The Charterhouse of Parma (63 page)

The discussion continued anew on this point, and the Duchess brought it to a close with this remark: “Rassi owes his life to the fact that I love you more than Fabrizio; no, I would not poison all the evenings of the old age we are going to spend together.”

The Duchess hurried to the Fortress; General Fabio Conti was delighted to present her with the formal text of the military regulations: no one can enter a State prison without an order signed by the Prince.

“But Marchese Crescenzi and his musicians come to the Fortress every day …”

“That is because I have obtained an order for them from the Prince.”

The poor Duchess was not aware of all her misfortunes. General Fabio Conti had considered himself personally dishonored by Fabrizio’s escape: when he saw him arrive back at the Fortress, he ought not to have admitted him, for he had no orders to do so. “But,” he said to himself, “it is Heaven which sends him to me to reconstruct my honor and save me from the ridicule which would spoil my military career. Here is an opportunity which must not be missed: no doubt he will be acquitted, and I have only a few days for my revenge.”

Our hero’s arrival filled Clélia with despair: the poor girl, pious and sincere as she was, could not conceal from herself that she would never find happiness apart from Fabrizio; yet she had vowed to the Madonna, at the time of her father’s near poisoning, that she would offer him the sacrifice of marrying the Marchese Crescenzi. She had vowed never to see Fabrizio again, and already she was prey to the cruelest remorse for the admission she had been led to make in the letter she had written to Fabrizio on the eve of his escape. How to describe what occurred in that melancholy heart, so sadly occupied with watching her birds fluttering to and fro and habitually and tenderly glancing up toward the window from which Fabrizio used to gaze at her, when she saw him there once again, greeting her with tender respect?

She imagined it to be a vision Heaven granted for her punishment; then the cruel reality dawned upon her reason. “They have recaptured him,” she said to herself, “and he is lost!”

She recalled the remarks made in the Fortress following that escape; the humblest of the jailers regarded himself as mortally offended. Clélia looked at Fabrizio, and in spite of herself that gaze depicted the whole of the passion which filled her with despair.

“Do you suppose,” she seemed to be saying to Fabrizio, “that I shall
find happiness in that sumptuous Palace they are making ready for me? My father never tires of telling me that you are as poor as we are; but good God! how eagerly I should share that poverty! Yet alas! we must never see one another again.”

Clélia lacked the strength to make use of their alphabets: as she gazed at Fabrizio she suddenly felt ill and sank into a chair next to the window. Her chin was resting on the sill and, since she had sought to glimpse him until the last moment of consciousness, her face was turned toward Fabrizio, who could see her clearly. When she opened her eyes again, after a few seconds, her first glance was for Fabrizio: she saw tears in his eyes, but these were the effect of extreme joy; he was discovering that absence had not made her forget him. The two poor young people remained some while as though enchanted by the sight of each other. Fabrizio even dared to sing, as though he were accompanying himself on the guitar, a few improvised verses, which said:
“It is to see you once more that I have returned to prison; I am to be tried and sentenced.
”

These words appeared to waken all of Clélia’s virtue: she swiftly stood up, hid her eyes, and by sudden gestures sought to convey to him that she was never to look upon him again; she had vowed as much to the Madonna, and it was in a moment of forgetfulness that she had just looked at him. When Fabrizio dared express his love once more, Clélia fled, offended, swearing to herself that she would never look at him again, for such were the precise terms of her vow to the Madonna:
My eyes shall never look upon him again
. She had written them on a slip of paper which her uncle Don Cesare had allowed her to burn upon the altar at the moment of the offertory, while he was saying Mass.

Yet despite all these vows, Fabrizio’s presence in the Farnese Tower had reawakened all of Clélia’s old habits and actions. Usually she spent all her days by herself, in her room. No sooner had she recovered from the unexpected agitation which the sight of Fabrizio had provoked in her than she began to move about the
palazzo
and renew acquaintance, so to speak, with all her humble friends. One garrulous old woman who worked in the kitchen said to her with an air of mystery: “This time, Signor Fabrizio will not leave the Fortress.”

“He will not repeat the mistake of climbing over the walls,” Clélia said, “but he will leave by the door, if he is acquitted.”

“I am telling Your Excellency, and I have good reason for saying so, that he will not leave the Fortress except feet first.”

Clélia turned as pale as death, which was noticed by the old woman, who cut short her eloquence there and then. She said to herself that she had been wrong to speak in such a fashion before the Governor’s daughter, whose duty it would be to say to the world that Fabrizio had died of some disease. On her way back to her room, Clélia encountered the prison doctor, an honest man if a timid one, who said to her with a frightened expression that Fabrizio was quite ill. Clélia could scarcely keep on her feet; she searched everywhere for her uncle, the kind Abbé Don Cesare, and found him at last in the chapel, where he was praying quite fervently; his expression seemed quite troubled. The dinner-bell rang. At table, not one word was exchanged between the two brothers until the end of the meal, when the General spoke quite sharply to his brother. Don Cesare glanced at the servants, who left the room.

“General,” Don Cesare said to the Governor, “I must inform you that I shall be leaving the Fortress; this is my resignation.”

“Bravo! Bravissimo!
To make me the object of suspicion!… And your reason, if you please?”

“My conscience.”

“Why, you are no more than a cassock—what do you know about honor?”

“Fabrizio is a dead man,” Clélia said to herself; “he has been poisoned at his dinner tonight, or tomorrow at the latest.” She ran to her aviary, determined to sing, accompanying herself on the piano. “I shall go to confession,” she said to herself, “and I shall be forgiven for having broken my vow in order to save a man’s life.” Imagine her consternation when, at her aviary, she saw that the shutters had been replaced by boards fastened to the iron bars! Overwhelmed, she attempted to warn the prisoner by a few words screamed rather than sung. There was no reply of any kind; a deathly silence already reigned in the Farnese Tower. “Everything is over,” she said to herself. She ran downstairs,
beside herself, then back up in order to supply herself with what money she had, and some little diamond earrings; she also snatched up, in passing, the bread that remained from dinner which had been set on a sideboard. “If he is still alive, it is my duty to save him.” She walked on with a proud expression toward the little door of the Tower; it was open, and eight soldiers had just been posted in the pillared hall of the ground floor. She stared quite boldly at these soldiers; Clélia intended to speak to the sergeant in command: the man was not there. Clélia dashed up the narrow iron staircase that spiraled around a column; the soldiers watched her in amazement, but apparently because of her lace shawl and bonnet, dared say nothing. On the first landing, there was no one, but when she reached the second floor, at the entrance to the corridor which, the reader may recall, was sealed by three iron-barred doors and led to Fabrizio’s room, she found a turnkey unknown to her who told her in a terrified tone of voice, “He has not yet eaten.”

“I am quite aware of that,” Clélia said haughtily. The man dared not stop her.

Twenty paces farther on, Clélia found sitting on the first of the six wooden steps leading up to Fabrizio’s room another turnkey, elderly and very red in the face, who said to her firmly, “Signorina, do you have an order from the Governor?”

“Don’t you know who I am?” At this moment Clélia was inspired by a supernatural strength, and was quite beside herself. “I am going to save my husband,” she said to herself.

While the old turnkey exclaimed: “But my duty doesn’t permit …” Clélia ran up the six steps; she flung herself against the door: an enormous key stood in the keyhole; it required all her strength to make it turn. At this moment, the half-drunk old turnkey grabbed the hem of her dress; she rushed into the room, closed the door behind her, tearing her dress, and as the turnkey was pushing against it to enter after her, she shot the bolt that was under her hand. She glanced around the room and saw Fabrizio sitting in front of a tiny table, where his dinner was laid. She dashed to the table, knocked it over, and, seizing Fabrizio’s arm, asked him: “My love, have you eaten anything?”

This form of address enchanted Fabrizio. In her agitation, Clélia
was forgetting, for the first time in her life, all feminine discretion, and revealing her true feelings.

Fabrizio had been on the point of beginning this fatal meal; he took her in his arms and covered her with kisses. “This dinner was poisoned,” he thought; “if I tell her I have not touched it, her religious feelings will overcome her again and Clélia will run away. If on the other hand she believes I am dying, I shall convince her not to leave me. She wants to find a way to get out of her dreadful engagement—fate has granted it to us: the jailers will come up here and break down the door, and there will be such a scandal that the Marchese Crescenzi will surely be offended, and the marriage broken off.” During the moment of silence filled by these reflections, Fabrizio felt that already Clélia was attempting to free herself from his embrace. “I feel no pains as yet,” he told her, “but soon they will cast me at your feet; help me to die.”

“O my only friend!” she answered him, “I shall die with you,” and she clasped him in her arms with a convulsive movement.

She was so lovely just then, her gown slipping off her shoulders and in such a state of extreme passion, that Fabrizio could not resist an almost involuntary movement. Which met with no resistance …

In the enthusiasm of passion and of generosity which followed extreme rapture, he murmured to her quite foolishly: “No unworthy falsehood must cast a shadow over the first moments of our happiness: had it not been for your courage, I should be no more than a corpse, or be in the throes of the cruelest agony; but I was just about to begin dining, when you came in, and I have not yet touched this food.” Fabrizio dwelt on these these dreadful images in order to dispel the indignation he was already reading in Clélia’s eyes. She gazed at him for a few seconds, overcome by two violent and opposing emotions, then flung herself into his arms. There was a loud noise in the corridor; the three iron-barred doors were opened and shut with great violence; men were shouting as they ran.

“Oh, if I had weapons!” Fabrizio exclaimed. “They took mine from me when I turned myself in. Now they must be coming to end my life! Farewell, my Clélia, I bless my death, since it has been the occasion of my happiness.”

Clélia kissed him and slipped into his hand a tiny ivory-handled dagger, whose blade was scarcely longer than that of a pen-knife. “Don’t let them kill you,” she said, “defend yourself to the very end; if my uncle the Abbé hears all this noise, he has the courage and the virtue to come to your rescue; I shall appeal to them …”

And with these words, she rushed to the door. “If you are not killed,” she said with exaltation, keeping the bolt closed with her hand and turning to face him, “let yourself starve to death rather than touching any food whatever. Keep this bread with you always.”

The noise was coming closer. Fabrizio put his arm around her, stood beside her at the door, and, yanking it open, rushed down the six wooden steps. In his hand he held the tiny ivory-handled dagger, and he was on the point of stabbing the waistcoat of General Fontana, the Prince’s aide-de-camp, who quickly stepped back, exclaiming in terror: “But I’m coming to rescue you, Signor del Dongo!”

Fabrizio ran back up the six steps and cried into the room, “It’s Fontana, he’s come to rescue me.” Then, returning to the General on the wooden steps, he discussed the situation with him quite coolly. First, and at great length, he begged him to forgive his initial impulse of anger. “I was about to be poisoned by this dinner, which is here before me; I had the wit not to touch it, but I confess that such an undertaking has given me a shock. When I heard you coming up the stairs, I imagined that someone was coming to finish me off with a dagger.… Signor General, I request you to give orders that no one is to enter this room: we shall remove this poison, and our good Prince shall be informed of everything.”

Pale and abashed, the General transmitted the orders Fabrizio had suggested to the picked jailers who had followed him: these men, crestfallen at the discovery of the poison, hurriedly ran back down the stairs; they seemed to be hurrying ahead in order not to delay the Prince’s aide-de-camp on the narrow staircase, but they actually wanted to make their escape and disappear. To General Fontana’s great amazement, Fabrizio stopped for a good quarter of an hour on the little iron staircase that spiraled down to the ground floor; he wanted to give Clélia time to hide on the first floor.

It was the Duchess who, after several wild attempts, had managed to send General Fontana to the Fortress; it was quite by accident that she had succeeded. As she left Count Mosca, who was certainly as alarmed as she was, she had run to the Palace. The Princess, who regarded with marked repugnance any display of energy, which she found vulgar, thought she had gone mad and scarcely seemed disposed to engage in any unusual measures on her behalf. The Duchess, beside herself, was weeping bitter tears, unable to do anything but repeat over and over: “But Signora, in a quarter of an hour, Fabrizio will be poisoned!” Observing the Princess’s perfect composure, the Duchess went mad with grief. It did not occur to her to make that moral reflection which would not have escaped a woman brought up in one of those Northern religions which encourage self-scrutiny: “I was the first to use poison, and now it is I who shall be destroyed by poison.” In Italy, such reflections, in moments of passion, are taken as the sign of a vulgar sensibility, much as a pun would be regarded in Paris in similar circumstances.