The Charterhouse of Parma (58 page)

One may judge of the latter’s consideration for the poor Duchess; he would have suffered a thousand deaths rather than utter Clélia Conti’s name in her hearing. The Duchess held Parma in abhorrence; while for Fabrizio, all that betokened this city was at once sublime and touching.

Less than ever had the Duchess forgotten her revenge; she had been so happy before the incident of Giletti’s death! And now what was her fate—she was living in expectation of a dreadful event of which she was determined not to utter a word to Fabrizio, she who once, during her transactions with Ferrante, had supposed she would delight Fabrizio by telling him that one day he would be avenged.

One can now form some notion of the amenity of Fabrizio’s conversations with the Duchess: a gloomy silence reigned between them almost all the time. To increase the pleasures of their intercourse, the Duchess had yielded to the temptation of playing a little trick on this all too beloved nephew. The Count was writing her almost daily; apparently he was sending couriers as in the time of their
amours
, for his letters invariably bore the stamp of some Swiss canton or other. The poor man was tormenting his wits to avoid speaking too openly of his feelings, and attempting to make his letters entertaining; they were scarcely glanced at by a distracted pair of eyes. What avails, alas! the faithfulness of an esteemed lover, when one’s heart is riven by the coldness of the man one prefers to him?

In two months’ time the Duchess answered him only once, and that was to ask him to determine the Princess’s susceptibilities and to see whether, despite the insolence of the fireworks display, a letter from the Duchess would be well received. The letter he was to deliver, if he judged it suitable, asked the Princess for the position of Lord-in-Waiting, which had fallen vacant recently, for the Marchese Crescenzi, and requested that it be awarded him in consideration of his marriage. The Duchess’s letter was a masterpiece of the tenderest and the most eloquent respect; this courtly style did not admit the slightest word of which any consequence, however remote, might not be agreeable to
the Princess. Hence the reply breathed a tender friendship to which separation was a torment.

Hence it was with the awareness of having sought to hasten, as much as it lay within her power, the wedding which was filling Fabrizio with despair that the Duchess saw him every day. Sometimes, therefore, they would spend four or five hours sailing around the lake, without exchanging a single word. Fabrizio’s good will was complete, but he was thinking of other things, and his naïve and simple soul afforded him nothing to say. The Duchess saw this, and it was agony to her.

We have forgotten to mention, in its proper place, that the Duchess had taken a house in Belgirate, a charming village which keeps the promise of its name
(i.e.
, a fine turn around the lake). From the French
windows of her salon, the Duchess could step out into her boat, quite an ordinary one which she had rented and for which four oarsmen would have sufficed; she hired a dozen, and managed to include a man from each of the villages around Belgirate. The third or fourth time she found herself in the middle of the lake with all these carefully selected men, she ordered them to stop rowing. “I regard you all as my friends,” she told them, “and I want to entrust you with a secret. My nephew Fabrizio has escaped from prison; and perhaps, treacherously, an attempt will be made to recapture him, right here on your lake, that country of freedom. Keep your ears cocked, and inform me of anything you happen to learn. I authorize you to enter my rooms by day or night.”

The oarsmen responded enthusiastically; the Duchess knew how to make herself loved. But she did not believe there was any question of recapturing Fabrizio: it was for herself that she was taking all these precautions, and before the fatal order to open the reservoir of the Palazzo Sanseverina, she would not have dreamed of such a thing.

Her prudence had also committed her to rent an apartment for Fabrizio at the port of Locarno; every day he came to see her, or she herself crossed over into Switzerland. One may judge of the vitality of their perpetual tête-à-têtes by this detail: the Marchesa and her daughters came to see them twice, and the presence of these “strangers” gave them pleasure; for despite the ties of blood, we may call a person who knows nothing of our dearest interests and whom we see but once a year a stranger.

The Duchess happened to be at Fabrizio’s apartment in Locarno one evening, with the Marchesa and her two daughters; the district Archpriest and the parish priest as well had come to pay their respects to these ladies: the Archpriest, who had interests in a commercial establishment and kept abreast of current happenings, suddenly ventured to say: “The Prince of Parma is dead!”

The Duchess turned very pale; she had scarcely the courage to say: “Have any details been made known?”

“No,” the Archpriest replied; “the report merely cites the death, which is certain.”

The Duchess looked at Fabrizio. “I have done this for him,” she said to herself; “I would have done a thousand worse things, and here he is, in front of me, indifferent and dreaming of another!”

It was beyond her powers to endure this dreadful thought; she fell into a dead faint. Everyone hastened to her assistance; but as she came to, she noticed that Fabrizio was less concerned than the Archpriest and the curate; he was daydreaming as usual.

“He’s thinking of returning to Parma,” the Duchess said to herself, “and perhaps of breaking off Clélia’s wedding to the Marchese; but I’ll be able to keep him from doing that.” Then, remembering the presence of the two priests, she made haste to add: “He was a great Prince, and has been greatly maligned! This is a great loss for us all!”

The two priests took their leave, and the Duchess, in order to be alone, announced that she was taking to her bed. “No doubt,” she said to herself, “prudence would have me wait a month or two before returning to Parma; but I feel that I shall never have such patience; I am suffering too much here. This continual daydreaming of Fabrizio’s and this silence are an intolerable spectacle for my heart. Who could have predicted that I would find it tedious to sail around this delightful lake, the two of us together, and just when I have done more to avenge him than I can ever tell him! After such a spectacle, death is nothing. I am paying now for those childish transports of happiness I was taking in my
palazzo
at Parma when I received Fabrizio there on his way back from Naples! Had I spoken one word, everything would have been settled, and perhaps, involved with me, he would not have given a thought to that little Clélia; but that word was deeply repugnant to me. Now it overwhelms me. What could be simpler? She is twenty and I—transformed by anxiety, ill as I am, I am twice her age!… One must die, end it all! A woman of forty is no longer something for the men who have loved her in her youth! Now I shall find no more than the pleasures of vanity; and do they make life worth living? All the more reason for going to Parma, and for amusing myself. If matters took a certain turn, I should lose my life. Well! What’s so bad about that? I’d die a splendid death, and before it was over, but only then, I’d say to Fabrizio: ‘Ingrate! It was for you!’ … Yes, only in Parma can I find something to do with what life remains to me; I’ll play the
grande dame
there. What a blessing if I could be aware now of all those distinctions which used to be the bane of the Raversi’s life! In those days, in order to see my own happiness, I needed to look into the eyes of envy.… My vanity has one satisfaction; with the exception of the Count perhaps, no one can have guessed the event that has put an end to my heart’s life.… I’ll go on loving Fabrizio, I’ll be devoted to his interests; but he must not break off Clélia’s wedding and marry her himself.… No, that must never be!”

The Duchess had reached this point in her mournful monologue when she heard a loud noise in the house. “Good!” she said to herself. “Now they’re coming to arrest me; Ferrante will have let himself get caught, he must have confessed. And so much the better! Now I’ll have an occupation: fighting for my life. But first of all not to let myself be captured.” Half-dressed, the Duchess fled into her garden: she was already planning to climb over a little wall and escape into the countryside; but she noticed that someone was entering her bedroom. She recognized Bruno, the Count’s confidential servant: he was alone, along with her chambermaid. She approached the French door. The man was telling the chambermaid about the wounds he had received. The Duchess entered her room; Bruno virtually flung himself at her feet, imploring her not to tell the Count the absurd hour he had chosen to make his appearance. “Right after the Prince’s death,” he added, “the Signor Count gave orders to all the posting-stations not to furnish horses to the subjects of the State of Parma. So I reached the Po on our own horses, but when I was getting out of the boat, my carriage was overturned, broken, smashed to bits, and I had such serious bruises that I couldn’t ride a horse, as was my duty.”

“Even so,” said the Duchess, “it is three in the morning: I’ll say you arrived at noon; you won’t contradict me.”

“I am grateful for the Signora’s kindness.”

Politics in a literary work are a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, a crude affair though one impossible to ignore. We are about to speak of very ugly matters, which for more than one reason we should rather suppress, but which we are forced to discuss by events which fall within our province, since the hearts of our characters constitute their theater.

“But for God’s sake, how did the Prince happen to die?” the Duchess asked Bruno.

“He was out shooting migratory birds in the marshes along the Po, two leagues from Sacca. He fell into a hole concealed by a tuft of grass; he was perspiring heavily, and caught a chill; he was taken to a lonely farmhouse, where he died in a few hours. Some people claim that Signors Catena and Borone died as well, and that the whole business happened because of the copper pots in the peasant’s farmhouse where they were—pots filled with mold. They had eaten food out of them. And of course the excitable people, the Jacobins, say what they like and talk of poison.… I know that my friend Toto, a groom at Court, would have died if it hadn’t been for the generous care of a country bumpkin who seemed to have considerable medical knowledge and supplied him with some very strange remedies. But people have already stopped talking about the Prince’s death: the truth is, he was a cruel man. When I left, a mob was gathering to slaughter Chief Justice Rassi: they wanted to go and set fire to the gates of the Fortress, in order to try to save the prisoners. But it was claimed that Fabio Conti would fire his cannons. Other people declared that the Fortress cannoneers had poured water over their gunpowder, being unwilling to massacre their fellow citizens. But what’s more interesting is that while Sandolaro was tying up my poor arm, a man came from Parma saying that people had found Barbone in the streets—you know, that famous clerk of the Fortress—and had beaten him and then hanged him from the tree on the promenade closest to the Fortress. The people were on the way to break that fine statue of the Prince which stands in the Court gardens, but the Signor Count took a battalion of the Guard, posted it in front of the statue, and announced that no one entering the gardens would leave alive, and people were afraid. But the strangest thing of all, which that man from Parma, who is a former police-officer, told me several times, is that the Signor Count actually kicked General P——, in command of the Prince’s Guard, and had him taken out of the gardens by two fusiliers, after tearing off his epaulettes.”

“I know my Count!” exclaimed the Duchess in a transport of joy she would not have believed possible a moment earlier. “He would never
permit an offense to our Princess; and as for General P——, in his devotion to his legitimate masters, he would never consent to serve the usurper, while the Count, being less delicate, fought in all the Spanish campaigns, which he was frequently reproached for at Court.”

The Duchess had opened the Count’s letter, but interrupted her reading to ask Bruno a hundred questions. The letter was highly entertaining; the Count used the most lugubrious terms, yet the liveliest pleasure broke through at each word; he avoided details concerning the manner of the Prince’s death, and ended his letter with these words: