by Stendhal
Soon Monsignor Catanzara, haughtily dismissing any notion that he could be motivated by any feelings of fear, turned to explaining to his niece all the difficulties involved in saving the life of Missirilli. As he spoke, the minister paced around the chamber with Vanina; he picked up a carafe of lemonade that was sitting on the mantel, and filled a crystal drinking glass. Just when he was about to put it to his lips, Vanina stopped him, took it in her hand for a moment, and then threw it out into the garden with an air of apparent distraction. A moment later, the minister picked up a piece of chocolate from a candy dish. Vanina took this, too, from him, and said with a laugh: “Be careful; everything in here is poisoned; your death was intended. I obtained mercy for my future uncle so that I should not enter the Savelli family completely empty-handed.”
Monsignor Catanzara, stunned, thanked his niece and gave her to understand that she had good reason for being hopeful about Missirilli’s life.
“Our bargain is complete,” Vanina exclaimed, “and the proof of it is in the recompense,” and she embraced him. The minister accepted his recompense.
“You must know, my dear Vanina, that I am not a man who enjoys bloodshed. Moreover, I am still young enough, though I must seem old to you, and I may well live to a time when blood spilled today will leave a stain.” Two o’clock struck when Monsignor Catanzara accompanied Vanina to the little door leading to his garden.
The day after next, when the minister appeared before the pope, feeling very awkward about the task ahead of him, His Holiness preempted him by saying: ‘After all, it turns out that I have a favor to ask of you. There is one of these Forli carbonari who remains condemned to death; the thought kept me awake during the night: we must save the man.” The minister, seeing the pope had taken his side, made many objections, and ended by writing up a decree of motu proprio, which the pope signed, though such a decree went against custom.11
Vanina considered that although she might obtain a pardon for her lover, someone still might try to poison him. Since the day before, she had had her confessor the abbé Cari deliver Missirilli little packets of hardtack biscuits with the warning not to touch any food furnished by the state.
Vanina, having heard soon afterward that the Forli carbonari were to be transferred to Castel San Leo, decided to try to see Missirilli as he passed through Città Castellana; she arrived there twenty-four hours before the prisoners; she found the abbé Cari there, who had preceded her by several days. He had convinced the jailer to allow Missirilli to attend a midnight mass in the prison chapel. But even more: if Missirilli would agree to having his arms and legs in chains, the jailer would retire to the chapel door so that he could continue to see the prisoner, for whom he was responsible, but he would not be able to hear anything that was said.
At last, the day that would decide Vanina’s fate arrived. From the morning on, she shut herself up in the prison chapel. Who could describe the thoughts that tormented her all that long day? Did Missirilli love her enough to forgive her? She had betrayed his venti, but she had also saved his life. When her tormented brain allowed reason to dominate, Vanina hoped that he would consent to leave Italy with her: if she had sinned, it had been through an excess of love. When four o’clock sounded, she could hear the hoofbeats of the horses of the carabinieri on the pavement far away. Each footfall seemed to echo in her heart. Soon, she could hear the wheels of the carts bringing the prisoners. They stopped in the little square outside the prison; she saw two carabinieri lift out Missirilli, who had been alone in a cart, so weighted down with chains that he could not move. She thought, with tears in her eyes, ‘At least he is alive; he has not yet been poisoned!” The evening was cruel; the altar lamp, placed very high up and given very little oil by the jailer, was all that illuminated the somber chapel. Vanina’s gaze wandered among the tombs of many great lords from the Middle Ages who had died in the prison. Their statues had a fierce look about them.
All sounds had long since ceased; Vanina was absorbed in her dark thoughts. A little after midnight had sounded, she thought she could hear a faint sound like the rustling of a bat in flight. She tried to get up and walk, but she fell half fainting on the altar rail. At that same moment, two phantoms appeared beside her, though she had not heard them coming. It was the jailer and Missirilli, weighted down with so many chains that he seemed wrapped in them. The jailer opened up a lantern, which he set on the altar step next to Vanina in such a way that he could clearly see his prisoner. Then, he retreated into the darkness back by the doorway. As soon as the jailer had gone, Vanina threw her arms around Missirilli. Holding him tightly in her arms, she could feel nothing but the cold, sharp edges of his chains. She wondered, “Who has put these chains on him?” There was no pleasure in embracing her beloved. And this sorrow was followed by another even stronger: she suddenly was sure that Missirilli knew of her crime, because his greeting was so cold.
“Dear friend,” he said to her at last, “I am sorry for the love you feel for me; it is in vain that I try to discover the merit in me that might have inspired it. Let us turn, please, to more Christian sentiments; let us forget the illusions that once blinded us; I can no longer be yours. The ill fortune that has dogged all of my endeavors is perhaps the result of the state of mortal sin in which I constantly find myself. Even if I listen only to the human counsel of prudence, why was I not arrested myself along with my friends that fatal night in Forli? Why, when the moment of danger had come, was I absent from my post? Why did my absence furnish the grounds for the cruelest suspicions? I had another passion, stronger than my passion for the liberty of Italy.”
Vanina could not ignore the surprise she felt at the change in Missirilli. Without being obviously emaciated, he nonetheless looked now like a man of thirty. Vanina attributed this to the bad treatment he would have received in prison; she burst into tears. “Oh!” she exclaimed; “the jailers promised me they were treating you well!”
The fact was that with the approach of death, all the religious principles in the young carbonaro’s heart that could accord with his passion for the liberation of Italy had reappeared and blossomed. Little by little, Vanina could see that the changes she saw in her lover were moral ones, and not at all the result of physical mistreatment. Her sorrow, which she had thought was at its height, now grew even greater.
Missirilli ceased speaking; Vanina seemed at the point of suffocating with her sobs. He added, with some emotion in his voice as well: “If I were to love anything on this earth, it would be you, Vanina; but thanks be to God, I have only one goal now: I will die either in prison or in fighting for the liberty of Italy.” There was a silence; evidently, Vanina was unable to speak: she tried, but in vain.
Missirilli continued: “Duty is cruel, my friend; but if there were no pain in accomplishing it, what would become of heroism? Give me your word that you will not seek to see me again.”
As much as the chains around him would permit, he made a small movement toward her, extending his fingers toward her. “If you will allow a man who was once dear to you to give you some advice, be wise and marry the worthy man your father has chosen for you. Do not tell him anything that might lead to trouble; but likewise, do not try to see me again; let us be strangers to each other from this day forward. You have advanced a considerable sum for the service of your country; if she is ever delivered from her tyrants, that sum will be faithfully repaid in national bonds.”
Vanina was devastated. In speaking to her, the only time his eyes showed any life was when he spoke of his country.
Eventually, though, pride came to the rescue of the young princess; she had about her some diamonds and some small files. Without replying to Missirilli, she offered him these. “I accept out of my duty,” he said to her, “because it is right for me to try to escape; but I will never see you again, and I swear it on these new gifts. Farewell, Van-ina; promise me never to write to me, never to try seeing me; let me devote myself entirely to my country; I am dead to you: farewell.”
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p; “No!” replied Vanina furiously; “I want you to know what I have done, guided by the love I had for you.” She went on to tell him all her acts since Missirilli had left the San Nicolo castle to give himself up to the legate. When that story was done: “But all that is nothing,” said Vanina; “I have done yet more, out of love for you.” Then she told him of her betrayal.
“Ah! Monster!” he cried, furious, and threw himself upon her; he tried to attack and beat her with his chains. He would have succeeded, but the jailer came running at the very first cries. He seized Missirilli. “Go, monster; I never want to see you again,” Missirilli said to Vanina, throwing at her, as forcefully as his chains would permit, her files and her diamonds; and he quickly moved away. Vanina lay there, crushed. She returned to Rome; and the papers have announced that she has just married Prince Don Livio Savelli.
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI
DUCHESS OF BRACCIANO
Unhappily for me, and for the reader, this is by no means a piece of fiction but rather the faithful translation of a very serious narrative written in Padua in December 1585.
I found myself in Mantua some years back, hunting for the kind of sketches or little paintings that my small fortune would allow me to afford, but I was looking for painters who worked before the year 1600; it was around that date that originality in Italian art, which had already come under great peril at the conquest of Florence in 1530, finally died off altogether.1
But instead of paintings, an old, very wealthy, and very greedy patrician offered to sell me, at a high price, certain manuscripts yellowed by time; I asked to have a look at them; he assented, adding that he had enough faith in my honesty that I would not memorize any spicy anecdotes that I might run across if I ended up not buying the manuscripts.
On that condition, which suited me, I looked through some three or four hundred volumes—to the great detriment of my eyes—in which the stories of tragic adventures of two or three centuries past were jumbled together with letters of challenge for duels, peace treaties between bordering nobles, memoranda on all sorts of subjects, etc., etc. The old owner asked an enormous price for the manuscripts. After quite a lot of negotiation, I paid a considerable price for the right to make copies of certain short narratives that interested me and that demonstrated the customs in the Italy of around the year 1500. I have twenty-two folio volumes of them, and it is from one of these faithfully copied stories that the reader is about to read, provided he has the necessary patience. I know the history of Italy in the sixteenth century, and I believe that what follows is perfectly true. I have taken great pains to ensure that my translation of that old Italian style—solemn, direct, laden with allusions to the things and the ideas that preoccupied people during the pontificate of Sixtus V (in 1585)—would show no traces of the fine literature of our era, of our unprejudiced century.
The unknown author of the manuscript is quite circumspect, never making any judgment on a fact, never writing so as to lead the reader up to one: his only concern is to narrate truthfully. If from time to time he is picturesque without meaning to be, this is because in 1585, vanity had not yet surrounded every action every man performs with a halo of affectation; people believed that the only way to convince one’s neighbor was to speak to him as clearly as possible. In 1585, with the exception of court jesters or poets, nobody strove to make himself liked by the way he spoke. Nobody would swear, for instance, “I will die at Your Majesty’s feet,” at the very moment when he had ordered post-horses for the purpose of fleeing the country: this particular brand of treachery had not yet been invented. People spoke little, and each gave careful attention to what others said to him.
And therefore, generous reader!—do not expect to find here a spicy style, fast-paced and glittering with fashionable allusions to the latest ways of feeling; above all, do not expect the kind of seductive emotions you find in a George Sand novel. That great writer would have crafted a masterpiece out of the life and the miseries of Vittoria Accoramboni. The sincere and simple tale I present to you here has no advantages beyond those more modest ones of being historical. When by chance you find yourself traveling alone in a coach as night falls and your thoughts turn to the great art of plumbing the depths of the human heart, you may base your reflections on the circumstances of the story presented here. The author tells everything, explains everything, leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination: he wrote this twelve days after the death of the heroine.2
Vittoria Accoramboni was born into a very noble family in a little town in the duchy of Urbino called Agubio. From her childhood, everyone noticed her rare and exceptional beauty, but this beauty was the least of her charms: she had everything that a highborn daughter would need to be widely admired. But among all her extraordinary qualities, there was nothing quite so remarkable about her, nothing that gave her quite so much the air of the prodigy, as an utterly charming grace that won her the hearts and the goodwill of everyone at first sight. And that simplicity which gave power to her every word was never troubled by the slightest artifice: you immediately put your wholehearted trust in this woman endowed with such extraordinary beauty. You might have been able to resist her enchantment, using all your willpower, if you had only seen her, but if you had also heard her speaking, or above all if you had actually had some conversation with her, you would have found it entirely impossible to escape such an extraordinary charm.
Many a young Roman gentleman came to her father’s palazzo, which can still be seen on the Piazza Rusticuci near Saint Peter’s, seeking her hand. There was a great deal of jealousy, and there were many rivalries, but at last Vittoria’s parents chose Félix Peretti, the nephew of Cardinal Montalto, now Pope Sixtus V long may he reign.
Félix, son of Camille Peretti, the cardinal’s sister, was originally called François Mignucci, but he took the name of Félix Peretti when he was formally adopted by his uncle.
When she came to enter into the Peretti family, Vittoria brought with her, though she did not know it, the kind of excellence that one might call fatal, a superiority that came with her everywhere she went; one might say that the only way not to adore her was never to have met her.3 Her husband loved her to the point of madness; her mother-in-law, Camille, and Cardinal Montalto himself seemed to have nothing else on earth to do but to seek out what might be the wishes of Vittoria and then seek to satisfy them. All Rome wondered at how the cardinal, whose fortune everyone knew was modest and who had always had an abhorrence of luxury, could find such unfailing pleasure in anticipating Vittoria’s every wish. Young, stunningly beautiful, adored by everyone, she could not help but have some very costly desires. Her new relatives showered her with the costliest jewels, with pearls, in short, with all the rarest delights to be found among the Roman goldsmiths, who were at the time very well furnished with such items.
Out of love for his lovable niece, Cardinal Montalto, so renowned for his severity, treated Vittoria’s brothers as if they were his own nephews. Octave Accoramboni, just when he had completed his thirtieth year, was named bishop of Fossombrone by the Duke of Urbino and Pope Gregory XIII—all because of the intervention of Cardinal Montalto. Marcel Accoramboni, a hot-headed and daring young man accused of many crimes and sought after by the corte,4 had with great difficulty managed to escape a number of prosecutions that could have brought him to his death. But, honored by the cardinal’s protection, he was able to breathe more freely.
Vittoria’s third brother, Jules Accoramboni, was admitted to the first honors at the court of Cardinal Alexandre Sforza, as soon as Cardinal Montalto had requested it of him.
In a word, if men knew how to measure their good fortune not against the infinite insatiability of their desires but against the actual enjoyment of what they already have, the marriage of Vittoria with the nephew of Cardinal Montalto would have seemed like the height of human felicity to the Accoramboni. But the insane desire for immense and uncertain advantages can hurl even men at the peak of fortune’s favor into strange and perilous thinking
.
It is quite true that if any of Vittoria’s relatives, out of a desire to acquire a greater fortune, had assisted—as a great many people in Rome suspected—in delivering her from her husband, he would quite quickly thereafter come to recognize how much wiser it would have been to be content with a more moderate but entirely agreeable fortune, one that should have reached the peak of what human ambition can desire.
While Vittoria was thus living like a queen in her own house, one night, when Félix Peretti had just got into bed with his wife, a letter from someone named Catherine was brought up to him; born in Bologna, she was Vittoria’s chambermaid. The letter had been carried by one of Catherine’s brothers, Dominique d’Acquaviva, nicknamed Il Mancino (the Left-Handed One). This man had been banished from Rome for a number of crimes, but, upon Catherine’s plea, Félix had got him under the powerful protection of his uncle the cardinal. Il Mancino came to Félix’s house often, having inspired the latter to place great trust in him.
The letter of which we speak was written under the name of Marcel Accoramboni, the one of Vittoria’s brothers who was dearest to her husband. He kept himself hidden outside of Rome most of the time, but still, from time to time he would take the chance of coming into the city, and when he did, he found refuge in the home of Félix.
In the letter delivered at this unexpected hour, Marcel called upon his brother-in-law Félix Peretti for help; he entreated him to come to his aid in a matter of the greatest urgency, adding that he would be waiting for him outside the Montecavallo palazzo.
Félix told his wife about this extraordinary letter, then got dressed, carrying no other arms than his sword. Accompanied by a single domestic carrying a lit torch, he was just about to depart when he turned to find his mother, Camille, and all the women in the house, including Vittoria herself; all begged him insistently not to leave the house at such a late hour. When he seemed not to respond to their prayers, they threw themselves on their knees, tears in their eyes, beseeching him to listen to them.