The Charterhouse of Parma (35 page)

While the Prince was smiling at these thoughts and indulging himself
in all these pleasant anticipations, he was striding up and down his study, at the door of which General Fontana had remained standing stiff as a soldier presenting arms. Seeing the Prince’s shining eyes and recalling the Duchess’s traveling costume, he imagined the dissolution of the monarchy. His amazement knew no bounds when he heard the Prince inform him: “Request Her Grace the Duchess to wait a quarter of an hour or so.”

General Fontana turned on his heel like a soldier on parade; the Prince smiled once more: “Fontana is not accustomed,” he said to himself, “to seeing this proud Duchess kept waiting: the astonished expression with which he will tell her about the
quarter of an hour or so
will prepare the way for the touching tears this very room will soon see shed.” This quarter of an hour or so was delightful for the Prince; he strode up and down with a firm and steady gait, he reigned.”Nothing must be said here that is not perfectly appropriate; whatever my feelings toward the Duchess, it must not be forgotten that she is one of the greatest ladies of my court. How did Louis XIV speak to the princesses his daughters when he had occasion to be displeased with them?” And his eyes stopped at the portrait of the
Roi Soleil
.

Amusingly enough, it never occurred to the Prince to wonder if he would pardon Fabrizio, and what such a pardon would mean. Finally, after some twenty minutes, the faithful Fontana reappeared at the door, but without saying a word.

“Let Duchess Sanseverina come in,” the Prince exclaimed quite theatrically. “The tears are going to begin,” he said to himself, and as if to be prepared for such a spectacle, he drew out his handkerchief.

Never had the Duchess been so gay, and so pretty; she looked no more than twenty-five. As he watched her tiny steps skim across the carpets, the poor aide-de-camp was about to lose his wits.

“I have many pardons to ask of Your Serene Highness,” the Duchess said in her light, gay little voice, “I have taken the liberty of presenting myself here in a costume which is not precisely suitable, but Your Highness has so accustomed me to your kindness that I have ventured to hope you would deign to grant me one more.”

The Duchess spoke quite slowly, in order to give herself time to enjoy the Prince’s countenance: it was delicious on account of its profound
astonishment as well as the remainder of the grand airs which the position of the head and arms still retained. The Prince had remained as though thunderstruck; in his shrill, troubled little voice he kept exclaiming, though almost inaudibly:
“What’s this? What’s this
?”

The Duchess, as though out of respect, having finished her compliment, left him plenty of time to reply; then she added:

“I venture to hope that Your Serene Highness will deign to forgive the incongruity of my dress.”

But in speaking so, her mocking eyes shone with so lively a luster that the Prince could not endure it; he stared up at the ceiling, which in him was the last sign of the most extreme embarrassment.
“What’s this? What’s this
?” he said again. Then he was lucky enough to hit upon a phrase: “Your Grace, be seated.”

He even pushed a chair toward her with a certain ease. The Duchess was not insensible of this sign of politeness and subdued the intensity of her gaze.

“What’s this? What’s this
?” the Prince repeated a third time, wriggling in his armchair, where he seemed unable to find a firm support.

“I shall be taking advantage of the cool night air to travel by post,” the Duchess continued, “and since my absence may last some time, I did not want to leave Your Serene Highness’s territories without thanking you for all the kindnesses you have deigned to show me over the last five years.”

At these words the Prince understood at last; he turned pale: this was a man who suffered more than anyone in the world at finding himself mistaken in his anticipations; then he assumed an air of grandeur quite worthy of the portrait of Louis XIV which was before his eyes. “At last,” the Duchess said to herself, “he is behaving like a man.”

“And what is the reason for this sudden departure,” the Prince inquired in a steady tone of voice.

“I had been planning on it for some time,” the Duchess replied, “and a little insult offered to
Monsignore
del Dongo, who tomorrow will be sentenced to death or the galleys, has made me hasten my departure.”

“And to what city will you be going?”

“To Naples, I suppose.” And as she stood up, she added: “There remains
for me only to take leave of Your Serene Highness and to thank you very humbly for all your
former kindnesses.
”

In her turn she spoke so steadily that the Prince realized that in two seconds everything would be over; the scandal of the departure having occurred, he knew that any compromise was impossible; she was not a woman to go back on her word. He ran after her. “But you know quite well, Your Grace,” he said, taking her hand, “that I have always cared for you, and that it was entirely up to you to give my friendship another name altogether. A murder has been committed, that is what cannot be denied; I have entrusted the investigation of the case to my best judges …”

At these words, the Duchess drew herself up to her full height; every appearance of respect and even of urbanity vanished in a twinkling of an eye: the outraged woman stood revealed, and the outraged woman addressing herself to someone whom she knew to be acting in bad faith. It was with the expression of the liveliest anger and even of contempt that she observed to the Prince, weighing each of her words: “I am leaving forever Your Serene Highness’s territories, in order never to hear the name of Justice Rassi and the other infamous assassins who have sentenced to death my nephew and so many others; if Your Serene Highness prefers not to intermix a sentiment of bitterness with the last moments I have to spend with a Prince so refined and witty when he is not deceived, I humbly implore you not to bring to mind the very idea of these infamous judges who sell themselves for a thousand scudi or a decoration.”

The admirable and especially sincere accent with which these words were spoken made the Prince shudder; for a moment he feared seeing his dignity compromised by an even more direct accusation, but on the whole his sensation soon turned to one of pleasure: he was admiring the Duchess; the whole of her person at this moment attained to a sublime beauty. “Great God! How lovely she is,” the Prince said to himself; “something must be conceded to a woman so unique—there may not be another like her in all of Italy.… Well now, with a little diplomacy it shouldn’t be impossible to make her my mistress one of these days; what a difference between such a creature and that doll of a Marchesa Balbi, who every year still manages to steal at least
three hundred thousand francs from my poor subjects.… But did I hear her correctly?” he suddenly realized. “She said
sentenced to death my nephew and so many others.
”

Whereupon rage overcame him, and it was with an hauteur worthy of his supreme rank that the Prince said, after a silence: “And what must be done to keep Your Grace from leaving us?”

“Something of which you are incapable,” the Duchess retorted with the accent of the bitterest irony and the most ill-concealed scorn.

The Prince was beside himself, but he owed it to the habit of his position as absolute sovereign that he had the power to resist a first impulse. “I must have this woman,” he said to himself, “I owe it to myself, and then I must kill her with contempt.… If she leaves this room, I shall never see her again.” But, intoxicated with rage and hatred as he was at this moment, how was he to find the words which might satisfy what he owed himself and at the same time convince the Duchess not to abandon his court that very moment? “A gesture,” he said to himself, “a gesture can neither be reported nor made into a joke,” and he went over to stand between the Duchess and the door of his study. At that moment he heard someone scratching at that very door.

“Who is the damned idiot,” he roared at the top of his lungs, “who is the damned idiot who is foisting his imbecile presence upon me here?”

Poor General Fontana showed his pale and agonized countenance, and it was with the expression of a man in his final agony that he uttered these barely audible words: “His Excellency Count Mosca requests the honor to be introduced.”

“Have him come in!” shouted the Prince. And as Mosca was bowing: “All right, all right, here is Her Grace the Duchess Sanseverina, who says she is leaving Parma this moment for Naples, and who is offering me any amount of insolence!”

“What’s that?” asked Mosca, turning pale.

“You mean you knew nothing of this plan of hers?”

“Not the first syllable; I left Her Grace at six o’clock, happy and, I believe, satisfied.”

This remark produced an incredible effect upon the Prince. First he stared at Mosca, whose growing pallor revealed that he was speaking
the truth and was no accomplice in the Duchess’s enterprise. “In which case,” the Prince said to himself, “I am losing her forever; pleasure and revenge, everything is vanishing at the same time. In Naples, she will be composing epigrams with her nephew Fabrizio on the great wrath of the little Prince of Parma.” He stared at the Duchess; the most violent contempt was disputing with the most violent anger for possession of her heart; her eyes at this moment were fixed upon Count Mosca, and the delicate contours of that lovely mouth expressed the bitterest disdain. Her entire countenance said:
Vile courtier!
“So,” thought the Prince, after scrutinizing her, “I am losing this means of getting her back in my court. At this very moment, if she leaves the room, she is lost to me. God knows what she will say about my judges in Naples.… And with that wit and that divine power of persuasion Heaven has given her, she will make the whole world believe her. To her I shall owe my reputation as an absurd tyrant who gets up in the middle of the night to look under his bed …” Then, by an adroit gesture, as though attempting to stride back and forth in the room to diminish his agitation, the Prince once again put himself in front of the door; the Count was three paces to his right, pale, undone, and trembling so greatly that he was obliged to lean on the back of the armchair the Duchess had occupied at the beginning of the audience and which the Prince, in an impulse of rage, had pushed away. The Count was in love. “If the Duchess leaves, I shall follow her,” he was saying to himself; “but will she want me in her entourage? That is the question.”

To the Prince’s left, the Duchess was standing, arms crossed and pressed against her breast, staring at him with a splendid insolence; a complete and profound pallor had succeeded the vivid colors which just now had animated this sublime countenance.

The Prince, unlike the other two persons in the room, was red-faced and evidently anxious; his left hand toyed convulsively with the Cross attached to the Grand Cordon of his Order which he wore under his coat; with his right hand he stroked his chin. “What is to be done?” he said to the Count, without quite knowing what he himself was doing and carried away by his habit of consulting him on every occasion.

“I have no idea, Your Serene Highness,” the Count replied with the look of a man in the last agonies. He could barely speak the words of his answer. The tone of his voice gave the Prince the first consolation his wounded pride had been able to find in this entire audience, and this grain of happiness afforded him a phrase that did his vanity good.

“Well then,” he said, “I am the most sensible of the three of us; I am quite willing to set aside my position in the world; I shall speak here
as a friend.
” And he added, with a fine smile of condescension carefully imitated from the happy days of Louis XIV: “
As a friend speaking to friends
. Your Grace,” he went on, “what must be done in order to make you forget such an untimely resoluion?”

“I have no idea,” the Duchess replied with a deep sigh. “To tell the truth, I have no idea, so greatly do I hold Parma in horror.”

There was no epigrammatic impulse in this remark; it was evident that sincerity itself was speaking through her mouth.

The Count suddenly turned to one side; his courtier’s soul was scandalized; then he cast an imploring glance at his Prince. With great dignity and
sang-froid
, the Prince let a moment pass; then he addressed the Count: “I see,” he said, “that your charming friend is quite beside herself; it is simple enough: she adores her nephew.” And, turning toward the Duchess, he added, with a glance filled with gallantry and at the same time with the kind of expression assumed for quoting a line from a play:
“What is to be done to please these fine eyes
?”

The Duchess had had time to reflect; in a slow and steady tone of voice, as if she were dictating her ultimatum, she replied: “Your Highness would write me a gracious letter of the kind you know so well how to compose; it would tell me that, not convinced of the guilt of Fabrizio del Dongo, the Archbishop’s First Grand Vicar, you will not sign the sentence when it is presented to you, and that this unjust procedure will have no future consequences.”

“What do you mean
unjust!
” exclaimed the Prince, reddening to the whites of his eyes and growing angry all over again.

“Nor is that all,” the Duchess replied with a Roman pride; “as
of this evening
, and,” she added glancing at the clock, “it is already a quarter past eleven, as of this evening Your Serene Highness will send word to
the Marchesa Raversi that she is advised to proceed to the country to recover from the fatigue which must have been caused by a certain trial of which she was speaking in her salon earlier this evening.”

The Prince was walking back and forth like a man in a fury. “Whoever saw such a woman …?” he exclaimed. “She has no respect for me.”

The Duchess replied with complete equanimity, “In all my life it has never occurred to me to lack respect for Your Serene Highness; your Highness has had the extreme condescension to say that you were speaking
as a friend to friends
. Moreover, I have no desire to remain in Parma,” she added, glancing at the Count with utter contempt.