The Charterhouse of Parma (61 page)

“Since he has a printing-press at his command,” the Duchess said to herself, “we’ll soon be getting a sonnet-sequence; Lord knows what name he’ll give me!”

The Duchess’s coquetry led her to make a trial of her strength; for a week she was indisposed, and the Court had no more amusing parties. The Princess, quite scandalized by everything which her fear of her son had compelled her to do since the first moments of her widowhood, went to spend this week in a convent attached to the church where the late Prince was buried. This interruption of the parties left the Prince with an enormous burden of leisure to dispose of, and charged a notable failure to the account of the Minister of Justice. Ernesto V realized all the tedium which would threaten him if the Duchess were to leave the Court, or merely ceased to shed gaiety within it. The parties began again, and the Prince showed himself increasingly interested in the
commedia dell’arte
. He planned to take a part, but dared not confess this ambition. One day, blushing deeply, he said to the Duchess: “Why shouldn’t I act too?”

“We are all at Your Highness’s orders here. If Your Highness deigns to command me, I shall have the plot of a comedy arranged, so that all Your Highness’s brilliant scenes will be opposite me, and since during the first days everyone is somewhat shaky, if Your Highness will pay me close attention, I shall provide him with all the appropriate lines.”

Everything was arranged, and with infinite skill. The shy Prince was ashamed of being shy; the pains the Duchess took not to offend this innate timidity made a profound impression on the young Sovereign.

The day of his debut, the performance began half an hour earlier than usual, and there were present in the salon, at the moment they took the stage, only eight or ten elderly ladies. Such an audience had little or no effect upon the Prince, and moreover, brought up in Munich on true monarchical principles, they always applauded. Invoking her authority as Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess locked the door through which the commonplace courtiers had access to the play. The Prince, who had a certain
literary
turn of mind and a handsome countenance, acquitted himself nicely in his first scenes; he repeated quite intelligently the phrases which he read in the Duchess’s eyes, or which she whispered to him. In a moment when the scant audience was applauding with all their might, the Duchess made a sign, the door of honor was opened, and the theater was filled in a moment by all the prettiest women of the court, who, judging the Prince both handsome
and expressive, began applauding; the Prince blushed with pleasure. He was playing the part of the Duchess’s lover. Far from having to suggest words to him, soon she was compelled to shorten the scenes; he spoke of love with an enthusiasm which frequently embarrassed the actress; his speeches lasted five minutes. The Duchess was no longer the dazzling beauty she had been the year before; Fabrizio’s imprisonment and, even more, the sojourn on Lake Maggiore with a Fabrizio turned morose and silent had given another ten years to the lovely Gina. Her features had become marked, and showed more intelligence and less youth. They now revealed a girlish animation only rarely; but on the stage, with makeup and all the assistance which art affords an actress, she was still the loveliest woman at court. The impassioned speeches the Prince poured out to her alerted the courtiers, and that evening people remarked to each other over and over: “There’s
la Balbi
of this new reign.”

The Count took silent umbrage. The play over, the Duchess said to the Prince before the whole court: “Your Highness acts too well; people will be saying that you are in love with a woman of thirty-eight, which will spoil my arrangement with the Count. So I shall act no more with Your Highness, unless the Prince swears he will speak to me only as he would to a woman of a certain age—to Marchesa Raversi, for instance.”

The same play was performed three times; the Prince was wild with pleasure; but one evening, he seemed extremely anxious. “Either I am greatly mistaken,” said the Mistress of the Robes to her Princess, “or our Rassi is trying to play some trick on us; I should advise Your Highness to choose a play for tomorrow; the Prince will act badly, and in his despair, he will say something to you …”

Indeed, the Prince acted very badly; he was scarcely audible, and couldn’t manage to end his sentences. At the end of the first act, he was almost in tears; the Duchess was standing beside him, but cold and motionless. The Prince, happening to be alone with her for a moment in the green room, went to close the door.

“Under no circumstances,” he said, “can I get through the second and third acts; I have no desire whatever to be applauded out of mere
politeness; the way they were clapping for me tonight cut me to the quick. Give me some advice—what must be done?”

“I shall go out on stage, curtsy to Her Highness, then to the audience, like a real impresario, and announce that the actor performing the role of Lelio being suddenly indisposed, the performance will conclude by some pieces of music. Count Rusca and the Ghisolfi girl will be delighted to show off their squeaky little voices to such a brilliant audience.”

The Prince took the Duchess’s hand and kissed it rapturously. “If only you were a man,” he exclaimed, “you would give me good advice: Rassi has just laid on my desk a hundred and eighty-two depositions against my father’s alleged murderers. As well as these depositions, there is a formal accusation of over two hundred pages; I must read all this, and moreover I have promised not to mention a word about it to the Count. That leads straight to executions; already he wants me to have extradited from France, near Antibes, that great poet Ferrante Palla, whom I admire so greatly. He’s living there under the name of Poncet.”

“The day you have a Liberal hanged, Rassi will be bound to the Ministry by chains of iron, which he desires above all things; but Your Highness will no longer be able to announce a promenade two hours in advance. I shall mention to neither the Princess nor the Count the cry of pain which has just escaped you; but since I am under oath to keep no secrets from the Princess, I should be glad if Your Highness were to say to his mother the very things which have just been uttered to me.”

Such a notion somewhat mollified the distress of the
failed actor
which had overcome the Sovereign.

“Very well, inform my mother; I shall be waiting in her study.” The Prince left the wings, crossed a salon adjoining the theater, and abruptly dismissed the Chamberlain and his aide-de-camp, who were following him; quite as hurriedly, the Princess left the performance; in the Princess’s study, the Mistress of the Robes curtsied deeply to both mother and son and left them alone. One may imagine the agitation of the Court: these are the things which make Court life so entertaining.
After an hour, the Prince himself appeared at the study door and summoned the Duchess; the Princess was in tears; her son’s countenance had quite altered.

“What weak creatures these are,” the Mistress of the Robes marveled to herself, “always in a temper and looking for some excuse to be angry with someone.” At first mother and son vied for the opportunity to describe matters to the Duchess, who took great pains to keep her responses quite neutral. For two endless hours, the three actors in this tedious scene played out the roles we have just suggested. It was the Prince himself who went to fetch the two enormous portfolios Rassi had left on his desk; as he emerged from his mother’s study, he found the whole Court waiting for him.

“Go away, leave me in peace!” he exclaimed, in a tone that was quite unprecedented. The Prince didn’t want to be seen carrying the two portfolios—a Prince carries nothing. The courtiers vanished in the twinkling of an eye. As he walked on, the Prince encountered only the footmen who were snuffing the candles; he dismissed them angrily, as well as poor Fontana, the aide-de-camp on duty, who had been tactless enough to remain, out of zeal.

“Everyone is doing his best to vex me this evening!” he exclaimed crossly to the Duchess as he returned to the study. The Prince considered her highly intelligent and was annoyed by her evident insistence upon not offering an opinion. For her part, the Duchess was determined to say nothing until her advice was
expressly
requested. A good half-hour passed before the Prince, who had the sense of his own dignity, brought himself to say: “But Signora, you say nothing!”

“I am here to serve the Princess, and to forget instantly whatever is said in my presence.”

“Well then, Signora,” the Prince said, blushing deeply, “I order you to give me your advice.”

“Crimes are punished so that they will not be repeated. Was the late Prince poisoned? This seems highly unlikely. Was he poisoned by the Jacobins? That is what Rassi would like to prove, for then he becomes a permanently necessary instrument to Your Highness. In that case, Your Highness, who is setting out on his reign, may indulge himself in many evenings like this one. The majority of your subjects say, and
quite veraciously, that Your Highness has a kind nature; so long as Your Highness will not have some Liberal hanged, he will enjoy such a reputation, and certainly no one will dream of planning poison for you.”

“Your conclusion is obvious!” the Princess exclaimed. “You don’t want my husband’s assassins punished!”

“It is all too clear, Signora, that I am bound to them by the tenderest affection.”

From the Prince’s expression the Duchess realized that he believed her to be in complete agreement with his mother on some line of conduct. There was a swift series of sharp exchanges between the two women, after which the Duchess protested that she would not speak another word, and she kept her promise; but the Prince, after a long argument with his mother, once again commanded the Duchess to give her opinion.

“That is what I swear to both Your Highnesses I shall not do!”

“This is mere childishness!” the Prince exclaimed.

“I beg you to speak, my dear Duchess,” said the Princess with great dignity.

“That is what I implore you to excuse me from doing, Signora; but Your Highness,” the Duchess added, turning to the Prince, “reads French perfectly; in order to calm our agitated minds, why not read us
all
one of La Fontaine’s fables?”

The Princess found this “all” rather insolent, but she looked both amazed and amused as the Mistress of the Robes, who had gone quite coolly to the bookshelves, returned with a volume of La Fontaine’s
Fables;
she turned the pages for a few moments, then remarked to the Prince as she handed the volume to him: “I beg Your Highness to read the
whole
of this fable.”

This reading was followed by a long silence. The Prince walked up and down the study, after having gone to put the book back on the shelves himself.

“And now, Duchess,” the Princess said, “will you deign to speak to us?”

“Certainly not, Your Highness. So long as the Prince has not appointed me his Minister, I should in speaking run the risk of losing my place as Mistress of the Robes.”

Another silence, for a quarter of an hour. At last the Princess thought of the part once played by
Marie de Médicis
, the mother of Louis XIII: for some days past, the Mistress of the Robes had had the Court Reader read aloud Monsieur Bazin’s excellent
History of Louis XIII
. Though quite annoyed, the Princess realized that the Duchess might well leave the country, and then Rassi, of whom she was dreadfully afraid, might well imitate Richelieu and cause her own son to send her into exile. At that moment, the Princess would have given anything in the world to humiliate her Mistress of the Robes, but she could not do so: she stood up and came, with a rather exaggerated smile, to take the Duchess’s hand and say: “My dear Duchess, prove your affection for me by speaking now.”

“Very well, but only these words: toss into this very fireplace all the papers collected by that viper Rassi, and never reveal to him that they have been burned.” In a whisper, and quite familiarly, she added in the Princess’s ear: “Rassi may be a Richelieu!”

“What the Devil! Those papers are costing me over eighty thousand francs!” exclaimed the irritated Prince.

“My dear Prince,” the Duchess replied energetically, “you see what it costs you to employ such rascals of low birth. Please God you may lose a million and never lend credence to the low scoundrels who kept your father from sleeping during the last six years of his reign.”