The Charterhouse of Parma (19 page)

This discovery had given His Highness a happy day. Occasionally the Duchess dropped a few words of her intention to take a leave of a
few months each year, which she would devote to seeing the Italy she knew nothing of: she would visit Naples, Florence, Rome. Now nothing in the world could cause greater pain to the Prince than such an appearance of abandonment: this was one of his most salient weaknesses; any behavior resembling disdain for his old capital pierced him to the heart. He felt that he had no means of keeping the Duchess Sanseverina with him, and the Duchess Sanseverina was by far the most brilliant woman in Parma. An unparalleled phenomenon, given Italian laziness, was that people came in from the surrounding countryside to attend her
Thursdays;
these were veritable parties; almost always the Duchess provided something new and entertaining. The Prince was dying to attend one of these
Thursdays
, but how was he to manage it? To visit the residence of a mere subject was a thing which neither he nor his father had ever done!

On a certain Thursday, it was cold and rainy; all evening the Prince heard the carriages rolling up the cobblestones from the palace square to the Palazzo Sanseverina. He was overcome by a feeling of impatience: other people were being amused, and he, the Sovereign Prince, the absolute master, who ought to be amused more than anyone else in the world—he was bored! He rang for his aide-de-camp, it was necessary to take the time to put a dozen trusty men in the street between His Highness’s palace and the Palazzo Sanseverina. Finally, after an hour which seemed a century to the Prince, and during which he was twenty times tempted to brave the assassins’ daggers and emerge quite spontaneously and taking no precaution, he appeared in Countess Sanseverina’s first salon. A thunderbolt falling in that salon would not have produced as much astonishment. In the twinkling of an eye, and as the Prince advanced, a silence of amazement fell in these gay and noisy rooms; all eyes, fixed upon the Prince, opened excessively wide. The courtiers seemed disconcerted; only the Duchess showed no surprise. When at last people had regained the power of speech, the great concern of all present was to decide this important question: had the Duchess been informed of this visit, or had she been as surprised by it as everyone else?

The Prince was entertained, and the reader will judge of the utterly
spontaneous character of the Duchess, and of the infinite power which certain vague hints of departure, cleverly dropped, had allowed her to assume.

As she was accompanying the Prince to the door while he was making a number of extremely agreeable remarks, a singular notion occurred to her which she ventured to express to him quite simply, and as if it were the most ordinary matter. “If Your Serene Highness wished to address three or four of these charming sentences lavished upon me to the Princess, you would make me happier far than by telling me here and now how pretty I am. For I would not for anything in the world distress the Princess by the particular marks of favor with which Your Highness has honored me.”

The Prince stared at her fixedly, and replied in a dry tone of voice: “I was under the impression that I am empowered to go where I please.”

The Duchess blushed. “I merely wished,” she replied at once, “not to expose Your Highness to the risk of performing a futile errand, for this Thursday will be the last; I shall be going to spend a few days in Bologna or in Florence.”

As she returned through her salons, everyone supposed her at the height of royal favor, and she had just ventured what in the memory of man no one had dared in all of Parma. She made a sign to the Count, who left his whist table and followed her into a little salon that was lighted but empty.

“You have done a very bold thing,” he told her; “I should not have advised it; but in fond hearts,” he added with a smile, “happiness augments love, and if you leave tomorrow morning, I shall follow you tomorrow night. I shall be delayed only by that task at the Ministry of Finance which I have been so foolish as to assume, but in four well-occupied hours, one can dispose of a good many treasury accounts. Let us return to the party, dear friend, and accomplish our ministerial fatuities in all freedom, and without any appearance of constraint; it is perhaps the last performance we shall be giving in this city. If he believes himself to be challenged, a man is capable of anything; he will call this
setting an example
. When these people will have gone, we shall
determine the means of barricading the palace for the rest of the night; best perhaps to leave without delay for your estate of Sacca, near the Po, which has the advantage of being but a half-hour’s distance from Austrian territory.”

This was a delicious moment for the Duchess’s love and for her self-esteem; she gazed at the Count, and her eyes brimmed with tears. So powerful a Minister, surrounded by this host of courtiers overwhelming him with compliments equal to those they addressed to the Prince himself—to leave everything for her and so readily!

Returning to her salons, she was wild with joy. Everyone bowed before her. “How happiness has changed our Duchess,” said the courtiers on all sides, “she is quite unrecognizeable. Finally that noble Roman soul, so high above us all, deigns to appreciate the extreme favor of which she has just been the object on the part of our Sovereign!”

Toward the evening’s end, the Count came to her: “I have news for you …” Immediately the persons surrounding the Duchess moved away. “The Prince, returning to his palace,” continued the Count, “had himself announced at his wife’s apartments. Imagine the surprise! ‘I have come to tell you,’ he said to her, ‘of a fine evening which I have spent at the Duchess Sanseverina’s. It is she who has requested me to tell you about all she has done with that musty old palace.’ Then the Prince, who had taken a chair, began to describe each of your salons. He spent more than twenty minutes in those apartments of his wife, who was weeping for joy; despite her intelligence, she could not manage a word to keep the conversation in the light key His Highness sought to give it.”

This Prince was by no means a bad man, whatever the Italian Liberals might say of him. In truth, he had thrown into his prisons a considerable number of them, but this was out of fear, and he sometimes murmured as if to console himself for certain memories: “Better to kill the Devil than let the Devil kill us.” The day after the party we have just described, he was quite merry, having performed two fine actions: to attend a
Thursday
and to speak to his wife. At dinner, he spoke to her again; in a word, the Duchess Sanseverina’s
Thursday
effected an internal revolution that echoed throughout all Parma; Marchesa Raversi was dismayed, and the Duchess had the double joy of having been able
to be useful to her lover, and having found him more in love with her than ever.

“All this on account of a very imprudent notion that happened to pass through my head!” she said to the Count. “I might surely be freer in Rome or in Naples, but would I find there so entrancing a game to play? No, indeed, my dear Count, and it is you who constitute my happiness.”

It is with minor details of court life as insignificant as the one we have just related that the history of the next four years should be filled. Each spring, the Marchesa and her daughters came to the Palazzo Sanseverina or to the estate of Sacca, on the bank of the Po, for a stay of two months; many agreeable hours were spent there, and Fabrizio was often mentioned, but the Count would never permit him to pay a single visit to Parma. The Duchess and the Minister had indeed to make amends for certain follies, but in general Fabrizio followed quite obediently the line of conduct that had been drawn for him: a nobleman studying theology and not entirely relying on his virtue to achieve his advancement. At Naples, he had developed a deep interest in the study of antiquity, he made excavations; this passion had almost replaced the one for horses. He had sold his English thoroughbreds in order to continue certain diggings at Miseno, where he had found a bust of Tiberius as a young man, which now ranked among the finest remains of antiquity. The discovery of this bust was nearly the keenest pleasure he had experienced at Naples. His soul was too noble to imitate the other young men, for example, to play a lover’s part with any seriousness. No doubt he had no dearth of mistresses, but they were quite without consequence for him, and in spite of his youth one might say
of him that he knew nothing of love; for which reason he was loved all the more. Nothing prevented him from behaving with utter self-possession, for to him one pretty young woman was always the same as any other pretty young woman; it was always the one he had met last who seemed most attractive. One of the most admired ladies of Naples had thrown herself at him for the last year of his stay, which had initially amused him and ultimately got on his nerves to such a degree that one of the felicities of his departure was to be released from the attentions of the charming Duchess of A——. It was in 1821 that, having passed all his examinations more or less satisfactorily, having bestowed a gift and a cross upon his director of studies, or tutor, Fabrizio finally left to see something of the city of Parma, of which he thought so often. He was a Monsignore, and four horses drew his carriage; at the post-stage before Parma, he took only two, and in town drew up in front of the church of San Giovanni. Here could be seen the elaborate tomb of his great-great-uncle, the Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, author of the Latin genealogy. He prayed at the tomb, then walked to the palazzo of the Duchess, who expected him several days later. There were a number of people in her salon, but soon they were left alone.

“And are you satisfied with me now?” he asked her as he rushed into her arms. “Thanks to you, I have spent four quite happy years at Naples, instead of boring myself to death in Novara with a mistress authorized by the police.”

The Duchess could not get over her amazement—she would not have recognized Fabrizio if she had passed him in the street; she found him to be what indeed he was: one of the best-looking men in Italy; it was his physiognomy, above all, that was charming. She had sent him to Naples with the manners of a daredevil; the riding-whip he always used to carry in those days seemed to be an inherent part of his being: now he had the noblest, and the most reserved expression in the presence of strangers, yet in private she recognized all the fire of his first youth. He was a diamond that had lost nothing in being polished. Fabrizio had not been there an hour before Count Mosca appeared, perhaps a little too soon. The young man spoke to him in such good terms of the Cross of Parma bestowed upon his tutor and expressed his deep
gratitude for other benefits to which he dared not refer so openly with such perfect tact that the minister immediately formed a favorable impression.

“This nephew of yours,” he murmured to the Duchess, “is made to embellish any high position to which you wish to advance him in due course.”

So far, everything was going wonderfully, but when the Minister, very pleased with Fabrizio and hitherto concerned only with his words and gestures, happened to glance at the Duchess, he observed a singular expression in her eyes. “This young man is doing something peculiar here,” he said to himself. This reflection was a bitter one; the Count had reached the age of
fifty
, a cruel number whose entire resonance can affect only a man desperately in love. Count Mosca was very kind, very worthy of being loved, whatever his severities as a Minister. But in his eyes, this cruel number of
fifty
darkened his whole life and would have been capable of eliciting cruelty on his own account. In the five years during which he had persuaded the Duchess to come to Parma, she had frequently roused his jealousy, especially in the early times, but never had she given him occasion for any real complaint. He even believed, and with reason, that it was in the intention of securing his affections all the more closely that the Duchess had resorted to these appearances of favor in regard to several handsome young men at court. He was certain, for instance, that she had rejected certain offers on the part of the Prince, who had even, on that occasion, had uttered an instructive remark.

“But if I were to accept Your Highness’s offer,” the Duchess had said to him with a laugh, “how should I dare to face the Count?”

“I should be almost as much out of countenance as you. The dear Count! My friend! But there is a simple solution to the difficulty, which I have already considered: the Count shall be sent to the Citadel for the rest of his days.”

At the moment of Fabrizio’s arrival, the Duchess was so transported with happiness that it had not occurred to her that the expression in her eyes might give the Count ideas. The effect was profound and the suspicions without remedy.

Fabrizio was received by the Prince two hours after his arrival; the Duchess, foreseeing the good effect this impromptu audience might produce in public, had sought it for two months: this favor put Fabrizio in an exceptional position from his first moment at court; the pretext had been that he was merely passing through Parma on his way to see him mother in Piedmont. At the moment when a charming little note from the Duchess was delivered to the Prince explaining that Fabrizio was awaiting his orders, His Highness was feeling bored. “Now I shall see,” he told himself, “some saintly little dunce, a dull face or a cunning one.” The City Commander had already reported on Fabrizio’s first visit to the tomb of his uncle the Archbishop. The Prince saw coming toward him a tall young man whom, had it not been for his violet stockings, he would have taken for some young officer.

This little surprise dispelled his boredom. “Here is a fine fellow,” he said to himself, “for whom I shall be asked Lord knows what favors—doubtless all I can give. He’s just arrived, probably embarrassed: I’ll try a little Jacobin politics on him, and we’ll see how he manages to deal with that.”