The Charterhouse of Parma (26 page)

“Now what’s come over you?” asked the astonished Duchess. “Has the Count overwhelmed you with gloomy thoughts?”

“I am illuminated by a new truth, and instead of rebelling against it, my mind has adopted it. It is true that I had a close call with life imprisonment, but that footman looked so handsome in his English livery: what a shame it would have been to kill him!”

The Minister was delighted by Fabrizio’s air of discretion. “He is remarkable in every respect,” he said, with his eyes on the Duchess. “Let me tell you, my friend: you’ve made a conquest, and perhaps the most desirable one of all.”

“Ah!” thought Fabrizio. “Now comes a joke at my expense about little Marietta.” He was mistaken.

“Your
evangelical
simplicity,” the Count continued, “has won the heart of our venerable Archbishop, Father Landriani. One of these days
we’ll be making you a Grand Vicar, and the cream of the jest is that the present three Grand Vicars, men of great merit, hard workers, and two of whom, I believe, were Grand Vicars since before you were born, will be sending an eloquent letter addressed to their Archbishop, requesting that you rank first among them. These gentlemen base their arguments first of all upon your virtues and then upon the fact that you happen to be the grand-nephew of the famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo. When I discovered the respect in which your virtues were held, I immediately promoted the oldest Grand Vicar’s nephew to the rank of captain; he’s been a lieutenant since Marshal Suchet’s siege of Tarragona.”

“Go right away, dressed just as you are, and pay an affectionate visit to your Archbishop!” exclaimed the Duchess. “Tell him about your sister’s wedding; when he learns that she’s to be a Duchess, he’ll regard you as altogether apostolical. And remember, you know nothing of what the Count has just confided to you concerning your future nomination.”

Fabrizio hastened to the Archbishop’s palace; there he was simple and modest, a manner he assumed all too readily; on the other hand, it required a tremendous effort to play the
grand seigneur
. While listening to Monsignore Landriani’s extended narratives, he kept asking himself: “Should I have shot the footman leading the lean horse?” His reason told him as much, but his heart could not inure itself to the bloody image of the handsome young fellow falling disfigured from his horse. “That fortress which would have swallowed me up, had the horse stumbled—was that the prison all these omens threaten me with?” This question was of the utmost importance to him, and the Archbishop was pleased by his air of profound attention.

On leaving the Archbishop’s Palace, Fabrizio hurried off to little Marietta; from a distance he could hear the loud voice of Giletti, who had sent for wine and was enjoying himself with his friends the prompter and the candle-snuffers. Only the
mammaccia
, who played the mother’s part, answered his call.

“New things have happened since you left!” she exclaimed. “Two or three of our actors have been accused of celebrating the great Napoléon’s feast-day with an orgy, and our poor troupe, they call us Jacobins, has been ordered to leave the State of Parma, and bravo Napoléon! But they say the Minister spit in the cuspidor, and one thing’s for sure: Giletti’s got some money, I don’t know how much, but I’ve seen him with a handful of scudi. Our manager’s given Marietta five scudi for the trip to Mantua and Venice, and one for me. She’s still in love with you, but Giletti scares her; three days back, at our last performance, he really wanted to kill her; he gave her two good smacks, and the worst thing is he tore her blue shawl. If you wanted to be nice, you’d give her a blue shawl and we’ll say we won it in a lottery. The drum-major of the
carabinieri
’s giving an assault-at-arms tomorrow, you’ll see the schedule posted at every street corner. Come and see us; if he’s gone to watch the assault, so we can count on his being gone a
while, I’ll be at the window and signal you to come on up. Try to bring us something nice, and Marietta will love you madly.”

Coming down the winding staircase of this wretched slum, Fabrizio was filled with compunction: “I haven’t changed one bit,” he said to himself; “all those fine resolutions I made at our lake shore when I was looking at life so philosophically have evaporated. My soul was wandering at the time; it was all a dream and dissolves at the touch of real life. This would be the moment for action,” he mused as he returned to the Palazzo Sanseverina at about eleven that evening. But it was in vain that he sought in his heart the courage to speak with that sublime sincerity which had seemed so easy to him during the night he had spent on the shores of Lake Como. “I’m going to disappoint the person I love best in the world; if I speak, I’ll seem no more than a bad actor; I’m worthless really, except in certain moments of exaltation.”

“The Count has treated me admirably,” he said to the Duchess after describing his visit to the Archbishop’s Palace; “I am all the more appreciative of his conduct since I realize that he is not particularly fond of me; my behavior toward him must therefore be correct in the extreme. He has his excavations at Sanguigna, which he is still quite enthusiastic about, at least judging from his trip the day before yesterday when he galloped twelve leagues to spend two hours with his workmen. If they find fragments of statues in that antique temple, the foundations of which he has just unearthed, there’s always the fear of their being stolen, and I thought I might offer to spend thirty-six hours at Sanguigna—tomorrow, around five, I must see the Archbishop again, and then I could leave in the evening and take advantage of the cool night air on the journey.”

The Duchess did not at first reply. Then, with extreme affection, she remarked, “One might think you were looking for excuses to get away from me; no sooner are you back from Belgirate than you find reasons for leaving again.”

“Here,” thought Fabrizio, “is a good opportunity to speak. But at the lake I was a little mad, I didn’t realize in my enthusiasm for sincerity that my compliments turn to impertinence; I should be saying something like: I love you with the most devoted friendship, and so on, but my soul is incapable of love. And isn’t that as much as to say: I see that
you’re in love with me, but beware, I cannot repay you in the same coin? If she is in love with me, the Duchess may be annoyed to be found out, and she will be disgusted with my impudence if all she feels for me is mere friendship.… That kind of offense is never forgiven.” While he was pondering these important notions, Fabrizio, without realizing it, was striding up and down the salon, his expression filled with the lofty gravity of a man who sees disaster straight ahead of him.

The Duchess watched him admiringly; he was no longer the boy she had seen grow up, he was no longer the ever-obedient nephew; he was a serious man by whom it would be delicious to be loved. She stood up from the ottoman on which she had been sitting and, passionately flinging herself into his arms, exclaimed: “So you want to run away from me?”

“No,” he replied, with the expression of a Roman emperor, “but I want to conduct myself properly.”

This remark was capable of various interpretations; Fabrizio lacked the courage to proceed any further and to run the risk of wounding this adorable woman. He was too young, too susceptible to emotion; his mind supplied him with no graceful turn of phrase to express all he meant. In a natural transport of feeling and despite all his reasoning, he took this charming woman in his arms and covered her with kisses. At the same moment, they heard the sound of the Count’s carriage entering the courtyard, and at almost the same moment the Count himself appeared in the salon; he seemed greatly moved.

“You inspire very singular passions,” he said to Fabrizio, who remained nearly thunderstruck by the remark. “Tonight the Archbishop had the audience which His Serene Highness grants him every Thursday; the Prince has just informed me that the Archbishop, seeming quite troubled, began with a set speech he had got by heart, filled with learned allusions which at first left the Prince completely in the dark. Landriani ended by declaring that it was important for the Church of Parma that Monsignore Fabrizio del Dongo be named his first Vicar-General, and then, immediately after his twenty-fourth birthday, his Coadjutor
with eventual succession
. I must confess this expression alarmed me,” the Count continued, “and I feared some sort of outburst from the Prince. But he merely looked at me with a smile and
said in French: ‘I recognize your hand in this, Monsieur.’ ‘I swear before God and Your Highness,’ I exclaimed with all possible unction, ‘that I am perfectly unaware of the expression
future succession
.’ Then I told the truth, the very thing we’ve been saying right here for the last few hours; I added, with some feeling, that in the future I should consider myself extremely favored by His Highness if he deigned to grant me a minor bishopric to begin with. The Prince must have believed me, for he found it suitable to be gracious; with tremendous simplicity, he told me: ‘This is official business between the Archbishop and myself, you have no say in the matter. The good man,’ the Prince went on to say, ‘then delivered an extremely long and quite tedious report, after which came an official proposal; I replied rather coolly that the person in question was still quite young and, moreover, a very recent arrival at my court; that I would risk giving the impression that I was honoring a bill of exchange drawn upon me by the Emperor, by offering so high a dignity to the son of one of the principal officers of his Lombardo-Venetian realm. The Archbishop protested that no such recommendation had ever been made. This was a stupid thing to say
to me;
it surprised me coming from a man of his understanding; but he always loses his head when he has to speak to me, and that evening he was more troubled than ever, which suggested to me that he passionately desired the thing. I remarked that I knew better than he that there was no higher recommendation in del Dongo’s favor, that no one at my court denied his abilities, that no one spoke too badly of his morals, but that I feared he was liable to
enthusiasm
, and that I had determined never to raise to high office such lunatics with whom a prince could never be sure of anything. And then,’ his Highness continued, ‘I was forced to endure a pathetic narrative almost as long as the first: the Archbishop launched into praises of the House of God. Bungler! I said to myself, he is losing his way and compromising an appointment which was virtually granted; he should have stopped there and thanked me effusively. Nothing of the sort: he continued his homily with absurd insistence; I tried to find a response which would not be too unfavorable to young del Dongo; I managed this, indeed a rather felicitious one, as you will judge: “Monsignore,” I said to him, “Pius VII was a great pope and a great saint; he alone of all sovereigns
dared to say
no
to the tyrant who held all Europe at his feet! Yet he too was liable to enthusiasm, which led him, when he was Bishop of Imola, to write his celebrated
Pastoral Letter of the Citizen-Cardinal Chiaramonti
in favor of the Cisalpine Republic.” My poor Archbishop appeared quite stupefied, and to complete the effect I told him, as seriously as I could manage: “Farewell, Monsignore, I shall take twenty-four hours to reflect upon your proposition.” The poor fellow added several rather clumsy and inopportune supplications after I had pronounced the word
farewell
. And now, Count Mosca della Rovere, I request that you inform the Duchess that I do not wish to delay by twenty-four hours a thing which may be agreeable to her; sit down here and write to the Archbishop that letter of approval which will conclude this whole business.’ I wrote the letter, the Prince signed it, and said: ‘Take it immediately to the Duchess.’ Here, Madame, is the letter, and it is this matter which has afforded me a pretext for the happiness of seeing you once again this evening.”

The Duchess read the letter with rapture. During the Count’s long narrative, Fabrizio had had time to recover himself: he did not appear the least surprised by this incident, but took the matter like a true
grand seigneur
who quite naturally believed he was invariably entitled to such extraordinary advancements, to these strokes of fortune which would unhinge any bourgeois person; he referred to his gratitude, but in moderate terms, and ended by remarking to the Count: “A good courtier must indulge the ruling passion; yesterday you expressed the fear that your workmen in Sanguigna would steal the fragments of whatever ancient statues they might unearth; I too am very fond of such excavations; if you will be so good as to permit me, I shall go and supervise the workmen. Tomorrow evening, after the suitable expression of gratitude to the Prince and the Archbishop, I shall leave for Sanguigna.”

“But can you guess,” the Duchess asked the Count, “the source of our good Archbishop’s sudden passion for Fabrizio?”

“I have no need to guess; the Grand-Vicar, whose brother is one of my captains, told me only yesterday: ‘Father Landriani proceeds on this unwavering principle, that the Titular Bishop is superior to the Coadjutor,’ and he is beside himself with joy at having a del Dongo
under his orders and at having put him under obligation. Anything which emphasizes Fabrizio’s high birth adds to his secret happiness: that he should have such a man as his aide-de-camp! In the second place Monsignore Fabrizio delighted him, did not intimidate him at all; and lastly for ten years he has been nourishing a well-watered hatred for the Bishop of Piacenza, who has publicly paraded the claim to succeed him to the See of Parma, and worse still, is merely the son of a miller. It is with this prospect of a future succession that the Bishop of Piacenza has formed very close relations with the Marchesa Raversi, and now these liaisons greatly alarm the Archbishop as to the success of his cherished scheme, to have a del Dongo on his staff, and to give him orders.”

Two days later, early in the morning, Fabrizio was overseeing the excavations at Sanguigna, opposite Colorno (the Versailles of the Princes of Parma); these diggings extended across the plain quite close to the high-road leading from Parma to the bridge of Casalmaggiore, the first town over the Austrian border. The men were working on a long trench eight feet deep but as narrow as possible; they were engaged in searching, along the old Roman road, for the ruins of a second temple which, according to local report, still existed in the Middle Ages. Despite the Prince’s orders, several peasants regarded these long ditches across their property with a certain hostility. No matter what they were told, they imagined that a treasure hunt was being conducted there, and Fabrizio’s presence was particularly suitable to prevent the outbreak of any little disturbance. He was far from bored, and followed the excavations with passionate interest; occasionally, some medal would be unearthed, and Fabrizio endeavored to keep the workmen from conspiring to make off with it.