The Charterhouse of Parma

by Stendhal

  The old woman turned pale and grabbed at Fabrizio’s hand, which she tried to kiss. “I thankfully accept the provisions you have made for Marietta and for me. You have such a kindly face that I took you for a simpleton; and you ought to realize that others besides myself might make the same mistake; my advice to you is to look more like a nobleman.” And then she added with splendid impudence: “It’s good advice—you’d better think it over. And since winter is coming soon, suppose you make us each a present, Marietta and me, of a good coat of that fine English cloth they sell in the big shop in the Piazza San Petronio.”

  The love of pretty Marietta afforded Fabrizio all the delights of the sweetest friendship, which soon reminded him of the same sort of felicity he might have met with at the Duchess’s hands.

  “But how odd it is,” he would occasionally tell himself, “that I’m not susceptible to that exclusive and impassioned preoccupation known as love? Among all the relationships chance has bestowed upon me at Novara or in Naples, have I ever met a woman whose presence, even in the first days, I preferred to a ride on a fine new horse? Is what they call love,” he added, “only one more lie? Doubtless I love the way I have a good appetite at six o’clock! And could it be this rather vulgar propensity which our liars have made into Othello’s jealousy and Tancred’s passion? Or must I assume I am constituted differently from other men? Why should it be that my soul lacks this one passion? What a singular fate is mine!”

  In Naples, especially toward the end of his visit, Fabrizio had encountered women proud of their rank, their beauty, and their position in the society of the suitors they had given up for him, women who had tried to dominate him. No sooner had he realized their intentions than Fabrizio had broken with them in the swiftest and most scandalous fashion. “Now,” he said to himself, “if I ever let myself be carried away by the doubtless intense pleasure of being intimate with that pretty woman known as the Duchess Sanseverina, I shall be precisely like that idiot Frenchman who one day killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It is to the Duchess that I owe the only happiness I have ever derived from tender sentiments; my friendship for her is my very life, and besides, without her what am I? A poor exile reduced to a pathetic existence in a crumbling castle outside Novara. I remember how during the terrible autumn rains I would have to fasten an umbrella over my bed to avoid an accident. I rode the horses of our notary, which he permitted me to do out of respect for my blue blood (for my high birth), but he was beginning to find my stay a bit extended; my father had granted me an allowance of twelve hundred francs and considered himself damned for supporting a Jacobin. My poor mother and my sisters did without dresses to enable me to make a few little presents to my mistresses. This way of being generous pierced me to the heart. And furthermore, people were beginning to suspect I was a poor man, and the young nobles of the region were taking pity on me. Sooner or later some fool would have revealed his scorn for the poor Jacobin whose plans had come to nothing, for in the eyes of such people that is precisely what I was. I would have given or received a good saber-thrust, which would have landed me in the Fortress of Fenestrelles, or else I would once again have fled to Switzerland, with no more than an income of those same twelve hundred francs. I have the good fortune to owe the Duchess the absence of all these miseries; moreover it is she who feels for me the transports of friendship which I should be feeling for her …

  “Instead of this absurd and mean existence which would have made of me a melancholy mindless beast, I have lived the last four years in a great city and kept an excellent carriage, which has prevented me from suffering envy and all the low emotions characteristic of the provinces. This over-indulgent aunt always complains that I never take enough money from her banker. Would I ruin forever this admirable position? Would I lose the one friend I have in the world? All I need do is utter a single lie, merely say to a charming and perhaps incomparable woman for whom I feel the warmest friendship, “I love you,” though I haven’t the faintest notion of what it is to feel love. She would spend her days reproaching me for the lack of precisely those transports which are unknown to me. Marietta, on the other hand, who knows nothing of my heart and who takes a caress for a rapture of the soul, believes I am madly in love and regards herself as the happiest of women.

  “As a matter of fact, all I have ever known, I believe, of that tender preoccupation known as love was what I felt for young Aniken in that inn at Zonders, near the Belgian border.”

  It is with regret that we shall record here one of Fabrizio’s worst actions: in the midst of this tranquil life, a wretched pique of vanity seized this heart so refractory to love and led it far astray. At the same time as Fabrizio, there happened to be in Bologna the celebrated Fausta F——, one of the finest singers of our day, and perhaps the most capricious woman the world has ever seen. That splendid Venetian poet Burati had made her the subject of a famous satirical sonnet which was to be heard in those days on the lips both of princes and of the poorest street urchins:

  In a single day to desire and to refuse,

  to worship and detest, and in betrayal

  alone of all a lover’s enterprise

  to be content, to scorn what the world adores,

  while the world adores her alone:

  these are Fausta’s faults, and many more.

  Therefore never look upon this serpent.

  For if, foolhardy fellow, you but once

  allow your gaze to fall upon her form,

  you will forget her follies and her whims.

  Fortunate to hear her sing, you will forget

  yourself as well, and in an instant Love

  will make of you what Circe long ago

  made of the companions of Odysseus.

  For the moment this miracle of beauty was under the spell of the enormous sideburns and haughty insolence of young Count M——, to the point of not being disgusted by his abominable jealousy. Fabrizio observed this nobleman in the streets of Bologna and was shocked by the air of superiority with which he monopolized the promenade and deigned to reveal his graces to the public. This Count was extremely rich, regarded himself as entitled to everything, and, since his prepotenze had incurred certain threats, he now appeared in public only surrounded by eight or ten buli (cut-throats), whom he had dressed up in his livery and imported from his estates near Brescia. Fabrizio’s eyes had once or twice met those of this terrible Count, when as chance would have it he heard Fausta sing. He was amazed by the angelic sweetness of her voice; he had never imagined anything like it; it afforded him sensations of supreme happiness which presented a striking contrast to the placidity of his present existence. “Would this be love?” he asked himself. Intensely curious to experience this sentiment, and moreover quite entertained by the notion of defying Count M——, whose expression was more terrible than that of any drum-major, our hero gave himself up to the childishness of passing much too often in front of the Palazzo Tanari, which Count M—— had rented for Fausta.

  One day, as it was beginning to grow dark, Fabrizio, attempting to attract Fausta’s notice, was greeted by emphatic peals of laughter from the Count’s buli, who happened to be standing in the doorway of the Palazzo Tanari. He hurried to his lodgings, quickly armed himself properly, and returned to the palazzo. Hidden behind her blinds, Fausta was awaiting his return, and gave him due credit for it. The Count, jealous of the world, became particularly so of Signor Joseph Bossi, and permitted himself some absurd remarks; whereupon every morning our hero saw to it that a letter was delivered to him which contained no more than these words:

  Signor Joseph Bossi destroys noxious insects, and lodges at the Pellegrino, Via Larga, No. 79.

  Count M——, accustomed to the respect assured by his enormous fortune, his blue blood, and the bravura of his thirty servants, declined to understand the language of this little communication.

  Fabrizio wrote still others to Fausta; the Count set spies upon this rival, who might have had his charms; first of all he discovere
d his real name and, subsequently, that for the moment he could not show himself in Parma. A few days later, Count M——, his buli, his splendid horses, and Fausta left for Parma.

  Fabrizio, lured on by the game, followed them the next day. It was to no avail that the faithful Ludovic made his touching remonstrances; Fabrizio refused to listen, and Ludovic, himself a brave fellow, admired him for it; moreover this journey brought him closer to his own pretty mistress at Casalmaggiore. With Ludovic’s connivance, eight or ten former soldiers of Napoléon’s regiments entered Signor Joseph Bossi’s service as “domestics.” “If,” Fabrizio said to himself, as he undertook the madness of following Fausta, “if I am careful to have no communication with Count Mosca, the Minister of Police, or with the Duchess, I am exposing no one but myself to danger. Later on, I shall tell my aunt that I was going to Parma in search of love, that splendid thing I have never encountered. The fact of the matter is that I think of Fausta even when I don’t see her. But is it the memory of her voice I love, or her person?” No longer mindful of his ecclesiastical career, Fabrizio was now sporting moustaches and sideburns which were almost as terrible as the Count’s and which somewhat disguised him. He established his headquarters not in Parma, which would have been too rash, but in a nearby village in the woods on the Sacca road, where his aunt’s castle happened to be. Following Ludovic’s advice, he gave himself out in this village as the private servant of a great and eccentric English lord, who expended a hundred thousand francs a year to indulge in the pleasures of the chase, and who would soon be arriving from Lake Como, where he was detained by the trout-fishing. Fortunately, the pretty little palazzo Count M—— had rented for his lovely Fausta was located at the southern end of the city of Parma, specifically on the Sacca road, and Fausta’s windows overlooked the fine allées of great trees extending beneath the high towers of the Citadel. Fabrizio was quite unknown in this lonely neighborhood; he lost no time in having the Count followed, and one day when the latter had just left the admirable singer’s residence, he had the audacity to appear in the street in broad daylight; to tell the truth he was riding an excellent horse, and was well armed to boot. Some musicians, of the kind that are to be found on every street corner in Italy and who are sometimes excellent, came to plant their double-basses under Fausta’s windows: after a brief prelude, they sang quite nicely a certain cantata in her honor. Fausta appeared at the window and easily noticed a very well mannered young man who, halting his horse in the middle of the street, made a gesture of greeting and then proceeded to stare in a manner anything but equivocal. Despite the exaggeratedly British costume Fabrizio had adopted, she soon recognized the author of the impassioned letters which had brought about her departure from Bologna. “What an odd man!” she said to herself. “I believe I’m falling in love. I have a hundred louis to spare, I can easily dispense with this terrible Count M——. As it happens, he has little enough wit and never surprises me, and the only thing the least bit entertaining about him is the dreadful appearance of his bodyguard.”

  The following day, Fabrizio having learned that at eleven every morning Fausta went to hear Mass in the center of town, in that same church of San Giovanni which housed the tomb of his great-uncle Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, Fabrizio made so bold as to follow her. As it happened, Ludovic had procured for him a splendid English wig of the finest auburn hair. Apropos of the color of this embellishment, which was that of the flames which consumed his heart, Fabrizio produced a sonnet which Fausta purported to find delightful; an unknown hand had taken care to place it upon her piano. This little skirmish lasted some eight days, but Fabrizio found that for all his enterprise in these matters, he was making no real progress; Fausta refused to receive him. His eccentricity was being carried too far; she has subsequently remarked that she was alarmed by him. Fabrizio was now sustained only by a faint hope of managing to feel what is called love, but he frequently felt bored.

  “Monsignore, let us be on our way,” Ludovic kept urging him, “you are not in love; I observe you possessed of a mortifying good sense and sang-froid. Besides, you are making no progress; out of pure shame, let us decamp!”

  Fabrizio was about to leave at the first moment of ill-humor when he learned that Fausta would be performing for the Duchess Sanseverina. “Perhaps that sublime voice will finally inflame my heart,” he mused to himself, and actually dared to introduce himself, in disguise, into this palazzo where he was known to all eyes. Judge of the Duchess’s emotion when suddenly, as the concert was ending, she noticed a man in chasseur’s livery standing near the door of the grand salon; his attitude reminded her of someone. She consulted Count Mosca, who only then informed her of Fabrizio’s extreme and really quite incredible folly. He was taking it very well. This infatuation for someone besides the Duchess delighted him; a perfect gentleman in all things but politics, Count Mosca acted upon the theory that he himself could find happiness only so long as the Duchess was happy.

  “I shall save him from himself,” he told her. “Imagine our enemies’ delight if he were to be arrested here in this palazzo! That is why I have more than a hundred men in my service here, and that is why I have asked you for the keys of the great reservoir. He lets it be known that he’s madly in love with Fausta and that till now he cannot separate her from Count M——, who affords the absurd creature a queenly existence.”

  The Duchess’s countenance betrayed the keenest pain. “Then Fabrizio is nothing but a libertine quite incapable of serious and tender feelings. Not even to come to see us! That is what I shall never forgive him,” she said at last; “and here I’ve been writing him in Bologna every day!”

  “I greatly admire his restraint,” the Count replied; “he does not wish to compromise us by this episode, and it will be amusing to hear him tell us about it later on.”

  Fausta was too silly a creature to be able to keep her concerns to herself: the day after the concert, whose every aria her eyes had addressed to this tall young man in chasseur’s livery, she mentioned the existence of an unknown admirer to Count M——.

  “Where do you see him?” demanded the Count in a rage.

  “In the streets, in church,” Fausta answered unthinkingly, and then immediately attempted to counteract her imprudence or at least to get rid of whatever might suggest Fabrizio: she immediately produced an elaborate description of a tall young man with red hair and blue eyes; no doubt it was some rich and clumsy Englishman, or some prince or other. At this word Count M——, who was hardly distinguished for the accuracy of his perceptions, conceived the notion, quite flattering to his vanity, that his rival was none other than the Crown Prince of Parma. This wretched and melancholy young man, guarded by five or six tutors, assistant tutors, instructors, and so on, who permitted him to venture into the world only after holding council, cast strange glances upon any passable woman he was allowed to come near. At the Duchess’s concert, his rank had placed him in front of all the guests, on a separate armchair three feet away from lovely Fausta, and her glances had deeply offended Count M——. This folly of extreme vanity—having a prince for a rival—greatly entertained Fausta, who delighted in confirming it by a hundred naïvely furnished details.

  “Isn’t your lineage,” she asked the Count, “just as venerable as that of the House of Farnese to which this young man belongs?”

  “What do you mean, just as venerable! In my family there is no bastardy, if you please!”*

  As chance would have it, Count M—— never had an opportunity to observe this imaginary rival, which only confirmed him in the flattering notion of having a Prince as his antagonist. For when the interests of his project did not summon Fabrizio to Parma, he kept to the woods around Sacca and the banks of the Po. Count M——was much more arrogant, but also more prudent now that he believed himself in a position to dispute Fausta’s heart with a Crown Prince; he requested her quite seriously to exercise the greatest restraint in all her behavior. After falling to his knees as a madly jealous lover, he informed her
quite curtly that his honor was involved in her not becoming the young Prince’s dupe.

  “I should hardly be his dupe, you know, if I loved him; I’ve never happened to see a Prince at my feet.”

  “If you yield,” the Count continued with a haughty stare, “perhaps I cannot take revenge on the Prince, but I will most assuredly take revenge.” And he left, slamming the doors behind him.

  If Fabrizio had presented himself at this moment, he would have gained his cause.

  “If you value your life,” Count M——said to Fausta that evening as he left her after the performance, “make certain I never learn the young Prince has entered your house. I can do nothing against him, damn his eyes, but don’t remind me of what I can do against you!”

  “Ah, my dear little Fabrizio,” Fausta exclaimed, “if only I knew where to find you!”

  Wounded vanity can take a long ways a young man who is rich and surrounded from the cradle by flatterers. Count M——’s authentic passion for Fausta awakened with a fury: he was not stopped by the dangerous prospect of doing battle with the sole scion of the sovereign in whose territory he was now living; nor had he any mind to see this Prince or at least to have him followed. Unable to attack him in any other way, Count M—— dared contemplate making him appear ridiculous. “I shall be banished forever from the State of Parma,” he said to himself, “but what does that matter to me?” Had he sought to reconnoiter his enemy’s position, Count M—— would have learned that the poor young Prince never left the palace without being followed by three or four old men, tiresome guardians of protocol, and that the only pleasure of his own choosing he was permitted in all the world was mineralogy. By day as by night, the little palazzo Fausta occupied, to which the best society in Parma thronged, was surrounded by observers; Count M—— knew hour by hour what she was doing and above all what others were doing around her. This much can be said in praise of the Count’s jealous precautions: this whimsical woman at first had no notion whatever of this redoubling of surveillance. The reports of all his agents informed Count M—— that a very young man in a red wig appeared quite frequently under Fausta’s windows, though always in a different disguise. “Obviously it’s the young Prince,” Count M—— said to himself, “or else why assume a disguise? And damn it all, a man like me is not made to yield to him. Were it not for the usurpations of the Republic of Venice, I too should be a Sovereign Prince!”