he would have felt an invincible repugnance for
the person who denied the value of omens, especially if in doing so he
had had recourse to irony.
Fabrizio walked on without noticing the distance he was covering, and
had reached this point in his vain reasonings when, raising his head, he
saw the wall of his father's garden. This wall, which supported a fine
terrace, rose to a height of more than forty feet above the road, on its
right. A cornice of wrought stone along the highest part, next to the
balustrade, gave it a monumental air. "It is not bad," Fabrizio said to
himself dispassionately, "it is good architecture, a little in the Roman
style"; he applied to it his recently acquired knowledge of antiquities.
Then he turned his head away in disgust; his father's severities, and
especially the denunciation of himself by his brother Ascanio on his
return from his wanderings in France, came back to his mind.
"That unnatural denunciation was the origin of my present existence; I
may detest, I may despise it; when all is said and done, it has altered
my destiny. What would have become of me once I had been packed off to
Novara, and my presence barely tolerated in the house of my father's
agent, if my aunt had not made love to a powerful Minister? If the said
aunt had happened to possess merely a dry, conventional heart instead of
that tender and passionate heart which loves me with a sort of
enthusiasm that astonishes me? Where should I be now if the Duchessa had
had the heart of her brother the Marchese del Dongo?"
_PRIORE BLANÈS_
Oppressed by these cruel memories, Fabrizio began now to walk with an
uncertain step; he came to the edge of the moat immediately opposite the
magnificent façade of the castle. Scarcely did he cast a glance at that
great building, blackened by time. The noble language of architecture
left him unmoved, the memory of his brother and father stopped his heart
to every sensation of beauty, he was attentive only to the necessity of
keeping on his guard in the presence of hypocritical and dangerous
enemies. He looked for an instant, but with a marked disgust, at the
little window of the bedroom which he had occupied until 1815 on the
third storey. His father's character had robbed of all charm the memory
of his early childhood. "I have not set foot in it," he thought, "since
the 7th of March, at eight o'clock in the evening. I left it to go and
get the passport from Vasi, and next morning my fear of spies made me
hasten my departure. When I passed through again after my visit to
France, I had not time to go upstairs, even to look at my prints again,
and that thanks to my brother's denouncing me."
Fabrizio turned away his head in horror. "Priore Blanès is eighty-three
at the very least," he said sorrowfully to himself; "he hardly ever
comes to the castle now, from what my sister tells me; the infirmities
of old age have had their effect on him. That heart, once so strong and
noble, is frozen by age. Heaven knows how long it is since he last went
up to his _campanile_! I shall hide myself in the cellar, under the vats
or under the wine-press, until he is awake; I shall not go in and
disturb the good old man in his sleep; probably he will have forgotten
my face, even; six years mean a great deal at his age! I shall find only
the tomb of a friend! And it is really childish of me," he added, "to
have come here to provoke the disgust that the sight of my father's
castle gives me."
Fabrizio now came to the little _piazza_ in front of the church; it was
with an astonishment bordering on delirium that he saw, on the second
stage of the ancient _campanile_, the long and narrow window lighted by
the little lantern of Priore Blanès. The Priore was in the habit of
leaving it there, when he climbed to the cage of planks which formed his
observatory, so that the light should not prevent him from reading the
face of his planisphere. This chart of the heavens was stretched over a
great jar of terra-cotta which had originally belonged to one of the
orange trees at the castle. In the opening, at the bottom of the jar,
burned the tiniest of lamps, the smoke of which was carried away from
the jar through a little tin pipe, and the shadow of the pipe indicated
the north on the chart. All these memories of things so simple in
themselves deluged Fabrizio's heart with emotions and filled him with
happiness.
Almost without thinking, he put his hands to his lips and gave the
little, short, low whistle which had formerly been the signal for his
admission. At once he heard several tugs given to the cord which, from
the observatory above, opened the latch of the _campanile_ door. He dashed
headlong up the staircase, moved to a transport of excitement; he found
the Priore in his wooden armchair in his accustomed place; his eye was
fixed on the little glass of a mural quadrant. With his left hand the
Priore made a sign to Fabrizio not to interrupt him in his observation;
a moment later, he wrote down a figure upon a playing card, then,
turning round in his chair, opened his arms to our hero who flung
himself into them, dissolved in tears. Priore Blanès was his true
father.
"I expected you," said Blanès, after the first warm words of affection.
Was the Priore speaking in his character as a diviner, or, indeed, as he
often thought of Fabrizio, had some astrological sign, by pure chance,
announced to him the young man's return?
"This means that my death is at hand," said Priore Blanès.
"What!" cried Fabrizio, quite overcome.
"Yes," the Priore went on in a serious but by no means sad tone: "five
months and a half, or six months and a half after I have seen you again,
my life having found its full complement of happiness will be
extinguished
Come face al mancar dell'alimento"
(as the little lamp is when its oil runs dry). "Before the supreme
moment, I shall probably pass a month or two without speaking, after
which I shall be received into Our Father's Bosom; provided always that
He finds that I have performed my duty in the post in which He has
placed me as a sentinel.
"But you, you are worn out with exhaustion, your emotion makes you ready
for sleep. Since I began to expect you, I have hidden a loaf of bread
and a bottle of brandy for you in the great chest which holds my
instruments. Give yourself that sustenance, and try to collect enough
strength to listen to me for a few moments longer. It lies in my power
to tell you a number of things before night shall have given place
altogether to-day; at present I see them a great deal more distinctly
than perhaps I shall see them to-morrow. For, my child, we are at all
times frail vessels, and we must always take that frailty into account.
To-morrow, it may be, the old man, the earthly man in me will be
occupied with preparations for my death, and to-morrow evening at nine
o'clock, you will have to leave me."
Fabrizio having obeyed him in silence, as was his custom:
"Then, it is true," the old man went on, "that when you tried to see
Waterloo you found nothing at first but a prison?"
"Yes, Father," replied Fabrizio in amazement.
"Well, that was a rare piece of good fortune, for, warned by my voice,
your soul can prepare itself for another prison, far different in its
austerity, far more terrible! Probably you will escape from it only by a
crime; but, thanks be to heaven, that crime will not have been committed
by you. Never fall into crime, however violently you may be tempted; I
seem to see that it will be a question of killing an innocent man, who,
without knowing it, usurps your rights; if you resist the violent
temptation which will seem to be justified by the laws of honour, your
life will be most happy in the eyes of men . . . and reasonably happy in
the eyes of the sage," he added after a moment's reflexion; "you will
die like me, my son, sitting upon a wooden seat, far from all luxury and
having seen the hollowness of luxury, and like me not having to reproach
yourself with any grave sin.
"And now, the discussion of your future state is at an end between us, I
could add nothing of any importance. It is in vain that I have tried to
see how long this imprisonment is to last; is it to be for six months, a
year, ten years? I have been able to discover nothing; apparently I have
made some error, and heaven has wished to punish me by the distress of
this uncertainty. I have seen only that after your prison, but I do not
know whether it is to be at the actual moment of your leaving it, there
will be what I call a crime; but, fortunately, I believe I can be sure
that it will not be committed by you. If you are weak enough to involve
yourself in this crime, all the rest of my calculations becomes simply
one long error. Then you will not die with peace in your soul, on a
wooden seat and clad in white." As he said these words, Priore Blanès
attempted to rise; it was then that Fabrizio noticed the ravages of
time; it took him nearly a minute to get upon his feet and to turn
towards Fabrizio. Our hero allowed him to do this, standing motionless
and silent. The Priore flung himself into his arms again and again; he
embraced him with extreme affection. After which he went on, with all
the gaiety of the old days: "Try to make a place for yourself among all
my instruments where you can sleep with some comfort; take my furs; you
will find several of great value which the Duchessa Sanseverina sent me
four years ago. She asked me for a forecast of your fate, which I took
care not to give her, while keeping her furs and her fine quadrant.
Every announcement of the future is a breach of the rule, and contains
this danger, that it may alter the event, in which case the whole
science falls to the ground, like a child's card-castle; and besides,
there were things that it was hard to say to that Duchessa who is always
so charming. But let me warn you, do not be startled in your sleep by
the bells, which will make a terrible din in your ear when the men come
to ring for the seven o'clock mass; later on, in the stage below, they
will set the big _campanone_ going, which shakes all my instruments.
To-day is the feast of San Giovita, Martyr and Soldier. As you know, the
little village of Grianta has the same patron as the great city of
Brescia, which, by the way, led to a most amusing mistake on the part of
my illustrious master, Giacomo Marini of Ravenna. More than once he
announced to me that I should have quite a fine career in the church; he
believed that I was to be the curate of the magnificent church of San
Giovita, at Brescia; I have been the curate of a little village of seven
hundred and fifty chimneys! But all has been for the best. I have seen,
and not ten years ago, that if I had been curate at Brescia, my destiny
would have been to be cast into prison on a hill in Moravia, the
Spielberg. To-morrow I shall bring you all manner of delicacies pilfered
from the great dinner which I am giving to all the clergy of the
district who are coming to sing at my high mass. I shall leave them down
below, but do not make any attempt to see me, do not come down to take
possession of the good things until you have heard me go out again. You
must not see me again _by daylight_, and as the sun sets to-morrow at
twenty-seven minutes past seven, I shall not come up to embrace you
until about eight, and it is necessary that you depart while the hours
are still numbered by nine, that is to say before the clock has struck
ten. Take care that you are not seen in the windows of the _campanile_:
the police have your description, and they are to some extent under the
orders of your brother, who is a famous tyrant. The Marchese del Dongo
is growing feeble," added Blanès with a sorrowful air, "and if he were
to see you again, perhaps he would let something pass to you, from hand
to hand. But such benefits, tainted with deceit, do not become a man
like yourself, whose strength will lie one day in his conscience. The
Marchese abhors his son Ascanio, and it is on that son that the five or
six millions that he possesses will devolve. That is justice. You, at
his death, will have a pension of 4,000 francs, and fifty ells of black
cloth for your servants' mourning."
CHAPTER NINE
Fabrizio's soul was exalted by the old man's speech, by his own keen
attention to it, and by his extreme exhaustion. He had great difficulty
in getting to sleep, and his slumber was disturbed by dreams, presages
perhaps of the future; in the morning, at ten o'clock, he was awakened
by the whole belfry's beginning to shake; an alarming noise seemed to
come from outside. He rose in bewilderment and at first imagined that
the end of the world had come; then he thought that he was in prison; it
took him some time to recognise the sound of the big bell, which forty
peasants were setting in motion in honour of the great San Giovita; ten
would have been enough.
Fabrizio looked for a convenient place from which to see without being
seen; he discovered that from this great height his gaze swept the
gardens, and even the inner courtyard of his father's castle. He had
forgotten this. The idea of that father arriving at the ultimate bourne
of life altered all his feelings. He could even make out the sparrows
that were hopping in search of crumbs upon the wide balcony of the
dining-room. "They are the descendants of the ones I used to tame long
ago," he said to himself. This balcony, like every balcony in the
mansion, was decorated with a large number of orange trees in
earthenware tubs, of different sizes: this sight melted his heart; the
view of that inner courtyard thus decorated, with its sharply defined
shadows outlined by a radiant sun, was truly majestic.
The thought of his father's failing health came back to his mind. "But
it is really singular," he said to himself, "my father is only
thirty-five years older than I am; thirty-five and twenty-three make
only fifty-eight!" His eyes, fixed on the windows of the bedroom of that
stern man who had never loved him, filled with tears. He shivered, and a
sudden chill ran through his veins when he thought he saw his father
crossing a terrace planted with orange trees which was on a level with
his room; but it was only one of the servants. Close underneath the
_campanile_ a number of girls dressed in white and split up into
different bands were occupied in tracing patterns with red, blue and
yellow flowers on the pavement of the streets through which the
procession was to pass. But there was a spectacle which spoke with a
more living voice to Fabrizio's soul: from the _campanile_ his gaze shot
down to the two branches of the lake, at a distance of several leagues,
and this sublime view soon made him forget all the others; it awakened
in him the most lofty sentiments. All the memories of his childhood came
crowding to besiege his mind; and this day which he spent imprisoned in
a belfry was perhaps one of the happiest days of his life.
Happiness carried him to an exaltation of mind quite foreign to his
nature; he considered the incidents of life, he, still so young, as if
already he had arrived at its farthest goal. "I must admit that, since I
came to Parma," he said to himself at length after several hours of
delicious musings, "I have known no tranquil and perfect joy such as I
used to find at Naples in galloping over the roads of Vomero or pacing
the shores of Miseno. All the complicated interests of that nasty little
court have made me nasty also. . . . I even believe that it would be a
sorry happiness for me to humiliate my enemies if I had any; but I have
no enemy. . . . Stop a moment!" he suddenly interjected, "I have got an
enemy, Giletti. . . . And here is a curious thing," he said to himself,
"the pleasure that I should feel in seeing such an ugly fellow go to all
the devils in hell has survived the very slight fancy that I had for
little Marietta. . . . She does not come within a mile of the Duchessa
d'A----, to whom I was obliged to make love at Naples, after I had told
her that I was in love with her. Good God, how bored I have been during
the long assignations which that fair Duchessa used to accord me; never
anything like that in the tumble-down bedroom, serving as a kitchen as
well, in which little Marietta received me twice, and for two minutes on
each occasion.
_THE CAMPANILE_
"Oh, good God, what on earth can those people have to eat? They make one
pity them! . . . I ought to have settled on her and the _mammaccia_ a
pension of three beefsteaks, payable daily. . . . Little Marietta," he
went on, "used to distract me from the evil thoughts which the proximity
of that court put in my mind.
"I should perhaps have done well to adopt the _caffè_ life, as the
Duchessa said; she seemed to incline in that direction, and she has far
more intelligence than I. Thanks to her generosity, or indeed merely
with that pension of 4,000 francs and that fund of 40,000 invested at
Lyons, which my mother intends for me, I should always have a horse and
a few scudi to spend on digging and collecting a cabinet. Since it
appears that I am not to know the taste of love, there will always be
those other interests to be my great sources of happiness; I should
like, before I die, to go back to visit the battlefield of Waterloo and
try to identify the meadow where I was so neatly lifted from my horse
and left sitting on the ground. That pilgrimage accomplished, I should
return constantly to this sublime lake; nothing else as beautiful is to
be seen in the world, for my heart at least. Why go so far afield in
search of happiness? It is there, beneath my eyes!
"Ah," said Fabrizio to himself, "there is this objection: the police
drive me away from the Lake of Como, but I am younger than the people
who are setting those police on my track. Here," he added with a smile,
"I should certainly not find a Duchessa d'A----, but I should find one
of those little girls down there who are strewing flowers on the
pavement, and, to tell the truth, I should care for her just as much.
Hypocrisy freezes me, even in love, and our great ladies aim at effects
that are too sublime. Napoleon has given them new ideas as to conduct
and constancy.
"The devil!" he suddenly exclaimed, drawing back his head from the
window, as though he had been afraid of being recognised despite the
screen of the enormous wooden shutter which protected the bells from
rain, "here comes a troop of police in full dress." And indeed, ten
policemen, of whom four were non-commissioned officers, had come into
sight at the top of the village street. The serjeant distributed them at
intervals of a hundred yards along the course which the procession was
to take. "Everyone knows me here; if they see me, I shall make but one
bound from the shores of the Lake of Como to the Spielberg, where they
will fasten to each of my legs a chain weighing a hundred and ten
pounds: and what a grief for the Duchessa!"
It took Fabrizio two or three minutes to realise that, for one thing, he
was stationed at a height of more than eighty feet, that the place in
which he stood was comparatively dark, that the eyes of the people who
might be looking up at him were blinded by a dazzling sun, in addition
to which they were walking about, their eyes wide open, in streets all
the houses of which had just been whitewashed with lime, in honour of
the _festa_ of San Giovita. Despite all these clear and obvious reasons,
Fabrizio's Italian nature would not have been in a state, from that
moment, to enjoy any pleasure in the spectacle, had he not interposed
between himself and the policemen a strip of old cloth which he nailed
to the frame of the window, piercing a couple of holes in it for his
eyes.
The bells had been making the air throb for ten minutes, the procession
was coming out of the church, the _mortaretti_ started to bang. Fabrizio
turned his head and recognised that little terrace, adorned with a
parapet and overlooking the lake, where so often, when he was a boy, he
had risked his life to watch the _mortaretti_ go off between his legs,
with the result that on the mornings of public holidays his mother liked
to see him by her side.
It should be explained that the _mortaretti_ (or little mortars) are
nothing else than gun-barrels which are sawn through so as to leave them
only four inches long; that is why the peasants greedily collect all the
gun-barrels which, since 1796, European policy has been sowing broadcast
over the plains of Lombardy. Once they have been reduced to a length of
four inches, these little guns are loaded to the muzzle, they are
planted in the ground in a vertical position, and a train of powder is
laid from one to the next; they are drawn up in three lines like a
battalion, and to the number of two or three hundred, in some suitable
emplacement near the route along which the procession is to pass. When
the Blessed Sacrament approaches, a match is put to the train of powder,
and then begins a running fire of sharp explosions, utterly irregular
and quite ridiculous; the women are wild with joy. Nothing is so gay as
the sound of these _mortaretti_, heard at a distance on the lake, and
softened by the rocking of the water; this curious sound, which had so
often been the delight of his boyhood, banished the somewhat too solemn
thoughts by which our hero was being besieged; he went to find the
Priore's big astronomical telescope, and recognised the majority of the
men and women who were following the procession. A number of charming
little girls, whom Fabrizio had last seen at the age of eleven or
twelve, were now superb women in the full flower of the most vigorous
youth; they made our hero's courage revive, and to speak to them he
would readily have braved the police.
After the procession had passed and had re-entered the church by a side
door which was out of Fabrizio's sight, the heat soon became intense
even up in the belfry; the inhabitants returned to their homes, and a
great silence fell upon the village. Several boats took on board loads
of _contadini_ returning to Bellagio, Menaggio and other villages
situated on the lake; Fabrizio could distinguish the sound of each
stroke of the oars: so simple a detail as this sent him into an ecstasy;
his present joy was composed of all the unhappiness, all the irritation
that he found in the complicated life of a court. How happy he would
have been at this moment to be sailing for a league over that beautiful
lake which looked so calm and reflected so clearly the depth of the sky
above! He heard the door at the foot of the _campanile_ opened: it was
the Priore's old servant who brought in a great hamper, and he had all
the difficulty in the world in restraining himself from speaking to her.
"She is almost as fond of me as her master," he said to himself, "and
besides, I am leaving to-night at nine o'clock; would she not keep the
oath of secrecy I should make her swear, if only for a few hours? But,"
Fabrizio reminded himself, "I should be vexing my friend! I might get
him into trouble with the police!" and he let Ghita go without speaking
to her. He made an excellent dinner, then settled himself down to sleep
for a few minutes; he did not awake until half-past eight in the
evening; the Priore Blanès was shaking him by the arm, it was dark.
Blanès was extremely tired, and looked fifty years older than the night
before. He said nothing more about serious matters, sitting in his
wooden armchair. "Embrace me," he said to Fabrizio. He clasped him again
and again in his arms. "Death," he said at last, "which is coming to put
an end to this long life, will have nothing about it so painful as this
separation. I have a purse which I shall leave in Ghita's custody, with
orders to draw on it for her own needs, but to hand over to you what is
left, should you ever come to ask for it. I know her; after those
instructions, she is capable, from economy on your behalf, of not buying
meat four times in the year, if you do not give her quite definite
orders. You may yourself be reduced to penury, and the obol of your aged
friend will be of service to you. Expect nothing from your brother but
atrocious behaviour, and try to earn money by some work which will make
you useful to society. I foresee strange storms; perhaps, in fifty years'
time, the world will have no more room for idlers! Your mother and
aunt may fail you, your sisters will have to obey their husbands. . . .
Away with you, away with you, fly!" exclaimed Blanès urgently; he
had just heard a little sound in the clock which warned him that ten was
about to strike, and he would not even allow Fabrizio to give him a
farewell embrace.
"Hurry, hurry!" he cried to him; "it will take you at least a minute to
get down the stair; take care not to fall, that would be a terrible
omen." Fabrizio dashed down the staircase and emerging on to the
_piazza_ began to run. He had scarcely arrived opposite his father's
castle when the bell sounded ten times; each stroke reverberated in his
bosom, where it left a singular sense of disturbance. He stopped to
think, or rather to give himself up to the passionate feelings inspired
in him by the contemplation of that majestic edifice which he had judged
so coldly the night before. He was recalled from his musings by the
sound of footsteps; he looked up and found himself surrounded by four
constables. He had a brace of excellent pistols, the priming of which he
had renewed while he dined; the slight sound that he made in cocking
them attracted the attention of one of the constables, and he was within
an inch of being arrested. He saw the danger he ran, and decided to fire
the first shot; he would be justified in doing so, for this was the sole
method open to him of resisting four well armed men. Fortunately, the
constables, who were going round to clear the _osterie_, had not shown
themselves altogether irresponsive to the hospitality that they had
received in several of those sociable resorts; they did not make up
their minds quickly enough to do their duty. Fabrizio took to his heels
and ran. The constables went a few yards, running also, and shouting
"Stop! Stop!" then everything relapsed into silence. After every three
hundred yards Fabrizio halted to recover his breath. "The sound of my
pistols nearly made me get caught; this is just the sort of thing that
would make the Duchessa tell me, should it ever be granted me to see her
lovely eyes again, that my mind finds pleasure in contemplating what is
going to happen in ten years' time, and forgets to look-out for what is
actually happening beneath my nose."
Fabrizio shuddered at the thought of the danger he had just escaped; he
increased his pace, and presently found himself impelled to run, which
was not over-prudent, as it attracted the attention of several
_contadini_ who were going back to their homes. He could not bring
himself to stop until he had reached the mountain, more than a league
from Grianta, and even when he had stopped, he broke into a cold sweat
at the thought of the Spielberg.
"There's a fine fright!" he said aloud: on hearing the sound of this
word, he was almost tempted to feel ashamed. "But does not my aunt tell
me that the thing I most need is to learn to make allowances for myself?
I am always comparing myself with a model of perfection, which cannot
exist. Very well, I forgive myself my fright, for, from another point of
view, I was quite prepared to defend my liberty, and certainly all four
of them would not have remained on their feet to carry me off to prison.
What I am doing at this moment," he went on, "is not military; instead
of retiring rapidly, after having attained my object, and perhaps given
the alarm to my enemies, I am amusing myself with a fancy more
ridiculous perhaps than all the good Priore's predictions."
_THE CHESTNUT TREE_
For indeed, instead of retiring along the shortest line, and gaining the
shore of Lake Maggiore, where his boat was awaiting him, he made an
enormous circuit to go and visit _his tree_. The reader may perhaps
remember the love that Fabrizio bore for a chestnut tree planted by his
mother twenty-three years earlier. "It would be quite worthy of my
brother," he said to himself, "to have had the tree cut down; but those
creatures are incapable of delicate shades of feeling; he will never
have thought of it. And besides, that would not be a bad augury," he
added with firmness. Two hours later he was shocked by what he saw;
mischief-makers or a storm had broken one of the main branches of the
young tree, which hung down withered; Fabrizio cut it off reverently,
using his dagger, and smoothed the cut carefully, so that the rain
should not get inside the trunk. Then, although time was highly precious
to him, for day was about to break, he spent a good hour in turning the
soil round his dear tree. All these acts of folly accomplished, he went
rapidly on his way towards Lake Maggiore. All things considered, he was
not at all sad; the tree was coming on well, was more vigorous than
ever, and in five years had almost doubled in height. The branch was
only an accident of no consequence; once it had been cut off, it did no
more harm to the tree, which indeed would grow all the better if its
spread began higher from the ground.
Fabrizio had not gone a league when a dazzling band of white indicated
to the east the peaks of the Resegon di Lee, a mountain famous
throughout the district. The road which he was following became thronged
with _contadini_; but, instead of adopting military tactics, Fabrizio
let himself be melted by the sublime or touching aspect of these forests
in the neighbourhood of Lake Como. They are perhaps the finest in the
world; I do not mean to say those that bring in most new money, as the
Swiss would say, but those that speak most eloquently to the soul. To
listen to this language in the position in which Fabrizio found himself,
an object for the attentions of the gentlemen of the Lombardo-Venetian
police, was really childish. "I am half a league from the frontier," he
reminded himself at length, "I am going to meet _doganieri_ and
constables making their morning rounds: this coat of fine cloth will
look suspicious, they will ask me for my passport; now that passport is
inscribed at full length with my name, which is marked down for prison;
so here I am under the regrettable necessity of committing a murder. If,
as is usual, the police are going about in pairs, I cannot wait quietly
to fire until one of them tries to take me by the collar; he has only to
clutch me for a moment while he falls, and off I go to the Spielberg."
Fabrizio, horrified most of all by the necessity of firing first,
possibly on an old soldier who had served under his uncle, Conte
Pietranera, ran to hide himself in the hollow trunk of an enormous
chestnut; he was renewing the priming of his pistols, when he heard a
man coming towards him through the wood, singing very well a delicious
air from _Mercadante_, which was popular at that time in Lombardy.
_THE FOREST_
"There is a good omen for me," he said to himself. This air, to which he
listened religiously, took from him the little spark of anger which was
finding its way into his reasonings. He scrutinised the high road
carefully, in both directions, and saw no one: "The singer must be
coming along some side road," he said to himself. Almost at that moment,
he saw a footman, very neatly dressed in the English style and mounted
on a hack, who was coming towards him at a walk, leading a fine
thoroughbred, which however was perhaps a little too thin.
"Ah! If I reasoned like Conte Mosca," thought Fabrizio, "when he assures
me that the risks a man runs are always the measure of his rights over
his neighbours, I should blow out this servant's brains with a
pistol-shot, and, once I was mounted on the thin horse, I should laugh
aloud at all the police in the world. As soon as I was safely in Parma,
I should send money to the man, or to his widow . . . but it would be a
horrible thing to do!"
CHAPTER TEN
Moralising thus, Fabrizio sprang down on to the high road which runs
from Lombardy into Switzerland: at this point, it is fully four or five
feet below the level of the forest. "If my man takes fright," he said to
himself, "he will go off at a gallop, and I shall be stranded here
looking the picture of a fool." At this moment he found himself only ten
yards from the footman, who had stopped singing: Fabrizio could see in
his eyes that he was frightened, he was perhaps going to turn his
horses. Still without having come to any decision, Fabrizio made a
bound, and seized the thin horse by the bridle.
"My friend," he said to the footman, "I am not an ordinary thief, for I
am going to begin by giving you twenty francs, but I am obliged to
borrow your horse; I shall be killed if I don't get away pretty quickly.
I have the four Riva brothers on my heels, those great hunters whom you
probably know; they caught me just now in their sister's bedroom, I
jumped out of the window, and here I am. They dashed out into the forest
with their dogs and guns. I hid myself in that big hollow chestnut
because I saw one of them cross the road; their dogs will track me down.
I am going to mount your horse and gallop a league beyond Como; I am
going to Milan to throw myself at the Viceroy's feet. I shall leave your
horse at the post-house with two napoleons for yourself, if you consent
with good grace. If you offer the slightest resistance, I shall kill you
with these pistols you see here. If, after I have gone, you set the
police on my track, my cousin, the gallant Conte Alari, Equerry to the
Emperor, will take good care to break your bones for you."
_THE HORSE_
Fabrizio invented the substance of this speech as he went on, uttering
it in a wholly pacific tone.
"As far as that goes," he went on with a laugh, "my name is no secret; I
am the Marchesino Ascanio del Dongo, my castle is quite close to here,
at Grianta. Damn you!" he cried, raising his voice, "will you let go the
horse!" The servant, stupefied, never breathed a word. Fabrizio
transferred the pistol to his left hand, seized the bridle which the
other dropped, sprang into the saddle, and made off at a canter. When he
had gone three hundred yards, it occurred to him that he had forgotten
to give the man the twenty francs he had promised him; he stopped; there
was still no one upon the road but the footman, who was following him at
a gallop; he signalled to him with his handkerchief to come on, and when
he judged him to be fifty yards off, flung a handful of small change on
to the road and went on again. From a distance he looked and saw the
footman gathering up the money. "There is a truly reasonable man,"
Fabrizio said to himself with a laugh, "not an unnecessary word." He
proceeded rapidly southwards, halted, towards midday, at a lonely house,
and took the road again a few hours later. At two o'clock in the morning
he was on the shore of Lake Maggiore; he soon caught sight of his boat
which was tacking to and fro; at the agreed signal, it made for the
shore. He could see no _contadino_ to whom to hand over the horse, so he
gave the noble animal its liberty, and three hours later was at
Belgirate. There, finding himself on friendly soil, he took a little
rest; he was exceedingly joyful, everything had proved a complete
success. Dare we indicate the true causes of his joy? His tree showed a
superb growth, and his soul had been refreshed by the deep affection
which he had found in the arms of Priore Blanès. "Does he really
believe," he asked himself, "in all the predictions he has made me? Or
was he, since my brother has given me the reputation of a Jacobin, a man
without law or honour, sticking at nothing, was he seeking simply to
bind me not to yield to the temptation to break the head of some animal
who may have done me a bad turn?" Two days later, Fabrizio was at Parma,
where he greatly amused the Duchessa and the Conte, when he related to
them, with the utmost exactitude, which he always observed, the whole
story of his travels.
On his arrival, Fabrizio found the porter and all the servants of the
_palazzo_ Sanseverina wearing the tokens of the deepest mourning.
"Whom have we lost?" he inquired of the Duchessa.
"That excellent man whom people called my husband has just died at
Baden. He has left me this _palazzo_, that had been arranged beforehand,
but as a sign of good-fellowship he has added a legacy of 300,000
francs, which embarrasses me greatly; I have no desire to surrender it
to his niece, the Marchesa Raversi, who plays the most damnable tricks
on me every day. You are interested in art, you must find me some good
sculptor; I shall erect a tomb to the Duca which will cost 300,000
francs." The Conte began telling anecdotes about the Raversi.
"I have tried to win her by kindness, but all in vain," said the
Duchessa. "As for the Duca's nephews, I have made them all colonels or
generals. In return for which, not a month passes without their sending
me some abominable anonymous letter; I have been obliged to engage a
secretary simply to read letters of that sort."
"And these anonymous letters are their mildest offence," the Conte
joined in; "they make a regular business of inventing infamous
accusations. A score of times I could have brought the whole gang before
the courts, and Your Excellency may imagine," he went on, addressing
Fabrizio, "whether my good judges would have convicted them."
_HONEST JUDGES_
"Ah, well, that is what spoils it all for me," replied Fabrizio with a
simplicity which was quite refreshing at court; "I should prefer to see
them sentenced by magistrates judging according to their conscience."
"You would oblige me greatly, since you are travelling with a view to
gaining instruction, if you would give me the addresses of such
magistrates; I shall write to them before I go to bed."
"If I were Minister, this absence of judges who were honest men would
wound my self-respect."
"But it seems to me," said the Conte, "that Your Excellency, who is so
fond of the French, and did indeed once lend them the aid of his
invincible arm, is forgetting for the moment one of their great maxims:
'It is better to kill the devil than to let the devil kill you.' I
should like to see how you would govern these burning souls, who read
every day the _History of the Revolution in France_, with judges who
would acquit the people whom I accuse. They would reach the point of not
convicting the most obviously guilty scoundrels, and would fancy
themselves Brutuses. But I should like to pick a crow with you; does not
your delicate soul feel a touch of remorse at the thought of that fine
(though perhaps a little too thin) horse which you have just abandoned
on the shore of Lake Maggiore?"
"I fully intend," said Fabrizio, with the utmost seriousness, "to send
whatever is necessary to the owner of the horse to recompense him for
the cost of advertising and any other expenses which he may be made to
incur by the _contadini_ who may have found it; I shall study the Milan
newspaper most carefully to find the announcement of a missing horse; I
know the description of that one very well."
"He is truly _primitive_," said the Conte to the Duchessa. "And where
would Your Excellency be now," he went on with a smile, "if, while he
was galloping away hell for leather on this borrowed horse, it had taken
it into its head to make a false step? You would be in the Spielberg, my
dear young nephew, and all my authority would barely have managed to
secure the reduction by thirty pounds of the weight of the chain
attached to each of your legs. You would have had some ten years to
spend in that pleasure-resort; perhaps your legs would have become
swollen and gangrened, then they would have cut them clean off."
"Oh, for pity's sake, don't go any farther with so sad a romance!" cried
the Duchessa, with tears in her eyes. "Here he is back again. . . ."
"And I am more delighted than you, you may well believe," replied the
Minister with great seriousness, "but after all why did not this cruel
boy come to me for a passport in a suitable name, since he was anxious
to penetrate into Lombardy? On the first news of his arrest, I should
have set off for Milan, and the friends I have in those parts would have
obligingly shut their eyes and pretended to believe that their police
had arrested a subject of the Prince of Parma. The story of your
adventures is charming, amusing, I readily agree," the Conte went on,
adopting a less sinister tone; "your rush from the wood on to the high
road quite thrills me; but, between ourselves, since this servant held
your life in his hands, you had the right to take his. We are about to
arrange a brilliant future for Your Excellency; at least, the Signora
here orders me to do so, and I do not believe that my greatest enemies
can accuse me of having ever disobeyed her commands. What a bitter grief
for her and for myself if, in this sort of steeplechase which you appear
to have been riding on this thin horse, he had made a false step! It
would almost have been better," the Conte added, "if the horse had
broken your neck for you."
_GALEAZZO, DUKE OF MILAN_
"You are very tragic this evening, my friend," said the Duchessa, quite
overcome.
"That is because we are surrounded by tragic events," replied the Conte,
also with emotion; "we are not in France, where everything ends in song,
or in imprisonment for a year or two, and really it is wrong of me to
speak of all this to you in a jocular tone. Well, now, my young nephew,
just suppose that I find a chance to make you a Bishop, for really I
cannot begin with the Archbishopric of Parma, as is desired, most
reasonably, by the Signora Duchessa here present; in that Bishopric,
where you will be far removed from our sage counsels, just tell us
roughly what your policy will be?"
"To kill the devil rather than let him kill me, in the admirable words
of my friends the French," replied Fabrizio with blazing eyes; "to keep,
by every means in my power, including pistols, the position you will
have secured for me. I have read in the del Dongo genealogy the story of
that ancestor of ours who built the castle of Grianta. Towards the end
of his life, his good friend Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, sent him to visit
a fortress on our lake; they were afraid of another invasion by the
Swiss. 'I must just write a few civil words to the governor,' the Duke
of Milan said to him as he was sending him off. He wrote and handed our
ancestor a note of a couple of lines; then he asked for it back to seal
it. 'It will be more polite,' the Prince explained. Vespasiano del Dongo
started off, but, as he was sailing over the lake, an old Greek tale
came into his mind, for he was a man of learning; he opened his liege
lord's letter and found inside an order addressed to the governor of the
castle to put him to death as soon as he should arrive. The Sforza, too
much intent on the trick he was playing our ancestor, had left a space
between the end of the letter and his signature; Vespasiano del Dongo
wrote in this space an order proclaiming himself Governor General of all
the castles on the lake, and tore off the original letter. Arriving at
the fort, where his authority was duly acknowledged, he flung the
commandant down a well, declared war on the Sforza, and after a few
years exchanged his fortress for those vast estates which have made the
fortune of every branch of our family, and one day will bring in to me,
personally, an income of four thousand lire."
"You talk like an academician," exclaimed the Conte, laughing; "that was
a bold stroke with a vengeance; but it is only once in ten years that
one has a chance to do anything so sensational. A creature who is half
an idiot, but who keeps a sharp look-out, and acts prudently all his
life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of imagination.
It was by a foolish error of imagination that Napoleon was led to
surrender to the prudent _John Bull_, instead of seeking to conquer
America. John Bull, in his counting-house, had a hearty laugh at his
letter in which he quotes Themistocles. In all ages, the base Sancho
Panza triumphs, you will find, in the long run, over the sublime Don
Quixote. If you are willing to agree to do nothing extraordinary, I have
no doubt that you will be a highly respected, if not a highly
respectable Bishop. In any case, what I said just now holds good: Your
Excellency acted with great levity in the affair of the horse; he was
within a finger's breadth of perpetual imprisonment."
_A CONQUEST_
This statement made Fabrizio shudder. He remained plunged in a profound
astonishment. "Was that," he wondered, "the prison with which I am
threatened? Is that the crime which I was not to commit?" The
predictions of Blanès, which as prophecies he utterly derided, assumed
in his eyes all the importance of authentic forecasts.
"Why, what is the matter with you?" the Duchessa asked him, in surprise;
"the Conte has plunged you in a sea of dark thoughts."
"I am illuminated by a new truth, and, instead of revolting against it,
my mind adopts it. It is true, I passed very near to an endless
imprisonment! But that footman looked so nice in his English jacket! It
would have been such a pity to kill him!"
The Minister was enchanted with his little air of wisdom.
"He is excellent in every respect," he said, with his eyes on the
Duchessa. "I may tell you, my friend, that you have made a conquest, and
one that is perhaps the most desirable of all."
"Ah!" thought Fabrizio, "now for some joke about little Marietta." He
was mistaken; the Conte went on to say:
"Your _Gospel_ simplicity has won the heart of our venerable Archbishop,
Father Landriani. One of these days we are going to make a Grand Vicar
of you, and the charming part of the whole joke is that the three
existing Grand Vicars, all most deserving men, workers, two of whom, I
fancy, were Grand Vicars before you were born, will demand, in a finely
worded letter addressed to their Archbishop, that you shall rank first
among them. These gentlemen base their plea in the first place upon your
virtues, and also upon the fact that you are the great-nephew of the
famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo. When I learned the respect that
they felt for your virtues, I immediately made the senior Vicar
General's nephew a captain; he had been a lieutenant ever since the
siege of Tarragona by Marshal Suchet."
"Go right away now, dressed as you are, and pay a friendly visit to your
Archbishop!" exclaimed the Duchessa. "Tell him about your sister's
wedding; when he hears that she is to be a Duchessa, he will think you
more apostolic than ever. But, remember, you know nothing of what the
Conte has just told you about your future promotion."
Fabrizio hastened to the archiépiscopal palace; there he shewed himself
simple and modest, a tone which he assumed only too easily; whereas it
required an effort for him to play the great gentleman. As he listened
to the somewhat prolix stories of Monsignor Landriani, he was saying to
himself: "Ought I to have fired my pistol at the footman who was leading
the thin horse?" His reason said to him: "Yes," but his heart could not
accustom itself to the bleeding image of the handsome young man, falling
from his horse, all disfigured.
"That prison in which I should have been swallowed up, if the horse had
stumbled, was that the prison with which I was threatened by all those
forecasts?"
This question was of the utmost importance to him, and the Archbishop
was gratified by his air of profound attention.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On leaving the Archbishop's Palace, Fabrizio hastened to see little
Marietta; he could hear from the street the loud voice of Giletti who
had sent out for wine and was regaling himself with his friends the
prompter and the candle-snuffers. The _mammaccia_, who played the part
of mother, came alone in answer to his signal.
"A lot has happened since you were here," she cried; "two or three of
our actors are accused of having celebrated the great Napoleon's _festa_
with an orgy, and our poor company, which they say is Jacobin, has been
ordered to leave the States of Parma, and _evviva Napoleone_! But the
Minister has had a finger in that pie, they say. One thing certain is
that Giletti has got money, I don't know how much, but I've seen him
with a fistful of scudi. Marietta has had five scudi from our manager to
pay for the journey to Mantua and Venice, and I have had one. She is
still in love with you, but Giletti frightens her; three days ago, at
the last performance we gave, he absolutely wanted to kill her; he dealt
her two proper blows, and, what was abominable of him, tore her blue
shawl. If you would care to give her a blue shawl, you would be a very
good boy, and we can say that we won it in a lottery. The drum-major of
the _carabinieri_ is giving an assault-at-arms to-morrow, you will find
the hour posted up at all the street-corners. Come and see us; if he has
gone to the assault, and we have any reason to hope that he will stay
away for some time, I shall be at the window, and I shall give you a
signal to come up. Try to bring us something really nice, and Marietta
will be madly in love with you."
As he made his way down the winding staircase of this foul rookery,
Fabrizio was filled with compunction. "I have not altered in the least,"
he said to himself; "all the fine resolutions I made on the shore of our
lake, when I looked at life with so philosophic an eye, have gone to the
winds. My mind has lost its normal balance; the whole thing was a dream,
and vanishes before the stern reality. Now would be the time for action,"
he told himself as he entered the _palazzo_ Sanseverina about eleven
o'clock that evening. But it was in vain that he sought in his heart for
the courage to speak with that sublime sincerity which had seemed to him
so easy, the night he spent by the shore of the Lake of Como. "I am
going to vex the person whom I love best in the world; if I speak, I
shall simply seem to be jesting in the worst of taste; I am not worth
anything, really, except in certain moments of exaltation.
"The Conte has behaved admirably towards me," he said to the Duchessa,
after he had given her an account of his visit to the Archbishop's
Palace; "I appreciate his conduct all the more, in that I think I am
right in saying that personally I have made only a very moderate
impression on him: my behaviour towards him ought therefore to be
strictly correct. He has his excavations at Sanguigna, about which he is
still madly keen, if one is to judge, that is, by his expedition the day
before yesterday: he went twelve leagues at a gallop in order to spend a
couple of hours with his workmen. If they find fragments of statues in
the ancient temple, the foundations of which he has just laid bare, he
is afraid of their being stolen; I should like to propose to him that I
should go and spend a night or two at Sanguigna. To-morrow, about five,
I have to see the Archbishop again; I can start in the evening and take
advantage of the cool night air for the journey."
_SANGUIGNA_
The Duchessa did not at first reply.
"One would think you were seeking excuses for staying away from me," she
said to him at length with extreme affection: "No sooner do you come
back from Belgirate than you find a reason for going off again."
"Here is a fine opportunity for speaking," thought Fabrizio. "But by the
lake I was a trifle mad; I did not realise, in my enthusiasm for
sincerity, that my compliment ended in an impertinence. It was a
question of saying: 'I love you with the most devoted friendship, etc.,
etc., but my heart is not susceptible to love.' Is not that as much as
to say: 'I see that you are in love with me: but take care, I cannot pay
you back in the same coin.' If it is love that she feels, the Duchessa
may be annoyed at its being guessed, and she will be revolted by my
impudence if all that she feels for me is friendship pure and
simple . . . and that is one of the offences people never forgive."
While he weighed these important thoughts in his mind, Fabrizio, quite
unconsciously, was pacing up and down the drawing-room with the grave
air, full of dignity, of a man who sees disaster staring him in the
face.
The Duchessa gazed at him with admiration; this was no longer the child
she had seen come into the world, this was no longer the nephew always
ready to obey her; this was a serious man, a man whom it would be
delicious to make fall in love with her. She rose from the ottoman on
which she was sitting, and, flinging herself into his arms in a
transport of emotion:
"So you want to run away from me?" she asked him.
"No," he replied with the air of a Roman Emperor, "but I want to act
wisely."
This speech was capable of several interpretations; Fabrizio did not
feel that he had the courage to go any farther and to run the risk of
wounding this adorable woman. He was too young, too susceptible to
sudden emotion; his brain could not supply him with any elegant turn of
speech to give expression to what he wished to say. By a natural
transport, and in defiance of all reason, he took this charming woman in
his arms and smothered her in kisses. At that moment the Conte's
carriage could be heard coming into the courtyard, and almost
immediately the Conte himself entered the room; he seemed greatly moved.
"You inspire very singular passions," he said to Fabrizio, who stood
still, almost dumbfoundered by this remark.
"The Archbishop had this evening the audience which His Serene Highness
grants him every Thursday; the Prince has just been telling me that the
Archbishop, who seemed greatly troubled, began with a set speech,
learned by heart, and extremely clever, of which at first the Prince
could understand nothing at all. Landriani ended by declaring that it
was important for the Church in Parma that _Monsignor_ Fabrizio del Dongo
should be appointed his First Vicar General, and, in addition, as soon
as he should have completed his twenty-fourth year, his Coadjutor _with
eventual succession_.
"The last clause alarmed me, I must admit," said the Conte: "it is going
a little too fast, and I was afraid of an outburst from the Prince; but
he looked at me with a smile, and said to me in French: 'Ce sont là de
vos coups, monsieur!'
_THE AUDIENCE_
"'I can take my oath, before God and before Your Highness,' I exclaimed
with all the unction possible, 'that I knew absolutely nothing about the
words _eventual succession_.' Then I told him the truth, what in fact we
were discussing together here a few hours ago; I added, impulsively,
that, so far as the future was concerned, I should regard myself as most
bounteously rewarded with His Highness's favour if he would deign to
allow me a minor Bishopric to begin with. The Prince must have believed
me, for he thought fit to be gracious; he said to me with the greatest
possible simplicity: 'This is an official matter between the Archbishop
and myself; you do not come into it at all; the worthy man delivered me
a kind of report, of great length and tedious to a degree, at the end of
which he came to an official proposal; I answered him very coldly that
the person in question was extremely young, and, moreover, a very recent
arrival at my court, that I should almost be giving the impression that
I was honouring a bill of exchange drawn upon me by the Emperor, in
giving the prospect of so high a dignity to the son of one of the
principal officers of his Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. The Archbishop
protested that no recommendation of that sort had been made. That was a
pretty stupid thing to say to _me_. I was surprised to hear it come from a
man of his experience; but he always loses his head when he speaks to
me, and this evening he was more troubled than ever, which gave me the
idea that he was passionately anxious to secure the appointment. I told
him that I knew better than he that there had been no recommendation
from any high quarter in favour of this del Dongo, that nobody at my
court denied his capacity, that they did not speak at all too badly of
his morals, but that I was afraid of his being liable to enthusiasm, and
that I had made it a rule never to promote to considerable positions
fools of that sort, with whom a Prince can never be sure of anything.
Then,' His Highness went on, 'I had to submit to a fresh tirade almost
as long as the first; the Archbishop sang me the praises of the
enthusiasm of the _Casa di Dio_. Clumsy fellow, I said to myself, you
are going astray, you are endangering an appointment which was almost
confirmed; you ought to have cut your speech short and thanked me
effusively. Not a bit of it; he continued his homily with a ridiculous
intrepidity; I had to think of a reply which would not be too
unfavourable to young del Dongo; I found one, and by no means a bad one,
as you shall judge for yourself. Monsignore, I said to him, Pius VII was
a great Pope and a great saint: among all the Sovereigns, he alone dared
to say _No_ to the tyrant who saw Europe at his feet: very well, he was
liable to enthusiasm, which led him, when he was Bishop of Imola, to
write that famous Pastoral of the _Citizen-Cardinal_ Chiaramonti, in
support of the Cisalpine Republic.
"'My poor Archbishop was left stupefied, and, to complete his
stupefaction, I said to him with a very serious air: Good-bye,
Monsignore, I shall take twenty-four hours to consider your proposal.
The poor man added various supplications, by no means well expressed and
distinctly inopportune after the word _Good-bye_ had been uttered by me.
Now, Conte Mosca della Rovere, I charge you to inform the Duchessa that
I have no wish to delay for twenty-four hours a decision which may be
agreeable to her; sit down there and write the Archbishop the letter of
approval which will bring the whole matter to an end.' I wrote the
letter, he signed it, and said to me: 'Take it, immediately, to the
Duchessa.' Here, Signora, is the letter, and it is this that has given
me an excuse for taking the pleasure of seeing you again this evening."
The Duchessa read the letter with rapture. While the Conte was telling
his long story, Fabrizio had had time to collect himself: he shewed no
sign of astonishment at the incident, he took the whole thing like a
true nobleman who naturally has always supposed himself entitled to
these extraordinary advancements, these strokes of fortune which would
unhinge a plebeian mind; he spoke of his gratitude, but in polished
terms, and ended by saying to the Conte:
_TITULAR AND COADJUTOR_
"A good courtier ought to flatter the ruling passion; yesterday you
expressed the fear that your workmen at Sanguigna might steal any
fragments of ancient sculpture they brought to light; I am extremely
fond of excavation, myself; with your kind permission, I will go to
superintend the workmen. To-morrow evening, after suitably expressing my
thanks at the Palace and to the Archbishop, I shall start for
Sanguigna."
"But can you guess," the Duchessa asked the Conte, "what can have given
rise to this sudden passion on our good Archbishop's part for Fabrizio?"
"I have no need to guess; the Grand Vicar whose nephew I made a captain
said to me yesterday: 'Father Landriani starts from this absolute
principle, that the titular is superior to the coadjutor, and is beside
himself with joy at the prospect of having a del Dongo under his orders,
and of having done him a service.' Everything that can draw attention to
Fabrizio's noble birth adds to his secret happiness: that he should have
a man like that as his aide-de-camp! In the second place, Monsignor
Fabrizio has taken his fancy, he does not feel in the least shy before
him; finally, he has been nourishing for the last ten years a very
vigorous hatred of the Bishop of Piacenza, who openly boasts of his
claim to succeed him in the see of Parma, and is moreover the son of a
miller. It is with a view to this eventual succession that the Bishop of
Piacenza has formed very close relations with the Marchesa Raversi, and
now their intimacy is making the Archbishop tremble for the success of
his favourite scheme, to have a del Dongo on his staff and to give him
orders."
Two days after this, at an early hour in the morning, Fabrizio was
directing the work of excavation at Sanguigna, opposite Colorno (which
is the Versailles of the Princes of Parma); these excavations extended
over the plain close to the high road which runs from Parma to the bridge
of Casalmaggiore, the first town on Austrian territory. The workmen were
intersecting the plain with a long trench, eight feet deep and as narrow
as possible: they were engaged in seeking, along the old Roman Way, for
the ruins of a second temple which, according to local reports, had
still been in existence in the middle ages. Despite the Prince's orders,
many of the _contadini_ looked with misgivings on these long ditches
running across their property. Whatever one might say to them, they
imagined that a search was being made for treasure, and Fabrizio's
presence was especially desirable with a view to preventing any little
unrest. He was by no means bored, he followed the work with keen
interest; from time to time they turned up some medal, and he saw to it
that the workmen did not have time to arrange among themselves to make
off with it.
The day was fine, the time about six o'clock in the morning: he had
borrowed an old gun, single-barrelled; he shot several larks; one of
them, wounded, was falling upon the high road. Fabrizio, as he went
after it, caught sight, in the distance, of a carriage that was coming
from Parma and making for the frontier at Casalmaggiore. He had just
reloaded his gun when, the carriage which was extremely dilapidated
coming towards him at a snail's pace, he recognised little Marietta; she
had, on either side of her, the big bully Giletti and the old woman whom
she passed off as her mother.
Giletti imagined that Fabrizio had posted himself there in the middle of
the road, and with a gun in his hand, to insult him, and perhaps even to
carry off his little Marietta. Like a man of valour, he jumped down from
the carriage; he had in his left hand a large and very rusty pistol, and
held in his right a sheathed sword, which he used when the limitations
of the company obliged them to cast him for the part of some Marchese.
_GILETTI_
"Ha! Brigand!" he shouted, "I am very glad to find you here, a league
from the frontier; I'll settle your account for you, right away; you're
not protected here by your violet stockings."
Fabrizio was engaged in smiling at little Marietta, and barely heeding
the jealous shouts of Giletti, when suddenly he saw within three feet of
his chest the muzzle of the rusty pistol; he was just in time to aim a
blow at it, using his gun as a club: the pistol went off, but did not
hit anyone.
"Stop, will you, you ----," cried Giletti to the _vetturino_; at the
same time he was quick enough to spring to the muzzle of his adversary's
gun and to hold it so that it pointed away from his body; Fabrizio and
he pulled at the gun, each with his whole strength. Giletti, who was a
great deal the more vigorous of the two, placing one hand in front of
the other, kept creeping forward towards the lock, and was on the point
of snatching away the gun when Fabrizio, to prevent him from making use
of it, fired. He had indeed seen, first, that the muzzle of the gun was
more than three inches above Giletti's shoulder: still, the detonation
occurred close to the man's ear. He was somewhat startled at first, but
at once recovered himself:
"Oh, so you want to blow my head off, you scum! Just let me settle your
reckoning." Giletti flung away the scabbard of his Marchese's sword, and
fell upon Fabrizio with admirable swiftness. Our hero had no weapon, and
gave himself up for lost.
He made for the carriage, which had stopped some ten yards beyond
Giletti; he passed to the left of it, and, grasping the spring of the
carriage in his hand, made a quick turn which brought him level with the
door on the right hand side, which stood open. Giletti, who had started
off on his long legs and had not thought of checking himself by catching
hold of the spring, went on for several paces in the same direction
before he could stop. As Fabrizio passed by the open door, he heard
Marietta whisper to him:
"Take care of yourself; he will kill you. Here!"
As he spoke, Fabrizio saw fall from the door a sort of big hunting
knife, he stooped to pick it up, but as he did so was wounded in the
shoulder by a blow from Giletti's sword. Fabrizio, on rising to his
feet, found himself within six inches of Giletti, who struck him a
furious blow in the face with the hilt of his sword; this blow was
delivered with so much force that it completely took away Fabrizio's
senses. At that moment, he was on the point of being killed. Fortunately
for him, Giletti was still too near to be able to give him a thrust with
the point. Fabrizio, when he came to himself, took to flight, and ran as
fast as his legs would carry him; as he ran, he flung away the sheath of
the hunting knife, and then, turning smartly round, found himself three
paces ahead of Giletti, who was in pursuit. Giletti rushed on, Fabrizio
struck at him with the point of his knife; Giletti was in time to beat
up the knife a little with his sword, but he received the point of the
blade full in the left cheek. He passed close by Fabrizio who felt his
thigh pierced: it was Giletti's knife, which he had found time to open.
Fabrizio sprang to the right; he turned round, and at last the two
adversaries found themselves at a proper fighting distance.
Giletti swore like a lost soul: "Ah! I shall slit your throat for you,
you rascally priest," he kept on repeating every moment. Fabrizio was
quite out of breath and could not speak: the blow on his face from the
sword-hilt was causing him a great deal of pain, and his nose was
bleeding abundantly. He parried a number of strokes with his hunting
knife, and made a number of passes without knowing quite what he was
doing. He had a vague feeling that he was at a public display. This idea
had been suggested to him by the presence of the workmen, who, to the
number of twenty-five or thirty, formed a circle round the combatants,
but at a most respectful distance; for at every moment they saw them
start to run, and spring upon one another.
_A DUEL_
The fight seemed to be slackening a little; the strokes no longer
followed one another with the same rapidity, when Fabrizio said to
himself: "To judge by the pain which I feel in my face, he must have
disfigured me." In a spasm of rage at this idea, he leaped upon his
enemy with the point of his hunting knife forwards. This point entered
Giletti's chest on the right side and passed out near his left shoulder;
at the same moment Giletti's sword passed right to the hilt through the
upper part of Fabrizio's arm, but the blade glided under the skin and
the wound was not serious.
Giletti had fallen; as Fabrizio advanced towards him, looking down at
his left hand which was clasping a knife, that hand opened mechanically
and let the weapon slip to the ground.
"The rascal is dead," said Fabrizio to himself. He looked at Giletti's
face: blood was pouring from his mouth. Fabrizio ran to the carriage.
"Have you a mirror?" he cried to Marietta. Marietta stared at him,
deadly pale, and made no answer. The old woman with great coolness
opened a green workbag and handed Fabrizio a little mirror with a
handle, no bigger than his hand. Fabrizio as he looked at himself felt
his face carefully: "My eyes are all right," he said to himself, "that
is something, at any rate." He examined his teeth; they were not broken
at all. "Then how is it that I am in such pain?" he asked himself,
half-aloud.
The old woman answered him:
"It is because the top of your cheek has been crushed between the hilt
of Giletti's sword and the bone we keep there. Your cheek is horribly
swollen and blue: put leeches on it instantly, and it will be all
right."
"Ah! Leeches, instantly!" said Fabrizio with a laugh, and recovered all
his coolness. He saw that the workmen had gathered round Giletti, and
were gazing at him, without venturing to touch him.
"Look after that man there!" he called to them; "take his coat off." He
was going to say more, but, on raising his eyes, saw five or six men at
a distance of three hundred yards on the high road, who were advancing
on foot and at a measured pace towards the scene of action.
"They are police," he thought, "and, as there has been a man killed,
they will arrest me, and I shall have the honour of making a solemn
entry into the city of Parma. What a story for the Raversi's friends at
court who detest my aunt!"
Immediately, with the rapidity of a flash of lightning, he flung to the
open-mouthed workmen all the money that he had in his pockets and leaped
into the carriage.
"Stop the police from pursuing me!" he cried to his men, "and your
fortunes are all made; tell them that I am innocent, that this man
_attacked me and wanted to kill me_."
"And you," he said to the _vetturino_, "make your horses gallop; you shall
have four golden napoleons if you cross the Po before these people
behind can overtake me."
"Right you are," said the man; "but there's nothing to be afraid of:
those men back there are on foot, and my little horses have only to trot
to leave them properly in the lurch." So saying, he put the animals into
a gallop.
_PRECAUTIONS_
Our hero was shocked to hear the word "afraid" used by the driver: the
fact being that really he had been extremely afraid after the blow from
the sword-hilt which had struck him in the face.
"We may run into people on horseback coming towards us," said the
prudent _vetturino_, thinking of the four napoleons, "and the men who
are following us may call out to them to stop us. . . ." Which meant, in
other words: "Reload your weapons."
"Oh, how brave you are, my little Abate!" cried Marietta as she embraced
Fabrizio. The old woman was looking out through the window of the
carriage; presently she drew in her head.
"No one is following you, sir," she said to Fabrizio with great
coolness; "and there is no one on the road in front of you. You know how
particular the officials of the Austrian police are: if they see you
arrive like this at a gallop, along the embankment by the Po, they will
arrest you, no doubt about it."
Fabrizio looked out of the window.
"Trot," he said to the driver. "What passport have you?" he asked the
old woman.
"Three, instead of one," she replied, "and they cost us four francs
apiece; a dreadful thing, isn't it, for poor dramatic artists who are
kept travelling all the year round! Here is the passport of Signor
Giletti, dramatic artist: that will be you; here are our two passports,
Marietta's and mine. But Giletti had all our money in his pocket; what
is to become of us?"
"What had he?" Fabrizio asked.
"Forty good scudi of five francs," said the old woman.
"You mean six, and some small change," said Marietta with a smile: "I
won't have my little Abate cheated."
"Isn't it only natural, sir," replied the old woman with great coolness,
"that I should try to tap you for thirty-four scudi? What are
thirty-four scudi to you, and we--we have lost our protector. Who is
there now to find us lodgings, to beat down prices with the _vetturini_
when we are on the road, and to put the fear of God into everyone?
Giletti was not beautiful, but he was most useful; and if the little
girl there hadn't been a fool, and fallen in love with you from the
first, Giletti would never have noticed anything, and you would have
given us good money. I can assure you that we are very poor."
Fabrizio was touched; he took out his purse and gave several napoleons
to the old woman.
"You see," he said to her, "I have only fifteen left, so it is no use
your trying to pull my leg any more."
Little Marietta flung her arms round his neck, and the old woman kissed
his hands. The carriage was moving all this time at a slow trot. When
they saw in the distance the yellow barriers striped with black which
indicated the beginning of Austrian territory, the old woman said to
Fabrizio:
"You would do best to cross the frontier on foot with Giletti's passport
in your pocket; as for us, we shall stop for a minute, on the excuse of
making ourselves tidy. And besides, the _dogana_ will want to look at
our things. If you will take my advice, you will go through
Casalmaggiore at a careless stroll; even go into the _caffè_ and drink
a glass of brandy, once you are past the village, put your best foot
foremost. The police are as sharp as the devil in an Austrian country;
they will pretty soon know there has been a man killed; you are
travelling with a passport which is not yours, that is more than enough
to get you two years in prison. Make for the Po on your right after you
leave the town, hire a boat and get away to Ravenna or Ferrara; get
clear of the Austrian States as quickly as ever you can. With a couple
of louis you should be able to buy another passport from some
_doganiere_; it would be fatal to use this one; don't forget that you
have killed the man."
_FEAR_
As he approached, on foot, the bridge of boats at Casalmaggiore,
Fabrizio carefully reread Giletti's passport. Our hero was in great
fear, he recalled vividly all that Conte Mosca had said to him about the
danger involved in his entering Austrian territory; well, two hundred
yards ahead of him he saw the terrible bridge which was about to give
him access to that country, the capital of which, in his eyes, was the
Spielberg. But what else was he to do? The Duchy of Modena, which
marches with the State of Parma on the South, returned its fugitives in
compliance with a special convention, the frontier of the State which
extends over the mountains in the direction of Genoa was too far off;
his misadventure would be known at Parma long before he could reach
those mountains; there remained therefore nothing but the Austrian
States on the left bank of the Po. Before there was time to write to the
Austrian authorities asking them to arrest him, thirty-six hours, or
even two days must elapse. All these considerations duly weighed,
Fabrizio set a light with his cigar to his own passport; it was better
for him, on Austrian soil, to be a vagabond than to be Fabrizio del
Dongo, and it was possible that they might search him.
Quite apart from the very natural repugnance which he felt towards
entrusting his life to the passport of the unfortunate Giletti, this
document presented material difficulties. Fabrizio's height was, at the
most, five feet five inches, and not five feet ten inches as was stated
on the passport. He was not quite twenty-four, and looked younger.
Giletti had been thirty-nine. We must confess that our hero paced for a
good half-hour along a flood-barrier of the Po near the bridge of boats
before making up his mind to go down on to it. "What should I advise
anyone else to do in my place?" he asked himself finally. "Obviously, to
cross: there is danger in remaining in the State of Parma; a constable
may be sent in pursuit of the man who has killed another man, even in
self-defence." Fabrizio went through his pocket, tore up all his papers,
and kept literally nothing but his handkerchief and his cigar-case; it
was important for him to curtail the examination which he would have to
undergo. He thought of a terrible objection which might be raised, and
to which he could find no satisfactory answer: he was going to say that
his name was Giletti, and all his linen was marked F. D.
As we have seen, Fabrizio was one of those unfortunates who are
tormented by their imagination; it is a characteristic fault of men of
intelligence in Italy. A French soldier of equal or even inferior
courage would have gone straight to the bridge and have crossed it
without more ado, without thinking beforehand of any possible
difficulties; but also he would have carried with him all his coolness,
and Fabrizio was far from feeling cool when, at the end of the bridge, a
little man, dressed in grey, said to him: "Go into the police office and
shew your passport."
This office had dirty walls studded with nails from which hung the pipes
and the soiled hats of the officials. The big deal table behind which
they were installed was spotted all over with stains of ink and wine;
two or three fat registers bound in raw hide bore stains of all colours,
and the margins of the pages were black with finger-marks. On top of the
registers which were piled one on another lay three magnificent wreaths
of laurel which had done duty a couple of days before for one of the
Emperor's festivals.
_THE PASSPORT_
Fabrizio was impressed by all these details; they gave him a tightening
of the heart; this was the price he must pay for the magnificent luxury,
so cool and clean, that caught the eye in his charming rooms in the
_palazzo_ Sanseverina. He was obliged to enter this dirty office and to
appear there as an inferior; he was about to undergo an examination.
The official who stretched out a yellow hand to take his passport was
small and dark. He wore a brass pin in his necktie. "This is an
ill-tempered fellow," thought Fabrizio. The gentleman seemed excessively
surprised as he read the passport, and his perusal of it lasted fully
five minutes.
"You have met with an accident," he said to the stranger, looking at his
cheek.
"The _vetturino_ flung us out over the embankment."
Then the silence was resumed, and the official cast sour glances at the
traveller.
"I see it now," Fabrizio said to himself, "he is going to inform me that
he is sorry to have bad news to give me, and that I am under arrest."
All sorts of wild ideas surged simultaneously into our hero's brain,
which at this moment was not very logical. For instance, he thought of
escaping by a door in the office which stood open. "I get rid of my
coat, I jump into the Po, and no doubt I shall be able to swim across
it. Anything is better than the Spielberg." The police official was
staring fixedly at him, while he calculated the chances of success of
this dash for safety; they furnished two interesting types of the human
countenance. The presence of danger gives a touch of genius to the
reasoning man, places him, so to speak, above his own level: in the
imaginative man it inspires romances, bold, it is true, but frequently
absurd.
You ought to have seen the indignant air of our hero under the searching
eye of this police official, adorned with his brass jewelry. "If I were
to kill him," thought Fabrizio, "I should be convicted of murder and
sentenced to twenty years in the galleys, or to death, which is a great
deal less terrible than the Spielberg with a chain weighing a hundred
and twenty pounds on each foot and nothing but eight ounces of bread to
live on; and that lasts for twenty years; so that I should not get out
until I was forty-four." Fabrizio's logic overlooked the fact that, as
he had burned his own passport, there was nothing to indicate to the
police official that he was the rebel, Fabrizio del Dongo.
Our hero was sufficiently alarmed, as we have seen; he would have been a
great deal more so could he have read the thoughts that were disturbing
the official's mind. This man was a friend of Giletti; one may judge of
his surprise when he saw his friend's passport in the hands of a
stranger; his first impulse was to have that stranger arrested, then he
reflected that Giletti might easily have sold his passport to this fine
young man who apparently had just been doing something disgraceful at
Parma. "If I arrest him," he said to himself, "Giletti will get into
trouble; they will at once discover that he has sold his passport; on
the other hand, what will my chiefs say if it is proved that I, a friend
of Giletti, put a _visa_ on his passport when it was carried by someone
else." The official got up with a yawn and said to Fabrizio: "Wait a
minute, sir"; then, adopting a professional formula, added: "A
difficulty has arisen." On which Fabrizio murmured: "What is going to
arise is my escape."
As a matter of fact, the official went out of the office, leaving the
door open; and the passport was left lying on the deal table. "The
danger is obvious," thought Fabrizio; "I shall take my passport and walk
slowly back across the bridge; I shall tell the constable, if he
questions me, that I forgot to have my passport examined by the
commissary of police in the last village in the State of Parma."
Fabrizio had already taken the passport in his hand when, to his
unspeakable astonishment, he heard the clerk with the brass jewelry say:
"Upon my soul, I can't do any more work; the heat is stifling; I am
going to the _caffè_ to have half a glass. Go into the office when you
have finished your pipe, there's a passport to be stamped; the party is
in there."
Fabrizio, who was stealing out on tiptoe, found himself face to face
with a handsome young man who was saying to himself, or rather humming:
"Well, let us see this passport; I'll put my scrawl on it."
"Where does the gentleman wish to go?"
"To Mantua, Venice and Ferrara."
"Ferrara it is," said the official, whistling; he took up a die, stamped
the _visa_ in blue ink on the passport, rapidly wrote in the words:
"Mantua, Venice and Ferrara," in the space left blank by the stamp, then
waved his hand several times in the air, signed, and dipped his pen in
the ink to make his flourish, which he executed slowly and with infinite
pains. Fabrizio followed every movement of his pen; the clerk studied
his flourish with satisfaction, adding five or six finishing touches,
then handed the passport back to Fabrizio, saying in a careless tone: "A
good journey, sir!"
Fabrizio made off at a pace the alacrity of which he was endeavouring to
conceal, when he felt himself caught by the left arm: instinctively his
hand went to the hilt of his dagger, and if he had not observed that he
was surrounded by houses he might perhaps have done something rash. The
man who was touching his left arm, seeing that he appeared quite
startled, said by way of apology:
"But I called the gentleman three times, and got no answer; has the
gentleman anything to declare before the customs?"
"I have nothing on me but my handkerchief; I am going to a place quite
near here, to shoot with one of my family."
He would have been greatly embarrassed had he been asked to name this
relative. What with the great heat and his various emotions, Fabrizio
was as wet as if he had fallen into the Po. "I am not lacking in courage
to face actors, but clerks with brass jewelry send me out of my mind; I
shall make a humorous sonnet out of that to amuse the Duchessa."
Entering Casalmaggiore, Fabrizio at once turned to the right along a
mean street which leads down to the Po. "I am in great need," he said to
himself, "of the succour of Bacchus and Ceres," and he entered a shop
outside which there hung a grey clout fastened to a stick; on the clout
was inscribed the word _Trattoria_. A meagre piece of bed-linen
supported on two slender wooden hoops and hanging down to within three
feet of the ground sheltered the doorway of the _Trattoria_ from the
vertical rays of the sun. There, a half-undressed and extremely pretty
woman received our hero with respect, which gave him the keenest
pleasure; he hastened to inform her that he was dying of hunger. While
the woman was preparing his breakfast, there entered a man of about
thirty; he had given no greeting on coming in; suddenly he rose from the
bench on which he had flung himself down with a familiar air, and said
to Fabrizio: "_Eccellenza, la riverisco_! (Excellency, your servant!)"
Fabrizio was in the highest spirits at the moment, and, instead of
forming sinister plans, replied with a laugh: "And how the devil do you
know my Excellency?"
_THE TRATTORIA_
"What! Doesn't Your Excellency remember Lodovico, one of the Signora
Duchessa Sanseverina's coachmen? At Sacca, the place in the country
where we used to go every year, I always took fever; I asked the Signora
for a pension, and retired from service. Now I am rich; instead of the
pension of twelve scudi a year, which was the most I was entitled to
expect, the Signora told me that, to give me the leisure to compose
sonnets, for I am a poet in the _lingua volgare_, she would allow me
twenty-four scudi and the Signor Conte told me that if ever I was in
difficulties I had only to come and tell him. I have had the honour to
drive Monsignore for a stage, when he went to make his retreat, like a
good Christian, in the Certosa of Velleja."
Fabrizio studied the man's face and began to recognise him. He had been
one of the smartest coachmen in the Sanseverina establishment; now that
he was what he called rich his entire clothing consisted of a coarse
shirt, in holes, and a pair of cloth breeches, dyed black at some time
in the past, which barely came down to his knees; a pair of shoes and a
villainous hat completed his equipment. In addition to this, he had not
shaved for a fortnight. As he ate his omelette Fabrizio engaged in
conversation with him, absolutely as between equals; he thought he
detected that Lodovico was in love with their hostess. He finished his
meal rapidly, then said in a low voice to Lodovico: "I want a word with
you."
"Your Excellency can speak openly before her, she is a really good
woman," said Lodovico with a tender air.
"Very well, my friends," said Fabrizio without hesitation, "I am in
trouble, and have need of your help. First of all, there is nothing
political about my case; I have simply and solely killed a man who
wanted to murder me because I spoke to his mistress."
"Poor young man!" said the landlady.
"Your Excellency can count on me!" cried the coachman, his eyes ablaze
with the most passionate devotion; "where does His Excellency wish to
go?"
"To Ferrara. I have a passport, but I should prefer not to speak to the
police, who may have received information of what has happened."
"When did you despatch this fellow?"
"This morning, at six o'clock."
"Your Excellency has no blood on his clothes, has he?" asked the
landlady.
"I was thinking of that," put in the coachman, "and besides, the cloth
of that coat is too fine; you don't see many like that in the country
round here, it would make people stare at us; I shall go and buy some
clothes from the Jew. Your Excellency is about my figure, only thinner."
"For pity's sake, don't go on calling me Excellency, it may attract
attention."
"Very good, Excellency," replied the coachman, as he left the tavern.
"Here, here," Fabrizio called after him, "and what about the money! Come
back!"
"What do you mean--money!" said the landlady; "he has sixty-seven scudi
which are entirely at your service. I myself," she went on, lowering her
voice, "have forty scudi which I offer you with the best will in the
world; one doesn't always have money on one when these accidents
happen."
On account of the heat, Fabrizio had taken off his coat on entering the
_Trattoria_.
"You have a waistcoat on you which might land us in trouble if anyone
came in: that fine _English cloth_ would attract attention." She gave our
fugitive a stuff waistcoat, dyed black, which belonged to her husband. A
tall young man came into the tavern by an inner door; he was dressed
with a certain style.
_THE LANDLADY_
"This is my husband," said the landlady. "Pietro-Antonio," she said to
her husband, "this gentleman is a friend of Lodovico; he met with an
accident this morning, across the river, and he wants to get away to
Ferrara."
"Oh, we'll get him there," said the husband with an air of great
gentility; "we have Carlo-Giuseppe's boat."
Owing to another weakness in our hero which we shall confess as
naturally as we have related his fear in the police office at the end of
the bridge, there were tears in his eyes; he was profoundly moved by the
perfect devotion which he found among these _contadini_; he thought also
of this characteristic generosity of his aunt; he would have liked to be
able to make these people's fortune. Lodovico returned, carrying a
packet.
"So that's finished," the husband said to him in a friendly tone.
"It's not that," replied Lodovico in evident alarm, "people are
beginning to talk about you, they noticed that you hesitated before
turning down our _vicolo_ and leaving the big street, like a man who was
trying to hide."
"Go up quick to the bedroom," said the husband.
This room, which was very large and fine, had grey cloth instead of
glass in its two windows; it contained four beds, each six feet wide and
five feet high.
"Be quick! Be quick!" said Lodovico, "there is a swaggering fool of a
constable who has just been posted here and began trying to make love to
the pretty lady downstairs; and I've told him that when he goes
travelling about the country he may find himself stopping a bullet. If
the dog hears any mention of Your Excellency, he'll want to do us a bad
turn, he will try to arrest you here, so as to get Teodolinda's
_Trattoria_ a bad name.
"What's this?" Lodovico went on, seeing Fabrizio's shirt all stained
with blood and his wounds bandaged with handkerchiefs, "so the _porco_
shewed fight, did he? That's a hundred times more than you need to get
yourself arrested, and I haven't bought you any shirt." Without ceremony
he opened the husband's wardrobe and gave one of his shirts to Fabrizio,
who was soon attired like a prosperous countryman. Lodovico took down a
net that was hanging on the wall, placed Fabrizio's clothes in the
basket in which the fish are put, went downstairs at a run and hastened
out of the house by a back door; Fabrizio followed him.
"Teodolinda," he called out as he passed by the bar, "hide what I've
left upstairs, we are going to wait among the willows, and you,
Pietro-Antonio, send us a boat quickly, we'll pay well for it."
Lodovico led Fabrizio across more than a score of ditches. There were
planks, very long and very elastic, which served as bridges across the
wider of these ditches; Lodovico took up these planks after crossing by
them. On coming to the last canal he took up the plank with haste. "Now
we can stop and breathe," he said; "that dog of a constable will have to
go two leagues and more to reach Your Excellency. Why, you're quite
pale," he said to Fabrizio; "I haven't forgotten the little bottle of
brandy."
"It comes in most useful; the wound in my thigh is beginning to hurt me;
and besides, I was in a fine fright in the police office by the bridge."
"I can well believe it," said Lodovico; "with a shirt covered in blood,
as yours was, I can't conceive how you ever even dared to set foot in
such a place. As for your wounds, I know what to do; I am going to put
you in a cool place where you can sleep for an hour; the boat will come
for us there, if there is any way of getting a boat; if not, when you
have rested a little, we shall go on two short leagues, and I shall take
you to a mill where I shall take a boat myself. Your Excellency knows
far more than I do: the Signora will be in despair when she hears of the
accident; they will tell her that you are mortally wounded, perhaps even
that you killed the other man by foul play. The Marchesa Raversi will
not fail to circulate all the evil reports that can hurt the Signora.
Your Excellency might write."
_THE PO_
"And how should I get the letter delivered?"
"The boys at the mill where we are going earn twelve soldi a day; in a
day and a half they can be at Parma, say four francs for the journey,
two francs for the wear and tear of their shoe-leather: if the errand
was being done for a poor man like me, that would be six francs; as it
is in the service of a Signore, I shall give them twelve."
When they had reached the resting-place in a clump of alders and
willows, very leafy and very cool, Lodovico went to a house more than an
hour's journey away in search of ink and paper. "Great heavens, how
comfortable I am here," cried Fabrizio. "Fortune, farewell! I shall
never be an Archbishop!"
On his return, Lodovico found him fast asleep and did not like to arouse
him. The boat did not arrive until the sun had almost set; as soon as
Lodovico saw it appear in the distance he called Fabrizio, who wrote a
couple of letters.
"Your Excellency knows far more than I do," said Lodovico with a
troubled air, "and I am very much afraid of displeasing him seriously,
whatever he may say, if I add a certain remark."
"I am not such a fool as you think me," replied Fabrizio, "and, whatever
you may say, you will always be in my eyes a faithful servant of my
aunt, and a man who has done everything in the world to get me out of a
very awkward scrape."
Many more protestations still were required before Lodovico could be
prevailed upon to speak, and when, at last he had made up his mind, he
began with a preamble which lasted for quite five minutes. Fabrizio grew
impatient, then said to himself: "After all, whose fault is it? It is
due to our vanity, which this man has very well observed from his seat
on the box." Lodovico's devotion at last impelled him to run the risk of
speaking plainly.
"What would not the Marchesa Raversi give to the messenger you are going
to send to Parma to have these two letters? They are in your
handwriting, and consequently furnish legal evidence against you. Your
Excellency will take me for an inquisitive and indiscreet fellow; in the
second place, he will perhaps feel ashamed of setting before the eyes of
the Signora Duchessa the wretched handwriting of a coachman like myself;
but after all, the thought of your safety opens my mouth, although you
may think me impertinent. Could not Your Excellency dictate those two
letters to me? Then I am the only person compromised, and that very
little; I can say, at a pinch, that you appeared to me in the middle of
a field with an inkhorn in one hand and a pistol in the other, and that
you ordered me to write."
"Give me your hand, my dear Lodovico," cried Fabrizio, "and to prove to
you that I wish to have no secret from a friend like yourself, copy
these two letters just as they are." Lodovico fully appreciated this
mark of confidence, and was extremely grateful for it, but after writing
a few lines, as he saw the boat coming rapidly downstream:
"The letters will be finished sooner," he said to Fabrizio, "if Your
Excellency will take the trouble to dictate them to me." The letters
written, Fabrizio wrote an A and a B on the closing lines, and on a
little scrap of paper which he afterwards crumpled up, put in French:
"_Croyez A et B_." The messenger would be told to hide this scrap of
paper in his clothing.
The boat having come within hailing distance, Lodovico called to the
boatmen by names which were not theirs; they made no reply, and put into
the bank a thousand yards lower down, looking all round them to make
sure that they had not been seen by some _doganiere_.
"I am at your orders," said Lodovico to Fabrizio; "would you like me to
take these letters myself to Parma? Or would you prefer me to accompany
you to Ferrara?"
"To accompany me to Ferrara is a service which I was hardly daring to
ask of you. I shall have to land, and try to enter the town without
shewing my passport. I may tell you that I feel the greatest repugnance
towards travelling under the name of Giletti, and I can think of no one
but yourself who would be able to buy me another passport."
"Why didn't you speak at Casalmaggiore? I know a spy there who would
have sold me an excellent passport, and not dear, for forty or fifty
francs."
One of the two boatmen, whose home was on the right bank of the Po, and
who consequently had no need of a foreign passport to go to Parma,
undertook to deliver the letters. Lodovico, who knew how to handle the
oars, set to work to propel the boat with the other man.
"We shall find on the lower reaches of the Po," he said, "several armed
vessels belonging to the police, and I shall manage to avoid them." Ten
times at least they were obliged to hide among little islets flush with
the water, covered with willows. Three times they set foot on shore in
order to let the boat drift past the police vessels empty. Lodovico took
advantage of these long intervals of leisure to recite to Fabrizio
several of his sonnets. The sentiments were true enough, but were so to
speak blunted by his expression of them, and were not worth the trouble
of putting them on paper; the curious thing was that this ex-coachman
had passions and points of view that were vivid and picturesque; he
became cold and commonplace as soon as he began to write. "It is the
opposite of what we see in society," thought Fabrizio; "people know
nowadays how to express everything gracefully, but their hearts have
nothing to say." He realised that the greatest pleasure he could give to
this faithful servant would be to correct the mistakes in spelling in
his sonnets.
"They laugh at me when I lend them my copy-book," said Lodovico; "but if
Your Excellency would deign to dictate to me the spelling of the words
letter by letter, the envious fellows wouldn't have anything left to
say: spelling doesn't make genius." It was not until the third night of
his journey that Fabrizio was able to land in complete safety in a
thicket of alders, a league above Pontelagoscuro. All the next day he
remained hidden in a hempfield, while Lodovico went ahead to Ferrara; he
there took some humble lodgings in the house of a poor Jew, who at once
realised that there was money to be earned if one knew how to keep one's
mouth shut. That evening, as the light began to fail, Fabrizio entered
Ferrara riding upon a pony; he had every need of this support, for he
had been touched by the sun on the river; the knife-wound that he had in
his thigh, and the sword-thrust that Giletti had given him in the
shoulder, at the beginning of their duel, were inflamed and had brought
on a fever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Jew, the owner of the house, had procured a discreet surgeon, who,
realising in his turn that there was money in the case, informed
Lodovico that his _conscience_ obliged him to make his report to the
police on the injuries of the young man whom he, Lodovico, called his
brother.
"The law is clear on the subject," he added; "it is evident that your
brother cannot possibly have injured himself, as he says, by falling
from a ladder while he was holding an open knife in his hand."
Lodovico replied coldly to this honest surgeon that, if he should decide
to yield to the inspirations of his conscience, he, Lodovico, would have
the honour, before leaving Ferrara, of falling upon him in precisely the
same way, with an open knife in his hand. When he reported this incident
to Fabrizio, the latter blamed him strongly, but there was not a moment
to be lost; they must fly. Lodovico told the Jew that he wished to try
the effect of a little fresh air on his brother; he went to fetch a
carriage, and our friends left the house never to return. The reader is
no doubt finding these accounts of all the manœuvres that the absence
of a passport renders necessary extremely wearisome; this sort of
anxiety does not exist in France; but in Italy, and especially in the
neighbourhood of the Po, people talk about passports all day long. Once
they had left Ferrara without hindrance, as though they were taking a
drive, Lodovico sent the carriage back, then re-entered the town by
another gate and returned to pick up Fabrizio with a _sediola_ which he
had hired to take them a dozen leagues. Coming near Bologna, our friends
had themselves taken through the fields to the road which leads from
Florence to Bologna; they spent the night in the most wretched inn they
could find, and on the following day, Fabrizio feeling strong enough to
walk a little, they entered Bologna like ordinary pedestrians. They had
burned Giletti's passport; the comedian's death must by now be common
knowledge, and there was less danger in being arrested as people without
passports than as bearing the passport of a man who had been killed.
Lodovico knew at Bologna two or three servants in great houses; it was
decided that he should go to them and find out how the land lay. He
explained to them that, while he was on his way from Florence,
travelling with his younger brother, the latter, wanting to sleep, had
let him come on by himself an hour before sunrise. He was to have joined
him in the village where he, Lodovico, would stop to escape the midday
heat. But Lodovico, seeing no sign of his brother, had decided to
retrace his steps; he had found his brother injured by a blow from a
stone and with several knife-wounds, and, in addition, robbed by some
men who had picked a quarrel with him. This brother was a good-looking
boy, knew how to groom and drive horses, read and write, and was anxious
to find a place with some good family. Lodovico reserved for use on a
future occasion the detail that, when Fabrizio was on the ground, the
robbers had fled, taking with them the little bag in which the brothers
had put their linen and their passports.
On arriving in Bologna, Fabrizio, feeling extremely tired and not
venturing, without a passport, to shew his face at an inn, had gone into
the huge church of San Petronio. He found there a delicious coolness;
presently he felt quite revived. "Ungrateful wretch that I am," he said
to himself suddenly, "I go into a church, simply to sit down, as it
might be in a _caffè_!" He threw himself on his knees and thanked God
effusively for the evident protection with which he had been surrounded
ever since he had had the misfortune to kill Giletti. The danger which
still made him shudder had been that of his being recognised in the
police office at Casalmaggiore. "How," he asked himself, "did that
clerk, whose eyes were so full of suspicion, who read my passport
through at least three times, fail to notice that I am not five feet ten
inches tall, that I am not thirty-eight years old, and that I am not
strongly pitted by small-pox? What thanks I owe to Thee, O my God! And I
have actually refrained until this moment from casting the nonentity
that I am at Thy feet. My pride has chosen to believe that it was to a
vain human prudence that I owed the good fortune of escaping the
Spielberg, which was already opening to engulf me."
_SAN PETRONIO_
Fabrizio spent more than an hour in this state of extreme emotion, in
the presence of the immense bounty of God. Lodovico approached, without
his hearing him, and took his stand opposite him. Fabrizio, who had
buried his face in his hands, raised his head, and his faithful servant
could see the tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Come back in an hour," Fabrizio ordered him, somewhat harshly.
Lodovico forgave this tone in view of the speaker's piety. Fabrizio
repeated several times the Seven Penitential Psalms, which he knew by
heart; he stopped for a long time at the verses which had a bearing on
his situation at the moment.
Fabrizio asked pardon of God for many things, but what is really
remarkable is that it never entered his head to number among his faults
the plan of becoming Archbishop simply because Conte Mosca was Prime
Minister and felt that office and all the importance it implied to be
suitable for the Duchessa's nephew. He had desired it without passion,
it is true, but still he had thought of it, exactly as one might think
of being made a Minister or a General. It had never entered his thoughts
that his conscience might be concerned in this project of the Duchessa.
This is a remarkable characteristic of the religion which he owed to the
instruction given him by the Jesuits of Milan. That religion _deprives
one of the courage to think of unfamiliar things_, and especially
forbids _personal examination_, as the most enormous of sins; it is a
step towards Protestantism. To find out of what sins one is guilty, one
must question one's priest, or read the list of sins, as it is to be
found printed in the books entitled, _Preparation for the Sacrament of
Penance_. Fabrizio knew by heart the list of sins, rendered into the
Latin tongue, which he had learned at the Ecclesiastical Academy of
Naples. So, when going through that list, on coming to the article,
_Murder_, he had most forcibly accused himself before God of having
killed a man, but in defence of his own life. He had passed rapidly, and
without paying them the slightest attention, over the various articles
relating to the sin of _Simony_ (the procuring of ecclesiastical
dignities with money). If anyone had suggested to him that he should pay
a hundred louis to become First Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Parma,
he would have rejected such an idea with horror; but, albeit he was not
wanting in intelligence, nor above all in logic, it never once occurred
to his mind that the employment on his behalf of Conte Mosca's influence
was a form of Simony. This is where the Jesuitical education triumphs:
it forms the habit of not paying attention to things that are clearer
than daylight. A Frenchman, brought up among conflicting personal
interests and in the prevailing irony of Paris might, without being
deliberately unfair, have accused Fabrizio of hypocrisy at the very
moment when our hero was opening his soul to God with the utmost
sincerity and the most profound emotion.
Fabrizio did not leave the church until he had prepared the confession
which he proposed to make next day. He found Lodovico sitting on the
steps of the vast stone peristyle which rises above the great piazza
opposite the front of San Petronio. As after a storm the air becomes
more pure, so now Fabrizio's soul was tranquil and happy and so to speak
refreshed.
"I feel quite well now, I hardly notice my wounds," he said to Lodovico
as he approached him; "but first of all I have to apologise to you; I
answered you crossly when you came and spoke to me in the church; I was
examining my conscience. Well, how are things going?"
"Excellently: I have taken lodgings, to tell the truth not at all worthy
of Your Excellency, with the wife of one of my friends, who is a very
pretty woman and, better still, on the best of terms with one of the
heads of the police. To-morrow I shall go to declare how our passports
came to be stolen; my declaration will be taken in good part; but I
shall pay the carriage of the letter which the police will write to
Casalmaggiore, to find out whether there exists in that _comune_ a
certain San Micheli, Lodovico, who has a brother, named Fabrizio, in
service with the Signora Duchessa Sanseverina at Parma. All is settled,
_siamo a cavallo_." (An Italian proverb meaning: "We are saved.")
Fabrizio had suddenly assumed a most serious air: he begged Lodovico to
wait a moment, almost ran back into the church, and when barely past the
door flung himself down on his knees; he humbly kissed the stone slabs
of the floor. "It is a miracle, Lord," he cried with tears in his eyes:
"when Thou sawest my soul disposed to return to the path of duty, Thou
hast saved me. Great God! It is possible that one day I may be killed in
some quarrel; in the hour of my death remember the state in which my
soul is now." It was with transports of the keenest joy that Fabrizio
recited afresh the Seven Penitential Psalms. Before leaving the building
he went up to an old woman who was seated before a great Madonna and by
the side of an iron triangle rising vertically from a stand of the same
metal. The sides of this triangle bristled with a large number of spikes
intended to support the little candles which the piety of the faithful
keeps burning before the famous Madonna of Cimabue. Seven candles only
were lighted when Fabrizio approached the stand; he registered this fact
in his memory, with the intention of meditating upon it later on when he
had more leisure.
"What do the candles cost?" he asked the woman.
"Two bajocchi each."
As a matter of fact they were scarcely thicker than quills and were not
a foot in length.
"How many candles can still go on your triangle?"
"Sixty-three, since there are seven alight."
"Ah!" thought Fabrizio, "sixty-three and seven make seventy; that also
is to be borne in mind." He paid for the candles, placed the first seven
in position himself, and lighted them, then fell on his knees to make
his oblation, and said to the old woman as he rose:
"It is _for grace received_.
"I am dying of hunger," he said to Lodovico as he joined him outside.
"Don't let us go to an _osteria_, let us go to our lodgings; the woman
of the house will go out and buy you everything you want for your meal;
she will rob you of a score of soldi, and will be all the more attached
to the newcomer in consequence."
"All this means simply that I shall have to go on dying of hunger for a
good hour longer," said Fabrizio, laughing with the serenity of a child:
and he entered an _osteria_ close to San Petronio. To his extreme
surprise, he saw at a table near the one at which he had taken his seat,
Peppe, his aunt's first footman, the same who on a former occasion had
come to meet him at Geneva. Fabrizio made a sign to him to say nothing;
then, having made a hasty meal, a smile of happiness hovering over his
lips, he rose; Peppe followed him, and, for the third time, our hero
entered the church of San Petronio. Out of discretion, Lodovico remained
outside, strolling in the _piazza_.
"Oh, Lord, Monsignore! How are your wounds? The Signora Duchessa is
terribly upset: for a whole day she thought you were dead, and had been
left lying on some island in the Po; I must go and send off a messenger
to her this very instant. I have been looking for you for the last six
days; I spent three at Ferrara, searching all the inns."
"Have you a passport for me?"
"I have three different ones: one with Your Excellency's names and
titles, a second with your name only, and the other in a false name,
Giuseppe Bossi; each passport is made out in duplicate, according to
whether Your Excellency prefers to have come from Florence or from
Modena. You have only to go for a turn outside the town. The Signor
Conte would be glad if you would lodge at the Albergo del Pellegrino;
the landlord is a friend of his."
Fabrizio, with the air of a casual visitor, advanced along the right
aisle of the church to the place where his candles were burning; he
fastened his eyes on Cimabue's Madonna, then said to Peppe as he fell on
his knees: "I must just give thanks for a moment." Peppe followed his
example. When they left the church, Peppe noticed that Fabrizio gave a
twenty-franc piece to the first pauper who asked him for alms: this
mendicant uttered cries of gratitude which drew into the wake of the
charitable stranger the swarms of paupers of every kind who generally
adorn the Piazza San Petronio. All of them were anxious to have a share
in the napoleon. The women, despairing of making their way through the
crowd that surrounded him, flung themselves on Fabrizio, shouting to him
to know whether it was not the fact that he had intended to give his
napoleon to be divided among all the _poveri del buon Dio_. Peppe,
brandishing his gold-headed cane, ordered them to leave His Excellency
alone.
"Oh! Excellency!" all the women proceeded to cry in still more piercing
accents, "give another gold napoleon for the poor women!" Fabrizio
increased his pace, the women followed him, screaming, and a number of
male paupers, running in from every street, created a sort of tumult.
All this crowd, horribly dirty and energetic, cried out: "_Eccellenza_!"
Fabrizio had great difficulty in escaping from the rabble; the scene
brought his imagination back to earth. "I have got only what I deserve,"
he said to himself; "I have rubbed shoulders with the mob."
Two women followed him as far as the Porta Saragozza, by which he left
the town: Peppe stopped them by threatening them seriously with his cane
and flinging them some small change; Fabrizio climbed the charming hill
of San Michele in Bosco, made a partial circuit of the town outside the
walls, took a path which brought him in five hundred yards to the
Florence road, then re-entered Bologna and gravely handed to the police
official a passport in which his description was given in the fullest
detail. This passport gave him the name of Giuseppe Bossi, student of
theology. Fabrizio noticed a little spot of red ink dropped, as though
by accident, at the foot of the sheet, near the right hand corner. A
couple of hours later he had a spy on his heels, on account of the title
of _Eccellenza_ which his companion had given him in front of the
beggars of San Petronio, although his passport bore none of the titles
which give a man the right to make his servants address him as
Excellency.
_THE INQUIRY_
Fabrizio saw the spy and made light of him; he gave no more thought
either to passports or to police, and amused himself with everything,
like a boy. Peppe, who had orders to stay beside him, seeing that he was
more than satisfied with Lodovico, preferred to go back in person to
convey these good tidings to the Duchessa. Fabrizio wrote two very long
letters to his dear friends; then it occurred to him to write a third to
the venerable Archbishop Landriani. This letter produced a marvellous
effect; it contained a very exact account of the affair with Giletti.
The good Archbishop, deeply moved, did not fail to go and read this
letter to the Prince, who was quite ready to listen to it, being
somewhat curious to know what line this young Monsignore took to excuse
so shocking a murder. Thanks to the many friends of the Marchesa
Raversi, the Prince, as well as the whole city of Parma, believed that
Fabrizio had procured the assistance of twenty or thirty peasants to
overpower a bad actor who had had the insolence to challenge him for the
favours of little Marietta. In despotic courts, the first skilful
intriguer controls the _Truth_, as the fashion controls it in Paris.
"But, what in the devil's name!" exclaimed the Prince to the Archbishop;
"one gets things of that sort done for one by somebody else; but to do
them oneself is not the custom; besides, one doesn't kill a comedian
like Giletti, one buys him."
Fabrizio had not the slightest suspicion of what was going on at Parma.
As a matter of fact, the question there was whether the death of this
comedian, who in his lifetime had earned a monthly salary of thirty-two
francs, was not going to bring about the fall of the Ultra Ministry, and
of its leader, Conte Mosca.
On learning of the death of Giletti, the Prince, stung by the
independent airs which the Duchessa was giving herself, had ordered the
Fiscal General Rassi to treat the whole case as though the person
charged were a Liberal. Fabrizio, for his part, thought that a man of
his rank was superior to the laws; he did not take into account that in
countries where bearers of great names are never punished, intrigue can
do anything, even against them. He often spoke to Lodovico of his
perfect innocence, which would very soon be proclaimed; his great
argument being that he was not guilty. Whereupon Lodovico said to him:
"I cannot conceive how Your Excellency, who has so much intelligence and
education, can take the trouble to say all that before me who am his
devoted servant; Your Excellency adopts too many precautions; that sort
of thing is all right to say in public, or before a court." "This man
believes me to be a murderer, and loves me none the less for it,"
thought Fabrizio, falling from the clouds.
Three days after Peppe's departure, he was greatly astonished to receive
an enormous letter, sealed with a plait of silk, as in the days of Louis
XIV, and addressed _a Sua Eccellenza reverendissima monsignor Fabrizio
del Dongo, primo gran vicario della diocesi di Parma, canonico_, etc.
"Why, am I still all that?" he asked himself with a laugh. Archbishop
Landriani's letter was a masterpiece of logic and lucidity; it filled
nevertheless nineteen large pages, and gave an extremely good account of
all that had occurred in Parma on the occasion of the death of Giletti.
"A French army commanded by Marshal Ney, and marching upon the town,
would not have had a greater effect," the good Archbishop informed him;
"with the exception of the Duchessa and myself, my dearly beloved son,
everyone believes that you gave yourself the pleasure of killing the
histrion Giletti. Had this misfortune befallen you, it is one of those
things which one hushes up with two hundred louis and six months'
absence abroad; but the Marchesa Raversi is seeking to overthrow Conte
Mosca with the help of this incident. It is not at all with the dreadful
sin of murder that the public blames you, it is solely with the
_clumsiness_, or rather the insolence of not having condescended to have
recourse to a _bulo_" (a sort of hired assassin). "I give you a summary
here in clear terms of the things that I hear said all around me, for
since this ever deplorable misfortune, I go every day to three of the
principal houses in the town to have an opportunity of justifying you.
And never have I felt that I was making a more blessed use of the scanty
eloquence with which heaven has deigned to endow me."
_THE ARCHBISHOP_
The scales fell from Fabrizio's eyes; the Duchessa's many letters,
filled with transports of affection, never condescended to tell him
anything. The Duchessa swore to him that she would leave Parma for ever,
unless presently he returned there in triumph. "The Conte will do for
you," she wrote to him in the letter that accompanied the Archbishop's,
"everything that is humanly possible. As for myself, you have changed my
character with this fine escapade of yours; I am now as great a miser as
the banker Tombone; I have dismissed all my workmen, I have done more, I
have dictated to the Conte the inventory of my fortune, which turns out
to be far less considerable than I supposed. After the death of the
excellent Conte Pietranera, whom, by the way, you would have done far
better to avenge, instead of exposing your life to a creature of
Giletti's sort, I was left with an income of twelve hundred francs and
five thousand francs of debts; I remember, among other things, that I
had two and a half dozen white satin slippers coming from Paris and not
a single pair of shoes to wear in the street. I have almost made up my
mind to take the three hundred thousand francs which the Duca has left
me, the whole of which I intended to use in erecting a magnificent tomb
to him. Besides, it is the Marchesa Raversi who is your principal enemy,
that is to say mine; if you find life dull by yourself at Bologna, you
have only to say the word, I shall come and join you. Here are four more
bills of exchange," and so on.
The Duchessa said not a word to Fabrizio of the opinion that was held in
Parma of his affair, she wished above all things to comfort him, and in
any event the death of a ridiculous creature like Giletti did not seem
to her the sort of thing that could be seriously charged against a del
Dongo. "How many Gilettis have not our ancestors sent into the other
world," she said to the Conte, "without anyone's ever taking it into his
head to reproach them with it?"
Fabrizio, taken completely by surprise, and getting for the first time a
glimpse of the true state of things, set himself down to study the
Archbishop's letter. Unfortunately the Archbishop himself believed him
to be better informed than he actually was. Fabrizio gathered that the
principal cause of the Marchesa Raversi's triumph lay in the fact that
it was impossible to find any eye-witnesses of the fatal combat. The
footman who had been the first to bring the news to Parma had been at
the village inn at Sanguigna when the fight occurred; little Marietta
and the old woman who acted as her mother had vanished, and the Marchesa
had bought the _vetturino_ who drove the carriage, and who had now made
an abominable deposition. "Although the proceedings are enveloped in the
most profound mystery," wrote the Archbishop in his Ciceronian style,
"and directed by the Fiscal General, Rassi, of whom Christian charity
alone can restrain me from speaking evil, but who has made his fortune
by harrying his wretched prisoners as the greyhound harries the hare;
although this Rassi, I say, whose turpitude and venality your
imagination would be powerless to exaggerate, has been appointed to take
charge of the case by an angry Prince, I have been able to read the
three depositions of the _vetturino_. By a signal piece of good fortune,
the wretch contradicts himself. And I shall add, since I am addressing
my Grand Vicar, him who, after myself, is to have the charge of this
Diocese, that I have sent for the curate of the parish in which this
straying sinner resides. I shall tell you, my dearly beloved son, but
under the seal of the confessional, that this curate already knows,
through the wife of the _vetturino_, the number of scudi that he has
received from the Marchesa Raversi; I shall not venture to say that the
Marchesa insisted upon his slandering you, but that is probable. The
scudi were transmitted to him through a wretched priest who performs
functions of a base order in the Marchesa's household, and whom I have
been obliged to banish from the altar for the second time. I shall not
weary you with an account of various other actions which you might
expect from me, and which, moreover, enter into my duty. A Canon, your
colleague at the Cathedral, who is a little too prone at times to
remember the influence conferred upon him by the wealth of his family,
to which, by divine permission, he is now the sole heir, having allowed
himself to say in the house of Conte Zurla, the Minister of the
Interior, that he regarded this _bagattella_ (he referred to the killing
of the unfortunate Giletti) as proved against you, I summoned him to
appear before me, and there, in the presence of my three other Vicars
General, of my Chaplain and of two curates who happened to be in the
waiting-room, I requested him to communicate to us his brethren the
elements of the complete conviction which he professed to have acquired
against one of his colleagues at the Cathedral; the unhappy man was able
to articulate only the most inconclusive arguments; every voice was
raised against him, and, although I did not think it my duty to add more
than a very few words, he burst into tears and made us the witnesses of
his full confession of his complete error, upon which I promised him
secrecy in my name and in the names of the persons who had been present
at the discussion, always on the condition that he would devote all his
zeal to correcting the false impressions that might have been created by
the language employed by him during the previous fortnight.
"I shall not repeat to you, my dear son, what you must long have known,
namely that of the thirty-four _contadini_ employed on the excavations
undertaken by Conte Mosca, whom the Raversi pretends to have been paid
by you to assist you in a crime, thirty-two were at the bottom of their
trench, wholly taken up with their work, when you armed yourself with
the hunting knife and employed it to defend your life against the man
who had attacked you thus unawares. Two of their number, who were
outside the trench, shouted to the others: 'They are murdering
Monsignore!' This cry alone reveals your innocence in all its whiteness.
Very well, the Fiscal General Rassi maintains that these two men have
disappeared; furthermore, they have found eight of the men who were at
the bottom of the trench; at their first examination, six declared that
they had heard the cry: 'They are murdering Monsignore!' I know, through
indirect channels, that at their fifth examination, which was held
yesterday evening, five declared that they could not remember distinctly
whether they had heard the cry themselves or whether it had been
reported to them by their comrades. Orders have been given that I am to
be informed of the place of residence of these excavators, and their
parish priests will make them understand that they are damning
themselves if, in order to gain a few soldi, they allow themselves to
alter the truth."
The good Archbishop went into endless details, as may be judged by those
we have extracted from his letter. Then he added, using the Latin
tongue:
"This affair is nothing less than an attempt to bring about a change of
government. If you are sentenced, it can be only to the galleys or to
death, in which case I should intervene by declaring from my
Archepiscopal Throne that I know you to be innocent, that you simply
and solely defended your life against a brigand, and that finally I have
forbidden you to return to Parma for so long as your enemies shall be
triumphant there; I propose even to stigmatise, as he deserves, the
Fiscal General; the hatred felt for that man is as common as esteem for
his character is rare. But finally, on the eve of the day on which this
Fiscal is to pronounce so unjust a sentence, the Duchessa Sanseverina
will leave the town, and perhaps even the States of Parma: in that
event, no doubt is felt that the Conte will hand in his resignation.
Then, very probably, General Fabio Conti will come into office and the
Marchesa Raversi will be triumphant. The great mistake in your case is
that no skilled person has been appointed to take charge of the
procedure necessary to bring your innocence into the light of day, and
to foil the attempts that have been made to suborn witnesses. The Conte
believes that he is playing this part; but he is too great a gentleman
to stoop to certain details; besides, in his capacity as Minister of
Police, he was obliged to issue, at the first moment, the most severe
orders against you. Lastly, dare I say it, our Sovereign Lord believes
you to be guilty, or at least feigns that belief, and has introduced a
certain bitterness into the affair." (The words corresponding to "our
Sovereign Lord" and "feigns that belief" were in Greek, and Fabrizio
felt infinitely obliged to the Archbishop for having had the courage to
write them. With a pen-knife he cut this line out of the letter, and
destroyed it on the spot.)
Fabrizio broke off a score of times while reading this letter; he was
carried away by transports of the liveliest gratitude: he replied at
once in a letter of eight pages. Often he was obliged to raise his head
so that his tears should not fall on the paper. Next day, as he was
sealing this letter, he felt that it was too worldly in tone. "I shall
write it in Latin," he said to himself, "that will make it appear more
seemly to the worthy Archbishop." But, while he was seeking to construct
fine Latin phrases of great length, in the true Ciceronian style, he
remembered that one day the Archbishop, in speaking to him of Napoleon,
had made a point of calling him Buonaparte; at that instant there
vanished all the emotion that, on the previous day, had moved him to
tears. "O King of Italy!" he exclaimed, "that loyalty which so many
others swore to thee in thy lifetime, I shall preserve for thee after
thy death. He is fond of me, no doubt, but because I am a del Dongo and
he a son of the people." So that his fine letter in Italian might not be
wasted, Fabrizio made a few necessary alterations in it, and addressed
it to Conte Mosca.
That same day, Fabrizio met in the street little Marietta; she flushed
with joy and made a sign to him to follow her without speaking. She made
swiftly for a deserted archway; there, she pulled forward the black lace
shawl which, following the local custom, covered her head, so that she
could not be recognised; then turning round quickly:
"How is it," she said to Fabrizio, "that you are walking freely in the
street like this?" Fabrizio told her his story.
_MARIETTA_
"Good God! You were at Ferrara! And there was I looking for everywhere
in the place! You must know that I quarrelled with the old woman,
because she wanted to take me to Venice, where I knew quite well that
you would never go, because you are on the Austrian black list. I sold
my gold necklace to come to Bologna, I had a presentiment that I should
have the happiness of meeting you here; the old woman arrived two days
after me. And so I shan't ask you to come and see us, she would go on
making those dreadful demands for money which make me so ashamed. We
have lived very comfortably since the fatal day you remember, and
haven't spent a quarter of what you gave us. I would rather not come and
see you at the Albergo del Pellegrino, it would be a _pubblicità_. Try
to find a little room in a quiet street, and at the Ave Maria"
(nightfall) "I shall be here, under this same archway." So saying, she
took to her heels.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
All serious thoughts were forgotten on the unexpected appearance of this
charming person. Fabrizio settled himself to live at Bologna in a joy
and security that were profound. This artless tendency to take delight
in everything that entered into his life shewed through in the letters
which he wrote to the Duchessa; to such an extent that she began to take
offence. Fabrizio paid little attention; he wrote, however, in abridged
symbols on the face of his watch: "When I write to the D., must never
say _When I was prelate, when I was in the Church_: that annoys her." He
had bought a pair of ponies with which he was greatly pleased: he used
to harness them to a hired carriage whenever little Marietta wished to
pay a visit to any of the enchanting spots in the neighbourhood of
Bologna; almost every evening he drove her to the _Cascata del Reno_. On
their way back, he would call on the friendly Crescentini, who regarded
himself as to some extent Marietta's father.
"Upon my soul, if this is the _caffè_ life which seemed to me so
ridiculous for a man of any worth, I did wrong to reject it," Fabrizio
said to himself. He forgot that he never went near a _caffè_ except to
read the _Constitutionnel_, and that, since he was a complete stranger
to everyone in Bologna, the gratification of vanity did not enter at all
into his present happiness. When he was not with little Marietta, he was
to be seen at the Observatory, where he was taking a course in
astronomy; the Professor had formed a great affection for him, and
Fabrizio used to lend him his ponies on Sundays, to cut a figure with
his wife on the _Corso della Montagnola_.
_THE MAMMACCIA_
He loathed the idea of harming any living creature, however undeserving
that creature might be. Marietta was resolutely opposed to his seeing
the old woman, but one day, when she was at church, he went up to visit
the _Mammaccia_, who flushed with anger when she saw him enter the room.
"This is a case where one plays the del Dongo," he said to himself.
"How much does Marietta earn in a month when she is working?" he cried,
with the air with which a self-respecting young man, in Paris, enters
the balcony at the Bouffes.
"Fifty scudi."
"You are lying, as usual; tell the truth, or, by God, you shall not have
a centesimo!"
"Very well, she was getting twenty-two scudi in our company at Parma,
when we had the bad luck to meet you; I was getting twelve scudi, and we
used to give Giletti, our protector, a third of what each of us earned.
Out of which, every month almost, Giletti would make Marietta a present;
the present might be worth a couple of scudi."
"You're lying still; you never had more than four scudi. But if you are
good to Marietta, I will engage you as though I were an _impresario_;
every month you shall have twelve scudi for yourself and twenty-two for
her; but if I see her with red eyes, I make you bankrupt."
"You're very stiff and proud; very well, your fine generosity will be
the ruin of us," replied the old woman in a furious tone; "we lose our
_avviamento_" (our connexion). "When we have the enormous misfortune to
be deprived of Your Excellency's protection, we shall no longer be known
in any of the companies, they will all be filled up; we shall not find
any engagement, and, all through you, we shall starve to death."
"Go to the devil," said Fabrizio as he left the room.
"I shall not go to the devil, you impious wretch! But I will go straight
away to the police office, where they shall learn from me that you are a
Monsignore who has flung his cassock to the winds, and that you are no
more Giuseppe Bossi than I am." Fabrizio had already gone some way down
the stairs. He returned.
"In the first place, the police know better than you what my real name
may be; but if you take it into your head to denounce me, if you do
anything so infamous," he said to her with great seriousness, "Lodovico,
shall talk to you, and it is not six slashes with the knife that your
old carcass shall get, but two dozen, and you will be six months in
hospital, and no tobacco."
The old woman turned pale, and dashed at Fabrizio's hand, which she
tried to kiss.
"I accept with gratitude the provision that you are making for Marietta
and me. You look so good that I took you for a fool; and, you bear in
mind, others besides myself may make the same error; I advise you always
to adopt a more noblemanly air." Then she added with an admirable
impudence: "You will reflect upon this good advice, and, as the winter
is not far off, you will make Marietta and me a present of two good
jackets of that fine English stuff which they sell at the big shop in
the Piazza San Petronio."
The love of the pretty Marietta offered Fabrizio all the charms of the
most delightful friendship, which set him dreaming of the happiness of
the same order which he might have been finding in the Duchessa's
company.
"But is it not a very pleasant thing," he asked himself at times, "that
I am not susceptible to that exclusive and passionate preoccupation
which they call love? Among the intimacies into which chance has brought
me at Novara or at Naples, have I ever met a woman whose company, even
in the first few days, was to my mind preferable to riding a good horse
that I did not know? What they call love," he went on, "can that be just
another lie? I feel myself in love, no doubt, as I feel a good appetite
at six o'clock! Can it be out of this slightly vulgar propensity that
those liars have fashioned the love of Othello, the love of Tancred? Or
am I indeed to suppose that I am constructed differently from other men?
That my soul should be lacking in one passion, why should that be? It
would be a singular destiny!"
_THE DUCHESSA_
At Naples, especially in the latter part of his time there, Fabrizio had
met women who, proud of their rank, their beauty and the position held
in society by the adorers whom they had sacrificed to him, had attempted
to lead him. On discovering their intention, Fabrizio had broken with
them in the most summary and open fashion. "Well," he said to himself,
"if I ever allow myself to be carried away by the pleasure, which no
doubt is extremely keen, of being on friendly terms with that charming
woman who is known as the Duchessa Sanseverina, I shall be exactly like
that stupid Frenchman who killed the goose that was laying the golden
eggs. It is to the Duchessa that I owe the sole happiness which has ever
come to me from sentiments of affection: my friendship for her is my
life, and besides, without her, what am I? A poor exile reduced to
living from hand to mouth in a tumble-down country house outside Novara.
I remember how, during the heavy autumn rains, I used to be obliged, at
night, for fear of accidents, to fix up an umbrella over the tester of
my bed. I rode the agent's horses, which he was good enough to allow out
of respect for my blue blood (for my influence, that is), but he was
beginning to find my stay there a trifle long; my father had made me an
allowance of twelve hundred francs, and thought himself damned for
having given bread to a Jacobin. My poor mother and sisters let
themselves go without new clothes to keep me in a position to make a few
little presents to my mistresses. This way of being generous pierced me
to the heart. And besides, people were beginning to suspect my poverty,
and the young noblemen of the district would have been feeling sorry for
me next. Sooner or later some prig would have let me see his contempt
for a poor Jacobin whose plans had come to grief, for in those people's
eyes I was nothing more than that. I should have given or received some
doughty thrust with a sword which would have carried me off to the
fortress of Fenestrelle, or else I should have been obliged to take
refuge again in Switzerland, still on my allowance of twelve hundred
francs. I have the good fortune to be indebted to the Duchessa for the
absence of all these evils; besides, it is she who feels for me the
transports of affection which I ought to be feeling for her.
"Instead of that ridiculous, pettifogging existence which would have
made me a sad dog, a fool, for the last four years I have been living in
a big town, and have an excellent carriage, which things have preserved
me from feelings of envy and all the base sentiments of a provincial
life. This too indulgent aunt is always scolding me because I do not
draw enough money from the banker. Do I wish to ruin for all time so
admirable a position? Do I wish to lose the one friend that I have in
the world? All I need do is to utter a _falsehood_; all I need do is to
say to a charming woman, a woman who is perhaps without a counterpart in
the world, and for whom I feel the most passionate friendship: '_I love
you_,' I who do not know what it is to love amorously. She would spend
the day finding fault with me for the absence of these transports which
are unknown to me. Marietta, on the other hand, who does not see into my
heart, and takes a caress for a transport of the soul, thinks me madly
in love and looks upon herself as the most fortunate of women.
"As a matter of fact, the only slight acquaintance I have ever had with
that tender obsession which is called, I believe, _love_, was with that
young Aniken in the inn at Zonders, near the Belgian frontier."
_FAUSTA_
It is with regret that we have to record here one of Fabrizio's worst
actions; in the midst of this tranquil life, a wretched _pique_ of
vanity took possession of this heart rebellious to love and led it far
astray. Simultaneously with himself there happened to be at Bologna the
famous Fausta F----, unquestionably one of the finest singers of the day
and perhaps the most capricious woman that was ever seen. The excellent
poet Burati, of Venice, had composed the famous satirical sonnet about
her, which at that time was to be heard on the lips alike of princes and
of the meanest street Arabs:
"To wish and not to wish, to adore and on the same day to detest, to
find contentment only in inconstancy, to scorn what the world worships,
while the world worships it: Fausta has these defects and many more.
Look not therefore upon that serpent. If thou seest her, imprudent man,
thou forgettest her caprices. Hast thou the happiness to hear her voice,
thou dost forget thyself, and love makes of thee, in a moment, what
Circe in days of yore made of the companions of Ulysses."
For the moment, this miracle of beauty had come under the spell of the
enormous whiskers and haughty insolence of the young Conte M-----, to
such an extent as not to be revolted by his abominable jealousy.
Fabrizio saw this Conte in the streets of Bologna and was shocked by the
air of superiority with which he took up the pavement and deigned to
display his graces to the public. This young man was extremely rich,
imagined that everything was permitted him, and, as his _prepotenze_ had
brought him threats of punishment, never appeared in public save with
the escort of nine or ten _buli_ (a sort of cut-throat) clad in his
livery, whom he had brought from his estates in the environs of Brescia.
Fabrizio's eye had met once or twice that of this terrible Conte, when
chance led him to hear Fausta sing. He was astonished by the angelic
sweetness of her voice: he had never imagined anything like it; he was
indebted to it for sensations of supreme happiness, which made a
pleasing contrast to the _placidity_ of his life at the time. Could this
at last be love? he asked himself. Thoroughly curious to taste that
sentiment, and amused moreover by the thought of braving Conte M----,
whose expression was more terrifying than that of any drum-major, our
hero let himself fall into the childish habit of passing a great deal
too often in front of the _palazzo_ Tanari, which Conte M---- had taken
for Fausta.
One day, as night was beginning to fall, Fabrizio, seeking to catch
Fausta's eye, was greeted by peals of laughter of the most pointed kind
proceeding from the Conte's _buli_, who were assembled by the door of
the _palazzo_ Tanari. He hastened home, armed himself well, and again
passed before the _palazzo_. Fausta, concealed behind her shutters, was
awaiting his return, and gave him due credit for it. M----, jealous of
the whole world, became specially jealous of Signor Giuseppe Bossi, and
indulged in ridiculous utterances; whereupon every morning our hero had
delivered at his door a letter which contained only these words:
"Signor Giuseppe Bossi destroys troublesome insects and is staying at
the Pellegrino, Via Larga, No. 79."
Conte M----, accustomed to the respect which was everywhere assured him
by his enormous fortune, his blue blood and the physical courage of his
thirty servants, declined altogether to understand the language of this
little missive.
Fabrizio wrote others of the sort to Fausta; M---- posted spies round
this rival, who perhaps was not unattractive; first of all, he learned
his true name, and later that, for the present, he could not shew his
face at Parma. A few days after this, Conte M----, his _buli_, his
magnificent horses and Fausta set off together for Parma.
Fabrizio, becoming excited, followed them next day. In vain did the good
Lodovico utter pathetic remonstrances: Fabrizio turned a deaf ear, and
Lodovico, who was himself extremely brave, admired him for it; besides,
this removal brought him nearer to the pretty mistress he had left at
Casalmaggiore. Through Lodovico's efforts, nine or ten old soldiers of
Napoleon's regiments re-enlisted under Signor Giuseppe Bossi, in the
capacity of servants. "Provided," Fabrizio told himself, when committing
the folly of going after Fausta, "that I have no communication either
with the Minister of Police, Conte Mosca, or with the Duchessa, I expose
only myself to risk. I shall explain later on to my aunt that I was
going in search of love, that beautiful thing which I have never
encountered. The fact is that I think of Fausta even when I am not
looking at her. But is it the memory of her voice that I love, or her
person?" Having ceased to think of an ecclesiastical career, Fabrizio
had grown a pair of moustaches and whiskers almost as terrible as those
of Conte M----, and these disguised him to some extent. He set up his
headquarters not at Parma--that would have been too imprudent--but in a
neighbouring village, in the woods, on the road to Sacca, where his aunt
had her country house. Following Lodovico's advice, he gave himself out
in this village as the valet of a great English nobleman of original
tastes, who spent a hundred thousand francs a year on providing himself
with the pleasures of the chase, and would arrive shortly from the Lake
of Como, where he was detained by the trout-fishing. Fortunately for
him, the charming little _palazzo_ which Conte M---- had taken for the
fair Fausta was situated at the southern extremity of the city of Parma,
precisely on the road to Sacca, and Fausta's windows looked out over the
fine avenues of tall trees which extend beneath the high tower of the
citadel. Fabrizio was completely unknown in this little frequented
quarter; he did not fail to have Conte M---- followed, and one day when
that gentleman had just emerged from the admirable singer's door, he had
the audacity to appear in the street in broad daylight; it must be
admitted that he was mounted upon an excellent horse, and well armed. A
party of musicians, of the sort that frequent the streets in Italy and
are sometimes excellent, came and planted their viols under Fausta's
window; after playing a prelude they sang, and quite well too, a cantata
composed in her honour. Fausta came to the window and had no difficulty
in distinguishing a young man of extremely polite manners, who, stopping
his horse in the middle of the street, bowed to her first of all, then
began to direct at her a gaze that could have but one meaning. In spite
of the exaggeratedly English costume adopted by Fabrizio, she soon
recognised the author of the passionate letters that had brought about
her departure from Bologna. "That is a curious creature," she said to
herself; "it seems to me that I am going to fall in love with him. I
have a hundred louis in hand, I can quite well give that terrible Conte
M---- the slip; if it comes to that, he has no spirit, he never does
anything unexpected, and is only slightly amusing because of the
bloodthirsty appearance of his escort."
On the following day Fabrizio, having learned that every morning at
eleven o'clock Fausta went to hear mass in the centre of the town, in
that same church of San Giovanni which contained the tomb of his
great-uncle, Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, made bold to follow her
there. To tell the truth, Lodovico had procured him a fine English wig
with hair of the most becoming red. Inspired by the colour of his wig,
which was that of the flames that were devouring his heart, he composed
a sonnet which Fausta thought charming; an unseen hand had taken care to
place it upon her piano. This little war lasted for quite a week; but
Fabrizio found that, in spite of the steps he was taking in every
direction, he was making no real progress; Fausta refused to see him. He
strained the effect of singularity; she admitted afterwards that she was
afraid of him. Fabrizio was kept going now only by a faint hope of
coming to feel what is known as _love_, but frequently he felt bored.
"Let us leave this place, Signore," Lodovico used to urge him; "you are
not in the least in love: I can see that you have the most desperate
coolness and commonsense. Besides, you are making no headway; if only
for shame, let us clear out." Fabrizio was ready to go at the first
moment of ill-humour, when he heard that Fausta was to sing at the
Duchessa Sanseverina's. "Perhaps that sublime voice will succeed in
softening my heart," he said to himself; and he actually ventured to
penetrate in disguise into that _palazzo_ where he was known to every
eye. We may imagine the Duchessa's emotion, when right at the end of the
concert, she noticed a man in the full livery of a _chasseur_, standing
by the door of the big drawing-room: that pose reminded her of someone.
She went to look for Conte Mosca, who only then informed her of the
signal and truly incredible folly of Fabrizio. He took it extremely
well. This love for another than the Duchessa pleased him greatly; the
Conte, a perfect _galantuomo_, apart from politics, acted upon the maxim
that he could himself find happiness only so long as the Duchessa was
happy. "I shall save him from himself," he said to his mistress; "judge
of our enemies' joy if he were arrested in this _palazzo_! Also I have
more than a hundred men with me here, and that is why I made them ask
you for the keys of the great reservoir. He gives out that he is madly
in love with Fausta, and up to the present has failed to get her away
from Conte M----, who lets the foolish woman live the life of a queen."
The Duchessa's features betrayed the keenest grief; so Fabrizio was
nothing more than a libertine, utterly incapable of any tender and
serious feeling. "And not to come and see us! That is what I shall never
be able to forgive him!" she said at length; "and I writing to him every
day to Bologna!"
"I greatly admire his restraint," replied the Conte; "he does not wish
to compromise us by his escapade, and it will be amusing to hear him
tell us about it."
Fausta was too great a fool to be able to keep quiet about what was on
her mind; the day after the concert, every melody in which her eyes had
addressed to that tall young man dressed as a _chasseur_, she spoke to
Conte M---- of an unknown admirer. "Where do you see him?" asked the
Conte in a fury. "In the streets, in church," replied Fausta, at a loss
for words. At once she sought to atone for her imprudence, or at least
to eliminate from it anything that could suggest Fabrizio: she dashed
into an endless description of a tall young man with red hair; he had
blue eyes; no doubt he was some Englishman, very rich and very awkward,
or some prince. At this word Conte M----, who did not shine in the
accuracy of his perceptions, conceived the idea, deliciously flattering
to his vanity, that this rival was none other than the Crown Prince of
Parma. This poor melancholy young man, guarded by five or six governors,
under-governors, preceptors, etc., etc., who never allowed him out of
doors until they had first held council together, used to cast strange
glances at all the passable women whom he was permitted to approach. At
the Duchessa's concert, his rank had placed him in front of all the rest
of the audience in an isolated armchair within three yards of the fair
Fausta, and his stare had been supremely shocking to Conte M----. This
hallucination of an exquisite vanity, that he had a Prince for a rival,
greatly amused Fausta, who took delight in confirming it with a hundred
details artlessly supplied.
"Your race," she asked the Conte, "is surely as old as that of the
Farnese, to which this young man belongs?"
"What do you mean? As old? I have no bastardy in my family, thank
you."[11]
As luck would have it, Conte M---- never had an opportunity of studying
this pretended rival at his leisure, which confirmed him in the
flattering idea of his having a Prince for antagonist. The fact was that
whenever the interests of his enterprise did not summon Fabrizio to
Parma, he remained in the woods round Sacca and on the bank of the Po.
Conte M---- was indeed more proud, but was also more prudent since he
had imagined himself to be on the way to disputing the heart of Fausta
with a Prince; he begged her very seriously to observe the greatest
restraint in all her doings. After flinging himself on his knees like a
jealous and impassioned lover, he declared to her in so many words that
his honour was involved in her not being made the dupe of the young
Prince.
"Excuse me, I should not be his dupe if I cared for him; I must say, I
have never yet seen a Prince at my feet."
"If you yield," he went on with a haughty stare, "I may not perhaps be
able to avenge myself on the Prince but I will, most assuredly, be
avenged"; and he went out, slamming the doors behind him. Had Fabrizio
presented himself at that moment, he would have won his cause.
"If you value your life," her lover said to her that evening as he bade
her good night after the performance, "see that it never comes to my
ears that the young Prince has been inside your house. I can do nothing
to him, curse him, but do not make me remember that I can do everything
to you!"
"Ah, my little Fabrizio," cried Fausta, "if I only knew where to find
you!"
Wounded vanity may carry a young man far who is rich and from his cradle
has always been surrounded by flatterers. The very genuine passion that
Conte M---- felt for Fausta revived with furious intensity; it was in no
way checked by the dangerous prospect of his coming into conflict with
the only son of the Sovereign in whose dominions he happened to be
staying; at the same time he had not the courage to try to see this
Prince, or at least to have him followed. Not being able to attack him
in any other way, M---- dared to consider making him ridiculous. "I
shall be banished for ever from the States of Parma," he said to
himself; "Pshaw! What does that matter?" Had he sought to reconnoitre
the enemy's position, he would have learned that the poor young Prince
never went out of doors without being followed by three or four old men,
tiresome guardians of etiquette, and that the one pleasure of his choice
that was permitted him in the world was mineralogy. By day, as by night,
the little _palazzo_ occupied by Fausta, to which the best society of
Parma went in crowds, was surrounded by watchers; M---- knew, hour by
hour, what she was doing, and, more important still, what others were
doing round about her. There is this to be said in praise of the
precautions taken by her jealous lover: this eminently capricious woman
had at first no idea of the multiplication of his vigilance. The reports
of all his agents informed Conte M---- that a very young man, wearing a
wig of red hair, appeared very often beneath Fausta's windows, but
always in a different disguise. "Evidently, it is the young Prince,"
thought M---- "otherwise, why the disguise? And, by gad, a man like me
is not made to give way to him. But for the usurpations of the Venetian
Republic, I should be a Sovereign Prince myself."
On the feast of Santo Stefano, the reports of the spies took on a more
sombre hue; they seemed to indicate that Fausta was beginning to respond
to the stranger's advances. "I can go away this instant, and take the
woman with me!" M---- said to himself; "but no! At Bologna I fled from
del Dongo; here I should be fleeing before a Prince. But what could the
young man say? He might think that he had succeeded in making me afraid.
And, by God, I come of as good a family as he." M----- was furious, but,
to crown his misery, he made a particular point of not letting himself
appear in the eyes of Fausta, whom he knew to be of a mocking spirit, in
the ridiculous character of a jealous lover. On Santo Stefano's day,
then, after having spent an hour with her and been welcomed by her with
an ardour which seemed to him the height of insincerity, he left her,
shortly before eleven o'clock, getting ready to go and hear mass in the
church of San Giovanni. Conte M---- returned home, put on the shabby
black coat of a young student of theology, and hastened to San Giovanni;
he chose a place behind one of the tombs that adorn the third chapel on
the right; he could see everything that went on in the church beneath
the arm of a cardinal who is represented as kneeling upon his tomb; this
statue kept the light from the back of the chapel and gave him
sufficient concealment. Presently he saw Fausta arrive, more beautiful
than ever. She was in full array, and a score of admirers, drawn from
the highest ranks of society, furnished her with an escort. Joyous
smiles broke from her eyes and lips. "It is evident," thought the
jealous wretch, "that she counts upon meeting here the man she loves,
whom for a long time, perhaps, thanks to me, she has been prevented from
seeing." Suddenly, the keen look of happiness in her eyes seemed to
double in intensity; "My rival is here," muttered M----, and the fury of
his outraged vanity knew no bounds. "What sort of figure do I cut here,
serving as pendant to a young Prince in disguise?" But despite every
effort on his part, he could never succeed in identifying this rival,
for whom his famished gaze kept seeking in every direction.
All through the service Fausta, after letting her eyes wander over the
whole church, would end by bringing her gaze to rest, charged with love
and happiness, on the dim corner in which M---- was concealed. In an
impassioned heart, love is liable to exaggerate the slightest shades of
meaning, it draws from them the most ridiculous conclusions; did not
poor M---- end by persuading himself that Fausta had seen him, that,
having in spite of his efforts perceived his deadly jealousy, she wished
to reproach him with it and at the same time to console him for it with
these tender glances?
The tomb of the cardinal, behind which M---- had taken his post of
observation, was raised four or five feet above the marble floor of San
Giovanni. The fashionable mass ending about one o'clock, the majority of
the faithful left the church, and Fausta dismissed the _beaux_ of the
town, on a pretext of devotion; as she remained kneeling on her chair,
her eyes, which had grown more tender and more brilliant, were fixed on
M----; since there were now only a few people left in the building, she
no longer put her eyes to the trouble of ranging over the whole of it
before coming joyfully to rest on the cardinal's statue. "What
delicacy!" thought Conte M----, imagining that he was the object of her
gaze. At length Fausta rose and quickly left the church after first
making some odd movements with her hands.
M----, blind with love and almost entirely relieved of his mad jealousy,
had left his post to fly to his mistress's _palazzo_ and thank her a
thousand, thousand times, when, as he passed in front of the cardinal's
tomb, he noticed a young man all in black: this funereal being had
remained until then on his knees, close against the epitaph on the tomb,
in such a position that the eyes of the jealous lover, in their search
for him, must pass over his head and miss him altogether.
This young man rose, moved briskly away, and was immediately surrounded
by seven or eight persons, somewhat clumsy in their gait, of a singular
appearance, who seemed to belong to him. M----- hurried after him, but,
without any marked sign of obstruction, was stopped in the narrow
passage formed by the wooden drum of the door, by these clumsy men who
were protecting his rival; and when finally, at the tail of their
procession, he reached the street, he was in time only to see someone
shut the door of a carriage of humble aspect, which, by an odd contrast,
was drawn by a pair of excellent horses, and in a moment had passed out
of sight.
He returned home panting with fury; presently there arrived his
watchers, who reported impassively that that morning the mysterious
lover, disguised as a priest, had been kneeling in an attitude of great
devotion against a tomb which stood in the entrance of a dark chapel in
the church of San Giovanni. Fausta had remained in the church until it
was almost empty, and had then rapidly exchanged certain signs with the
stranger; with her hands she had seemed to be making a series of
crosses. M---- hastened to the faithless one's house; for the first time
she could not conceal her uneasiness; she told him, with the artless
mendacity of a passionate woman that, as usual, she had gone to San
Giovanni, but that she had seen no sign there of that man who was
persecuting her. On hearing these words, M----, beside himself with
rage, railed at her as at the vilest of creatures, told her everything
that he had seen himself, and, the boldness of her lies increasing with
the force of his accusations, took his dagger and flung himself upon
her. With great coolness Fausta said to him:
"Very well, everything you complain of is the absolute truth, but I have
tried to keep it from you so that you should not go rushing desperately
into mad plans of vengeance which may ruin us both; for, let me tell you
once for all, as far as I can make out, the man who is persecuting me
with his attentions is one who is accustomed not to meet with any
opposition to his wishes, in this country at any rate." Having very
skilfully reminded M---- that, after all, he had no legal authority over
her, Fausta ended by saying that probably she would not go again to the
church of San Giovanni. M---- was desperately in love; a trace of
coquetry had perhaps combined itself with prudence in the young woman's
heart; he felt himself disarmed. He thought of leaving Parma; the young
Prince, however powerful he might be, could not follow him, or if he did
follow him would cease to be anything more than his equal. But pride
represented to him afresh that this departure must inevitably have the
appearance of a flight, and Conte M---- forbade himself to think of it.
"He has no suspicion that my little Fabrizio is here," the singer said
to herself, delighted, "and now we can make a fool of him in the most
priceless fashion!"
Fabrizio had no inkling of his good fortune; finding next day that the
singer's windows were carefully shuttered, and not seeing her anywhere,
he began to feel that the joke was lasting rather too long. He felt some
remorse. "In what sort of position am I putting that poor Conte Mosca,
and he the Minister of Police! They will think he is my accomplice, I
shall have come to this place to ruin his career! But if I abandon a
project I have been following for so long, what will the Duchessa say
when I tell her of my essays in love?"
One evening when, on the point of giving up everything, he was
moralising thus to himself, as he strolled under the tall trees which
divided Fausta's _palazzo_ from the citadel, he observed that he was
being followed by a spy of diminutive stature; in vain did he attempt to
shake him off by turning down various streets, this microscopic being
seemed always to cling to his heels. Growing impatient, he dashed into a
lonely street running along the bank of the Parma, where his men were
ambushed; on a signal from him they leaped out upon the poor little spy,
who flung himself at their feet; it was Bettina, Fausta's maid; after
three days of boredom and seclusion, disguised as a man to escape the
dagger of Conte M----, of whom her mistress and she were in great dread,
she had undertaken to come out and tell Fabrizio to see someone loved
him passionately and was burning to see him, but that the said person
could not appear any more in the church of San Giovanni. "The time has
come," Fabrizio said to himself, "hurrah for persistence!"
The little maid was exceedingly pretty, a fact which took Fabrizio's
mind from his moralisings. She told him that the avenue and all the
streets through which he had passed that evening were being jealously
watched, though quite unobtrusively, by M----'s spies. They had taken
rooms on the ground floors or on the first storeys of the houses; hidden
behind the shutters and keeping absolutely silent, they observed
everything that went on in the apparently quite deserted street, and
heard all that was said.
"If those spies had recognised my voice," said little Bettina, "I should
have been stabbed without mercy as soon as I got back to the house, and
my poor mistress with me, perhaps."
This terror rendered her charming in Fabrizio's eyes.
"Conte M----," she went on, "is furious, and the Signora knows that he
will stick at nothing. . . . She told me to say to you that she would
like to be a hundred leagues away from here with you."
Then she gave an account of the scene on St. Stephen's day, and of the
fury of M----, who had missed none of the glances and signs of affection
which Fausta, madly in love that day with Fabrizio, had directed towards
him. The Conte had drawn his dagger, had seized Fausta by the hair, and,
but for her presence of mind, she must have perished.
Fabrizio made the pretty Bettina come up to a little apartment which he
had near there. He told her that he came from Turin, and was the son of
an important personage who happened at that moment to be in Parma, which
meant that he had to be most careful in his movements. Bettina replied
with a smile that he was a far grander gentleman than he chose to
appear. It took our hero some little time to realise that the charming
girl took him for no less a personage than the Crown Prince himself.
Fausta was beginning to be frightened, and to love Fabrizio; she had
taken the precaution of not mentioning his name to her maid, but of
speaking to her always of the Prince. Finally Fabrizio admitted to the
pretty girl that she had guessed aright: "But if my name gets out," he
added, "in spite of the great passion of which I have furnished your
mistress with so many proofs, I shall be obliged to cease to see her,
and at once my father's Ministers, those rascally jokers whom I shall
bring down from their high places some day, will not fail to send her an
order to quit the country which up to now she has been adorning with her
presence."
Towards morning, Fabrizio arranged with the little lady's maid a number
of plans by which he might gain admission to Fausta's house. He summoned
Lodovico and another of his retainers, a man of great cunning, who came
to an understanding with Bettina while he himself wrote the most
extravagant letter to Fausta; the situation allowed all the
exaggerations of tragedy, and Fabrizio did not miss the opportunity. It
was not until day was breaking that he parted from the little lady's
maid, whom he left highly satisfied with the ways of the young Prince.
It had been repeated a hundred times over that, Fausta having now come
to an understanding with her lover, the latter was no longer to pass to
and fro beneath the windows of the little _palazzo_ except when he could
be admitted there, and that then a signal would be given. But Fabrizio,
in love with Bettina, and believing himself to have come almost to the
point with Fausta, could not confine himself to his village two leagues
outside Parma. The following evening, about midnight, he came on
horseback and with a good escort to sing under Fausta's windows an air
then in fashion, the words of which he altered. "Is not this the way in
which our friends the lovers behave?" he asked himself.
Now that Fausta had shewn a desire to meet him, all this pursuit seemed
to Fabrizio very tedious. "No, I am not really in love in the least," he
assured himself as he sang (none too well) beneath the windows of the
little _palazzo_; "Bettina seems to me a hundred times preferable to
Fausta, and it is by her that I should like to be received at this
moment." Fabrizio, distinctly bored, was returning to his village when,
five hundred yards from Fausta's _palazzo_, fifteen or twenty men flung
themselves upon him; four of them seized his horse by the bridle, two
others took hold of his arms. Lodovico and Fabrizio's _bravi_ were
attacked, but managed to escape; they fired several shots with their
pistols. All this was the affair of an instant: fifty lighted torches
appeared in the street in the twinkling of an eye, as though by magic.
All these men were well armed. Fabrizio had jumped down from his horse
in spite of the men who were holding him; he tried to clear a space
round him; he even wounded one of the men who was gripping his arms in
hands like a pair of vices; but he was greatly surprised to hear this
man say to him, in the most respectful tone:
"Your Highness will give me a good pension for this wound, which will be
better for me than falling into the crime of high treason by drawing my
sword against my Prince."
"So this is the punishment I get for my folly," thought Fabrizio; "I
shall have damned myself for a sin which did not seem to me in the least
attractive."
Scarcely had this little attempt at a battle finished, when a number of
lackeys in full livery appeared with a sedan-chair gilded and painted in
an odd fashion. It was one of those grotesque chairs used by masked
revellers at carnival time. Six men, with daggers in their hands,
requested His Highness to get into it, telling him that the cold night
air might be injurious to his voice: they affected the most reverential
forms, the title "Prince" being every moment repeated and almost
shouted. The procession began to move on. Fabrizio counted in the street
more than fifty men carrying lighted torches. It might be about one
o'clock in the morning; all the populace was gazing out of the windows,
the whole thing went off with a certain gravity. "I was afraid of
dagger-thrusts on Conte M----'s part," Fabrizio said to himself; "he
contents himself with making a fool of me; I had not suspected him of
such good taste. But does he really think that he has the Prince to deal
with? If he knows that I am only Fabrizio, ware the dirk!"
These fifty men carrying torches and the twenty armed men, after
stopping for a long interval under Fausta's windows, proceeded to parade
before the finest _palazzi_ in the town. A pair of _maggiordomi_ posted
one on either side of the sedan-chair, asked His Highness from time to
time whether he had any order to give them. Fabrizio took care not to
lose his head; by the light which the torches cast he saw that Lodovico
and his men were following the procession as closely as possible.
Fabrizio said to himself: "Lodovico has only nine or ten men, and dares
not attack." From the interior of his sedan-chair he could see quite
plainly that the men responsible for carrying out this practical joke
were armed to the teeth. He made a show of talking and laughing with the
_maggiordomi_ who were looking after him. After more than two hours of
this triumphal march, he saw that they were about to pass the end of the
street in which the _palazzo_ Sanseverina stood.
As they turned the corner, he quickly opened the door in the front of
the chair, jumped out over one of the carrying poles, felled with a blow
from his dagger one of the flunkeys who thrust a torch into his face; he
received a stab in the shoulder from a dirk; a second flunkey singed his
beard with his lighted torch, and finally Fabrizio reached Lodovico to
whom he shouted: "Kill! Kill everyone carrying a torch!" Lodovico used
his sword, and delivered Fabrizio from two men who had started in
pursuit of him. He arrived, running, at the door of the _palazzo_
Sanseverina; out of curiosity the porter had opened the little door,
three feet high, that was cut in the big door, and was gazing in
bewilderment at this great mass of torches. Fabrizio sprang inside and
shut this miniature door behind him; he ran to the garden and escaped by
a gate which opened on to an unfrequented street. An hour later, he was
out of the town; at daybreak he crossed the frontier of the States of
Modena, and was safe. That evening he entered Bologna. "Here is a fine
expedition," he said to himself; "I never even managed to speak to my
charmer." He made haste to write letters of apology to the Conte and the
Duchessa, prudent letters which, while describing all that was going on
in his heart, could not give away any information to an enemy. "I was in
love with love," he said to the Duchessa, "I have done everything in the
world to acquire knowledge of it; but it appears that nature has refused
me a heart to love, and to be melancholy; I cannot raise myself above
the level of vulgar pleasure," and so forth.
It would be impossible to give any idea of the stir that this escapade
caused in Parma. The mystery of it excited curiosity: innumerable people
had seen the torches and the sedan-chair. But who was the man they were
carrying away, to whom every mark of respect was paid? No one of note
was missing from the town next day.
The humble folk who lived in the street from which the prisoner had made
his escape did indeed say that they had seen a corpse; but in daylight,
when they ventured out of their houses, they found no other traces of
the fray than quantities of blood spilled on the pavement. More than
twenty thousand sightseers came to visit the street that day. Italian
towns are accustomed to singular spectacles, but the _why_ and the
_wherefore_ of these are always known. What shocked Parma about this
occurrence was that even a month afterwards, when people had ceased to
speak of nothing but the torchlight procession, nobody, thanks to the
prudence of Conte Mosca, had been able to guess the name of the rival
who had sought to carry off Fausta, from Conte M----. This jealous and
vindictive lover had taken flight at the beginning of the parade. By the
Conte's order. Fausta was sent to the citadel. The Duchessa laughed
heartily over a little act of injustice which the Conte was obliged to
commit to put a stop to the curiosity of the Prince, who otherwise might
have succeeded in hitting upon the name of Fabrizio.
There was to be seen at Parma a scholar, arrived there from the North to
write a History of the Middle Ages; he was in search of manuscripts in
the libraries, and the Conte had given him every possible facility. But
this scholar, who was still quite young, shewed a violent temper; he
believed, for one thing, that everybody in Parma was trying to make a
fool of him. It was true that the boys in the streets sometimes followed
him on account of an immense shock of bright red hair which he displayed
with pride. This scholar imagined that at his inn they were asking
exaggerated prices for everything, and he never paid for the smallest
trifle without first looking up its price in the _Travels_ of a certain
Mrs. Starke, a book which has gone into its twentieth edition because it
indicates to the prudent Englishman the price of a turkey, an apple, a
glass of milk, and so forth.
The scholar with the fiery crest, on the evening of the very day on
which Fabrizio made this forced excursion, flew into a rage at his inn,
and drew from his pocket a brace of small pistols to avenge himself on
the _cameriere_ who demanded two soldi for an indifferent peach. He was
arrested, for to carry pocket pistols is a serious crime!
As this irascible scholar was long and lean, the Conte conceived the
idea, next morning, of making him pass in the Prince's eyes as the rash
fellow who, having tried to steal away Fausta from Conte M----, had
afterwards been hoaxed. The carrying of pocket pistols is punishable at
Parma with three years in the galleys; but this punishment is never
enforced. After a fortnight in prison, during which time the scholar had
seen no one but a lawyer who had put in him a terrible fright by his
account of the atrocious laws aimed by the pusillanimity of those in
power against the bearers of hidden arms, another lawyer visited the
prison and told him of the expedition inflicted by Conte M---- on a
rival who had not yet been identified. "The police do not wish to admit
to the Prince that they have not been able to find out who this rival
is. Confess that you were seeking to find favour with Fausta; that fifty
brigands carried you off while you were singing beneath her window; that
for an hour they took you about the town in a sedan-chair without saying
anything to you that was not perfectly proper. There is nothing
humiliating about this confession, you are asked to say only one word.
As soon as, by saying it, you have relieved the police from their
difficulty, you will be put into a post-chaise and driven to the
frontier, where they will bid you good-bye."
The scholar held out for a month; two or three times the Prince was on
the point of having him brought to the Ministry of the Interior, and of
being present in person at his examination. But at last he gave no more
thought to the matter when the scholar, losing patience, decided to
confess everything, and was conveyed to the frontier. The Prince
remained convinced that Conte M----'s rival had a forest of red hair.
Three days after the escapade, while Fabrizio, who was in hiding at
Bologna, was planning with the faithful Lodovico the best way to catch
Conte M----, he learned that he too was hiding in a village in the
mountains on the road to Florence. The Conte had only two or three of
his _buli_ with him; next day, just as he was coming home from his ride,
he was seized by eight men in masks who gave him to understand that they
were _sbirri_ from Parma. They conducted him, after bandaging his eyes,
to an inn two leagues farther up the mountains, where he found himself
treated with the utmost possible respect, and an abundant supper
awaiting him. He was served with the best wines of Italy and Spain.
"Am I a State prisoner then?" asked the Conte.
"Nothing of the sort," the masked Lodovico answered him, most politely.
"You have given offence to a private citizen by taking upon yourself to
have him carried about in a sedan-chair; to-morrow morning he wishes to
fight a duel with you. If you kill him, you will find a pair of good
horses, money, and relays prepared for you along the road to Genoa."
"What is the name of this fire-eater?" asked the Conte with irritation.
"He is called _Bombace_. You will have the choice of weapons and good
seconds, thoroughly loyal, but it is essential that one of you die!"
"Why, it is murder, then!" said the Conte; growing frightened.
"Please God, no! It is simply a duel to the death with the young man
whom you have had carried about the streets of Parma in the middle of
the night, and whose honour would be tarnished if you remained alive.
One or other of you is superfluous on this earth, therefore try to kill
him; you shall have swords, pistols, sabres, all the weapons that can be
procured at a few hours' notice, for we have to make haste; the police
at Bologna are most diligent, as you perhaps know, and they must on no
account interfere with this duel which is necessary to the honour of the
young man whom you have made to look foolish."
"But if this young man is a Prince. . . ."
"He is a private citizen like yourself, and indeed a great deal less
wealthy than you, but he wishes to fight to the death, and he will force
you to fight, I warn you."
"Nothing in the world frightens me!" cried M----.
"That is just what your adversary most passionately desires," replied
Lodovico. "To-morrow, at dawn, prepare to defend your life; it will be
attacked by a man who has good reason to be extremely angry, and will
not let you off lightly; I repeat that you will have the choice of
weapons; and remember to make your will."
Next morning, about six o'clock, breakfast was brought to Conte M----, a
door was then opened in the room in which he was confined, and he was
made to step into the courtyard of a country inn; this courtyard was
surrounded by hedges and walls of a certain height, and its doors had
been carefully closed.
In a corner, upon a table which the Conte was requested to approach, he
found several bottles of wine and brandy, two pistols, two swords, two
sabres, paper and ink; a score of _contadini_ stood in the windows of
the inn which overlooked the courtyard. The Conte implored their pity.
"They want to murder me," he cried, "save my life!"
"You deceive yourself, or you wish to deceive others," called out
Fabrizio, who was at the opposite corner of the courtyard, beside a table
strewn with weapons. He was in his shirtsleeves, and his face was
concealed by one of those wire masks which one finds in fencing-rooms.
"I require you," Fabrizio went on, "to put on the wire mask which is
lying beside you, then to advance towards me with a sword or with
pistols; as you were told yesterday evening, you have the choice of
weapons."
Conte M---- raised endless difficulties, and seemed most reluctant to
fight; Fabrizio, for his part, was afraid of the arrival of the police,
although they were in the mountains quite five leagues from Bologna. He
ended by hurling at his rival the most atrocious insults; at last he had
the good fortune to enrage Conte M----, who seized a sword and advanced
upon him. The fight began quietly enough.
After a few minutes, it was interrupted by a great tumult. Our hero had
been quite aware that he was involving himself in an action which, for
the rest of his life, might be a subject of reproach or at least of
slanderous imputations. He had sent Lodovico into the country to procure
witnesses. Lodovico gave money to some strangers who were working in a
neighbouring wood; they ran to the inn shouting, thinking that the game
was to kill an enemy of the man who had paid them. When they reached the
inn, Lodovico asked them to keep their eyes open and to notice whether
either of the two young men who were fighting acted treacherously and
took an unfair advantage over the other.
The fight, which had been interrupted for the time being by the cries of
murder uttered by the _contadini_, was slow in beginning again. Fabrizio
offered fresh insults to the fatuity of the Conte. "Signor Conte," he
shouted to him, "when one is insolent, one ought to be brave also. I
feel that the conditions are hard on you; you prefer to pay people who
are brave." The Conte, once more stung to action, began to shout to him
that he had for years frequented the fencing-school of the famous
Battistini at Naples, and that he was going to punish his insolence.
Conte M----'s anger having at length reappeared, he fought with a
certain determination, which did not however prevent Fabrizio from
giving him a very pretty thrust in the chest with his sword, which kept
him in bed for several months. Lodovico, while giving first aid to the
wounded man, whispered in his ear: "If you report this duel to the
police, I will have you stabbed in your bed."
Fabrizio withdrew to Florence; as he had remained in hiding at Bologna,
it was only at Florence that he received all the Duchessa's letters of
reproach; she could not forgive his having come to her concert and made
no attempt to speak to her. Fabrizio was delighted by Conte Mosca's
letters; they breathed a sincere friendship and the most noble
sentiments. He gathered that the Conte had written to Bologna, in such a
way as to clear him of any suspicion which might attach to him as a
result of the duel. The police behaved with perfect justice: they
reported that two strangers, of whom one only, the wounded man, was
known to them (namely Conte M----), had fought with swords, in front of
more than thirty _contadini_, among whom there had arrived towards the
end of the fight the curate of the village, who had made vain efforts to
separate the combatants. As the name of Giuseppe Bossi had never been
mentioned, less than two months afterwards Fabrizio returned to Bologna,
more convinced than ever that his destiny condemned him never to know
the noble and intellectual side of love. So much he gave himself the
pleasure of explaining at great length to the Duchessa; he was
thoroughly tired of his solitary life and now felt a passionate desire
to return to those charming evenings which he used to pass with the
Conte and his aunt. Since then he had never tasted the delights of good
society.
"I am so bored with the thought of the love which I sought to give
myself, and of Fausta," he wrote to the Duchessa, "that now, even if her
fancy were still to favour me, I would not go twenty leagues to hold her
to her promise; so have no fear, as you tell me you have, of my going to
Paris, where I see that she has now made her appearance and has created
a _furore_. I would travel all the leagues in the world to spend an
evening with you and with that Conte who is so good to his friends."
[Footnote 11: Pier-Luigi, the first sovereign of the Farnese family, so
renowned for his virtues, was, as is generally known, a natural son of
His Holiness Pope Paul III.]
END OF VOLUME I
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