The Charterhouse of Parma (21 page)

In his desk, the Prince kept a collection of envelopes addressed to most of his courtiers, in the handwriting of this same soldier who was believed to be illiterate, and who never even wrote out his own police reports: the Prince selected the envelope he required.

A few hours later, Count Mosca received a letter by post; the time it would arrive had been carefully calculated, and as soon as the courier, who had been seen coming in with a small envelope in his hand, left the Ministerial Palace, Mosca was summoned to His Highness’s quarters. Never had the favorite seemed overwhelmed by a deeper depression: to enjoy the situation at greater leisure, the Prince exclaimed upon catching sight of him, “I need to relax a little by chatting
at ease with my friend, and not by working with my Minister. I have had a dreadful headache this evening, and gloomy thought have given me no respite.”

Need we speak of the abominable mood which distressed the Prime Minister, Count Mosca della Rovere, as soon as he was allowed to leave his august master? Ranuccio-Ernesto IV was quite adept at tormenting a heart, and it would not be excessively unfair to offer here the comparison with a tiger which enjoys toying with its prey. The Count had himself driven home at a gallop; he shouted as he entered the door that no one was to be allowed upstairs, informed the clerk on duty that he was free to go (the knowledge that a human being was within range of his voice was hateful to him), and hastily shut himself up in the great picture gallery. Here at last he could give free rein to all his rage; here the evening was spent in darkness, wandering about like a man beside himself. He sought to silence his heart, in order to concentrate all his powers of attention upon what course of action to take. Plunged into anguish which would have wrung pity from his cruelest enemy, he reasoned with himself as follows:

“The man I abhor is living in the Duchess’s palace, spending all his time with her. Ought I to try making one of her chambermaids speak? Nothing is more dangerous; she is so kind; she pays them well! They adore her! (By whom, indeed, is she not adored?) Here is the question,” he continued furiously: “Am I to reveal the jealousy which is devouring me, or never speak of it at all? If I keep silence, she will not attempt to keep anything from me. I know Gina, she is a woman of impulse from head to toe; her behavior is unforeseen, even by herself; if she wishes to play a part in advance, she loses her way; invariably, at the moment of action, some new idea occurs to her which she follows in ecstasy, as if it were the most wonderful inspiration in the world, and which ruins everything.

“Not ever mentioning my torment, nothing will be concealed from me and I shall know everything that may be happening …

“Yes, but by speaking, I create other circumstances; I cause her to think about what she is doing; I suggest any number of the horrible things that may well happen … Perhaps he will be sent away”—the Count breathed again—”whereby I have virtually triumphed; even so,
there will be some sort of vexation at the moment, I shall calm her … and what could be more natural than such vexation?… for fifteen years she has loved him like her own son. There lies all my hope:
like a son …
but she had stopped seeing him after his Waterloo escapade; but on his return from Naples, for her at least, he has become another man.
Another man
,” he repeated furiously, “and this man is charming; above all he has that naïve and tender quality, and that smiling glance, which promise so much happiness! And it is just such eyes which the Duchess is hardly accustomed to find at our court!… Here they have been replaced by gloomy or sardonic looks. I myself, pursued by affairs, prevailing only by my influence over a man who would enjoy making me look like a fool—what must my own glances suggest more often than not? Ah, whatever precautions I take, it is my eyes above all which have made me old! Even my good humor borders on a kind of irony most of the time.… Moreover, and here I must be honest, does not my good humor itself suggest something very close to absolute power … and a certain nastiness? Do I not say as much to myself on occasion, especially when I am thwarted: I can do whatever I like? And I even add this foolishness: I must be happier than the next man, since I possess what others do not have—sovereign power in three matters out of four. Well then! Be fair; the habit of thinking in such fashions must have spoiled my smile … must give me a selfish, self-satisfied expression.… And how charming
his
smile appears! It breathes the easy happiness of first youth, and indeed engenders it.”

Unfortunately for the Count, the weather was warm that evening, stifling, and a storm was imminent; the kind of weather, in a word, which in these regions leads one to make extreme resolutions. How to account for all the arguments, all the ways of regarding what was happening to him, which for three mortal hours kept this impassioned man in torment? Ultimately, the party of discretion prevailed, solely as a consequence of this reflexion: “I am mad, most likely; imagining I can reason, I am doing anything but; I am merely circling about to find a less painful position, passing blindly over some decisive argument. Since I am blinded by excessive pain, let us follow that rule, approved by all elderly men, which is called
prudence
. Moreover, once I have uttered the fatal word
jealousy
, my role is determined forever. On the
contrary, by saying nothing today, I may speak tomorrow, and remain master of the whole situation.”

The crisis was too acute; the Count would have gone mad indeed had it lasted. He was comforted for few moments, his attention lingering over the anonymous letter. Where could it have come from? There ensued a search for names and a judgment of each, which produced a certain diversion. Finally the Count recalled a flash of malice that had appeared in his Sovereign’s eye when he had reached the point of saying, toward the end of the audience:

“Yes, dear friend, let us agree on this, the pleasures and cares of the happiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing compared to the inner happiness caused by relations of tenderness and love. I am a man before I am a prince, and when I have the good fortune to love, my mistress speaks to the man and not to the prince.”

The Count compared that moment of malign felicity with this phrase of the letter:
It is as a consequence of that great wisdom of yours that our State is so well governed
. “The Prince wrote that!” he exclaimed. “From a courtier, that remark would be of a gratuitous indiscretion; the letter comes from His Highness!”

This problem solved, the minor satisfaction produced by the pleasure of guessing correctly was soon erased by the cruel apparition of Fabrizio’s charming graces, which obsessed him anew. It was as if an enormous weight had once again fallen upon the wretched man’s heart.

“What does it matter whom the anonymous letter comes from!” he exclaimed in a fury. “Does it make the fact that it gives me away exist any the less? This whim may change my life,” he mused, as though to excuse himself for such insanity. “At the first opportunity, if she loves him in a certain fashion, she leaves with him for Belgirate, for Switzerland, for some corner or other of the world. She is rich now, and even if she had to live on no more than a few louis a year, what would that matter to her? Didn’t she confess to me herself, not eight days ago, that her palace, for all its comfort, all its splendor, bores her? A soul so young at heart craves novelty! And how readily that new happiness presents itself! She will be carried away before having realized the
danger, before having thought of pitying me! And yet I am so wretched!” cried the Count, bursting into tears.

He had sworn not to visit the Duchess that evening, but to no avail; never had he thirsted so to see her. Around midnight he appeared at her door; he found her alone with her nephew; at ten she had dismissed all her guests and closed her doors.

At the sight of the tender intimacy which reigned between these two beings, and of the Duchess’s naïve joy, a hideous difficulty rose before the Count’s eyes, all unexpectedly! During the long deliberation in the picture gallery he had not thought of it: how was he to conceal his jealousy?

Uncertain what excuse to use, he claimed that this evening he had found the Prince excessively ill-disposed toward him, contradicting each of his assertions, and so on. He had the pain of seeing the Duchess scarcely heed what he was saying, and pay no attention to those circumstances which, as recently as the evening before, would have inspired endless speculations. The Count looked at Fabrizio: never had that handsome Lombard countenance seemed to him so simple and so noble! Fabrizio paid more attention than the Duchess to the difficulties he was describing.

“Really,” he told himself, “that countenance combines an extreme sweetness of expression with a certain tender and naïve joy which makes it irresistible. It seems to say: there is nothing but love and the happiness it bestows which are serious matters in this world. And yet were we to stumble over some detail in which mind might be necessary, its vigilance wakens and astonishes you, and you are left dumbfounded.

“Everything is simple in his eyes because everything is seen from such a height. Good God! How to oppose such a foe? And after all, what is life without Gina’s love? With what delight she seems to listen to the charming sallies of that young mind, which for a woman must appear unparalleled in the whole world!”

A cruel notion gripped the Count like a cramp: “Stab him here before her eyes, and then kill myself?” He walked once around the room, barely keeping on his feet, but one hand convulsively clutching the
handle of his dagger. Neither Fabrizio nor the Duchess paid any attention to what he might have done. He said he was going to give some order to the footman—they did not even hear what he said; the Duchess smiled tenderly at some remark Fabrizio had just made to her. The Count went over to a lamp in the first salon and examined the point of his dagger. “One must be gracious and show this young man perfect manners,” he told himself, returning to the room where they were.

He was going mad; it seemed to him that they were leaning toward each other, exchanging kisses, here, in front of his very eyes. “This is impossible in my presence,” he told himself; “I am losing my reason. I must try to calm myself; if I behave coarsely, the Duchess is quite capable, out of wounded vanity, of following him to Belgirate; and there, or during the journey, chance might produce a word which will give a name to what they feel for one another; and afterward, in an instant, all the consequences …

“Solitude will make that word decisive, and moreover, once the Duchess is far away, what is to become of me? And if, after so many difficulties surmounted with regard to the Prince, I should show my old and care-worn face in Belgirate, what part would I play beside this pair so mad with happiness?

“Here too, what am I but the
Terzo incomodo
? (This beautiful Italian tongue is ready-made for love!)
Terzo incomodo
—a third presence which discommodes the other two! What pain for a man of intelligence to realize that he is playing that hateful part, and to be unable to bring himself to stand up and leave the room!”

The Count was about to explode or at least to betray his suffering by losing control of his features. As he wandered about the salon, he found himself near the door and suddenly made his escape, shouting in a friendly tone: “Good night, you two!”

To himself he said, “One must avoid bloodshed.”

The day after this horrible evening, following a night spent sometimes in poring over Fabrizio’s advantages, sometimes in the hideous transports of the cruelest jealousy, it occurred to the Count to summon a young footman; this man was paying court to a young girl named Cecchina, one of the Duchesses’s favorite chambermaids. As
luck would have it, this young servant was quite reserved in his behavior, actually miserly, for he hoped for employment as a concierge in one of the public buildings of Parma. The Count ordered this man to call Cecchina, his mistress, immediately. The man obeyed, and an hour later the Count appeared quite unexpectedly in the room where this young woman and her betrothed were waiting. The Count alarmed both of them by the quantity of gold he gave them, then addressed these few words to the trembling Cecchina, staring into her eyes: “Does the Duchess make love with Monsignore?”

“No,” replied the girl, forcing herself to speak after a moment’s silence.… “No,
not yet
, but he often kisses Madame’s hands, laughing as he does so, it is true, but with rapture.”

This testimony was completed by a hundred answers to as many furious questions from the Count; his painful passion made these poor wretches labor hard for all the money he had bestowed upon them: he ended by believing what he was told, and was less unhappy.

“If the Duchess should ever suspect this conversation has taken place,” he said to Cecchina, “I shall send your betrothed to the Citadel for twenty years, and the next time you see him again his hair will be white.”

Several days passed, during which it was Fabrizio’s turn to lose all his gaiety. “I assure you,” he said to the Duchess, “Count Mosca feels a genuine antipathy toward me.”

“So much the worse for His Excellency,” she replied, with a certain edge to her voice.

This was not the real reason that Fabrizio’s gaiety had vanished. “The position in which chance has placed me is untenable,” he told himself. “I am quite certain she will never speak, she would be as horrified by any word that was too specific as she would be by incest itself. But suppose some evening, after a wild and indiscreet day, she should search her conscience and decide that I might have guessed her feelings for me—how would I look to her then? Exactly like the
casto Giuseppe!
(An Italian proverb, alluding to Joseph’s absurd role with the wife of the eunuch Potiphar.)

“What if I made her understand, by a fine burst of confidence, that I am incapable of loving seriously? I haven’t enough strength of mind
to express such a thing without seeming to be simply impertinent. The only resource I have left is a grand passion abandoned in Naples, in which case I should return there for twenty-four hours; a clever plan, but is the game worth the candle? What about a minor affair here in Parma, which might cause a certain amount of irritation, but anything is preferable to the hideous role of the man who will not guess the truth. This latter course might be prejudicial to my future, of course; by exercising discretion and purchasing prudence, I should have to diminish the dangers …”