The Charterhouse of Parma (25 page)

Fabrizio had not covered a league when the peaks of the Resegone di Lecco, a famous mountain of the region, were silhouetted against a brilliant stripe in the eastern sky. The road he was taking was frequented by peasants; but instead of giving himself over to military ideas, Fabrizio indulged himself in the sublime or affecting aspects of these forests which surround Lake Como. They are perhaps the loveliest in the world; by which I do not mean that they bring in more
new-minted coins
, as they say in Switzerland, but that they speak most deeply to the soul. To heed this language in Fabrizio’s circumstances, while prey to the attentions of the gentlemen of the Lombardo-Venetian police, was truly childish.

“I am half a league from the frontier,” he told himself at last, “I am going to meet up with customs-officers and police on their morning rounds: this fine suit of mine will waken suspicions; they will ask to see my passport, which is inscribed quite explicitly with a name doomed to prison; hence I am faced with the pleasant necessity of committing a murder. If, as is usually the case, the police patrol in pairs, I cannot honestly wait to fire until one of them grabs me by the collar; supposing he manages to hold on to me for even a second as he falls, off I go to the Spielberg.”

Fabrizio, horror-stricken above all at this necessity of firing first, perhaps at some old soldier of his uncle Count Pietranera’s, ran to hide in the hollow trunk of a huge chestnut-tree; he was renewing the priming of his pistols when he heard a man walking through the woods singing a lovely tune of Mercadante’s, so popular in Lombardy at the time. “Now that’s a good omen!” he told himself. The tune, which he listened to religiously, defused the tiny element of rage which was beginning to blur his arguments. He gazed attentively at the high-road on both sides, and saw no one. “The singer must be coming along some path through the forest,” he decided. Almost at the same moment he saw a footman, in English-style livery and mounted on a horse, heading toward him at a walk, leading a fine thoroughbred, though perhaps a little too thin. “Ah, now if I were to reason like Mosca,” Fabrizio said
to himself, “when he keeps telling me that the dangers a man runs are always the measure of his rights over his neighbor, I would blow this footman’s brains out, and no sooner mounted on the thin horse, I would defy all the police in the world. No sooner back in Parma, I would send money to this man, or to his widow.… But it would be the act of a monster!”

As he moralized, Fabrizio sprang down onto the main road that runs from Lombardy into Switzerland: at this point, it is a good four or five feet below the level of the forest. “If my man is alarmed,” Fabrizio said to himself, “he’ll gallop away, and I’ll be stranded here looking like the fool I am.” At this moment, he found himself only ten steps from the footman, who was no longer singing: Fabrizio could see in his eyes that the man was frightened; perhaps he would turn his horses. Without having reached any decision, Fabrizio leaped forward and grabbed the lean horse by the bridle.

“My friend,” he said to the footman, “I’m not your usual thief; I’ll give you twenty francs right off, but I’m obliged to borrow your horse; I’ll be killed if I don’t clear out of here—the four Riva brothers are after me, those poachers you’ve probably heard of; they just caught me in their sister’s bedroom, I jumped out the window and here I am! They’re out here in the woods with their dogs and their guns. I managed to hide in this hollow tree when I saw one of them cross the road, but their dogs will track me down! I’m going to get on that horse of yours and gallop a good league beyond Como; I’ll throw myself on the Viceroy’s mercy in Milan and leave your horse at the post-house with two napoleons for yourself, if you’ll be good enough to consent. If you
put up any resistance, I’ll kill you with one of these pistols. If you alert the police once I’m out of here, my cousin, that’s Count Alari, Equerry to the Emperor, will be sure to break your bones for you.” Fabrizio was inventing this harangue as he went along, speaking in a calm and measured tone of voice. “Besides,” he said with a laugh, “my name’s no secret; I’m the Marchesino Ascanio del Dongo; my castle is close by, at Grianta. Damn you!” he exclaimed, raising his voice. “Let go of that horse!”

The footman, stupefied, did not utter a word. Fabrizio shifted his pistol to his left hand, grabbed the bridle as the man released it, jumped onto the horse, and cantered off. When he was some three hundred yards away, he realized he had forgotten to give the fellow the twenty francs he had promised; he halted: there was still no one on the road but the footman, who was following him at a gallop; he signaled to him with his handkerchief to come closer and, when he judged him to be about fifty yards away, tossed a handful of coins onto the road and set off again. Looking back, he saw the footman picking up the money. “Now, there’s a truly sensible fellow,” Fabrizio said to himself with a laugh. “Not one unnecessary word.” He rode on at a good pace, stopped toward noon at a lonely inn, and a few hours later was on his way. By two in the morning he was on the shore of Lake Maggiore, where he soon glimpsed his boat, drifting to and fro at its mooring. There was no one in sight to leave the horse with, so he turned the noble creature loose, and three hours later he was in Belgirate. There, finding himself on friendly ground, he took some rest; he was extremely happy, everything having turned out for the best. Dare we indicate the true causes of his joy? His tree had grown splendidly, and his soul had been refreshed by the profound sympathy he had found in the Abbé Blanès’s embrace. “Can he honestly believe,” he wondered, “in all those predictions he made to me? Or since my brother’s described me as a faithless Jacobin capable of anything, does he just want to spare me the temptation of murdering some brute who’s done me a bad turn?”

Two days later, Fabrizio was in Parma, where he greatly entertained the Duchess and the Count with the story of his journey, down to the last detail, as was his custom.

Upon his arrival, Fabrizio had found the porter and the other servants of the Palazzo Sanseverina wearing emblems of mourning on their livery. “Whom have we lost?” he now asked the Duchess.

“That excellent man people call my husband has just died at Baden. He has left me this palace, according to our agreement, but as a sign of true friendship he has added a legacy of three hundred thousand francs, which I don’t know what to do with. I have no desire to renounce it in favor of his niece, the Marchesa Raversi, who plays the most damnable tricks on me every day. You’re an art-lover, you must find me some good sculptor who will carve the Duke’s tomb for three hundred thousand francs.”

The Count began telling funny stories about the Marchesa Raversi.

“I’ve had no luck trying to win her over,” the Duchess observed. “As for the Duke’s nephews, I’ve had them all made colonels or generals. In return for which, not a month passes when they don’t send me some horrible anonymous letter—I’ve had to hire a secretary just to read such things.”

“And these letters are the least of their sins,” Count Mosca continued; “they continue fabricating loathsome denunciations. I could have had the whole clique dragged into court twenty times over, and Your Excellency may be assured,” he added, addressing Fabrizio, “that my good judges would have convicted them one and all.”

“Well, that’s what spoils everything else for me,” Fabrizio replied with a naïveté which court circles found quite entertaining. “I’d prefer seeing them convicted by magistrates who judge according to their conscience.”

“You will do me a great favor, traveling as you do to widen your knowledge, if you furnish me the address of such magistrates. I’ll write to them before I go to bed this evening.”

“If I were Minister, this lack of honest judges would offend my self-esteem.”

“But it strikes me,” the Count retorted, “that Your Excellency, who is so fond of the French, and who on one occasion even managed to lend them the support of his invincible arm, is momentarily forgetting one of their great maxims: ‘Better kill the Devil than let the Devil kill you.’ I’d like to see how you’d govern these ardent souls who read
The
History of the French Revolution
every day by appointing judges who would acquit the people I accuse. They’d release the most obviously guilty rascals, and regard themselves as so many Brutuses. But I have a bone to pick with you; doesn’t your sensitive soul suffer a certain remorse on account of that fine if somewhat emaciated horse you just abandoned on the shores of Lake Maggiore?”

“I fully intend,” said Fabrizio, with the utmost seriousness, “to recompense the owner for whatever it costs him to advertise for his lost property, and any other expenses he may have incurred to recover his horse from the peasants who may have found it—I’ll be careful to read the Milan papers, in order to find any notices of a lost horse; I know the description of this one very well.”

“He is a true
primitive
,” said the Count to the Duchess. “And what would have become of Your Excellency,” he continued with a smile, “if while he was galloping hell for leather, his borrowed horse had happened to stumble? You’d be in the Spielberg right now, my dear nephew, and all my influence would scarcely manage to reduce by thirty pounds the weight of the chains attached to each of your legs. You’d be spending a good ten years in that agreeable resort; perhaps your legs would become swollen, infected, gangrenous—and in due course they would be amputated on the spot …”

“Ah, for pity’s sake, stop your grim story there!” exclaimed the Duchess, with tears in her eyes. “Here he is back with us …”

“And I’m even happier about that than you are, if you can believe it,” replied the Minister, quite seriously. “But why didn’t this cruel child ask me for a passport inscribed with a suitable name, since he wants to cross Lombardy? At the first news of his arrest, I’d have set off for Milan, and my friends there would be happy to close their eyes and pretend to believe their police had arrested a subject of the Prince of Parma. The story of your excursion is certainly entertaining, I won’t deny it for a minute,” resumed the Count with a little less gravity in his voice, “your sortie out of the forest onto the road is quite thrilling, but
entre nous
, since that footman held your life in his hands, you had every right to take his. We’re about to arrange a brilliant future for Your Excellency, at least so I am commanded by Madame, and I don’t believe my worst enemies can accuse me of ever having disobeyed her
orders. What a deadly disappointment for both of us if, during that steeplechase of yours, your famished horse had happened to stumble! It might almost have been better,” the Count added, “if your horse had broken your neck.”

“You’re quite tragic this evening, my friend,” said the Duchess, deeply moved.

“That is because we are surrounded by tragic events,” replied the Count, also moved; “we are not in France, where everything ends with a song or a couple of years in prison; and it is quite wrong of me to speak lightly to you of such matters.… Well now, my young nephew, suppose I should find the means to make you a bishop one of these days—for in all conscience we can hardly begin with the Archbishopric of Parma, as Madame the Duchess here so reasonably desires. In such a bishopric, where you will be quite remote from our sage counsels, can you tell us something of what your politics will be?”

“To kill the Devil rather than letting him kill me, as my friends the French put it so nicely,” Fabrizio replied, his eyes shining. “To preserve by all possible means, including pistols, the position you will have secured for me. I’ve read in the del Dongo genealogy about our ancestor who built the Castle of Grianta. At the end of his life, his dear friend Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, sent him on a mission to a fortress on our lake shore; there was some danger of another invasion on the part of the Swiss. ‘Let me just dash off a word or two to our commander,’ the Duke said to him as he was leaving. He wrote a couple of lines and handed him the note; then he asked for it back in order to seal it. ‘A matter of
politesse,
’ said the Prince. Vespasiano del Dongo left, but as he was sailing across the lake, he remembered an old Greek story, for he was a learned man; he opened his good master’s letter and found orders addressed to the commander of the fortress that he be put to death upon his arrival. Galeazzo, all too intent on the trick he was playing on our ancestor, had left a gap between the last line of the note and his signature; in that space Vespasiano del Dongo wrote an order acknowledging himself governor-general of all the fortresses along the lake, and snipped off the original message. Having reached the fortress and been duly acknowledged, he flung the commander into a dungeon, declared war on Galeazzo and all the Sforzas, and after a few
years exchanged his fortress for the vast estates which have made the fortunes of every branch of our family, and which will some day provide me personally an income of four thousand lire.”

“You talk like an academician!” exclaimed the Count with a laugh. “Your story’s a good one, but the opportunity of performing such entertaining feats occurs only once a decade. Any fellow with half a brain who’s aware of what he’s doing and keeps his eyes open often enjoys the pleasure of getting the better of men of imagination. It was such follies of the imagination that induced Napoléon to surrender to a prudent John Bull rather than trying to escape to America. John Bull in his counting-house had a good laugh at Bonaparte’s letter quoting
Themistocles
. In every age, a base Sancho Panza triumphs over a sublime Don Quixote. If you confine yourself to doing nothing out of the ordinary, I have no doubt that you will be a highly respected if not a highly respectable bishop. Nonetheless my observation stands: Your Excellency behaved frivolously with regard to the horse, and came within an inch of a life sentence.”

This last remark made Fabrizio shudder; he remained plunged in the deepest amazement. “Could this,” he wondered, “have been the prison threatening me? Is this the crime I must not commit?” The Abbé’s predictions, which he had taken so lightly at the time, now assumed in his eyes all the importance of veritable omens.