by Stendhal
This was the era that saw the completion of one of the least foolish conspiracies that were afoot in that unhappy Italy. I will not go into irrelevant details here. I will content myself with saying that if the enterprise had been a success, Missirilli would have received a great share of the glory. It was up to him to give the signal at which several thousand insurgents would have arisen, awaiting the arrival of their leaders. The moment of decision was approaching when, as happens so often, the conspiracy came to nothing due to the arrest of its leaders.
As soon as she arrived in the Romagna, Vanina thought she could see that the love of country was going to overwhelm all her lover’s other affections. The young Roman’s pride was nettled. She tried in vain to reason with herself; a black mood overwhelmed her: she found herself cursing this liberty. One day, when she had come to Forli to see Missirilli, she could not control her misery, which till then her pride had allowed her to master. “Really,” she said to him, “you love me like a husband; this is not what I deserve.” Soon, tears were flowing; but they were tears of shame at having debased herself to the level of uttering reproaches. Missirilli responded to her tears like a man preoccupied. Suddenly, the idea of leaving him and returning to Rome occurred to Vanina. She found a cruel joy in punishing herself for the weakness that had led her to speak. After a silence of a few seconds, her decision was made; she would feel unworthy of Missirilli if she did not leave him. She took pleasure in imagining his unhappy surprise when he would be searching for her in vain. Soon, she was deeply saddened by the thought of being unable to gain the love of a man for whom she had committed so many follies. Then, she broke the silence and tried everything she could to wring a word of love from him. He distractedly said some very tender things to her; but it was with a much less profound tone than he took when speaking of his political enterprises, as he exclaimed:
“Ah! If this plan doesn’t succeed, if the government finds us out again, I will quit the party.”
Vanina stood there immobile. For an hour, she felt as if she were seeing her lover for the last time. What he said just now cast a fatal gloom over her spirit. She said to herself: “These carbonari have received several thousand sequins from me. My own devotion to the conspiracy cannot be doubted.”
She finally came out of her reverie, saying to Pietro: “Would you like to spend a day with me at the San Nicolo castle? The meeting this evening doesn’t require your presence. Tomorrow morning at San Nicolo, we can take a walk; that will calm you and give you the composure you need for these important events.” Pietro consented.
Vanina left him to make preparations for the journey, locking the chamber door, as was her custom when she was hiding him.
She sought out one of her waiting women, who had left her service to get married and set up a shop in Forli. Once she had arrived at this woman’s house, she set herself to writing hastily, in the margins of a Book of Hours that she found in the room, the exact location of the carbonarias meeting for that night. She concluded her denunciation with these words: “This venti is composed of nineteen members; here are their names and addresses.” After having written out the list, completely accurate except for the omission of Missirilli’s name, she said to the woman, in whom she had perfect confidence: “Take this book to the cardinal legate; have him read what I have written, and have him return the book to you. Here are ten sequins; if the legate ever mentions your name, your death is assured; but you will be saving my life if you have the legate read the page I have just written.”
Everything went marvelously. The legate’s fear kept him from behaving haughtily. He allowed the common woman to enter, though she had asked to remain masked; but he agreed on condition that her hands were to be tied. In this state, the merchant woman was introduced to the great man, whom she found seated behind a huge table covered with a green cloth.
The legate read the page from the Book of Hours, holding it as far away from him as he could, fearing some subtle poison. He returned it to the woman and did not have her followed. Less than forty minutes after having left her lover, Vanina saw her onetime waiting woman return, and now she returned to Missirilli, believing that henceforth he would belong to her alone. She told him that there was unusual activity in the town; people had seen patrols of carabinieri in streets where they normally did not go. “If you’ll listen to me,” she added, “we should leave this minute for San Nicolo.” Missirilli agreed. On foot, they went to the princess’s coach, which awaited them, along with one of her lady’s companions, half a league from the town.
When they had arrived at the San Nicolo castle, Vanina, troubled by her actions, redoubled her tenderness toward her beloved. But in speaking of love matters to him, she felt like she was playing a role. The day before, she had betrayed him, and she had felt no remorse. Holding her beloved tightly in her arms, she thought to herself: “Now there is a certain thing that someone could tell him, either today or anytime in the future, and that thing would make him recoil from me with horror.” In the middle of the night, one of Vanina’s domestics burst into her chamber. The man was a carbonaro without her ever having known it. Missirilli therefore had his secrets from her, even in details like this. She trembled. The man had come to tell Missirilli that in Forli during the night, the houses of nineteen carbonari had been surrounded and the men themselves arrested as they returned from the venti. In the scuffle, nine had escaped. The carabinieri had brought the ten to the prison of the citadel. As they entered, one of them had thrown himself into a well so deep that he was killed. Vanina lost her composure; fortunately, Pietro did not observe: he could have read her crime in her eyes… . The domestic added, “Right now the Forli garrison is lined up in every street. Each soldier is close enough to the next to be able to speak to him. The inhabitants cannot even cross the streets except at places where an officer is stationed.”
After the man had left, Pietro sat thinking for a moment. Finally, he said, “There is nothing to be done for the moment.” Vanina was dying inside; she trembled under her lover’s gaze.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked her; but then his thoughts turned to other matters, and he ceased to look at her.
Around noon, she hazarded saying to him, “So there is another venti discovered; this should make things quiet for you for a while.”
“Oh, very quiet!” Missirilli replied, with a smile that made her shudder.
She went to make a necessary visit to the curé of San Nicolo, who might have been a spy for the Jesuits. When she returned for dinner, at seven o’clock, the little room where her lover stayed concealed was empty. Beside herself, she ran throughout the house looking for him; he was nowhere to be found. Desperate, she returned to the little room; and only now did she see a note; it read:
I am going to surrender myself to the legate; I despair of our cause; heaven is against us. Who has betrayed us? Apparently the wretch has thrown himself into a well. Since my life is of no use for my poor Italy, I do not want my comrades seeing me as the only one not arrested and imagining that I was the one who gave them up. Farewell; if you love me, think of how to avenge me. Kill, destroy the vile creature who has betrayed us, even if it should be my own father.
Vanina fell back into a chair, half fainting, and plunged into the most miserable anguish. She could not speak a word; her eyes were dry and burning.
At last she flung herself down on her knees: “Great God!” she cried. “Hear my vow: yes, I will punish the creature who did the betrayal; but before I do that, I must somehow set Pietro free.”
An hour later, she was on her way to Rome. For some time now, her father had been pressing for her return. In her absence, he had arranged for her marriage to Prince Livio Savelli. As soon as Vanina arrived, he spoke to her about it with trepidation. To his great astonishment, she consented at once. That very evening, at the home of Countess Vittelleschi, her father officially presented her to Don Livio; she spoke a great deal with him. He was the most elegant young man, with the most beautiful hair; but t
hough he was thought to be quite intelligent, his character was seen as rather superficial, and thus the government had no suspicions about him. Vanina thought that if she began by turning his head, she could make him into a useful agent. As he was the nephew of Monsignor Savelli-Catanzara, the governor of Rome and minister of police, she assumed no spies dared to keep an eye on him.
After treating the amiable Don Livio very nicely for several days, Vanina told him that she could never marry him: he was simply too frivolous. “If you weren’t essentially a child,” she said to him, “the doings of your uncle would not be secret from you. For example, what are they doing about the carbonari who were discovered recently in Forli?”
Two days later, Don Livio came to tell her that all the carbonari arrested in Forli had escaped. The gaze of her great black eyes rested upon him, accompanied by the bitterest, most contemptuous smile, and she did not deign to speak to him the rest of the evening. The day after next, Don Livio came to her to confess, blushing as he did so, that he had been tricked before. “But,” he said now, “I’ve got hold of a key to my uncle’s office; I looked at the papers there and found that a congregation (or commission) of the most trusted cardinals and prelates is assembling secretly to determine whether it would be best to try these carbonari in Ravenna or in Rome. The nine arrested in Forli, along with their leader, named Missirilli, who was stupid enough to give himself up, are currently being held in the castle of San Leo.”8 At the word stupid, Vanina grasped hold of the prince with all her might.
“I want to see those official papers myself,” she said to him, “and to go into your uncle’s office; you surely misread them.”
Don Livio shuddered at this; Vanina was asking something practically impossible; but the spirit this young woman showed redoubled his love for her. A few days later, Vanina, disguised as a man and wearing a pretty little suit of livery from the Casa Savelli, was able to spend half an hour looking through the most secret papers of the minister of police. She felt a burst of joy when she came upon the daily report concerning the actions of “detainee Pietro Missirilli.” Her hands trembled as she held the paper. Rereading the name, she almost felt ill. When she left the palazzo of the governor of Rome, Vanina permitted Don Livio to embrace her. “You are acquitting yourself well,” she said to him, “with the tests I am setting you.”
After that word of praise, the young prince would have set fire to the Vatican if he thought it would please Vanina. That evening, there was a ball given by the French ambassador; she danced a great deal, and almost always with him. Don Livio was drunk with happiness; he had to be kept occupied and not be allowed to reflect.
“My father is eccentric sometimes,” Vanina said to him one day. “He fired two of his people, and they came crying to me. One has asked me to find him a position with your uncle, the governor of Rome; the other one, who had been an artillery soldier with the French, wants to get a place at Castel Sant’Angelo.”
“I’ll take them both into my service,” said the young prince at once.
“Is that what I’m asking you?” Vanina retorted heatedly. “I’ll repeat, word for word, what the two poor men are asking for; they deserve to get the places they seek, and not something else.”
There was nothing more difficult. Monsignor Catanzara was the most serious of men and admitted only people well known to him into his service. In the midst of a life apparently filled with every pleasure, Vanina, racked with remorse, was utterly miserable. The slow pace of events was killing her. Her father’s business manager had been the one who supplied her with money. Should she flee her father’s house and go to the Romagna and try to free her lover? However irrational this idea was, she was on the point of putting it into execution when chance took pity on her. Don Livio told her: “The ten carbonari from the Missirilli venti are being transferred to Rome, but they will be executed in the Romagna after their sentencing. This is what my uncle obtained from the pope this evening. You and I are the only ones in Rome who know the secret. Are you happy?”
“You have become a man,” Vanina replied. “You may give me a portrait of yourself as a gift.”
The evening before the day Missirilli was due to arrive in Rome, Vanina found a pretext to go to Città Castellana. It was in the prison there that they would house the carbonari being transferred from the Romagna to Rome. She saw Missirilli in the morning, as he was being taken out of the prison; he was chained, by himself, upon a cart; he looked pale, she thought, but not disheartened. An old woman tossed him a bouquet of violets; he smiled as he thanked her.
Vanina had seen her lover, and all her old ideas were rejuvenated; she found a new courage in herself. Well before this time, she had managed to secure a prestigious advancement for the abbé Cari, the chaplain of Castel Sant’Angelo, where her lover was about to be imprisoned; she had chosen this priest as her confessor. It is no small thing in Rome to be the confessor of the princess, niece of the governor.
The trial of the Forli carbonari was not lengthy. The Ultra Party, to be avenged for the prisoners’ having to be transferred to Rome despite their efforts, now saw to it that the judging commission was packed with the most ambitious prelates. The minister of police headed the commission.
The law against the carbonari was clear: these Forli men could indulge no hope; but nonetheless they defended themselves by every means possible. Not only did the judges condemn them to death but several argued for the most extreme torture, cutting off their hands, etc. The minister of police, whose fortune was assured—for no one exits that position except to take the hat9—felt no need for any amputated hands: in passing on the sentence to the pope, he had all the men’s punishments commuted to a few years in prison. The only exception was Pietro Missirilli. The minister saw in this young man a dangerous fanatic, and in any case he would have been condemned to death for the murder of the two carbinieri of whom we have spoken. Vanina saw his sentence as well as the commutations shortly after the minister had returned from the pope.
The next day, Monsignor Catanzara, coming home around midnight, could not find his valet; the minister, surprised, rang for him several times; finally, an old, dim-witted domestic appeared: the minister, impatient, took it upon himself to do his own undressing. He locked his door; it was very warm: he threw his jacket in a heap onto a chair. This jacket, tossed with somewhat too much force, traveled beyond the chair and struck the window’s muslin curtain, landing there upon the shape of a man. The minister leaped over to his bed and grabbed a pistol. As he approached the window, a very young man, dressed in the livery of the house, came up to him from behind the curtain with a pistol in his hand. Seeing this, the minister raised his pistol, took aim, and was about to fire. The young man burst out into laughter: “Well, Monsignor, don’t you recognize Vanina Vanini?”
“What is the meaning of this absurd joke?” replied the minister angrily.
“Let us reason things through calmly,” said the young woman. “To begin with, your pistol is not loaded.”
The minister, startled, saw that this was indeed the case; after which he quickly drew a dagger out of his pocket.10
Vanina said to him with a charming air, “Let us sit down, Monsignor”; and she calmly seated herself upon a sofa.
“Are you alone, at least?” asked the minister.
“Quite alone, I assure you!” cried Vanina. The minister took care to verify this, walking about the chamber and looking in every corner; after which, he seated himself upon a chair about three paces from Vanina.
“What possible motive could I have,” Vanina began, “in attempting to take the life of a man of moderation, a man who would probably be replaced by some weak-brained fanatic capable of destroying both himself and others?”
“Then what is it you want, mademoiselle?” said the minister with some heat. “This scene is not to my liking, and it must not go on much longer.”
“What I am about to add,” replied Vanina with some hauteur, abruptly dropping her gracious air, “has more to do
with you than with me. I want the life of the carbonaro Missirilli saved; if he is executed, you will not survive him by a week. I personally have no interest in all this; the folly you complain of was carried out, first, for my own amusement, and second, to help out one of my friends. I have wanted,” Vanina continued, switching now to her more genteel tone, “I have wanted to be of help to a gifted man, one who will soon be my uncle, and one who, one would think, ought to be concerned with enhancing the fortune of his house.”
The minister’s angry air evaporated; Vanina’s beauty no doubt contributed to this rapid change. Everyone in Rome knew of Monsignor Catanzara’s taste for pretty women, and in her disguise as a footman belonging to the Casa Savelli, with her tight silk stockings, her red waistcoat, her little sky-blue jacket with silver braiding, and her pistol in her hand, Vanina was simply ravishing.
“My future niece,” the minister said, with what was almost a laugh, “you are in the middle of a very crazy enterprise, and I can tell it will not be the last one.”
“I believe I can trust that a person of such wisdom,” Vanina replied, “will keep my secret, especially with regard to Don Livio; and to bind you to it, my dear uncle, if you grant me the life of my friend’s protégé, I will give you a kiss.” All this was said in that tone of half-joking pleasantry that Roman women know how to employ when treating of the most serious things, and it was with that same tone that Vanina, despite the pistol in her hand, was able to color the scene as simply a visit the young Princess Savelli was making to her uncle, the governor of Rome.