Italian Chronicles

by Stendhal

  “Be quiet, ungodly men, and know that everything here is being done on the orders of Prince Colonna,” said the monks, turning back to their path.

  But poor Elena was unfortunate; the prince was absent from Petrella, and when he returned, three days later, and granted her an audience, his tone was very severe.

  “Why have you come here, signorina? What is the point of this ill-advised escapade? Your women’s chatter has caused the deaths of seven men as brave as any in Italy, and for this no right-minded man will ever forgive you. In this world, you must either want something or not want it. And it is no doubt because of some new chatter that Giulio Branciforte has been declared sacrilege and has been condemned to be disemboweled for two hours with red-hot pincers, and after that burned like a Jew, yes, Giulio, one of the best Christians I know! How could they invent such a horrible lie without the benefit of some foul chatter on your part, or how could they even know that Giulio Branciforte was in Castro on the day the convent was attacked? All my men will tell you that on that very day he was seen here, in Petrella, and on that evening I sent him on an errand to Velletri.”

  “But is he still alive?” young Elena cried for the tenth time, bursting into tears.

  “He is dead to you,” replied the prince; “you will never see him again. I advise you to return to your convent at Castro; try not to commit any further indiscretions, and I command you to leave Petrella within the hour. And above all, do not tell anyone you have seen me, or I will know how to find and punish you.”

  Poor Elena was devastated at having been given such a reception by the famed Prince Colonna, the man Giulio so respected and the man she loved because Giulio loved him.

  But no matter what Prince Colonna might say, Elena’s plan of action was not ill advised. If she had come to Petrella three days later, she would have found Giulio Branciforte there; his knee wound made it impossible for him to walk, and the prince had him transported to the large market town of Avezzano in the kingdom of Naples. At the first news of the terrible sentence of sacrilege passed on Branciforte, declaring him guilty of having violated a convent, a sentence purchased by Signor de Campireali, the prince realized that if he were to keep Branciforte under his protection, he could not count on three-quarters of his men. This was a sin against the Madonna, whose protection every brigand counted on, protection every man thought he had some claim to. And thus, if there were some bargello in Rome daring enough to come to the forest of La Faggiola to try to arrest Giulio, he would be successful.

  Upon his arrival in Avezzano, Giulio took the name of Fontana, and the men who took him there were discreet. Upon their return to Petrella, they announced sorrowfully that Giulio had died on the road, and from that moment every one of the prince’s soldiers realized that anyone who so much as spoke that fatal name could expect to find a dagger in his heart very soon.

  So it was in vain that Elena, upon her return to Albano, wrote letter after letter and spent every sequin she owned in paying messengers to carry them to Branciforte. The two elderly monks who had become her friends—because, says the Florentine chronicler, extreme beauty never relinquishes its empire, even over hearts that have become hardened by egoism and hypocrisy—the two monks, we were saying, informed the poor girl that it was futile to try to get word to Branciforte: Colonna had had him declared dead, and in any case, Giulio would never reappear in public until the prince wanted him to. Elena’s nurse told her, weeping, that her mother had finally discovered her hiding place and that the strictest orders had been given for her to be removed forcibly to the Campireali palazzo in Albano. Elena understood that once she was in that palazzo, her imprisonment would be one of boundless severity and that they would cut off absolutely all communication with the world outside, whereas at the convent at Castro, she would have, in terms of sending and receiving letters, the same privileges that all the sisters had. And even more importantly, the point that decided her was that it was in the garden of that convent that Giulio had shed his blood for her; she would be able to see once more that wooden chair in the portress’s lodge where he had sat for a moment to examine the wound to his knee; it was there that he gave Marietta that little bouquet stained with blood that she would never again be without. She would return, then, sadly, to the convent at Castro, and here they could conclude her story: such a conclusion would have been better for her, and perhaps also for the reader. For we are about to witness the long degradation of a noble and generous soul. Civilization’s prudent measures and lies, which henceforth will surround her at all times, will take the place of those sincere bursts of passion and natural energy. The Roman chronicler here hazards a naive reflection: because a woman takes the trouble to give birth to a beautiful daughter, she thinks she has the talent necessary to manage her life for her, and because, at six years of age, she can reasonably say to her, “Young lady, straighten your collar,” when that girl is eighteen and she is fifty, and that daughter has as much and perhaps even more intelligence than her mother, the mother, carried away by her mania for ruling, thinks she still has the right to direct her life, even to the point of employing lies in order to do so. We shall see that Vittoria Carafa, Elena’s mother, by means of a series of clever ruses shrewdly combined, brought that dear daughter of hers to a cruel death after having made her miserable for twelve years, and all the sad result of that mania for ruling.

  Before dying, Signor de Campireali had had the great joy of hearing the sentence passed in Rome on Branciforte condemning him to two hours of torture with red-hot irons, to be carried out in one of the public intersections, then to be burned and his ashes thrown into the Tiber. The frescoes in the Cloister of Santa Maria Novella in Florence still depict for the modern viewer the cruel ways the sacrilegious were punished.17 In general, a great many guards were required to keep the indignant crowd from taking over from the executioners. Every man thought himself the intimate friend of the Madonna. Signor de Campireali had this sentence read out to him again just a few moments before his death, and he had rewarded the lawyer who obtained the sentence with a fine estate situated between Albano and the sea. This lawyer, indeed, was not without merit. Branciforte had been condemned to that hideous torture, but not a single witness was able to say for certain that it had been he under that disguise of courier, directing the movements of the attackers with such authority. The magnificence of the gift had all the schemers in Rome talking. There was at that time a certain fratone (monk) at the court, a deep and capable man, capable even of forcing the pope to award him the cardinal’s hat; he was in charge of the affairs relating to Prince Colonna, and having such a fearsome client earned him a great deal of respect. When Signora de Campireali saw that her daughter had returned to Castro, this was the man she approached.

  “Your Reverence will be magnificently recompensed if you are willing to help me succeed in a very simple affair, which I shall explain to you. A few days from now, the sentence condemning Giulio Branciforte to a horrible torture will be published and made official within the kingdom of Naples as well. I would ask Your Reverence to read this letter from the viceroy, who is in fact related to me, deigning to inform me of this news. In what country can Branciforte seek asylum? I will remit 15,000 piastres to the prince, entreating him to give it, either in full or in part, to Giulio Branciforte on the condition that he go and serve my lord the king of Spain in his war against the rebels in Flanders. The viceroy will give the rank of captain to Branciforte, and, so that the sentence of sacrilege, which I trust will be in force in Spain as well, does not hamper him in this career, he will adopt the name Lizzara; that is the name of a small estate I own in the Abruzzi, which I shall find a way of having made over to him through the ruse of false sales. I believe that Your Reverence has never seen a mother treat the murderer of her son in such a manner. With 500 piastres, we could long ago have rid the earth of this odious creature; but we have not wanted to embroil ourselves with Colonna. Therefore, please point out to him that my respect for his rights is costing me bet
ween 60,000 and 80,000 piastres. I wish never again to hear anything of this Branciforte, and now I ask you to present my respects to the prince.”

  The fratone said that within three days he would be traveling to the coast of Ostia, and Signora de Campireali handed him a ring worth 1,000 piastres.

  A few days later, the fratone reappeared in Rome and told Signora de Campireali that in fact he had not told the prince of her idea; but within a month young Branciforte would have embarked for Barcelona, where she could remit to him, via one of the bankers in that city, the sum of 50,000 piastres.

  The prince saw that Giulio was causing him many difficulties; no matter how dangerous it was for him to remain in Italy, the young lover could not resolve to leave the country. In vain, the prince had him consider that Signora de Campireali might die; in vain, he promised him that no matter what happened, after three years he could come back to his native land; Giulio burst into tears, but he would not consent. The prince was obliged to come and ask him to leave as a personal favor to him; Giulio could refuse nothing to his father’s friend; but before anything else, he wanted to know what Elena’s commands were. The prince deigned to see to it that a long letter would be sent to her; and, even more, he gave Giulio permission to write her from Flanders once a month. Finally, the despairing lover embarked for Barcelona. But all his letters were burned by the prince, who never wanted to see Giulio in Italy again. We have forgotten to say that, although the prince’s character was far from being conceited, he did think it necessary, in order to bring the negotiation to a conclusion, to tell Giulio that it was he who thought it best to settle a small fortune of 50,000 piastres on the only son of one of the most faithful servants the house of Colonna ever had.

  Poor Elena was treated like a princess at the Castro convent. The death of her father had left her with a considerable fortune, and even more immense inheritances would be hers eventually. On the occasion of her father’s death, she gave three ells of black cloth to every inhabitant of Castro and its environs who wanted to wear mourning for Signor de Campireali. She was still in the first days of her formal mourning period when, from an entirely unknown hand, she was given a letter from Giulio. It would be difficult to describe the rapture with which she opened the letter, or the profound sorrow that followed upon reading it. It definitely was Giulio’s writing; she examined it with the most careful attention. The letter spoke of love, but good God, what love! Signora de Campireali, a woman of considerable cleverness, had in fact composed it. Her plan was to begin a correspondence with seven or eight letters of passionate love; she looked forward to preparing the following ones, which would suggest that this love was burning itself out bit by bit.

  We shall skip quickly over ten years of a miserable life. Elena believed herself entirely forgotten but nonetheless had refused, in the haughtiest manner, all the marriage proposals that came from the most distinguished young lords of Rome. But she did hesitate for a moment when people spoke to her of Ottavio Colonna, the only son of the celebrated Fabrizio, who had treated her so harshly at Petrella. It seemed to her that if she were absolutely obliged to take a husband as protector of the estates she owned in the Roman states and in the kingdom of Naples, it would be less odious to her to take the name of the man Giulio had once loved. If she had consented to this marriage, Elena would have quickly learned the truth about Giulio Branciforte. The old prince Fabrizio often spoke with delight of the feats of superhuman bravery carried out by Colonel Lizzara (Giulio Branciforte), who, just like a hero in the old romances, sought distraction in fine deeds from his unhappy love affair, which had left him incapable of enjoying any of life’s pleasures. He believed Elena had married long before; Signora de Campireali had surrounded him, too, with a web of lies.

  Elena was more or less reconciled with her ever so capable mother. The latter, fervently desiring to see her daughter married, entreated her friend the old cardinal Santi Quattro,18 protector of the Visitation, who was going to Castro, to tell the most elderly sisters there in confidence that his trip had been delayed by an act of mercy. The good pope Gregory XIII had been moved to pity for the soul of a brigand named Giulio Branciforte, who had once tried to violate their convent; upon hearing of the brigand’s death, the pope revoked the sentence declaring him a sacrilege, knowing perfectly well that under the weight of that sentence, he could never get out of purgatory—if in fact Branciforte, who had been ambushed and massacred in Mexico by rebellious natives, had been lucky enough to make it as far as purgatory. This piece of news had everyone in the Castro convent talking; it reached Elena, who gave herself over to all those follies and vanities that a person in possession of a great fortune can turn to when deeply distressed. From this moment on, she did not come out of her room. The reader needs to know that in order to locate her room in the same spot as the portress’s lodge, the place where Giulio had taken refuge the night of the battle, she had had half the convent reconstructed. By taking infinite pains, and at the cost of a scandal that was difficult to repress, she managed to discover and to hire as domestics the three bravi whom Branciforte had employed, three out of the five who had escaped the battle of Castro. Among them was Ugone, an old man now and crippled by his wounds. The sight of these three men caused a great deal of murmuring; but eventually, the fear that Elena’s haughty character inspired in the whole convent had carried the day, and every day the three men could be seen, dressed in her livery, coming to get their daily orders at the exterior window, and often responding at length to her many questions, always on the same subject.

  After living those six months in seclusion, detached from the things of this world, that followed the news of Giulio’s death, the first sensation that managed to awaken that heart so broken by a misery without remedy was a sensation of vanity.

  Recently, the abbess had died. According to tradition, Cardinal Santi Quattro, still the official protector of the convent despite his ninety-two years of age, had drawn up a list of three sisters from whom the pope would select an abbess. For His Holiness even to consider the second and third names, it would have taken some very grave concern about the first name; ordinarily, those second and third names were crossed off with the stroke of a pen, and the nomination was done.

  One day, Elena was at the window of what was formerly the portress’s lodge and which was now the edge of one of the new wings constructed according to her orders. This window was situated not two feet above the passage that had been soaked in the blood of Giulio and that now was a part of the garden. Elena’s eyes were fixed on the ground. The three women who everyone had recently learned were on the cardinal’s list to succeed the abbess came and passed in front of Elena’s window. She did not see them and, as a result, was unable to greet them. One of the three was offended by this and said to the others in a voice loud enough to be overheard:

  “Now, that’s a fine thing, for a mere boarder to spread her rooms out in the public view like that!”

  Roused from her reverie by this, Elena lifted her gaze and beheld three unpleasant stares. “Well!” she exclaimed to herself, closing the window without greeting them, “perhaps I’ve been a lamb in this convent too long and it’s time I became a wolf, if only to provide a little variety for the town’s amusements.”

  One hour later, one of her men, sent off as a courier, carried the following letter to her mother, who for ten years now had been living in Rome, where she had become a person of great influence:

  My Most Respected Mother,

  Every year you give me 300,000 francs on my birthday; I spend this money on extravagances—honorable things, true, but extravagant nonetheless. Although you have not spoken of it for a long time now, I know there are two ways I could prove my gratitude for all the good intentions you have had regarding me over the years. I will not marry, but I would with pleasure become the abbess of this convent; what has given me this idea is that the three women our cardinal Santi Quattro has put on his list to present to the Holy Father are my enemies; and no matter which of
them is chosen, I can expect all sorts of vexations. Present my birthday greetings to people who might have influence; and let us delay the election for six months, which will drive the prioress, who is the temporary leader of the convent and my intimate friend, mad with happiness. It will be a source of happiness for me, too, and it is a rare thing that such a word can be used in speaking of your daughter. I think this is a mad idea; but if you think there is any chance of success, in a few days I will take the white veil;19 eight years of residence here without spending a single night elsewhere should entitle me to a six months’ exemption. Such a dispensation is never refused, and costs only forty ecus.

  I am, my venerable mother, with respect, etc.

  This letter gave the greatest joy to Signora de Campireali. Before she received it, she was bitterly repenting having told her daughter that Branciforte was dead; she did not know how that deep melancholy of hers would end; she feared some extreme reaction, even feared that her daughter would travel to Mexico to see the place where he had been massacred, in which case it was entirely possible that in Madrid she would learn the truth and hear the name Colonel Lizzara. But now, what her daughter was requesting through the courier was the most difficult, and maybe even the most absurd, thing in the world. A young woman who had never been religious and who was best known for her mad passion for a brigand—a love that might even have been consummated—for such a person to be put at the head of a convent where every Roman prince had a relative! “But,” thought Signora de Campireali, “they say that every case can be pleaded, and if it can be pleaded, it can be won.” In her reply, Vittoria Carafa gave some hope to her daughter, who, in general, had always wanted the silliest things but, as a kind of compensation, also soon grew bored with them. That evening, as she sought out any kind of information having anything to do with the Castro convent, she learned that for several months now, her friend Cardinal Santi Quattro had been greatly upset: he wanted to marry his niece to Don Ottavio Colonna, the eldest son of Prince Fabrizio, of whom so much has been said in the present history. The prince had offered him his second son, Don Lorenzo, because in order to fortify his own holdings, which had been strangely compromised of late because of the reconciliation of the pope with the king of Naples, who were now jointly warring against the brigands of La Faggiola, the wife of his eldest son would have to bring with her a dowry of 600,000 piastres (that is, 3,210,000 francs) to the house of Colonna. But Cardinal Santi Quattro, even by means of disinheriting all his other relations in the most extreme way, could offer a fortune of only 380,000 or 400,000 ecus.