The Charterhouse of Parma

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The Charterhouse of Parma Page 20

by Stendhal


  “My friend,” he said to the footman, “I’m not your usual thief; I’ll give you twenty francs right off, but I’m obliged to borrow your horse; I’ll be killed if I don’t clear out of here—the four Riva brothers are after me, those poachers you’ve probably heard of; they just caught me in their sister’s bedroom, I jumped out the window and here I am! They’re out here in the woods with their dogs and their guns. I managed to hide in this hollow tree when I saw one of them cross the road, but their dogs will track me down! I’m going to get on that horse of yours and gallop a good league beyond Como; I’ll throw myself on the Viceroy’s mercy in Milan and leave your horse at the post-house with two napoleons for yourself, if you’ll be good enough to consent. If you put up any resistance, I’ll kill you with one of these pistols. If you alert the police once I’m out of here, my cousin, that’s Count Alari, Equerry to the Emperor, will be sure to break your bones for you.” Fabrizio was inventing this harangue as he went along, speaking in a calm and measured tone of voice. “Besides,” he said with a laugh, “my name’s no secret; I’m the Marchesino Ascanio del Dongo; my castle is close by, at Grianta. Damn you!” he exclaimed, raising his voice. “Let go of that horse!”

  The footman, stupefied, did not utter a word. Fabrizio shifted his pistol to his left hand, grabbed the bridle as the man released it, jumped onto the horse, and cantered off. When he was some three hundred yards away, he realized he had forgotten to give the fellow the twenty francs he had promised; he halted: there was still no one on the road but the footman, who was following him at a gallop; he signaled to him with his handkerchief to come closer and, when he judged him to be about fifty yards away, tossed a handful of coins onto the road and set off again. Looking back, he saw the footman picking up the money. “Now, there’s a truly sensible fellow,” Fabrizio said to himself with a laugh. “Not one unnecessary word.” He rode on at a good pace, stopped toward noon at a lonely inn, and a few hours later was on his way. By two in the morning he was on the shore of Lake Maggiore, where he soon glimpsed his boat, drifting to and fro at its mooring. There was no one in sight to leave the horse with, so he turned the noble creature loose, and three hours later he was in Belgirate. There, finding himself on friendly ground, he took some rest; he was extremely happy, everything having turned out for the best. Dare we indicate the true causes of his joy? His tree had grown splendidly, and his soul had been refreshed by the profound sympathy he had found in the Abbé Blanès’s embrace. “Can he honestly believe,” he wondered, “in all those predictions he made to me? Or since my brother’s described me as a faithless Jacobin capable of anything, does he just want to spare me the temptation of murdering some brute who’s done me a bad turn?”

  Two days later, Fabrizio was in Parma, where he greatly entertained the Duchess and the Count with the story of his journey, down to the last detail, as was his custom.

  Upon his arrival, Fabrizio had found the porter and the other servants of the Palazzo Sanseverina wearing emblems of mourning on their livery. “Whom have we lost?” he now asked the Duchess.

  “That excellent man people call my husband has just died at Baden. He has left me this palace, according to our agreement, but as a sign of true friendship he has added a legacy of three hundred thousand francs, which I don’t know what to do with. I have no desire to renounce it in favor of his niece, the Marchesa Raversi, who plays the most damnable tricks on me every day. You’re an art-lover, you must find me some good sculptor who will carve the Duke’s tomb for three hundred thousand francs.”

  The Count began telling funny stories about the Marchesa Raversi.

  “I’ve had no luck trying to win her over,” the Duchess observed. “As for the Duke’s nephews, I’ve had them all made colonels or generals. In return for which, not a month passes when they don’t send me some horrible anonymous letter—I’ve had to hire a secretary just to read such things.”

  “And these letters are the least of their sins,” Count Mosca continued; “they continue fabricating loathsome denunciations. I could have had the whole clique dragged into court twenty times over, and Your Excellency may be assured,” he added, addressing Fabrizio, “that my good judges would have convicted them one and all.”

  “Well, that’s what spoils everything else for me,” Fabrizio replied with a naïveté which court circles found quite entertaining. “I’d prefer seeing them convicted by magistrates who judge according to their conscience.”

  “You will do me a great favor, traveling as you do to widen your knowledge, if you furnish me the address of such magistrates. I’ll write to them before I go to bed this evening.”

  “If I were Minister, this lack of honest judges would offend my self-esteem.”

  “But it strikes me,” the Count retorted, “that Your Excellency, who is so fond of the French, and who on one occasion even managed to lend them the support of his invincible arm, is momentarily forgetting one of their great maxims: ‘Better kill the Devil than let the Devil kill you.’ I’d like to see how you’d govern these ardent souls who read The History of the French Revolution every day by appointing judges who would acquit the people I accuse. They’d release the most obviously guilty rascals, and regard themselves as so many Brutuses. But I have a bone to pick with you; doesn’t your sensitive soul suffer a certain remorse on account of that fine if somewhat emaciated horse you just abandoned on the shores of Lake Maggiore?”

  “I fully intend,” said Fabrizio, with the utmost seriousness, “to recompense the owner for whatever it costs him to advertise for his lost property, and any other expenses he may have incurred to recover his horse from the peasants who may have found it—I’ll be careful to read the Milan papers, in order to find any notices of a lost horse; I know the description of this one very well.”

  “He is a true primitive,” said the Count to the Duchess. “And what would have become of Your Excellency,” he continued with a smile, “if while he was galloping hell for leather, his borrowed horse had happened to stumble? You’d be in the Spielberg right now, my dear nephew, and all my influence would scarcely manage to reduce by thirty pounds the weight of the chains attached to each of your legs. You’d be spending a good ten years in that agreeable resort; perhaps your legs would become swollen, infected, gangrenous—and in due course they would be amputated on the spot …”

  “Ah, for pity’s sake, stop your grim story there!” exclaimed the Duchess, with tears in her eyes. “Here he is back with us …”

  “And I’m even happier about that than you are, if you can believe it,” replied the Minister, quite seriously. “But why didn’t this cruel child ask me for a passport inscribed with a suitable name, since he wants to cross Lombardy? At the first news of his arrest, I’d have set off for Milan, and my friends there would be happy to close their eyes and pretend to believe their police had arrested a subject of the Prince of Parma. The story of your excursion is certainly entertaining, I won’t deny it for a minute,” resumed the Count with a little less gravity in his voice, “your sortie out of the forest onto the road is quite thrilling, but entre nous, since that footman held your life in his hands, you had every right to take his. We’re about to arrange a brilliant future for Your Excellency, at least so I am commanded by Madame, and I don’t believe my worst enemies can accuse me of ever having disobeyed her orders. What a deadly disappointment for both of us if, during that steeplechase of yours, your famished horse had happened to stumble! It might almost have been better,” the Count added, “if your horse had broken your neck.”

  “You’re quite tragic this evening, my friend,” said the Duchess, deeply moved.

  “That is because we are surrounded by tragic events,” replied the Count, also moved; “we are not in France, where everything ends with a song or a couple of years in prison; and it is quite wrong of me to speak lightly to you of such matters.… Well now, my young nephew, suppose I should find the means to make you a bishop one of these days—for in all conscience we can hardly begin with the
Archbishopric of Parma, as Madame the Duchess here so reasonably desires. In such a bishopric, where you will be quite remote from our sage counsels, can you tell us something of what your politics will be?”

  “To kill the Devil rather than letting him kill me, as my friends the French put it so nicely,” Fabrizio replied, his eyes shining. “To preserve by all possible means, including pistols, the position you will have secured for me. I’ve read in the del Dongo genealogy about our ancestor who built the Castle of Grianta. At the end of his life, his dear friend Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, sent him on a mission to a fortress on our lake shore; there was some danger of another invasion on the part of the Swiss. ‘Let me just dash off a word or two to our commander,’ the Duke said to him as he was leaving. He wrote a couple of lines and handed him the note; then he asked for it back in order to seal it. ‘A matter of politesse,’ said the Prince. Vespasiano del Dongo left, but as he was sailing across the lake, he remembered an old Greek story, for he was a learned man; he opened his good master’s letter and found orders addressed to the commander of the fortress that he be put to death upon his arrival. Galeazzo, all too intent on the trick he was playing on our ancestor, had left a gap between the last line of the note and his signature; in that space Vespasiano del Dongo wrote an order acknowledging himself governor-general of all the fortresses along the lake, and snipped off the original message. Having reached the fortress and been duly acknowledged, he flung the commander into a dungeon, declared war on Galeazzo and all the Sforzas, and after a few years exchanged his fortress for the vast estates which have made the fortunes of every branch of our family, and which will some day provide me personally an income of four thousand lire.”

  “You talk like an academician!” exclaimed the Count with a laugh. “Your story’s a good one, but the opportunity of performing such entertaining feats occurs only once a decade. Any fellow with half a brain who’s aware of what he’s doing and keeps his eyes open often enjoys the pleasure of getting the better of men of imagination. It was such follies of the imagination that induced Napoléon to surrender to a prudent John Bull rather than trying to escape to America. John Bull in his counting-house had a good laugh at Bonaparte’s letter quoting Themistocles. In every age, a base Sancho Panza triumphs over a sublime Don Quixote. If you confine yourself to doing nothing out of the ordinary, I have no doubt that you will be a highly respected if not a highly respectable bishop. Nonetheless my observation stands: Your Excellency behaved frivolously with regard to the horse, and came within an inch of a life sentence.”

  This last remark made Fabrizio shudder; he remained plunged in the deepest amazement. “Could this,” he wondered, “have been the prison threatening me? Is this the crime I must not commit?” The Abbé’s predictions, which he had taken so lightly at the time, now assumed in his eyes all the importance of veritable omens.

  “Now what’s come over you?” asked the astonished Duchess. “Has the Count overwhelmed you with gloomy thoughts?”

  “I am illuminated by a new truth, and instead of rebelling against it, my mind has adopted it. It is true that I had a close call with life imprisonment, but that footman looked so handsome in his English livery: what a shame it would have been to kill him!”

  The Minister was delighted by Fabrizio’s air of discretion. “He is remarkable in every respect,” he said, with his eyes on the Duchess. “Let me tell you, my friend: you’ve made a conquest, and perhaps the most desirable one of all.”

  “Ah!” thought Fabrizio. “Now comes a joke at my expense about little Marietta.” He was mistaken.

  “Your evangelical simplicity,” the Count continued, “has won the heart of our venerable Archbishop, Father Landriani. One of these days we’ll be making you a Grand Vicar, and the cream of the jest is that the present three Grand Vicars, men of great merit, hard workers, and two of whom, I believe, were Grand Vicars since before you were born, will be sending an eloquent letter addressed to their Archbishop, requesting that you rank first among them. These gentlemen base their arguments first of all upon your virtues and then upon the fact that you happen to be the grand-nephew of the famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo. When I discovered the respect in which your virtues were held, I immediately promoted the oldest Grand Vicar’s nephew to the rank of captain; he’s been a lieutenant since Marshal Suchet’s siege of Tarragona.”

  “Go right away, dressed just as you are, and pay an affectionate visit to your Archbishop!” exclaimed the Duchess. “Tell him about your sister’s wedding; when he learns that she’s to be a Duchess, he’ll regard you as altogether apostolical. And remember, you know nothing of what the Count has just confided to you concerning your future nomination.”

  Fabrizio hastened to the Archbishop’s palace; there he was simple and modest, a manner he assumed all too readily; on the other hand, it required a tremendous effort to play the grand seigneur. While listening to Monsignore Landriani’s extended narratives, he kept asking himself: “Should I have shot the footman leading the lean horse?” His reason told him as much, but his heart could not inure itself to the bloody image of the handsome young fellow falling disfigured from his horse. “That fortress which would have swallowed me up, had the horse stumbled—was that the prison all these omens threaten me with?” This question was of the utmost importance to him, and the Archbishop was pleased by his air of profound attention.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On leaving the Archbishop’s Palace, Fabrizio hurried off to little Marietta; from a distance he could hear the loud voice of Giletti, who had sent for wine and was enjoying himself with his friends the prompter and the candle-snuffers. Only the mammaccia, who played the mother’s part, answered his call.

  “New things have happened since you left!” she exclaimed. “Two or three of our actors have been accused of celebrating the great Napoléon’s feast-day with an orgy, and our poor troupe, they call us Jacobins, has been ordered to leave the State of Parma, and bravo Napoléon! But they say the Minister spit in the cuspidor, and one thing’s for sure: Giletti’s got some money, I don’t know how much, but I’ve seen him with a handful of scudi. Our manager’s given Marietta five scudi for the trip to Mantua and Venice, and one for me. She’s still in love with you, but Giletti scares her; three days back, at our last performance, he really wanted to kill her; he gave her two good smacks, and the worst thing is he tore her blue shawl. If you wanted to be nice, you’d give her a blue shawl and we’ll say we won it in a lottery. The drum-major of the carabinieri’s giving an assault-at-arms tomorrow, you’ll see the schedule posted at every street corner. Come and see us; if he’s gone to watch the assault, so we can count on his being gone a while, I’ll be at the window and signal you to come on up. Try to bring us something nice, and Marietta will love you madly.”

  Coming down the winding staircase of this wretched slum, Fabrizio was filled with compunction: “I haven’t changed one bit,” he said to himself; “all those fine resolutions I made at our lake shore when I was looking at life so philosophically have evaporated. My soul was wandering at the time; it was all a dream and dissolves at the touch of real life. This would be the moment for action,” he mused as he returned to the Palazzo Sanseverina at about eleven that evening. But it was in vain that he sought in his heart the courage to speak with that sublime sincerity which had seemed so easy to him during the night he had spent on the shores of Lake Como. “I’m going to disappoint the person I love best in the world; if I speak, I’ll seem no more than a bad actor; I’m worthless really, except in certain moments of exaltation.”

  “The Count has treated me admirably,” he said to the Duchess after describing his visit to the Archbishop’s Palace; “I am all the more appreciative of his conduct since I realize that he is not particularly fond of me; my behavior toward him must therefore be correct in the extreme. He has his excavations at Sanguigna, which he is still quite enthusiastic about, at least judging from his trip the day before yesterday when he galloped twelve leagues to spend two hour
s with his workmen. If they find fragments of statues in that antique temple, the foundations of which he has just unearthed, there’s always the fear of their being stolen, and I thought I might offer to spend thirty-six hours at Sanguigna—tomorrow, around five, I must see the Archbishop again, and then I could leave in the evening and take advantage of the cool night air on the journey.”

  The Duchess did not at first reply. Then, with extreme affection, she remarked, “One might think you were looking for excuses to get away from me; no sooner are you back from Belgirate than you find reasons for leaving again.”

  “Here,” thought Fabrizio, “is a good opportunity to speak. But at the lake I was a little mad, I didn’t realize in my enthusiasm for sincerity that my compliments turn to impertinence; I should be saying something like: I love you with the most devoted friendship, and so on, but my soul is incapable of love. And isn’t that as much as to say: I see that you’re in love with me, but beware, I cannot repay you in the same coin? If she is in love with me, the Duchess may be annoyed to be found out, and she will be disgusted with my impudence if all she feels for me is mere friendship.… That kind of offense is never forgiven.” While he was pondering these important notions, Fabrizio, without realizing it, was striding up and down the salon, his expression filled with the lofty gravity of a man who sees disaster straight ahead of him.

  The Duchess watched him admiringly; he was no longer the boy she had seen grow up, he was no longer the ever-obedient nephew; he was a serious man by whom it would be delicious to be loved. She stood up from the ottoman on which she had been sitting and, passionately flinging herself into his arms, exclaimed: “So you want to run away from me?”

 

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