The Charterhouse of Parma (15 page)

These tales and a score of others of the same sort, and of no less authenticity, deeply interested Countess Pietranera; the following day she sought certain details from Count Mosca himself, whom she teased mercilessly. She found him entertaining, and kept insisting to him that in his heart of hearts he was a monster without suspecting it.
One day, returning to his lodgings in an inn, the Count said to himself, “Not only is the Countess Pietranera a delightful woman, but when I spend the evening in her box, I manage to forget certain matters in Parma, the very thought of which pierces me to the heart.”

This Minister, despite his frivolous manner and his brilliant remarks, did not possess a soul
à la française;
he was not able to
forget
his griefs and grievances. When his pillow revealed a thorn, he was compelled to snap it off and blunt its point against his own throbbing limbs. (I apologize for this paragraph, translated from the Italian.)

Soon after making this discovery, the Count realized that despite the business which had summoned him to Milan, the day was inordinately long; he could not stay in one place; he exhausted his carriage-horses. Toward six in the evening, he took a horse to ride in the
Corso
, where he had some hopes of encountering Signora Pietranera; not having found her there, he recalled that the theater of La Scala would open at eight; he went in and found no more than ten persons in that enormous hall. He suffered a certain embarrassment at being there. “Is it possible,” he said, “that at the age of forty-five, I should be indulging in follies that would make a sub-lieutenant blush! Fortunately no one suspects them.” He made his escape and attempted to pass the time strolling through those attractive streets around the theater, lined with cafés which at that hour are overflowing with people; in front of each one, crowds of onlookers are perched on chairs in the middle of the street, taking ices and commenting on the passers-by, among whom the Count was remarkable; hence he enjoyed the pleasure of being recognized and greeted. Three or four importunate souls, of those who cannot be avoided, seized this occasion to have an audience with so powerful a Minister. Two of these tendered petitions; the third confined himself to addressing him with extensive advice on his political behavior. Intelligence, he reminded himself, is not taken unawares; nor does high office appear in the streets. He returned to the theater, where it occurred to him to rent a third-tier box; from here he could observe, without fear of detection, the second-tier box where he hoped to find the Countess. A wait of two whole hours did not seem too long to this lover; certain of not being seen, he happily abandoned himself to the full extent of his folly. “After all,” he told himself, “isn’t
old age precisely the time when one is no longer capable of such delicious childishness?”

At last the Countess appeared. Armed with his opera-glasses, he examined her in a transport of delight. “Young, brilliant, light as a bird,” he said to himself, “she can’t be twenty-five. Her beauty is the least of her charms: where else to find a soul ever sincere, which never acts
with discretion
, which abandons itself wholly to the impression of the moment, which asks only to be swept away by some new object? How well I understand Count Nani’s follies!”

The Count gave himself excellent reasons for his extravagance, completely absorbed in conquering the felicity he saw under his gaze. He found none so good when he came to consider his own age and the occasionally melancholy cares which filled his existence.

“A capable man whose wit is overpowered by his fears affords me a superior style of life and a great deal of money to be his Minister; but if he were to dismiss me tomorrow, I should be left old and poor, in other words, everything the world most despises; a fine figure of a man to offer the Countess!” Such thoughts were too somber, and his gaze returned to Signora Pietranera; he could not tear his eyes away, and to keep his mind focused upon her, he decided not to go down to her box. “She accepted Nani, I am told, only to put that imbecile Limercati in his place for his reluctance to take up a sword, or a dagger, against her husband’s murderer. I would do battle for her twenty times over,” the Count exclaimed in a transport. From one moment to the next he consulted the theater clock, which in luminous figures against a black background informed the audience, every five minutes, of the time when it was permissible to visit a friend’s box. “I cannot,” the Count mused, “spend more than half an hour in her box, recent acquaintance as I am; were I to remain longer, I should be making a spectacle of myself, and thanks to my age and worse still to this damned powdered hair, I should have all the attractions of the old fool in the
commedia dell’arte.
” But a further reflection made up his mind for him: “If she were to leave that box to visit another, I should be paid as I deserve for the greed with which I am hoarding such pleasure.” He stood up to go down to the Countess’s box, when all of a sudden he felt no further desire to present himself there. “Ah, now here’s a pretty mess!” he exclaimed,
laughing at himself and stopping on the stairs. “An impulse of authentic timidity—it’s been twenty-five years since I’ve experienced such a thing.”

He entered the box with a certain effort of will, and taking advantage, as a man of intelligence, of what had just occurred to him, he made no effort to seem at ease or to be clever by telling some entertaining story; he had the courage to be shy, he employed his wit in revealing his disturbance without being ridiculous. “If she takes it amiss,” he told himself, “I’m lost for good. So! Timid with powdered hair which would be gray without it! But it’s all true, so it can only be ridiculous if I exaggerate the fact or boast about it.” The Countess had so often been bored to death at the Castle of Grianta by the powdered heads of her brother, her nephew, and several respectable bores of the neighborhood that it never occurred to her to concern herself with her new admirer’s coiffure.

The Countess’s mind being shielded from the notion of deriding his entrance, she was entirely concerned with the news from France which Mosca always brought when he appeared in her box; no doubt he made it up. In discussing such matters with him this evening, she noticed his warm and benevolent expression.

“I suppose,” she said, “that in Parma, among your slaves, you would not permit yourself such a friendly aspect—it would spoil everything and give them some hope of not being hanged.”

The complete absence of self-importance in a man who was regarded as the leading diplomat in all Italy struck the Countess as singular; she actually found him to possess a certain charm. Finally, since he spoke so well and so passionately, she was not distressed that he had felt it appropriate to assume, for an evening, and without further consequence, an admirer’s part.

This was a great step forward, and a very dangerous one; fortunately for the Minister, to whom in Parma no lady was cruel, the Countess had arrived from Grianta only a few days before; her mind was still stiff with the tedium of country life. She had virtually forgotten the spirit of mockery, and all those things which belong to an elegant and frivolous style of life had assumed in her eyes a tincture of novelty which made them virtually sacred; she was not disposed to
make fun of anything, not even a timid lover of forty-five. Eight days later, the Count’s temerity might have been welcomed quite differently.

At La Scala, it is customary for these little visits to the boxes to last only some twenty minutes; the Count spent the whole evening in the box where he had the happiness of finding Signora Pietranera. “This is a woman,” he told himself, “who gives me back all the follies of my youth!” But he sensed the danger: “Will my rank as lord and master some forty leagues from here gain forgiveness for this nonsense? I’m so bored with life in Parma!” Nonetheless, every quarter of an hour he promised himself he would take his leave.

“I must confess, Madame,” he said to the Countess, smiling, “that at Parma I am perishing of tedium, and I must be allowed to intoxicate myself with pleasure when I find it in my path. So, without ulterior consequences and for this one evening, permit me to play a suitor’s part with you. Alas! in a few days I shall be far away from this box which dispels all problems and even, you may say, all proprieties!”

Eight days after this scandalously extended visit to the box at La Scala, and in the wake of several minor incidents of which a narrative might seem tedious, Count Mosca was absolutely mad with love, and the Countess already thinking that his age should be no objection, if in other respects she found him attractive. Matters had reached this stage when Mosca was recalled to Parma by a courier. It appeared that his Prince, left to himself, was in a state of fear. The Countess returned to Grianta; now that her imagination no longer embellished that lovely spot, it seemed to her a desert. “Can I have become attached to this man?” she wondered. Mosca wrote and had no need for pretence, absence having deprived him of the source of all his thoughts; his letters were entertaining, and, prompted by a little eccentricity to which no exception was taken, in order to avoid the remarks of the Marchese de Dongo, who did not like having to pay for the delivery of letters, Mosca sent couriers who posted his at Como, at Lecco, at Varese, or some other charming little town in the environs of the lake. This was done in hopes that the courier might bring back her replies; he did so.

Soon the courier-days became an event for the Countess; these couriers brought flowers, fruit, trifling little gifts which diverted her,
and her sister-in-law as well. Recollections of the Count mingled with the notion of his great power; the Countess had become interested in everything that was said of him; even the Liberals paid tribute to his talents.

The chief source of the Count’s ill repute was that he was regarded as the leader of the
ultra
party at the court of Parma, and that the Liberal party was headed by a schemer capable of anything, even of succeeding, the Marchesa Raversi, an immensely rich woman. The Prince took great care not to discourage this opposition party; he was well aware that he would always be the master, even with a Ministry formed in Signora Raversi’s salon. A thousand details were discussed at Grianta concerning her schemes; the absence of Count Mosca, whom everyone described as a Minister of extraordinary talent and a man of action, permitted the abandonment of powdered hair, symbol of everything sad and dull; it was a trivial detail, one of the obligations of the court at which he played, moreover, so important a part.

“A court is absurd,” the Countess said to the Marchesa, “but entertaining; it’s a game that interests me, though one must play by the rules. Who ever thought to protest the absurdity of the rules of whist? Yet once one has grown used to the rules, it is great fun to take your adversary’s tricks.”

The Countess often thought about the writer of so many amusing letters; the day they were delivered was a pleasure for her; she took her boat and went to read them in the beauty-spots along the lake shore, at Pliniana, at Belan, in the Sfondrata woods. These letters seemed to console her somewhat for Fabrizio’s absence. At least she could not forbid the Count to be head over heels in love; a month had not passed before she was thinking of him with the tenderest feelings. On his side, Count Mosca was almost sincere when he offered to present his resignation, to leave the Ministry, and to come spend his life with her in Milan or somewhere else.

“I have four hundred thousand francs,” he added, “which will always afford us an income of fifteen thousand.”

“A box at the theater once again, horses! and so on,” the Countess told herself; these were sweet dreams. The sublime beauties of the shores of Lake Como began to delight her once again. She went to
daydream there about this return of a brilliant and exceptional life, which, despite all appearances, would once more become possible for her. She saw herself on the Corso, in Milan, happy and gay, as in the days of the Viceroy. “Youth, or at least a life of activity, would begin again for me!”

Sometimes her eager imagination concealed things from her, but she never entertained those deliberate illusions produced by cowardice. Above everything else, she was a woman honest with herself. “If I am a little too old to indulge such follies,” she reminded herself, “envy, which creates as many illusions as love, can poison life in Milan. After my husband’s death, my noble poverty enjoyed a certain success, as did the rejection of two great fortunes. My poor little Count Mosca hasn’t the twentieth part of the wealth which those two wretches Limercati and Nani laid at my feet. The pathetic widow’s pension so arduously obtained, the dismissal of the servants which produced a certain effect, the little room on the fourth floor which brought twenty carriages to the door—all this once produced a remarkable show. But I shall have some unpleasant moments, whatever my skill, if all I have is my widow’s pension with which to return to life in Milan with the nice little bourgeois comforts supplied by the fifteen thousand francs which are all Mosca will have left after he resigns. A powerful objection, which will constitute a terrible weapon in envy’s armory, is that the Count, though long separated from his wife, is a married man. Everyone knows about that separation in Parma, but it will be news in Milan, and attributed to me. So, my lovely theater of La Scala, my divine Lake Como … adieu! adieu!”

Despite all these anticipations, if the Countess had had any fortune at all, she would have accepted Mosca’s offer of resignation. She regarded herself as an older woman, and the court alarmed her; but what will seem highly unlikely on this side of the Alps is that the Count would have gladly handed in his resignation. At least so he managed to convince his dear friend; in all his letters he sought with mounting urgency a second meeting in Milan; it was granted.

“To promise you I feel a mad passion for you,” the Countess observed to the Count, one day in Milan, “would not be the truth; I should be only too happy to love today, at thirty-some years, as I once
loved at twenty-two! But I have seen the collapse of so many things I once believed eternal! For you I feel the tenderest friendship, I trust you completely, and of all men, you are the one I prefer.”