by Stendhal
“There is the first mistake our abbess made,” Céliane said to Martona. “She must have remembered that the rule of Saint Benedict called for the garden gate to be closed. We will have to flee to our families, and with this severe and somber prince we have, I might very well lose my life over this affair. But you, Martona, you’re guilty of nothing; at my command you helped me transport those corpses, whose presence would have dishonored the convent. Let’s kneel down over here behind these rocks.”
Two soldiers approached them, returning from the garden gate to the guardhouse. Céliane observed with pleasure that they both seemed completely drunk. They were talking, but the one who had stood sentry, who was noticeable for his great height, was saying nothing at all to his companion of the events of the night; and later, in the trial that took place, he said simply that some armed men, dressed in superb clothing, had gotten into a fight some paces away from him. In the darkness, he could make out seven or eight men, but he took care not to get involved in their quarrel; after that, everyone had gone into the convent garden.
When the two soldiers had passed, Céliane and her companion approached the garden gate and found to their great joy that it was not entirely closed. This sage precaution had been the work of Félize. When she left the abbess, in order not to be seen by Céliane and Fabienne, she had run over to the garden gate, then completely open. She was mortally afraid that Rodéric would seize upon the moment to come in and try to see her. Knowing his imprudence and his audacity, and fearing that he might try to compromise her to avenge himself on her for her weakening affections, Félize remained hiding behind the door, behind the trees. She had heard everything that Céliane had said to the abbess and then to Martona, and it had been she who had pushed the gate almost closed a few moments after Céliane and Martona had carried out the corpse and she had heard the soldiers come to relieve the sentry.
Félize watched Céliane lock the gate with the counterfeit key and leave. Only then did she quit the garden. “So there it is,” she said to herself, “this revenge that I thought would give me so much pleasure.” She spent the rest of the night with Rodelinde, trying to understand what must have happened to have brought about such a tragic result.
Fortunately, shortly after dawn, her camériste noble returned to the convent bearing a letter for her from Rodéric. Rodéric and Lancelot had been too brave to make use of any of the paid assassins then very common in Florence. They attacked Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine alone. The duels had been long, because Rodéric and Lancelot wanted to follow their instructions faithfully and give the others only light wounds, and so they fell back constantly; and in fact they had wounded them only in their arms, being perfectly sure they could not die of those wounds. But just when they were about to leave, they saw to their great surprise a furious swordsman falling upon Pierre-Antoine. From the cries he made as he attacked, they recognized Don César, the knight of Malta. Seeing they were now three against two wounded men, they hurried to flee the scene, and the next morning there was astonishment all through Florence at the discovery of the corpses of those two young men, who had been of the first rank of the city’s rich and elegant youth. It was their rank that made it so surprising, because under the dissolute reign of François, whom Ferdinand had lately succeeded, all of Tuscany had been like some province in Spain, and there were more than a hundred murders in the city every year. The great question debated everywhere in the higher levels of society was whether Lorenzo and Pierre-Antoine had killed each other in a duel or whether they had been the victims of some revenge plot.
The day after all this, everything was quiet in the convent. The great majority of the nuns had no idea of anything that had happened. Shortly after dawn, before the gardeners arrived, Martona went out and raked up the dirt in the spots where it had been soaked in blood, destroying every trace of what had happened there. This woman, who had a lover herself, carried Céliane’s orders out with considerable intelligence and without, above all, saying a word to the abbess. Céliane gave her a gift, a pretty cross with diamonds on it. Martona was a simple woman, and as she thanked her, she added:
“There’s one thing I would prefer to all the diamonds in the world. Ever since this new abbess has come to the convent, and no matter how I’ve abased myself in currying favor with her by doing every kind of servile task, I haven’t been able to get the slightest concession out of her that would have made it easier for me to see my dear Julien R***. Now, it’s been more than four months since I’ve seen him, and he’ll probably forget me. Madame’s close friend, signora Fabienne, is one of the eight portress sisters; one good turn deserves another. Perhaps Madame Fabienne could, one day when she is in charge of the door, let me slip out to see Julien, or let him come in?”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Céliane, “but the problem, as Fabienne will no doubt say, is arranging things so the abbess does not perceive your absence. You’ve made her too accustomed to having you near her at all times. Try to absent yourself for short periods. I am certain that if you were attached to anyone other than the abbess, Fabienne would have no trouble in seeing you get what you’re asking for.”
It was not without design that Céliane spoke thus.
“You spend all your time weeping for your lover,” she said to Fabienne, “but you don’t spare a thought for the terrifying menace facing us. Our abbess is incapable of keeping her mouth shut, and sooner or later what has happened is bound to be communicated to our severe grand duke. He has carried the ideas of a man who was a cardinal for twenty-five years with him onto the throne. Our crime is one of the greatest that can be committed in the eyes of religion: in a word, the life of the abbess is the death of us.”
“What are you saying?” Fabienne cried, wiping away her tears.
“I am saying that you must ask your friend Victoire Ammanati to give you a little of that famous Perugian poison that her mother passed on to her on her deathbed, having been poisoned herself by her husband. Her illness had lasted several months, and few people suspected poison; it will be the same with our abbess.”
“Your idea is horrifying!” exclaimed the sweet Fabienne.
“I understand your horror, and I would share in it if it weren’t that the life of the abbess means the death of Fabienne and Céliane. Think about it: our madame abbess is utterly incapable of keeping quiet; a word from her will be enough to persuade the grand duke, and he has a horror of the crimes that took place when our poor convents enjoyed their freedom. Your cousin is closely connected to Martona, who belongs to a branch of her family that was ruined by the bankruptcies of 158*. Martona is madly in love with a good-looking silk weaver named Julien; your cousin must give the Perugian poison as a sleeping aid that we need to reduce the abbess’s vigilance, and it will kill her in six months.”
Count Buondelmonte had occasion to visit the court, and Grand Duke Ferdinand congratulated him on the exemplary tranquillity that reigned in the Abbey of Saint Reparata. The count went there to observe the fruits of his labors. One can imagine his astonishment when the abbess told him all about the double assassination, the end of which she had witnessed. The count quickly concluded that the abbess was entirely incapable of shedding any light on the cause of the double crime. “There is no one here intelligent enough to clarify what happened,” he said to himself, “except Félize, whose reasoning made such an impression and caused me such embarrassment on my first visit. But she is so preoccupied with the injustices of society and of the families toward nuns that she may not be willing to talk.”
The arrival at the convent of the grand duke’s envoy had thrown Félize into a state of wild joy. At last, she would see again that singular man, the sole cause of all the strange events of the last six months! But elsewhere in the convent, the arrival of the count had thrown Céliane and her friend young Fabienne into a state of profound terror.
“We’ll be lost because of your scruples,” Céliane said to Fabienne. “The abbess is too weak not to have talked. And now our lives ar
e in the count’s hands. We have two choices: we can flee, but with whom could we live? Our brothers’ avarice will supply all the motivation they need to reject us for the suspicion of crime that hangs over us, and refuse us bread. In the old days, when Tuscany was only a province of Spain, unfortunate persecuted Tuscans could find refuge in France. But this grand duke cardinal is trying to shake off the yoke of Spain. There is no refuge possible for us, and there, my poor friend, is where your childish scruples have landed us. So we are even more obligated now to commit the crime, because Martona and the abbess are the only witnesses of what happened that night. Rodelinde’s aunt will say nothing; she won’t want to compromise the reputation of the convent so dear to her. Martona, once she has given the so-called sleeping aid to the abbess, will be sure to say nothing when we tell her it was really poison. And after all, she’s a good sort, madly in love with her Julien.”
It would take too long to give a full account of the intelligent conversation that Félize had with the count. She was always mindful of the error she had made in giving in so easily on the matter of the two additional maids. The result had been that the count was absent from the convent for six months. Félize promised herself that she would not slip into an error like that again. The count had requested, in the most gracious manner possible, a conversation with her in the visiting room. The invitation had Félize beside herself. It was only by making an effort to remember her feminine dignity that she was able to put the conversation off till the following day. But upon arriving in the visiting room, where the count sat by himself, even though separated by a grill with huge, thick bars, Félize felt a timidity come over her that she had never before known. Her surprise was extreme, and now she deeply regretted the idea that just the day before had seemed so easy and pleasant to her. We mean that avowal of her passion for the count that she had made to the abbess, so that it would be passed on to the count. Back then, she was far from loving him in the way she did now. The idea of laying siege to the heart of this grave commissioner who had been given to the convent by the prince had seemed pleasurable to her. Now, her feelings were entirely different: making him like her was essential to her happiness; if she did not succeed, she would be miserable, and what would a grave, serious man like him make of the strange disclosure made by the abbess? He would almost certainly find it indecent, and this idea was torture to Félize. But talking was necessary. The count was there, serious, seated before her and complimenting her on her intelligence. Had the abbess already spoken to him? The young nun’s whole attention was focused on that one great question. Fortunately for her, she thought she could see what was in fact the truth: that the abbess, still terrified by the sight of those two corpses that appeared on the fatal night, had forgotten the trivial detail of the mad love a young nun had conceived.
The count, for his part, could easily see the extreme anxiety this beautiful person was suffering, and he was not sure what had caused it. “Could she be guilty?” he asked himself. The idea troubled him—him, the rational one. The suspicion led him to pay the most extreme and serious attention to the young nun’s responses. This was an honor that had not been accorded to any woman of his acquaintance for a long time. He admired the way Félize handled herself. She found a way to make each of her responses flattering to the count with regard to everything he said about the fight that had taken place near the convent’s gate; but she always resisted saying anything conclusive. After an hour and a half of conversation during which the count was never bored for a moment, he took his leave of the young nun, entreating her to grant him a second meeting in a few days. The request poured a celestial happiness into the heart of Félize.
The count departed the Abbey of Saint Reparata in a pensive mood.
“My duty without a doubt,” he said to himself, “is to give the prince a report on all the strange things I have just heard. The whole state has been preoccupied with the strange deaths of these two poor young men, so brilliant and so rich. On the other hand, considering the terrible bishop that the prince-cardinal has just named, to say anything of what has happened would result in introducing all the fury of the Spanish Inquisition into this unfortunate convent. That terrible bishop would put not one but five or six of these young women to death; and who would be guilty of their deaths if not I, whose sin in remaining silent, on the other hand, would be only a slight abuse of the confidence placed in me? If the prince finds out what has happened and reproaches me, I shall say to him, ‘Your terrible bishop frightens me.’”
The count dared not avow to himself fully all the motives he had for remaining silent. He was not sure that Félize was innocent, and his whole being was seized by horror at the very idea of putting the life of such a young girl in peril, one who had been so cruelly treated by her family and by society.
“She would have been the ornament of Florence,” he said to himself, “if someone had married her.”
The count had been invited to a magnificent hunting party in the Maremma near Siena, half of which belonged to him, along with the greatest lords of the court and the richest merchants of Florence. He made his excuses to them, the hunt took place without him, and Félize was startled to hear, the very day after their conversation, the hoofbeats of the count’s horses in the outer courtyard of the convent. The grand duke’s envoy, in resolving not to tell the prince about what had happened, had also felt that he now had the obligation to watch over the future tranquillity of the convent. Now, in order to do this, the first thing he had to do was to find out what part the two nuns whose lovers had perished had had in their deaths. After a very long conversation with the abbess, the count called eight or ten nuns, among whom were Céliane and Fabienne. He found to his great astonishment that, just as the abbess had told him, eight of them were completely ignorant of what had happened on the fatal night. The count’s only direct interrogations were of Céliane and Fabienne; they denied everything, Céliane with the firmness of a soul superior to even the greatest misfortunes, and the young Fabienne like a young girl in despair who was being barbarously forced to recall the source of all her misery. She was horribly haggard and seemed to be suffering from some malady of the chest; she could not be consoled for the death of the young Lorenzo B***.
“I am the one who killed him,” she would say to Céliane during the long talks between the two of them; “I should have been able to manage better the self-love of Don César, his predecessor, when I broke it off with him.”
When she came into the visiting room this time, Félize understood that the abbess had been weak enough to tell the grand duke’s envoy about the love she felt for him; the behavior of the wise Buondelmonte had completely changed. At first, this was a matter of great embarrassment for Félize, and she reddened at it. Without exactly realizing this, she was charming during the long conversation she had with the count, but she admitted to nothing. The abbess understood nothing of what she had seen, or rather, to all appearances, what she had failed to see. Céliane and Fabienne admitted nothing. The count was perplexed.
“If I question the caméristes nobles and the domestics, it will be the same as giving the bishop entrée to the affair. They will speak to their confessors, and the Inquisition will be visited upon the convent.”
Greatly troubled, the count returned every day to Saint Reparata. He took it upon himself to question all the nuns, then all the caméristes nobles, and then all the servants. He discovered the truth about an infanticide that had taken place three years before, which he had been informed about by the officer of the ecclesiastical court, presided over by the bishop. But, to his astonishment, he saw that the story of the two young men who entered the abbey gardens and died there was known only by the abbess, Céliane, Fabienne, and Félize and her friend, Rodelinde. The aunt of the latter was so good at dissimulation that she escaped suspicion altogether. The terror inspired by the new bishop, Monsignor ***, was so great that, with the exception of the abbess and Félize, the depositions of all the other nuns, who were clearly colludi
ng, were always couched in exactly the same terms. The count ended every session at the convent with a long conversation with Félize, which was pure happiness for her, but in order to make these conversations last longer, she took great care to explain to the count only a little each day of what she knew about the deaths of the two young cavaliers. But when it came to personal topics, she was, on the contrary, a model of frankness. She had had three lovers; she told the count, who had by now practically become her friend, the whole story of her love life. The perfect frankness of this young girl, so beautiful and so intelligent, so captivated the count that he could only respond to that frankness with a candor of his own.
“I do not think I could repay your stories,” he said to Félize, “with anything of my own as interesting. I do not know if I would dare tell you about all the persons of your sex that I have met who have always inspired in me more contempt for their characters than admiration for their beauty.”
The count’s frequent visits kept Céliane troubled. Fabienne, more and more absorbed in her grief, had ceased to voice her repugnance to the counsels of her friend. When her turn to guard the convent door came, she opened it up, looked away, and Julien, the young silk worker and boyfriend of Martona, the confidante of the abbess, could slip inside. Eight whole days passed before Fabienne again had her turn as portress and could let him out again. It seems that it was during this long stay that Martona gave the sleeping aid to the abbess, who wanted her confidante by her side day and night; Martona had been touched by the complaints of Julien, who was bored to death, all alone and locked up in her room.