by Stendhal
Félize resolved immediately upon vengeance. The resolution calmed her soul, which had been strengthened by this misfortune.
“Do you know, madame,” she said to the abbess, “that I deserve your pity? I have been deprived of all my peace of mind. It was a real wisdom in our founder, Saint Benedict, that led him to forbid any man under sixty ever being allowed into our convents. Monsieur Count Buondelmonte, the grand duke’s viceroy in charge of our convent, needed to have long conversations with me to dissuade me from the mad idea I had of increasing the number of my maids. He was wise, and he combined an admirable mind with an infinite prudence. I was struck, and more so than a servant of God and of Saint Benedict should have been, by these fine qualities of the count, our viceroy. Heaven has chosen to punish my vanity: I have fallen hopelessly in love with the count; at the risk of scandalizing my friend Rodelinde, I have confided in her all about my passion, which is as criminal as it is involuntary; and it is because she has given me her counsel and her consolation, because sometimes she has even succeeded in helping me resist the temptations of the evil spirit, that sometimes she has stayed up late with me. But it was always because I entreated her to; I know very well that if Rodelinde had quit me, I would have turned to thoughts of the count.”
The abbess did not fail to deliver a lengthy sermon to this strayed lamb. Félize was careful to voice some reflections, which lengthened the homily.
“Now,” she thought, “the things that will bring about our vengeance, Rodelinde’s and mine, will also bring the amiable count back to the convent. I will thus be able to repair the mistake I made in giving in too easily on the point about the number of maids. I was seduced, though I did not know it at the time, by the temptation to appear reasonable to a man who was himself so very reasonable. I will not let slip any chance there is of getting him to return to take up his post as viceroy over our convent. This is what bothers me most right now. That little toy Rodéric, who used to amuse me, now seems only ridiculous to me, and through my own fault I have been unable to see the amiable count again. It’s up to us from now on, Rodelinde and me, to ensure that our vengeance creates the kind of disorders that will make his presence here necessary. Our abbess is so unable to keep a secret that it is quite possible that she will try to prevent or abbreviate as much as she can any conversations I am able to have with him, and to do this she will tell him, I have no doubt, that onetime mistress of the cardinal grand duke, about my declaration of love for that singular, cold man. It will be a comical scene and it will perhaps amuse him, because, unless I am mistaken, he is not the kind to be fooled by the nonsense they preach at us; it is only that he has not yet found a woman worthy of him, and I will be that woman—or I will die.”
And now the boredom that had harassed Félize and Rodelinde was chased away by their schemes for vengeance, which occupied their every moment.
“Because Fabienne and Céliane have wickedly chosen to spend time in the garden during the hot weather, the very next meeting they have with their lovers must make such a horrific scandal that it will wipe my late-night walks there entirely out of the minds of the serious ladies here in the convent. The evening of the first rendezvous that Fabienne and Céliane give to Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine, Rodéric and Lancelot will station themselves behind those cut stones that are set up in that little area right in front of the door to the garden. Rodéric and Lancelot must not kill the women’s lovers but should give them each five or six little stabs with their swords, so that the two are covered in blood. The sight of them will alarm their mistresses and give them something to think about beyond the sweet nothings they were going to say to them.”
The two friends thought the best way to set up the ambush they had planned was to ask the abbess to grant a month’s leave for Livia, the camériste noble of Rodelinde. This most skillful girl was given letters for Rodéric and Lancelot. She also brought them a sum of money, which they used to set spies upon Lorenzo B*** and Pierre-Antoine D***, the lover of Céliane. These two young men, the noblest and most fashionable in the city, entered the convent on the same night. This had become a much more difficult thing to manage under the reign of the cardinal grand duke. Moreover, the abbess Virgilia had obtained a guard from Count Buondelmonte, stationed by the service door of the garden, the one that opened onto the deserted area behind the north rampart.
Livia, the camériste noble, came back every day to report to Félize and Rodelinde on the preparations for the planned attack on the lovers of Céliane and Fabienne. The preparations took no less than six weeks. It was now a matter of guessing which night Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine would choose for entering the convent; under the new regime, with all its strictness, prudence was doubly necessary for such business. And Livia was having great difficulty with Rodéric. He had perceived Félize’s attitude toward him growing lukewarm and now was refusing outright to get involved in taking vengeance on the lovers of Fabienne and Céliane unless she agreed to meet with him in person and tell him herself. Now, consenting to this was precisely what Felize, fully occupied with thoughts of Count Buondelmonte, would never do.
“I can understand perfectly well,” she wrote to him with an imprudent frankness,
how one might let oneself be damned in order to find happiness; but to let oneself be damned in order to see a previous lover whose reign is over—that is something I cannot understand at all. Nevertheless, I could receive you one more night in order to make you see reason, but it is not a crime I am asking of you. Thus, you have no right to be making exaggerated claims and asking to be paid as if someone had asked you to kill someone who had been insolent. Do not commit the error of giving the lovers of our enemies such serious wounds that they are unable to get themselves into the garden so as to be a spectacle for all of the women we will have assembled there. Do not do something that might reduce the spice of our vengeance; I see in you only a kind of scatterbrain, unworthy of inspiring the slightest confidence. And you must know that it is primarily for this mortal failing in you that you have ceased to merit my friendship.
Finally, the long-planned night of vengeance arrived. Rodéric and Lancelot, with the aid of several of their men, kept an eye on the movements of Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine all day long. Certain indiscretions that the latter two let fall made it clear that this was the night they would try to scale the walls of Saint Reparata. A rich merchant whose house was next door to the guardhouse that had furnished the sentry for the nuns’ garden gate was hosting his daughter’s wedding that night. Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine, disguised as servants of the rich man’s house, took advantage of the situation by coming to the guardhouse, around ten o’clock in the evening, and offering them a cask of wine in the merchant’s name. The soldiers did full honors to the gift. The night was very dark, and scaling of the convent wall was to take place at midnight; at eleven o’clock, Rodéric and Lancelot, hidden near the wall, were delighted to see the sentry relieved by a soldier who was more than half drunk and who fell sound asleep within a few minutes.
Within the convent, Félize and Rodelinde had watched their enemies hiding themselves in the garden under the trees that grew next to the wall. A little before midnight, Félize felt emboldened enough to go and wake up the abbess. She had some difficulty in doing so; and she had even more in trying to make her comprehend the nature of the crime she had come to report. At last, after more than a half hour of time lost, during the last minutes of which Félize trembled at the thought of passing for a slanderer, the abbess declared that if in fact the story was true, there was no need to add an infraction of the rule of Saint Benedict to a crime. Now, that rule strictly forbade setting foot in the garden after sunset. Happily, Félize recalled that one could come through the interior of the convent and, without setting foot in the garden, could watch from the terrace of a little, low orangery right beside the door guarded by the sentry. While Félize was busy persuading the abbess, Rodelinde went and awakened her aunt, an old and very pious subprioress in the convent.
The abbess, even while allowing herself to be led to the terrace of the orangery, was still far from believing what Félize was telling her. Thus, it is hard to imagine her surprise, her indignation, her stupor when she saw, nine or ten feet below the terrace, two nuns out of their rooms at that unheard-of hour—for in the darkness she could not yet recognize Fabienne and Céliane.
“You impious girls!” she cried in a voice that she hoped was imposing. “You imprudent, wicked creatures! Is this how you serve the Divine Majesty? Remember that the great Saint Benedict, your protector, is watching you now from the heavens above, and he shudders at the sight of your sacrilegious flouting of his rule. Get back inside, because the bell for retiring has sounded long ago; get back into your rooms as fast as you can, and set yourselves to pray as you await the penance I will impose upon you in the morning.”
Who could paint the stupefaction and the chagrin that overwhelmed the souls of Céliane and Fabienne upon hearing the voice of the angry abbess coming from so close, just above their heads? They stopped talking and stood absolutely still while yet another surprise unfolded before their and the abbess’s eyes. They could hear, some ten steps away and on the other side of the gate, the violent sounds of a combat with swords. Soon, the wounded combatants cried out; someone was hurt. Imagine the misery of Céliane and Fabienne when they recognized the voices of Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine! They had counterfeit keys for the garden gate, and now they rushed to open the locks, and though the door was very large, they had the strength to make it turn on its hinges. Céliane, who was the stronger and the older of the two, dared to leave the garden first. She returned a moment later supporting her love Lorenzo in her arms; he seemed dangerously wounded and could barely stand up. He moaned at every step like a man about to die, and in fact, after he had made scarcely a dozen steps into the garden and despite all the efforts of Céliane, he fell and died almost at once. Céliane, abandoning all prudence, called out his name aloud and burst into sobs as she saw he was no longer responding.
All this took place about twenty paces from the terrace of the little orangery. Félize could clearly see that Lorenzo was either dead or dying, and it would be difficult to paint her despair.
“I am the cause of all this,” she said to herself. “Rodéric must have let himself get carried away, and he must have killed Lorenzo. He has a cruel nature, with a vanity that never pardons an insult, and at a number of masquerade parties Lorenzo’s hair and clothes were considered finer than his.”
Félize supported the abbess, who had nearly fainted in horror.
A few seconds later, the unlucky Fabienne came into the garden supporting her lover, Pierre-Antoine, he, too, pierced and mortally wounded. He, too, was soon to die, but from within the silence that this scene of horror had inspired in all of them, he could be heard saying something to Fabienne:
“It was Don César, the knight of Malta. I recognized him perfectly, and though he wounded me, he is also bearing wounds from me.”
Don César had been Pierre-Antoine’s predecessor with Fabienne. Now, the young nun seemed to have lost all concern for her reputation; she called aloud for help from the Madonna and her patron saint, and she also called out for her camériste noble; she didn’t care if she woke the whole convent, because in fact she had really been in love with Pierre-Antoine. She wanted to care for him, stanch his bleeding, bandage his wounds. This genuine passion aroused pity in many of the nuns. Some approached the wounded man, and some went to bring lights; he was seated, leaned up against a laurel tree. Fabienne was on her knees before him, caring for him. He was speaking clearly, repeating again how it had been Don César, the knight of Malta, who had wounded him, when suddenly his arms stiffened and he expired.
Celiane interrupted the grieving of Fabienne. Once she was certain of Lorenzo’s death, she seemed to have forgotten him and now thought only of the peril surrounding her and her dear Fabienne. The latter had fainted and fallen onto the body of her lover. Céliane pulled her up and shook her vigorously to bring her back to herself.
“Your death and mine are certain if you give in to this weakness,” she said to her quietly, her mouth pressed against her ear so as not to be overheard by the abbess, whom she could distinctly make out leaning against the balustrade of the orangery, ten or twelve feet above the ground of the garden. “Pull yourself together,” she told her, “and think about your reputation and your safety! You’ll spend long years in a prison, in some dark and dirty cell, if you give in to your grief for one more moment.”
Just then, the abbess, who had been trying to come down, approached the two unfortunate nuns, leaning on Félize’s arm.
“As for you, madame,” Céliane said to her in a proud, firm tone that made an impression on the abbess, “if you value the peace and honor of this noble convent you hold so dear, you will keep quiet and not make a big scandal out of this for the grand duke. You have been in love yourself, but people say that you have been wise about it, and this gives you a certain superiority over us; but if you speak one word of this to the grand duke, it will immediately be the only topic of conversation in the city, and people will say that the abbess of Saint Reparata, who knew love in the early part of her life, did not have the strength necessary to rule the nuns at her convent. We will be lost, madame, but you will be lost even more certainly than us. Admit, madame,” she continued, as the abbess was sighing and emitting little confused sounds and cries that could be overheard, “that you don’t know yourself right now what to do to effect either the convent’s salvation or your own!”
The abbess remaining confused and quiet, Céliane went on:
“First, you must be quiet, and then, the essential thing is immediately to get these two dead bodies taken far from here; they will be the end of us, of us and of you, if they are discovered.”
The poor abbess, sighing deeply, was so troubled that she did not know how to respond. She had only Félize next to her, and the latter had prudently stepped away after having led her to the two unfortunate nuns, not wanting them to recognize her.
“My daughters, do what you think necessary, whatever seems right to you,” the miserable abbess said, her voice almost choked with horror at the situation in which she found herself. “I will find a way to cover up our shame, but remember that Divine Justice is always watching over our sins.”
Celiane paid no attention to the words of the abbess.
“Find a way to keep yourself quiet, madame; that’s all we ask of you,” she said repeatedly, interrupting her. Then addressing herself to Martona, the confidante of the abbess, who had just arrived:
“Come help me, my dear friend! This is for the honor of the whole convent, for the honor and even the life of the abbess; for if she speaks, not only will she lose us but also our noble families will not let us perish without seeking vengeance.”
Fabienne was leaning against an olive tree and sobbing, in no state to help Céliane and Martona.
Celiane said to her, “Go back into your room. And take care to get rid of every trace of blood on your clothes. In an hour, I’ll be back, and I’ll weep with you.”
Then, with Martona’s help, Céliane first carried the body of her love and then that of Pierre-Antoine into the street of the gold merchants, situated about ten minutes down the road from the garden gate. Céliane and her companion were lucky enough to be recognized by no one. And by another stroke of luck, which we have already noted and without which none of their endeavors would have been possible, the sentry was seated on a rock some distance away, apparently asleep. Céliane made sure of this first, before attempting to transport the corpses. But after dropping off the second one, Céliane and her companion were struck with fear. The night had grown a little less dark; it might have been about two in the morning; they could distinctly see three soldiers standing at the garden gate, and what was even worse, the gate appeared to be closed.