by Stendhal
Fabrizio crushed her in his arms, beside himself with amazement and delight.
A conversation which began with such a quantity of things to be said was not to end for a long while. Fabrizio told Clélia the precise truth as to her father’s banishment; the Duchess had had nothing to do with it, for the simple reason that she had not for a moment supposed that the notion of poison had occurred to General Conti; she had always assumed it was an inspiration of the Raversi faction, which sought to get rid of Count Mosca. This historical truth, developed at great length, made Clélia happy indeed; she had been wretched at having to hate anyone related to Fabrizio. Now she no longer regarded the Duchess with a jealous eye.
The happiness established by this one evening lasted only a few days.
The worthy Don Cesare arrived from Turin; plucking up courage from the perfect honesty of his own heart, he ventured to have himself presented to the Duchess. After requesting her on her word of honor not to abuse the trust he was about to place in her, he admitted that his brother, misled by a false point of honor and believing himself flouted and ruined in public opinion by Fabrizio’s escape, had felt bound to seek revenge.
Don Cesare had not spoken for two minutes before his case was won: his perfect virtue had touched the Duchess, who was quite unaccustomed to such a spectacle. He delighted her as a novelty.
“Hasten the marriage of the General’s daughter to the Marchese Crescenzi, and I promise you I shall do everything I can for the General to be received as if he were returning from a journey. I shall invite him to dinner; are you satisfied? No doubt there will be a certain chill at first, and the General must on no account be in a hurry to claim his office as Governor of the Fortress. But you know that I have a friendly feeling for the Marchese, and I shall nurse no rancor for his father-in-law.”
Armed with these words, Don Cesare came to tell his niece that she held in her own hands her despairing father’s life: for several months, he had not appeared at any Court.
Clélia determined to visit her father, hiding under an assumed name in a village near Turin; for he had imagined that the Court of Parma would require his extradition from that of Turin, in order to bring him to trial. She found him ill and half-mad. That very evening she wrote a letter to Fabrizio, breaking off with him forever. Upon receiving this letter, Fabrizio, who was developing a character quite similar to his beloved’s, went into retreat at the Charterhouse of Velleja, in the mountains ten leagues outside Parma. Clélia wrote him a letter ten pages long; she had once sworn never to marry the Marchese without Fabrizio’s consent; now she asked it of him, and from the depths of his retreat at Velleja, Fabrizio granted it to her by a letter filled with the purest friendship.
Upon receiving this letter in which the sentiment of friendship, it must be confessed, irritated her considerably, Clélia herself decided upon the day of her marriage, the festivities surrounding which occasion enhanced still further the brilliance of the Parmesan court that winter.
Ranuccio-Ernesto V was a miser at heart; but he was desperately in love, and he hoped to attach the Duchess to his Court; he begged his mother to accept a considerable sum with which to give a number of parties. The Mistress of the Robes succeeded in making admirable use of this great increase in funds; the parties at Parma, that winter, recalled the great days of the Court of Milan and of that charming Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy, whose kindness has left so lasting a memory.
The Coadjutor’s duties had recalled Fabrizio to Parma; but he declared that for reasons of piety, he would continue his retreat in the little apartment which his protector, Monsignore Landriani, had obliged him to take at the Archbishop’s Palace; and he shut himself up there, accompanied by a single servant. Hence he attended none of the brilliant festivities at Court, which won him an enormous reputation for sanctity in Parma and in his future diocese. One unexpected consequence of this retreat, to which Fabrizio had been inspired entirely by his deep and hopeless melancholy, was that the worthy Archbishop Landriani, who had always loved him and who, as it happened, had had the notion of making him Coadjutor, now conceived a slight jealousy of him. The Archbishop rightly supposed that he must attend all the Court festivities, as is the custom in Italy. On these occasions, he wore his ceremonial costume, which was more or less the same as the one he wore in the choir of his own Cathedral. The hundreds of servants gathered in the series of antechambers of the palace did not fail to rise and seek the blessing which the Monsignore was delighted to stop and bestow upon them. It was during one of these moments of solemn silence that Monsignore Landriani heard a voice saying: “Our Archbishop goes to the ball, and Monsignore del Dongo never leaves his room!”
At this moment the enormous favor Fabrizio had enjoyed at the Archbishop’s Palace came to an end; but he now could fly with his own wings. That very behavior which had been inspired solely by the despair into which Clélia’s marriage had plunged him passed for the effect of a sublime and elementary piety, and the faithful read as a work of edification that translation of his family’s genealogy which displayed no more than the most insane vanity. The booksellers produced a lithographed edition of Fabrizio’s protrait, which was sold out in a few days, particularly among the people; the engraver, out of ignorance, had reproduced around Fabrizio’s countenance several of those ornaments which should appear only in the portraits of Bishops and to which a Coadjutor has no claim. The Archbishop saw one of these portraits, and his rage knew no bounds; he summoned Fabrizio, and addressed him with the harshest observations, in terms which passion at times rendered extremely coarse. Fabrizio had no difficulty, as may easily be conceived, in conducting himself as Fénelon would have done on such an occasion; he listened to the Archbishop in all humility and with all possible respect; and when this prelate had ceased speaking, he recounted the whole history of the translation of that genealogy made on Count Mosca’s orders, at the time of Fabrizio’s first imprisonment. It had been published with worldly intentions, which he had ever regarded as unsuitable for a man of his condition. As for the portrait, he had been entirely ignorant of the second edition, as of the first, indeed; and the bookseller having sent to the Archbishop’s Palace, during his retreat, twenty-four copies of this second edition, Fabrizio had sent his own servant to purchase a twenty-fifth; and having learned by this means that his portrait was selling for thirty soldi, he had sent a hundred francs as payment for the twenty-five copies.
All these explanations, though set forth in the most reasonable tone by a man who had many other sorrows in his heart, increased the Archbishop’s rage to the point of madness; he went so far as to accuse Fabrizio of hypocrisy.
“That is what all these common people are like,” Fabrizio said to himself, “even when they have some intelligence!”
He now had a more serious cause for worry to contend with, derived from his aunt’s letters, which absolutely insisted that he return to his apartment in the Palazzo Sanseverina, or at least that he come visit her on occasion. Fabrizio was certain to hear of the splendid parties given by the Marchese Crescenzi on the occasion of his marriage, and this was what he was not sure he could manage to endure without creating a scene.
When the wedding took place, there were eight whole days during which Fabrizio had vowed himself to complete silence, after ordering his servant and the Archbishop’s men never to utter a word to him.
When Monsignore Landriani learned of this new affectation, he summoned Fabrizio much more frequently than was his custom, and sought to engage him in extremely long conversations; he even obliged him to hold conferences with certain provincial canons who were claiming that the Archbishopric had infringed their privileges. Fabrizio responded to all these incidents with the perfect indifference of a man whose mind is on other things. “I would be better off,” he said to himself, “if I were a Carthusian; I would suffer less among the rocks of Velleja.”
He went to see his aunt, and could not restrain his tears as he embraced her. She found him so transformed—his eyes
, even larger on account of his extreme thinness, seemed to be starting out of his head, and he himself seemed so pinched and wretched in his frayed little soutane of a simple priest that at first the Duchess too could not restrain her tears; but a moment afterward, when she realized that this entire transformation in the appearance of this handsome young man was caused by Clélia’s marriage, she experienced sentiments almost equal in vehemence to the Archbishop’s, though more skillfully concealed. She was cruel enough to speak at length of certain picturesque details which had characterized the delightful parties given by the Marchese Crescenzi. Fabrizio made no answer, but his eyes closed momentarily in a convulsive movement, and he grew even paler than he had been, which at first would have seemed impossible. In such moments of intense sorrow, his pallor assumed a greenish tinge.
Count Mosca arrived, and what met his eyes, a thing which seemed to him quite incredible, finally and altogether cured him of the jealousy which Fabrizio had never ceased to inspire in him. This able man employed the most delicate and ingenious turns of phrase to attempt to revive some interest in Fabrizio for the things of this world. The Count had always regarded him with a good deal of esteem and a certain friendliness; this friendliness, no longer counterbalanced by jealousy, became at this moment something quite akin to devotion. “There’s no denying it, he’s paid dearly for his good fortune,” he said to himself, numbering his disasters. With the excuse of showing him the painting by Parmigianino which the Prince had sent to the Duchess, the Count took Fabrizio aside. “Now, my friend, let us speak man to man: can I be of some help to you? You have no questions to fear from me, but perhaps a certain sum of money can be of use to you, or a certain amount of power? You have only to say the word and I am at your service; if you prefer to write, write to me.”
Fabrizio embraced him warmly and discussed the painting.
“Your behavior is a masterpiece of diplomacy,” the Count remarked to him, returning to the easy style of polite conversation; “you are arranging a fine future for yourself—the Prince respects you, the people venerate you, your frayed little black soutane gives Monsignore Landriani some sleepless nights. I have some experience in such matters, and I can assure you I have no advice to offer which might improve what I see. Your first step in the world at the age of twenty-five has brought you to the pinnacle of perfection. You are spoken of a great deal at Court, and do you know to what you owe this distinction which is altogether unique at your age? To that frayed little black soutane. The Duchess and I possess, as you know, that old house which once belonged to Petrarch, on the woody hillside above the Po; if you are ever weary of the wretched little stratagems of the envious, it has occurred to me that you might be Petrarch’s successor there—his renown will only increase your own.”
The Count was racking his brains to produce a smile on that anchorite’s face, but was unable to do so. What made the transformation more striking was that until recently, if Fabrizio’s countenance possessed one defect, it was to present now and then, quite inappropriately, an expression of pleasure and gaiety.
The Count did not let Fabrizio leave without telling him that notwithstanding his retreat, there might be some affectation in not appearing at Court the following Saturday, which was the Princess’s birthday. These words stabbed Fabrizio to the heart. “Good God!” he thought. “What am I doing here in this Palace!” He could not think without shuddering of one encounter he might have at Court. This notion absorbed all others; he realized that his sole recourse would be to arrive at the Palace just when the doors of the salons would be opened.
And so the name of Monsignore del Dongo was one of the first to be announced on the evening of the gala reception, and the Princess received him with the greatest possible distinction. Fabrizio’s eyes were fixed on the clock, and as soon as it indicated the twentieth minute of his presence in that salon and he stood up to take his leave, the Prince entered his mother’s apartments. After paying his respects for some moments, Fabrizio by a clever stratagem once again approached the door, when there occurred, to his misfortune, one of those Court incidents which the Mistress of the Robes was so good at bringing about: the Chamberlain-in-Waiting ran after him to say that he had been chosen to make up the Prince’s whist table. In Parma, this was a signal honor, one far above what the rank of Coadjutor ordinarily received in society. To make up the Prince’s whist table was a sign of favor, even for the Archbishop. At the Chamberlain’s words, Fabrizio felt his heart give way, and though a mortal enemy of any public scene, he was about to observe that he was suffering from a sudden spell of dizziness; but he realized that he would be subject to questions and to sympathies even more intolerable than the card-game. On that day, he had a horror of speaking.
Fortunately the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers happened to be among the great personages who had come to do honor to the Princess. This cunning monk, a worthy emulator of the Fontanas and the Duvoisins, had taken up his position in a remote corner of the salon; Fabrizio went over to stand in front of him so as not to notice the doorway into the room, and began talking of theological matters. But he could not help hearing Signor the Marchese and Signora the Marchesa Crescenzi being announced. Fabrizio, to his surprise, felt a violent impulse of anger. “If I were Borso Valserra,” he said to himself (this was one of the generals of the first Sforza), “I would go over and stab that fat Marchese here and now, with the very ivory-handled dagger that Clélia gave me on a certain happy day, and that would teach him to show himself with his Marchesa in a place where I happen to be!”
His countenance changed to such a degree that the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers inquired: “Is Your Excellency feeling unwell?”
“I have a dreadful headache … these bright lights are hurting my eyes … and I’m still here only because I’ve been asked to make up the Prince’s whist table.”
At this remark, the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers, who was of bourgeois extraction, was so disconcerted that, no longer knowing what to do, he began to bow to Fabrizio, who, for his part, much more troubled than the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers, began speaking with a strange volubility; he realized that a great silence was forming around him, and he did not want to look. Suddenly a bow tapped a music-stand; a ritornello was played, and the famous Signora P—— sang that once-popular aria by Cimarosa:
Quelle pupille tenere!
Fabrizio withstood the first measures, but soon his anger vanished, and he felt an overpowering need to shed tears. “Good God!” he said to himself. “What an absurd scene! And in my soutane as well!” He believed it was the better part of valor to speak about himself: “These terrible headaches, when I try to resist them, as I am doing this evening,” he said to the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers, “end with floods of tears which might provide food for scandal in a man of our condition; in consequence, I beg Your Most Illustrious Reverence to permit me to weep as I look your way without paying me any special attention.”
“Our Father Provincial at Catanzara is afflicted with the same infirmity,” observed the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers. And he began whispering an endless story.
The absurdity of which, including details of the evening meals of this Father Provincial, brought a smile to Fabrizio’s lips, a phenomenon which had not occurred in a long while; but soon he ceased attending to the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers. Signora P—— was singing, with heavenly talent, an aria by Pergolesi (the Princess was fond of old-fashioned music). There was a slight noise close to Fabrizio, and for the first time that evening he looked around. The armchair which had just produced this tiny creak on the parquet floor was occupied by the Marchesa Crescenzi, whose tear-filled eyes now met Fabrizio’s, which were in no better condition. The Marchesa looked down; Fabrizio continued to look at her for a few seconds: he was studying that lovely head covered with diamonds; but his gaze expressed rage and disdain. Then, telling himself: “… and my eyes shall never look upon you.” he turned back
to his Father Superior and said: “Now my infirmity is troubling me worse than ever.”
Indeed, Fabrizio wept bitter tears for over half an hour. Fortunately, a Mozart symphony, dreadfully mangled, as is the custom in Italy, came to his rescue and helped him dry his tears.
He stood fast, and did not glance at the Marchesa Crescenzi; but Signora P—— sang once again, and Fabrizio’s soul, relieved by tears, achieved a state of perfect repose. Life then appeared to him in a new light: “How can I claim,” he asked himself, “to be utterly forgetting her in these very first moments? Could such a thing be possible?” This notion occurred to him: “Can I be any more unhappy than I have been these last two months? And if nothing can increase my sufferings, why resist the pleasure of seeing her? She has forgotten the vows she has made; she is frivolous—are not all women like that? But who could deny her heavenly beauty? The look in her eyes fills me with ecstasy, while I must force myself to pay any attention to women who are considered the loveliest in Parma! Then why not let myself be enchanted; at least it will be a momentary relief.”
Fabrizio had some knowledge of men, but no experience of the passions, otherwise he would have realized that this momentary pleasure, to which he was about to yield, would render futile all the efforts he had been making to forget Clélia for the past two months.
The poor girl had come to this party only because her husband had obliged her to; after half an hour, she declared she was not feeling well and wanted to leave, but the Marchese told her that to send for his carriage to take her departure, when so many were still arriving, would be quite unprecedented and might even be interpreted as an indirect criticism of the Princess’s party. “As Cavaliere d’Onore,” he added, “I must remain at the Princess’s orders here in her salon until everyone has left: there may be, and indeed there doubtless will be, all kinds of orders to be given to the servants, they are so careless! And would you have a mere Equerry usurp that honor?”