The Charterhouse of Parma (39 page)

Around ten o’clock, a friend of the Duchess’s approached and whispered two words into her ear; she turned excessively pale; Clélia took her hand and ventured to squeeze it.

“I thank you, and I understand you now. You have a noble soul!” said the Duchess, making an effort to control herself. She had scarcely the strength to utter these few words. She smiled a great deal at the mistress of the house, who stood up to accompany her to the door of the last salon: such honors were due only to Princesses of the blood and made, for the Duchess, a cruel contrast with her present position. So she smiled gaily at Countess Zurla, but in spite of desperate efforts did not succeed in speaking a single word to her.

Clélia’s eyes filled with tears as she watched the Duchess pass through these salons crowded with all that was most brilliant in the society of Parma. “What will become of this poor woman,” she asked herself, “when she finds herself alone in her carriage? It would be an indiscretion on my part to offer to accompany her! I dare not.… Yet how much consolation it would be for the poor prisoner, sitting in some wretched room with his little lamp, if he knew how greatly he is loved! What dreadful solitude it is in which he has been cast! And we—we are here in these brilliant salons: how horrible it is! Could there be some way of getting a message to him? Good God! That would mean betraying my father; his situation between the two factions is so delicate! What would become of him if he were to expose himself to the Duchess’s impassioned hatred, controlling as she does the Prime Minister’s will, and he the master of three-quarters of the Kingdom’s affairs!

“On the other hand the Prince is forever concerned with all that happens in the Fortress, and he will hear no jokes on this subject; fear makes him cruel.… In any case, Fabrizio”—Clélia no longer said Signor del Dongo—“is much more to be pitied!… For him it is quite
another matter than the danger of losing a lucrative position!… And the Duchess!… What a terrible passion love is!… And yet all these worldly deceivers speak of it as a source of happiness! Old women are pitied because they can no longer feel or inspire love!… I shall never forget what I have just seen; what a sudden transformation! How the Duchess’s eyes—so lovely, so radiant—turned dim and lifeless after the fatal message Marchese N—— came to give her!… Fabrizio must indeed be worthy of being loved!…”

Amid these highly serious reflections which absorbed Clélia’s whole soul, the complimentary remarks which constantly surrounded her seemed even more distasteful to her than usual. To be rid of them, she went over to an open window half-veiled by a taffeta curtain; she was hoping no one would be so bold as to follow her into this sort of retreat. The window overlooked a little grove of orange-trees planted just below it: of course each winter it was necessary to put up a roof over the trees. Rapturously Clélia breathed in the perfume of these blossoms, and this pleasure seemed to restore a little peace to her soul.… “I thought he looked so noble,” she reflected; “but to inspire such feelings in a woman of such distinction!… She has had the glory of refusing the suit of the Prince, and had she deigned to accept it, she might have been queen of his territories.… My father says that the Sovereign’s passion went so far as to promise to marry her if he ever became free!… And this love of hers for Fabrizio has lasted so long! For it must have been five years ago that we met up with them on the shores of Lake Como!… Yes, it was five years ago,” she said to herself after a moment’s reflection. “I was struck by it at the time, when so many things passed unnoticed before my child’s eyes! How much those two ladies seemed to admire Fabrizio!…”

Clélia noticed with delight that none of the young men who had spoken to her so ardently had dared approach her balcony. One of them, Marchese Crescenzi, had taken several steps toward her, then had stopped beside a gaming-table. “If only,” she was thinking, “if only under my little window in the Fortress palace, the only one that ever gets any shade, I had the view of some pretty orange-trees like these, my thoughts would not be so sad! But the only view I have is of the enormous stone blocks of the Farnese Tower.… Ah!” she exclaimed,
making a sudden gesture, “maybe that’s where they’ve put him! I must lose no time in speaking to Don Cesare! He will be less severe than the General. My father will certainly tell me nothing when we return to the Fortress, but I’ll find out everything from Don Cesare.… I have some money; I could buy some orange-trees and plant them under the window of my eyrie, that would keep me from seeing that huge wall of the Farnese Tower. How much more hateful it will seem to me now that I know one of the prisoners it hides from the light of day! … Yes, that was only the third time I have seen him; once at Court, at the Prince’s birthday ball; today, surrounded by three policeman while that horrible Barbone was requesting handcuffs for him; and then the time at Lake Como.… That was five years ago; what a naughty boy he looked like then! What stares he gave the police, and what looks his aunt and his mother gave him! Surely there was some secret that day, something special between them; at the time it seemed to me that he too was afraid of the police …” Clélia shuddered. “But how ignorant I was! Doubtless, even back then, the Duchess had taken an interest in him.… How he made us laugh after a few moments, when those ladies, despite their evident concern, had become somewhat accustomed to a stranger’s presence! … And tonight I could not reply to his greeting!… O ignorance and timidity, how often you resemble all that is worst in us! And that’s how I behave when I’m over twenty!… I was quite right to long for the cloister; truly I am good for nothing but retirement from the world!
Worthy daughter of a jailer!
he will be saying. He scorns me, and as soon as he can write to the Duchess, he will mention my lack of concern, and the Duchess will think of me as a deceitful little girl; for finally tonight she was able to see me as full of sympathy for her troubles.”

Clélia realized that someone was approaching, apparently with the intention of taking a place beside her on the iron balcony of this window; she was annoyed, though she reproached herself for it; the daydreams from which she was about to be torn were not without their sweetness. “Here comes some importunate fellow, and I’ll give him a fine reception!” she thought. She turned her head with a haughty expression, when she glimpsed the timid countenance of the Archbishop approaching her balcony by tentative little movements. “This holy
man has no manners,” Clélia mused; “why come and disturb a poor girl like me? My peace and quiet is all I have.” She was greeting the Archbishop respectfully, but with a certain remoteness, when the prelate said to her:

“Signorina, have you heard the dreadful news?”

The girl’s eyes had already assumed a very different expression; but in accordance with the instructions her father had repeated a hundred times, she answered with a look of ignorance, which the language of her eyes clearly contradicted: “I have heard nothing, Monsignore.”

“My First Grand Vicar, poor Fabrizio del Dongo, who was no more guilty of that ruffian Giletti’s death than I am, has been captured in Bologna, where he was living under the assumed name of Joseph Bossi; he has been imprisoned in your Citadel; he arrived there
chained
to the very carriage he was riding in. Some jailer or other named Barbone, who was pardoned not long ago after having murdered one of his own brothers, sought to inflict an act of personal violence upon Fabrizio; but my young friend is not the man to suffer an insult. He flung his wretched adversary to his knees, after which he himself was handcuffed and cast into a dungeon twenty feet underground.”

“Not handcuffs, no.”

“Ah, you’ve heard something!” the Archbishop exclaimed, and the old man’s features lost their intense expression of discouragement. “But right now someone might come over to this balcony and interrupt us: would you be so charitable as to see to it yourself that this pastoral ring of mine is put in Don Cesare’s hands?”

The girl had taken the ring, but had no idea where to put it to avoid losing it.

“Put it on your thumb,” said the Archbishop, and he placed it there himself. “May I count on you to convey this ring?”

“Yes, Monsignore.”

“And will you promise me to keep secret what I shall now tell you, even should you not find it easy to fulfill my request?”

“Certainly, Monsignore,” the girl replied, trembling as she saw the somber and serious expression the old man had suddenly assumed.… “Our worthy Archbishop,” she continued, “can give me no orders unworthy of himself and of me.”

“Tell Don Cesare that I commend my adopted son to his care: I know that the
sbirri
who captured him have not given him time to take his missal, and I beg Don Cesare to let him have his own, and if your good uncle will be so good as to send to the Archiepiscopal Palace tomorrow, I shall take it upon myself to replace the book he has given to Fabrizio. And I request Don Cesare to pass on as well the ring worn by this pretty hand to Signor del Dongo.”

The Archbishop was interrupted by General Fabio Conti, who was coming to collect his daughter for the carriage-ride home; there was a moment of conversation which was not unskillfully managed by the prelate. Without in any way alluding to the new prisoner, he succeeded in turning the conversation so that he was able to utter quite appropriately certain moral and political observations; for instance: There are moments of crisis in Court life which determine for long periods the existence of the greatest figures; it would be notably imprudent to transform into
personal hatred
the state of political distance which is frequently the very simple consequence of contrary positions. The Archbishop, letting himself be somewhat carried away by his deep distress caused by an unexpected arrest, went so far as to say that certainly it was correct to maintain the positions of one’s choice, but that it would be a quite gratuitous imprudence to bring down upon oneself furious hatreds that would be the consequence of certain deeds not to be forgotten.

Once the General was in his carriage, he said to his daughter:

“Now that is what I call threats—threats to a man of my position!”

No other words were exchanged between father and daughter for some twenty minutes.

On receiving the Archbishop’s pastoral ring, Clélia had certainly intended to speak to her father, once in the carriage, of the little favor the prelate had asked of her. But after the word
threats
, so angrily spoken, she was convinced that her father would intercept the commission; she covered the ring with her left hand and squeezed it hard. During the whole time it took to drive from the Ministry of the Interior to the Citadel, she wondered if it would be a crime on her part not to speak to her father. She was a very pious, very timid girl, and her heart, usually so tranquil, was beating with unaccustomed violence;
but finally the
Who goes there
? of the sentry on the ramparts above the gate rang out at the approach of the carriage, before Clélia had found words likely to incline her father not to refuse, so fearful was she of being refused! As she climbed the three hundred and sixty steps to the Governor’s Palace, Clélia could think of nothing to say.

She hastened to speak to her uncle, who scolded her and refused to lend himself to anything.

“Well!” exclaimed the General, catching sight of his brother Don Cesare, “here is the Duchess about to spend a hundred thousand scudi to make a fool of me and help our prisoner escape!”

But for the moment we are obliged to leave Fabrizio in his prison, at the very top of the Citadel of Parma; he is well guarded, and perhaps we shall find him, when we return to him, somewhat changed. Meanwhile we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the Court, where some extremely complicated plots, and above all the passions of an unhappy woman, will determine his fate. As he climbed the three hundred and eighty steps to his prison in the Farnese Tower, under the Governor’s eyes, Fabrizio, who had so dreaded this moment, discovered that he had no time to brood over his misfortunes.

Returning home after Count Zurla’s party, the Duchess dismissed her serving-women with a gesture; then, collapsing fully dressed onto her bed:
“Fabrizio is in the power of his enemies
,” she exclaimed aloud,
“and perhaps on my account they will poison him!
”

How to describe the despairing moment which followed this account of the situation, in a woman so little swayed by reason, so much the slave of the present sensation, and, without confessing it to herself, so wildly in love with the young prisoner? There were inarticulate
cries, transports of rage, convulsive movements, but not a single tear. She had dismissed her serving-women for the sake of concealment, expecting to burst into sobs as soon as she was alone, but the tears, that first relief of great sufferings, failed her completely. Rage, indignation, the sense of her inferiority when matched with the Prince, overwhelmingly ruled this proud spirit.

“Am I not humiliated enough!” she kept exclaiming. “I am being flouted and, worse still, Fabrizio’s life is in danger! And I have no way of seeking revenge! Stop there, my Prince! Kill me, if you like, you have the power; but afterward I shall have your life. But alas, poor Fabrizio, what good will that do you? How different from that day when I sought to leave Parma! And yet then I believed I was unhappy … what blindness! I was about to break all the habits of a pleasant life: alas, without knowing it, I was on the brink of an event which would decide my fate forever. If, by his miserable habits of a fawning courtier, the Count had not removed the phrase
unjust proceedings
from that fatal leter the Prince’s vanity granted me, we would be saved. I had had the luck (rather than the skill, it must be confessed) to involve his vanity with regard to his beloved Parma. When I threatened to leave is when I was free! Good God! What a slave I am now, stuck here in this wretched sewer, and Fabrizio chained in the Citadel, that prison which for so many great spirits has been the antechamber of death! And I can no longer restrain that tiger by the fear of seeing me leave his den!