The Charterhouse of Parma (49 page)

One night, toward one o’clock in the morning, Fabrizio, leaning on his window-sill, had pushed his head through the opening cut in the shutter, and was contemplating the stars and the vast horizon to be enjoyed from the top of the Farnese Tower. His eyes, sweeping the countryside toward the lower Po and Ferrara, happened to notice an extremely small but rather bright light apparently emanating from the top of another tower. “That light cannot be visible from the plain,” Fabrizio said to himself, “the tower’s thickness keeps it from being seen from down below—it must be some signal for a distant point.” Suddenly he noticed that this light appeared and vanished at very close intervals. “It must be some girl communicating with her lover in the next village.” He counted nine successive flashes: “That’s an
I
,” he decided, “since
I
is the ninth letter of the alphabet. And then, after a pause, there were fourteen flashes. “That’s an
N”;
then, after another pause, a single flash: “That’s an
A;
the word is
Ina.
”

What were his delight and his amazement when the successive flashes, always separated by brief pauses, then completed the following words:
INA PENSA A TE
. Evidently, “Gina is thinking of you!” He immediately answered with successive flashes of his lamp through the opening in his shutter:
FABRIZIO T AMA
(“Fabrizio loves you!”) The
communication continued until daybreak. This night was the hundred and seventy-third of his captivity, and he now learned that for four months these signals had been made every night. But anyone could see and decipher them; from this night on, abbreviations were devised: three flashes in rapid succession indicated the Duchess; four, the Prince; two, Count Mosca; two quick flashes followed by two slow ones meant
escape
. It was agreed that in the future they would use the old alphabet
alla monaca
, which in order not to be understood by outsiders changes the usual order of the letters and gives them an arbitrary numbering;
A
, for instance, is represented by ten;
B
by three; in other words, three successive flashes of the lamp means
B
, ten flashes means
A
, etc.; a moment’s darkness constitutes the space between words. An appointment was made for the following night at one o’clock, and the following night the Duchess came to this tower, which was a quarter of a league outside the town. Her eyes filled with tears seeing the signals made by the very Fabrizio whom she had so often believed to be dead. She told him herself by flashing her lamp:
I love you Courage Keep up your hopes Exercise within your room You will need the strength of your arms
. “I have not seen him,” the Duchess said to herself, “since that concert of Fausta’s, when he appeared at my salon doors in a footman’s livery. Who could have guessed then what Fate held in store for us all!”

The Duchess had signals sent which told Fabrizio that soon he would be released,
thanks to the Prince’s kindness
(these signals could be read); then she went back to sending messages of affection; she could not tear herself away from him! Only the remonstrances of Ludovic, who because he had been of use to Fabrizio had become her own factotum, could convince her, when day was dawning, to break off the signals which might attract the attention of someone hostile. This announcement of an imminent release, repeated several times, cast Fabrizio into a deep melancholy: Clélia, noticing this the next day, was so indiscreet as to ask him the reason.

“I am about to give the Duchess serious grounds for annoyance.”

“What could she ask of you that you would deny her?” exclaimed Clélia, carried away by the most burning curiosity.

“She wants me to leave this place,” he answered, “and that is something I shall never consent to do.”

Clélia could not answer, she stared at him and dissolved into tears. If he had been able to speak to her at close range, perhaps then he might have obtained the avowal of feelings concerning which his uncertainty frequently plunged him into the deepest discouragement; how intensely he felt that life, without Clélia’s love, could be nothing for him but an endless round of bitter disappointments or unbearable tedium. It seemed to him that it was no longer worth living to rediscover those same delights which had seemed so interesting before he had known love, and although suicide had not yet become fashionable in Italy, he had thought of it as a last resort, if fate were to separate him from Clélia.

The following day he received a very long letter from her:

This letter was very long; certain passages, such as the
I command you …
, which we have just transcribed, afforded moments of delicious hope to Fabrizio’s love. It seemed to him that the basis of the feelings it expressed were quite tender, for all the remarkable discretion of their phrasing. At other moments, he paid the penalty for his complete ignorance in this sort of combat; he saw no more than friendship, or even simple humanity, in this letter from Clélia.

Moreover, everything she told him did not change his plans for an instant: supposing that the dangers she was describing were quite real, was it excessive to purchase, by a few momentary dangers, the happiness of seeing her every day? What kind of life would he be leading once he had again taken refuge in Bologna or in Florence? For, by escaping from the Fortress, he could not even hope for permission to live in Parma. And even if the Prince were to change his mind to the point of releasing him (which was highly unlikely, since he, Fabrizio, had become, for a powerful faction, a means of bringing down Count Mosca), what kind of life would he lead in Parma, separated from Clélia by all the hatred which divided the two factions? Once or twice a month, perhaps, chance would bring them to the same salons; but even then, what kind of conversation might he have with her? How would he regain that perfect intimacy which every day now he delighted in for
hours at a time? What would salon conversation be, compared to the words they were exchanging with their alphabets? “And when I might purchase this life of delights and this one occasion for happiness by a few little dangers, what would be the harm in that? And would it not be one more happiness to find thereby a faint opportunity of giving her a proof of my love?”

Fabrizio regarded Clélia’s letter as no more than the opportunity of asking her for a meeting: this was the sole and constant object of all his desires; he had spoken to her only once, and one other moment when he had entered the prison, and that had been over two hundred days ago.

An easy means of meeting with Clélia offered itself: the good Abbé Don Cesare granted Fabrizio half an hour’s exercise on the terrace of the Farnese Tower every Thursday during daylight hours; but the other days of the week, this exercise, which might be observed by all the inhabitants of Parma and the surrounding area, and seriously compromise the Governor, occurred only after dark. In order to reach the terrace of the Farnese Tower, there was no staircase but that of the little steeple attached to the chapel so lugubriously embellished with black and white marble, which the reader may perhaps recall. Grillo used to lead Fabrizio to this chapel, would open the door to the steeple stairs: his duty would have been to follow him up it, but since the evenings were beginning to be chilly, the jailer allowed him to climb the stairs on his own, locking him into that steeple which led to the terrace, and returning to warm himself at the fire in his own room. Very well then, might not Clélia make her way some evening, escorted by her own chambermaid, to the black marble chapel?

The whole long letter by which Fabrizio answered Clélia’s was calculated to produce this meeting. Moreover, he confided to her in all sincerity, and as if another person were involved, all the reasons which convinced him not to leave the fortress:

The result of this request for a meeting was an absence on Clélia’s part which lasted no less than five days, during which time she came to the aviary only when she knew Fabrizio could not make use of the little opening cut into the shutter. Fabrizio was in despair; he concluded from this absence that despite certain glances which had made him conceive certain wild hopes, he had never inspired in Clélia any feelings but those of simple friendship. “In which case,” he asked himself, “what does life matter to me? Let the Prince take it from me, he is welcome to it; one reason the more for not leaving the fortress!” And it was with a profound sentiment of disgust that, night after night, he answered the signals of the little lamp. The Duchess believed he had gone quite mad when she read, on the transcription of the signals which Ludovic brought her every morning, these strange words:
I do not wish to escape; I want to die here!

During these five days which were so cruel for Fabrizio, Clélia was still more unhappy than he; she had had this inspiration, so poignant for a generous spirit: “It is my duty to take refuge in a convent, far from the fortress; when Fabrizio learns that I am no longer here, which I shall have him learn through Grillo and the other jailers, then he will consent to make an attempt at escaping.” But going into a convent was abandoning forever all hopes of seeing Fabrizio again; and renouncing such hopes when he was giving such evident proofs that the sentiments which might once have linked him to the Duchess no longer existed! What more touching proof of love could a young man give? After seven long months in prison, which had seriously altered his health, he was refusing to regain his freedom. The frivolous being whom the courtiers had described to Clélia would have sacrificed twenty mistresses to leave the fortress even one day sooner; and what would he not have done to get out of a prison where poison might have ended his life from one day to the next!

Clélia’s courage failed her; she committed the signal error of not seeking refuge in a convent, which at the same time would have given
her the most natural reason in the world for breaking off with the Marchese Crescenzi. Once this mistake was made, how could she resist a young man so lovable, so sincere, so tender, who was exposing his very life to dreadful dangers in order to obtain the simple happiness of glimpsing her from one window to another? After five days of dreadful struggles, mingled with moments of contempt for herself, Clélia decided to answer the letter in which Fabrizio sought the happiness of speaking to her in the black marble chapel. In point of fact, she refused him, and in rather harsh terms, but from this moment on, all tranquillity was lost for her, at every moment her imagination depicted Fabrizio succumbing to the symptoms of poison; she came six or eight times a day to the aviary, feeling the passionate need to assure herself with her own eyes that Fabrizio was still alive.

“If he is still here in the Fortress,” she said to herself, “if he is exposed to all the horrors which the Raversi faction may be devising for him with the intent of destroying Count Mosca, it is solely because I have been so cowardly as not to take refuge in a convent! What excuse could he have to remain here, once he was convinced that I had left the place forever?”