The Charterhouse of Parma (44 page)

The Count knew that in the last eight days the Duchess had expended enormous sums to obtain informants in the Citadel; but in his opinion there were few hopes of success, all eyes being, at this time, still too wide open. We shall not describe for the reader all the attempts
at corruption made by this unfortunate woman: she was in despair, and agents of all kinds, utterly devoted to her service, were assisting her. But there is perhaps only one kind of business which is performed to perfection in the courts of minor despots, which is the custody of political prisoners. The Duchess’s gold produced no effect other than securing the dismissal from the Citadel of eight or ten men of all ranks.

Thus, for all their devotion to the prisoner, the Duchess and the Prime Minister had been able to do very little for him. The Prince was in a rage; the Court as well as the people were
vexed
by Fabrizio and delighted to see him come to grief; he had been too happy. Despite the gold disbursed by the handfuls, the Duchess had not advanced a step in her siege of the Citadel; no day passed without the Marchesa Raversi or Cavaliere Rassi having some new report to communicate to General Fabio Conti. They buttressed his weakness.

As we have said, on the day of his imprisonment, Fabrizio was first taken to the Governor’s
palazzo
: this was a pretty little building erected in the last century on
Vanvitelli’s
plans, who placed it one hundred and eighty feet above ground on the platform of the huge round tower. From the windows of this little
palazzo
, isolated on the back of the enormous tower like a camel’s hump, Fabrizio could glimpse the countryside and far in the distance the Alps; at the Citadel’s foot, he followed by sight the course of the River Parma, a sort of torrent which, turning right four leagues from the town, flung itself into the Po. Beyond the left bank of this river, which formed something like a series of huge white patches amid the green fields, his delighted eyes clearly identified each of the peaks of the vast wall by which the Alps enclose
northern Italy. These peaks, perennially covered with snow, even in August as it now was, provide a certain reminder of coolness in the midst of this scorching countryside; the eye can follow their tiniest details, and yet they are more than thirty leagues from the Citadel of Parma. This extensive view from the handsome Governor’s
palazzo
is interrupted toward the south corner by the Farnese Tower, in which a room was being hastily prepared for Fabrizio. This second tower, as the reader may recall, was built upon the platform of the great tower in honor of a certain Crown Prince who, unlike Hippolytus the son of Theseus, had not rejected the advances of a young stepmother. The Princess died in a few hours; the Prince’s son regained his freedom only seventeen years later, ascending the throne upon his father’s death. This extremely ugly Farnese Tower, to which, after waiting three-quarters of an hour, Fabrizio was led, was built another fifty feet above the platform of the main tower and adorned with any number of lightning-rods. The Prince, who, in his displeasure with his wife, had ordered the construction of this prison visible from all parts of the country, had had the singular notion of convincing his subjects that it had existed for ages: hence he gave it the name
Farnese Tower
. It was forbidden to speak of this edifice, though from every point of the city of Parma and the neighboring plains it was easy enough to see the masons laying each of the stones which composed this pentagonal structure. In order to prove its great age, there had been placed above the entrance door two feet wide and four feet high a magnificent bas-relief representing the celebrated General
Alessandro Farnese
forcing Henri IV to withdraw from Paris. This Farnese Tower, granted such an eminence, consisted of a ground-floor hall at least forty feet long, of comparable width, and filled with squat columns, for this disproportionately large room was no more than fifteen feet high. It was used as a guard-room and in its center an openwork iron staircase no more than two feet wide led upward, spiraling around one of the columns. Up this staircase, which trembled under the tread of the jailers escorting him, Fabrizio reached some huge rooms over twenty feet high, forming a splendid
piano nobile;
they had once been furnished with the greatest luxury for the young Prince who was to spend the best seventeen years of his life there. At one end of this apartment the new prisoner
was shown a magnificent chapel, the walls of its vault entirely covered with black marble; black marble columns as well, and of the noblest proportions, were placed in rows along black walls though without touching them, and these walls were embellished with any number of white marble skulls, of colossal size, elegantly carved and supported, each one, by crossbones. “Now here is an invention of the hatred which cannot kill,” Fabrizio said to himself, “and what a devilish notion to show me this!”

A light openwork iron staircase, also spiraling around a column, led up to the second floor of this prison, and it was in the rooms of this second floor, which were some fifteen feet high, that for a year now General Fabio Conti had given proof of his genius. First of all, under his direction, the windows of those rooms once occupied by the Prince’s servants, and which were more than thirty feet above the flagstones forming the platform of the great round tower, were solidly barred. It was by a dark corridor located in the center of the structure that one reached these rooms which each possessed two windows; and in this very narrow corridor Fabrizio noticed three successive iron gates formed of enormous iron bars and extending up to the ceiling. For two years, the plans, cross-sections, and elevations of all these fine inventions had entitled the General to a weekly audience with his master. A conspirator placed in one of these rooms could not complain to public opinion that he was being treated inhumanely, indeed could have no communication with the outside world, nor make the slightest movement without being heard. The General had had placed in each room huge oak planks forming a sort of trestle some three feet high, and this was his capital invention, the one which entitled him to a claim to the Ministry of Police. Upon these trestles he had set up an echoing cell of planks about ten feet high, which touched the wall only on the window side. On the three other sides there was a narrow corridor some four feet wide between the actual wall of the prison, composed of enormous stone blocks, and the plank walls of the cell. These walls, formed of four double planks of walnut, oak, and maple, were solidly attached together by iron bolts and countless nails.

It was in one of these rooms, constructed a year earlier as General
Fabio Conti’s masterpiece and given the splendid name of
Passive Obedience
, that Fabrizio was placed. He ran to the windows; the view from these barred windows was sublime: one tiny corner of the horizon was hidden, to the northwest, by the terraced roof of the Governor’s
palazzo
, which was only two stories high; the ground floor was occupied by the staff offices; and immediately Fabrizio’s eyes were drawn to one of the windows of the second story, where many birds of all kind were kept in a great number of cages. Fabrizio was delighted to hear them sing and to see them greet the last rays of the setting sun, while his jailers busied themselves around him. This aviary window was not more than twenty-five feet away from his own, and was five or six feet lower, so that he gazed down upon the birds.

There was a moon that evening, and just when Fabrizio entered his prison it was rising majestically above the horizon on the right, above the chain of the Alps, toward Treviso. It was only eight-thirty, and at the other end of the horizon, to the west, a brilliant red and orange sunset distinctly outlined the contours of Monte Viso and the other Alpine peaks which lead from Nice toward Mont-Cénis and Turin; without another thought for his misfortunes, Fabrizio was moved and delighted by this sublime spectacle. “So it is in this ravishing world that Clélia Conti lives! With that pensive, serious soul of hers, she must delight in this view more than anyone in the world; here we seem to be alone in the mountains a hundred leagues from Parma.” It was only after having spent more than two hours at the window, admiring this horizon which spoke so intimately to his soul, and often too glancing down at the attractive Governor’s
palazzo
, that Fabrizio suddenly exclaimed: “But is this really a prison? Is this what I have dreaded so much?” Instead of noticing at each step certain discomforts and reasons for bitterness, our hero let himself be charmed by the attractions of the prison.

All of a sudden his attention was abruptly returned to reality by a dreadful racket: his wooden room, which closely resembled an echoing cage, was violently shaken; the barks of a dog and tiny shrill cries completed the strangest uproar. “What is this? Am I going to escape so soon?” wondered Fabrizio. A second later he laughed as perhaps no
one has ever before laughed in a prison. On the General’s orders, there had been sent up, along with the jailers, a savage English dog intended to guard important prisoners; this brute was to spend the night in the passageways so ingeniously devised all around Fabrizio’s room. Dog and jailer were to sleep in the three-foot space between the stone blocks of the prison wall and the wooden planks where the prisoner could not take a single step without being heard.

Now, upon Fabrizio’s arrival, the room of
Passive Obedience
happened to be occupied by some hundred enormous rats which fled in all directions. The dog, half spaniel and half fox terrier, was anything but handsome though on the other hand appeared extremely alert. It had been attached to the flagstones under the planks of Fabrizio’s cell; but upon hearing the rats running so close by, it made such extraordinary efforts that it managed to slip its head out of its collar; then occurred that splendid battle whereof the uproar awakened Fabrizio from the least melancholy reveries. The rats that had managed to escape the first attack took refuge in the wooden cell; the dog pursued them up the six steps leading from the stone floor to Fabrizio’s chamber. Then began an even more dreadful racket: the cell was shaken to its foundations. Fabrizio laughed like a madman till tears ran down his cheeks: his jailer Grillo, laughing no less, had closed the door; the dog, pursuing the rats, was not impeded by any piece of furniture, for the room was quite bare; the dog’s leaps were hampered only by an iron stove in one corner. When the beast had triumphed over all its enemies, Fabrizio called to it, petted it, and managed to win its favors: “If ever this fellow sees me jumping over some wall,” he said to himself, “he won’t be barking.” But this subtle policy was a boast on his part: in his present state of mind, he found his happiness in playing with this dog. As a result of a strange mood to which he paid no attention, a secret joy prevailed deep in his soul.

After he had grown quite breathless from running with the dog, Fabrizio asked his jailer his name.

“Grillo, at Your Excellency’s service in everything the regulations allow.”

“Well then, my dear Grillo, as it happens a certain Giletti has tried
to murder me on the highway, I defended myself and managed to kill him; I would kill him again if I had to; but that won’t keep me from leading the best life I can while I am your guest. Request your superiors’ permission and see if you can’t bring me some linens from the Palazzo Sanseverina; and buy me a good supply of
nebiolo d’Asti
while you’re at it.”

This is quite a good sparkling wine made in Piedmont, which is
Alfieri
’s homeland, and highly esteemed, especially by the class of connoisseurs to which the jailers belong. Eight or ten of these gentlemen were busily transporting into Fabrizio’s wooden cell some old and heavily gilded pieces of furniture which they were bringing up from the Prince’s apartment; all of them religiously took note of this request favoring the wine of Asti. In spite of all their efforts, Fabrizio’s establishment for this first night was lamentable; but he appeared upset only by the absence of a bottle of good
nebiolo
.

“He seems like a good boy …,” the jailers were saying as they left, “and there is only one thing to be hoped for, that our bosses will let money be sent to him.”

Once he was alone and a little recovered from all this uproar: “Can this be a prison?” Fabrizio said to himself, staring at that vast horizon from Treviso to Monte Viso, the long chain of the Alps, the snow-covered peaks, the stars, and so on. “And my first night in prison as well. I imagine that Clélia Conti delights in this lofty solitude; here we are a thousand leagues above the pettiness and the nastiness which occupy us down below. If those birds which are here under my window belong to her, I shall be seeing her.… Will she blush when she catches sight of me?” It was in the articulation of this great question that the prisoner found sleep at a very advanced hour of the night.

On the day following this night, the first spent in prison and during which he did not feel a moment’s impatience, Fabrizio was reduced to making conversation with
Fox
, the English dog; his jailer Grillo gave him any number of friendly looks, but new orders made him keep silent, and he brought neither linens nor
nebiolo
.

“Shall I see Clélia?” Fabrizio asked himself, as he awoke. “But are those birds hers?” The birds were beginning to utter little cries and to
sing, and at this altitude that was the only sound that could be heard upon the air. It was a sensation full of novelty and pleasure for Fabrizio, this vast silence that reigned at this height: he listened with delight to the intense little irregular cheeping by which his neighbors the birds greeted the day. “If they belong to her, she will appear for a moment in that room, right under my window,” and even as he considered the enormous chains of the Alps, opposite the first hills of which the Citadel of Parma seemed to rise like a redoubt, his glances kept returning to the fine cages of orange-wood and mahogany, embellished with gilded wires, that filled the bright room which served as an aviary. What Fabrizio learned only later was that this room was the only one on the second floor of the
palazzo
which had shade from eleven till four in the afternoon; it was sheltered then by the Farnese Tower.