The Charterhouse of Parma (22 page)

What was especially cruel in the midst of all these thoughts was that in truth Fabrizio loved the Duchess much more than anyone else in the world. “I would have to be very clumsy,” he told himself in a rage, “to be so afraid of not being able to convince her of what is so obvious!” Lacking skill to escape this situation, he became somber and sullen. “What would become of me, for God’s sake, if I were to quarrel with the one being in the world for whom I passionately care?” On the other hand, Fabrizio could not bring himself to spoil such perfect felicity by an indiscreet word. His situation was so full of charm! The intimate friendship of so delightful and so lovely a woman was so sweet! From the crudest point of view, her protection afforded him so pleasant a position at this court, whose great intrigues, thanks to her explanations, entertained him like a play! “But at the first moment, I can be awakened by a thunderbolt!” he realized. These gay and affectionate evenings, spent almost tête-à-tête with so amusing a woman, if they were to lead to something still better, she would imagine she would find in me a lover; she would expect me to have raptures, madness, and I would still have nothing to offer her but the liveliest friendship, though without love; nature has deprived me of such sublime follies. How many reproaches have I not had to accept in this regard! I can still hear Duchess of A——, and I didn’t care a fig for her! She will suppose I feel no love for her, whereas I feel no love for anyone; she will never be willing to understand that. How often, after a story she has told about the court with that grace and abandon that only she possesses, and so necessary to my education as well, I kiss her hands and sometimes even her cheeks. What would happen if that hand should press mine in a certain way?”

Fabrizio appeared every day in the most highly regarded and least amusing houses of Parma. Instructed by the Duchess’s astute advice, he paid careful respects to the two princes, father and son, to Princess Clara-Paolina and to Monsignore the Archbishop. Success was his, but it failed to console him for his mortal fear of falling out with the Duchess.

So, less than a month after his arrival at court, Fabrizio suffered all the vexations of a courtier, and the intimate friendship which constituted the happiness of his life was poisoned. One evening, tormented by such notions, he emerged from that salon of the Duchess where he had all too much the look of a reigning lover; wandering at random through the town, he passed in front of the theater, which he saw was lit up; he went in. This was a gratuitous imprudence for a man of the cloth, one he had sworn to himself he would avoid in Parma, which is after all only a small town of forty thousand inhabitants. It is true that from his first days there he had discarded his official costume; on the evenings when he was not going into society, he dressed very simply in black, like a man in mourning.

In the theater, he took a box in the third ring in order not to be seen; Goldoni’s
La Locandiera
was being performed. He examined the architecture of the hall, scarcely glancing at the stage. But the large audience kept bursting into laughter; Fabrizio glanced at the young actress playing the mistress of the inn, who struck him as entertaining. He looked more closely: she seemed extremely appealing and altogether natural, a naïve young girl who was the first to laugh at the clever remarks Goldoni had put in her mouth and which she appeared quite
surprised to be saying. He asked what her name was, and was told
Marietta Valserra
. “Ah,” he thought, “she has taken my name, that’s odd.” Despite his plans, he did not leave the theater until the play was over. The next evening he returned; three days later, he knew Marietta Valserra’s address.

The same evening of the day on which, with some difficulty, he had obtained this address, he noticed that the Count was smiling at him. The poor jealous lover, having a world of trouble keeping within the bounds of prudence, had set spies on the young Monsignore, whose escapade in the theater delighted him. How to describe the Count’s joy when, the day after the one on which he had been able to bring himself to show Fabrizio some friendliness, he learned that the young man, in truth half-disguised by a long blue frock-coat, had climbed the stairs to the wretched apartment which Marietta Valserra occupied on the fourth floor of an old house behind the theater? His joy was doubled when he discovered that Fabrizio had introduced himself under a false name and had had the honor to provoke the jealousy of a scamp named Giletti, who played Third Servant in town and in the country danced on the tightrope. This noble lover of the Valserra launched into abuse of Fabrizio and kept repeating that he wanted to kill him.

Opera companies are formed by an impresario who hires wherever he can find them the performers he can afford or are at liberty, and the company, gathered at random, remains together for a season or two at most. This is not the case for the comedy troupes; proceeding from town to town and changing lodgings every two or three months, these nonetheless form a kind of family, all of whose members love or hate one another. In such troupes there are established households, which the
galants
in the town where the troupe is playing sometimes find it very hard to disrupt. This is precisely what happened to our hero: little Marietta was quite attracted to him, but she was dreadfully afraid of Giletti, who claimed to be her sole master and kept a close watch upon her every move. He protested everywhere that he would kill the Monsignore, for he had followed Fabrizio and had managed to discover his name. This Giletti was indeed the ugliest of creatures, hardly suited to be a lover: excessively tall, he was alarmingly thin, deeply pitted with smallpox scars, and inclined to squint. Furthermore, filled
with the graces of his trade, he usually appeared in the wings where his colleagues were gathered by turning cartwheels or some other such stunt. He triumphed in the parts where the performer must appear with his face whitened with flour, giving and receiving countless beatings with a stick. This worthy rival of Fabrizio earned a salary of thirty-two francs a month and considered himself the most fortunate of men.

It seemed to Count Mosca that he was returning from the grave when his spies gave him proof of all these details. His cheerful spirits revived; he seemed gayer and better company than ever in the Duchess’s salon, and was careful not to disclose to her the little episode that was bringing him back to life. He even took certain precautions to keep her from finding out what was happening for as long as possible. At last he had the courage to listen to reason, which for a month now had been vainly informing him that each time a lover’s virtues begin to fade, that lover must take a journey.

Urgent business summoned him to Bologna, and twice a day cabinet couriers brought him far fewer official papers than news of little Marietta’s amours, of the terrible Giletti’s rage, and of Fabrizio’s enterprises.

One of the Count’s agents requested several times
Arlecchino Fantasma e Pasticcio
, among Giletti’s triumphs (he emerges from the pie just when his rival Brighella is cutting into it and gives him a beating); this was an excuse to slip him a hundred francs. Giletti, riddled with debts, was careful not to mention this windfall, but became amazingly conceited.

Fabrizio’s whim turned into wounded pride (at his age, worries had already reduced him to having whims!). Vanity took him to the performance; the girl acted quite winningly, and he was delighted; leaving the theater, he was in love for an hour. The Count returned to Parma upon receiving word that Fabrizio was running real dangers; Giletti, who had served in Napoleon’s crack regiment of Italian dragoons, was talking seriously about killing Fabrizio, and taking measures to flee the country into Romagna afterward. If the reader is quite young, he will be scandalized by our admiration for this splendid sign
of Virtue. Yet it was no small effort of heroism on the Count’s part to return from Bologna; for it was frequently the case that his features appeared quite worn in the morning, and Fabrizio was so fresh, so serene! Who would have dreamed of blaming him for Fabrizio’s death, occurring in his absence and for so silly a cause? But the Count had one of those rare natures which make a possible generous action left unperformed into an eternal regret; moreover, he could not endure the thought of seeing the Duchess melancholy, and himself the cause.

He found her, upon his arrival, taciturn and glum; here is what had occurred: Cecchina, the little chambermaid, tormented by remorse and judging the scope of her transgression by the enormity of the sum she had received for committing it, had fallen sick. One evening, the Duchess, who was very fond of her, climbed up to her bedroom. The girl could not resist this evidence of kindness and burst into tears, trying to return to her mistress what she still possessed of the money she had received, and finally daring to confess her answers to the questions the Count had put to her.

The Duchess rushed to the lamp, blew it out, and then told little Cecchina that she forgave her, on condition that she would never speak a word of this strange episode to a living soul. “The poor Count,” she added quite gaily, “is so afraid of ridicule! Men are all like that.”

The Duchess hastened downstairs to her own apartments. No sooner had she locked herself in her bedroom than she burst into tears, finding something horrible in the notion of making love with this Fabrizio whom she had known from his infancy; yet what else did her conduct mean?

Such had been the first reason for the deep depression in which the Count found her plunged; once he had arrived, she suffered fits of impatience against him, and perhaps against Fabrizio as well; she felt as though she wanted not to see either of them again; she was annoyed by the absurd role which, in her eyes, Fabrizio was playing with little Marietta; for the Count had told her the whole story, like a true lover incapable of keeping a secret. She could not inure herself to this disaster: her idol had a flaw; finally, in a moment of friendly feeling, she
asked the Count’s advice; for him this was a delicious moment and a fine reward for the honest impulse that had brought him back to Parma.

“Nothing simpler!” said the Count, laughing. “Young men want to win all hearts, and then forget all about it the next day. Should he not go to Belgirate and visit the Marchesa del Dongo? Well, let him go then. During his absence I shall request the comedy troupe to take their talents elsewhere, and I shall defray their travel expenses. Soon, though, we shall find him in love with the first pretty woman chance throws in his path; this is in the order of things, and I wouldn’t have him otherwise.… If necessary, ask the Marchesa to write …”

This notion, given with an expression of utter indifference, was an inspiration for the Duchess, who was terrified of Giletti. That evening the Count announced quite by chance that there was a courier who, on his way to Vienna, was passing through Milan; three days later Fabrizio happened to receive a letter from his mother. He left, quite annoyed at not yet having, thanks to Giletti’s jealousy, taken advantage of the excellent intentions little Marietta had communicated to him through the services of a
mammaccia
, an old woman who acted as her mother.

Fabrizio found his mother and one of his sisters at Belgirate, a big Piedmontese village on the right bank of Lake Maggiore; the left bank is Milanese, and consequently Austrian. This lake, parallel to Lake Como, which also extends from north to south, is located some twenty leagues farther west. The mountain air, the calm and majestic aspect of this splendid lake, which reminded him of the one on which he had spent his childhood—everything contributed to changing into gentle melancholy Fabrizio’s disappointment, which was so close to anger. It was with an infinite tenderness that thoughts of the Duchess now occurred to him; it seemed to him that from a distance he was presently feeling the kind of love he had never experienced for any woman; nothing would have been more painful for him than to be permanently separated from her, and in this frame of mind, had the Duchess deigned to resort to the slightest coquetry, she could have won this heart, for example, by offering it a rival. But far from taking so decisive a step, it was not without blaming herself severely that she found her
thoughts still attached to the young traveler’s footsteps. She reproached herself for what she still called a caprice, as if it had been a monstrosity; she redoubled her attentions and kindness to the Count, who, seduced by such graces, turned a deaf ear to the voice of reason, which was prescribing a second journey to Bologna.

The Marchesa del Dongo, busy with the nuptials of her elder daughter, whom she was marrying to a Milanese duke, could spare only three days to her beloved son; never had she found in him so tender an affection. Amidst the melancholy which had increasingly occupied Fabrizio’s soul, one bizarre and even absurd notion had occurred to him and suddenly produced results. Shall we dare say that he wished to consult the Abbé Blanès? This excellent old man was quite incapable of understanding the sufferings of a heart wrenched apart by childish passions of almost equal strength; moreover, it would have taken him a week to have even glimpsed all the interests which Fabrizio was having to contend with in Parma; but in thinking of consulting him, Fabrizio was rediscovering the innocence of his feelings at the age of sixteen. Will this be believed? It was not simply as a man of wisdom, as an utterly devoted friend that Fabrizio sought him out; the object of this errand and the feelings which agitated our hero during the fifty hours it lasted are so absurd that doubtless, in the interests of the narrative, it would have been better to suppress them. I fear that Fabrizio’s credulity will deprive him of the reader’s sympathy; but after all, this is what he was like, why flatter him more than any other man? I have certainly not flattered either Count Mosca or the Prince.

Fabrizio then, since the whole truth must be told, Fabrizio accompanied his mother to the port of Laveno, on the left, or Austrian, bank of Lake Maggiore, where she landed at about eight in the evening. (The lake is regarded as neutral territory, and no passport is required of those who do not set foot on shore.) But no sooner had night fallen than he had himself set ashore on this same Austrian side, in a little grove of trees that juts out into the waves. He had hired a
sediola
, a sort of fast rustic tilbury in which he could follow, at some five hundred yards’ distance, his mother’s carriage; he was disguised in the livery of the
Casa del Dongo
, and none of the customs officers or the numerous employees of the police dreamed of asking to see his passport. A quarter
of a league from Como, where the Marchesa and her daughter were to stop for the night, he took a path to the left, which, skirting the town of Vico, then joined a little road recently laid along the far side of the lake. It was midnight, and Fabrizio could well hope to encounter no member of the police. The trees of the groves which the little road kept passing through silhouetted the black outlines of their foliage against a starry sky, veiled by a light mist. The waters of the lake and the sky itself were profoundly calm; Fabrizio’s soul could not resist this sublime beauty; he stopped, then sat down on a boulder jutting up out of the lake, forming a sort of tiny promontory. The universal silence was troubled only, at regular intervals, by the lapping of the little waves that expired on the beach. Fabrizio had an Italian heart; I seek no pardon for him: this defect, which will make him less lovable, consisted chiefly in this: his vanity came only in sudden bursts, and the mere aspect of such sublime beauty plunged him into tenderness and dulled the sharp ache of his sufferings. Seated on his solitary boulder, no longer having to remain on guard against the agents of the police, protected by the darkness and its immense silence, he found there, with little or no effort, the happiest moments he had known in a very long time, and his eyes filled with gentle tears.