The Charterhouse of Parma (24 page)

Fabrizio’s soul was exalted by the old man’s talk, by his own close attention, and by extreme fatigue. He found it quite difficult to fall asleep, and his slumber was troubled by dreams, omens perhaps of the future; at ten in the morning, he was awakened by the general vibration of the belfry, a dreadful racket that seemed to come from outside. He got up in bewilderment, convinced that it was the end of the world, then he supposed he was in prison; it took him some time to recognize the sound of the great bell which forty peasants were tolling in honor of the great San Giovita; ten would have sufficed.

Fabrizio looked for a convenient place from which to see without being seen; he realized that from this great height, his gaze overlooked the gardens and even the inner courtyard of his father’s castle. He had forgotten it. The notion of his father reaching the end of his life changed all his feelings. He made out the very sparrows pecking for bread crumbs on the great terrace of the dining hall. “These are the descendants of the ones I used to tame,” he mused. This terrace, like all the other castle balconies, was filled with many orange-trees in earthenware pots of various sizes: this prospect touched him; the aspect of that inner courtyard, embellished by brilliant sunshine and sharply defined shadows, was truly impressive.

He recalled his father’s failing health. “But how odd that is,” he said to himself, “my father is just thirty-five years older than I; thirty-five and twenty-three make only fifty-eight!” His eyes, fixed on the bedroom windows of that severe man who had never loved him, filled with tears. He shuddered, and a sudden chill ran through his veins when he believed he recognized his father crossing a terrace decorated with orange-trees, which adjoined his bedroom; but it was only a footman. Immediately under the belfry, a number of young girls dressed in white and divided into various groups were busy making patterns with red, blue, and yellow flowers on the paving-stones of the streets where the procession would pass. But there was one spectacle which touched Fabrizio’s soul more deeply: from the steeple, his gaze swept over the two branches of the lake for a distance of several leagues, and this sublime view soon made him forget all the rest; it awakened in him the loftiest sentiments. All the memories of his childhood laid siege to his mind, and this day spent shut up in a belfry was perhaps one of the happiest of his life.

Happiness carried him to a zenith of thoughts quite alien to his character; he considered the events of his young life as if he had already reached its ultimate limits. “It must be confessed, since I came to Parma,” he realized at last, after several hours of delicious reverie, “I haven’t had a moment of that perfect and peaceful joy I knew in Naples trotting through the lanes of Vomero or along the shores of Miseno. All the complicated intrigues of this wicked little court have made me wicked as well.… I take no pleasure in hatred, I even think it would be a melancholy satisfaction for me to humble my enemies, if I had any; but I have none whatever.… Wait a moment!” he suddenly realized. “I have Giletti.… The odd thing is, the pleasure I would take in sending this ugly fellow to the devil survives my rather vague feelings for little Marietta.… She is no match for the Duchess of A——, whom I was obliged to make love to in Naples, once I had told her I was in love with her. Great God! How bored I was during the many long assignations I was granted by that lovely Duchess! Which was never the case in that shabby little bedroom, which served as a kitchen as well, where little Marietta received me twice, and for two minutes each time.

“And Lord only knows what those people eat! It’s pitiful! I should have settled on her and the
mammaccia
a pension of three beefsteaks, payable daily.… Little Marietta,” he added, “would distract me from the evil thoughts inspired by the proximity of that court.

“I might have done well to live the café life, as the Duchess Sanseverina calls it; she seemed to incline in that direction, and she has much more sense than I ever will. Thanks to her favors, or else even with that pension of four thousand francs and the fund of forty thousand which my mother has invested for me at Lyons, I will always have a horse and some cash to spend on excavations and collections. Since I am destined, apparently, never to know love, these will always be a major source of happiness for me; I’d like, before I die, to revisit the battlefield at Waterloo and try to find the field where I was so gaily robbed of my horse and dumped on the ground. Once that pilgrimage is accomplished, I would frequently return to this sublime lake; nothing as lovely as this can be seen in all the world, at least to my mind and heart. What is the use of seeking happiness so far afield—it is here, right under my nose!

“Ah!” Fabrizio mused, “there is one objection: the police drive me away from Lake Como, but I am younger than those who give orders to the police. Here,” he added with a laugh, “I shall find no Duchess of A——, but rather one of those girls down there arranging flowers on the cobblestones, and whom I would love quite as much: hypocrisy freezes my heart in love as in everything else, and our great ladies aim at effects all too sublime. Napoléon has given them notions of conduct and constancy.

“The Devil!” he said to himself all of a sudden, pulling his head in from the window as if he had feared being recognized despite the shadow of the enormous wooden shutters that protected the bells from the rain. “Here comes a troop of police in full uniform.” Indeed, ten gendarmes, including four non-commissioned officers, appeared at the top of the village street. The Quartermaster posted them every hundred yards along the course the procession would take. “Everyone knows me here; if I am seen, I’ll go straight from the shores of Lake Como to the Spielberg prison, where they’ll fasten to each leg a chain
weighing a hundred and ten pounds: and what pain that will be for the Duchess!”

Fabrizio needed no more than two or three minutes to recall that first of all he was stationed some eighty feet above ground, that the place he was standing was relatively dark, that the eyes of anyone who might be looking at him would be blinded by dazzling sunshine, and finally that they were strolling about and staring wide-eyed through the streets, where all the houses had just been whitewashed in honor of the Feast of San Giovita. Despite the lucidity of such arguments, Fabrizio’s Italian soul would have been henceforth powerless to enjoy any pleasure whatever, had he not interposed between the police and himself a strip of old canvas, which he tacked against the window and in which he made two holes for his eyes.

The bells had been stirring the air for ten minutes, the procession was emerging from the church, the
mortaretti
(or little mortars) were audible. Fabrizio turned his head and recognized that little terrace embellished with a parapet and overlooking the lake, where so often, in his youth, he had risked his safety to watch the
mortaretti
explode between his legs, which made his mother prefer that he spend the holiday mornings by her side.

It must be said that these
mortaretti
are nothing more than rifle barrels sawed off to be no more than four inches long; it is for this purpose that the peasants greedily gather the gun-barrels which European politics since 1796 have been strewing across the plains of Lombardy. Once reduced to this length, these tiny cannons are loaded to the muzzle, thrust vertically into the ground, and a train of powder laid from one to the next; they are arranged in three rows like a battalion, two or three hundred of them, in some emplacement near the place where the procession will pass. When the Blessed Sacrament approaches, the train of powder is ignited, and then begins a running fire of successive explosions, irregular and absurd to the highest degree; the women are entranced. Nothing is so gay as the noise of these
mortaretti
heard from across the lake, and softened by the lapping of the waves; this singular noise, which had so often constituted the delight of his childhood, dispelled the somewhat over-solemn notions to
which our hero had fallen prey; he set about finding the Abbé’s big telescope and by it recognized most of the men and women following the procession. Many of the charming little girls whom Fabrizio had left at the age of eleven or twelve were now splendid women, in all the flower of the most vigorous youth; they restored our hero’s courage, and he would have defied any number of gendarmes to speak to them.

Once the procession had passed and re-entered the church by a side door which Fabrizio could not see, the heat soon became extreme even high up in the belfry; the villagers returned to their houses and a great silence reigned. Several boats were filled with peasants returning to Bellagio, to Menaggio, and to other villages along the shores of the lake; Fabrizio could make out the sound of each oar-stroke, a simple detail which enchanted him; his present delight consisted of all the discomfort and all the wretchedness he found in the complicated life of courts. How happy he would have been, at this moment, to row a league on this lovely calm lake which reflected so clearly the depths of the heavens! He heard the door at the foot of the belfry open: it was the Abbé Blanès’s old servant carrying a huge basket; it cost him a great deal to keep from speaking to her. “She is nearly as fond of me as is her master,” he told himself, “and besides I’m leaving tonight at nine; would she not keep a sworn secret for these few hours? But my friend,” Fabrizio decided, “would be distressed! I might compromise him with the police!” And he let old Ghita leave without a word. He made an excellent dinner, then lay down to sleep for a little while: he awoke only at eight-thirty that evening; the Abbé was shaking his arm and night had fallen.

Blanès was extremely tired; he had aged fifty years since the night before. He spoke no more of serious matters; seating himself in his wooden armchair, he said to Fabrizio: “Embrace me,” and he clasped him over and over in his arms.

“Death,” he said at last, “which is about to end this long life of mine, will have nothing so painful in it as this separation. I have a purse which I shall be leaving for Ghita, with orders to draw upon it for her own needs, but to give you what is left if ever you come to ask for it. I know her; upon such instructions, she is capable of buying meat no more than four times a year in order to accumulate savings for you,
unless you give her very specific orders. You yourself may be reduced to penury, and an old friend’s obol will come in handy. Expect nothing from your brother but harsh measures, and try to earn money by labors which will make you useful to society. I foresee strange tempests; perhaps in fifty years the world will have no use for idlers. Your mother and your aunt may fail you, your sisters will have to obey their husbands.… Go now, leave—make your escape!” the Abbé exclaimed urgently.

He had just heard a tiny sound in the belfry which indicated that ten o’clock was about to strike, and he was even reluctant to permit Fabrizio to embrace him one last time. “Hurry! hurry!” he cried to him: “You will take at least one minute to get down the stairs; be careful not to fall, that would be a terrible omen.”

Fabrizio rushed down the stairs, and once out in the square began to run. No sooner had he reached his father’s castle than the bells rang ten o’clock; each stroke echoed in his breast and left a strange disturbance there. He stopped to think, or rather to abandon himself to the impassioned sentiments inspired by the contemplation of this majestic edifice which he had regarded so coldly the day before. Human footsteps roused him from his reveries; he looked up and found himself surrounded by four gendarmes. He was armed with a brace of fine pistols whose priming he had just renewed while he was having his dinner; the tiny sound they made as he cocked them now alerted one of the gendarmes, and he was on the point of being arrested. He realized the risk he was running and decided to fire first; he was within his rights to do so, for this was his only way of resisting four well-armed men. Fortunately, the gendarmes, in making their rounds to clear the taverns, had not shown themselves entirely unresponsive to the welcome they had received in several of these agreeable resorts; they were not sufficiently swift in determining to do their duty. Fabrizio took to his heels, and the gendarmes ran a few paces after him, shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

Then everything returned to silence. After three hundred yards Fabrizio stopped to catch his breath. “The noise of my pistols almost got me caught—how right the Duchess would be to tell me, if ever I catch sight of her lovely face again, that my soul delights in pondering
what will happen in ten years, and forgets to see what is going on right under my nose!”

Fabrizio shuddered at the thought of the danger he had just avoided; he walked faster, but could not keep from breaking into a run, which was anything but prudent, for he attracted the attention of several peasants who were returning to their homes. He could not bring himself to stop until he had reached the mountains, over a league from Grianta, and even once he had stopped, he broke into a cold sweat at the thought of the Spielberg.

“A fine fright you’re in!” he told himself. (At the sound of this word, he was almost tempted to be ashamed.) “But didn’t my aunt tell me that what I needed most of all was to learn to forgive myself? I keep comparing myself to a perfect model which cannot exist. Well! I forgive myself my fear, for on the other hand I was quite ready to protect my freedom, and certainly all four would not have remained on their feet to haul me off to prison. What I am doing at this moment,” he added, “is not soldierly; instead of gaining a swift retreat, after having gained my goal and perhaps having aroused my foes, I am indulging in a caprice more absurd, perhaps, than all the good Abbé’s predictions.”

Indeed, instead of taking the shortest distance between two points and reaching the shores of Lake Maggiore, where his boat was moored, he was making a huge detour to visit
his tree
. The reader may recall the affection Fabrizio bore this chestnut-tree planted by his mother twenty-three years previously. “It would be just like my brother,” he mused, “to have had it chopped down, but such creatures are not sensitive to such things; it would never have occurred to him. And besides, that would not be a bad omen,” he added with conviction. Two hours later he was distressed to find that malefactors or a storm had broken one of the main branches of the young tree, which hung down, withered. Fabrizio cut it off respectfully, with the help of his dagger, and smoothed the place of the incision neatly, so that rainwater could not get inside the trunk. Then, though his time was precious, for day was about to break, he spent a good hour digging up the earth around the beloved tree. All these follies performed, he swiftly returned to Lake Maggiore. On the whole, he was not at all sad; the tree had grown quite well, and was more vigorous than ever; in five years it had almost doubled
its size. The broken branch was only an unimportant accident; once cut off, it would do no further harm to the tree, which would grow all the straighter, if its branches began higher from the ground.