The Charterhouse of Parma (34 page)

The townsfolk who lived in the street from which the prisoner had escaped were sure they had seen a corpse, but in daylight, when the inhabitants dared emerge from their houses, they found no further traces of combat but a good deal of blood spilled on the pavement. More than twenty thousand idlers came to have a look at the street by daylight. The cities of Italy are used to singular spectacles, but generally they know the
why
and the
how
. What shocked all Parma on this occasion was that even a month afterward, when people no longer spoke solely of the torchlight procession, no one, thanks to Count Mosca’s discretion, had been able to guess the name of the rival who had attempted to take Fausta away from Count M——. This jealous and vindictive lover had taken flight at the very start of the procession. On Count Mosca’s orders, Fausta was taken to the Citadel. The Duchess laughed a good deal at the little act of injustice which the Count was obliged to commit in order to arrest the curiosity of the Prince, who might otherwise have managed to discover Fabrizio’s name.

There was to be seen in Parma a learned man who had come from the North in order to write a history of the Middle Ages; he was seeking manuscripts in the various libraries, and Count Mosca had given him every possible authorization. But this scholar, though still a young man, behaved in an irascible manner; he believed, for instance, that everyone in Parma was attempting to make fun of him. It is true that children occasionally followed him through the streets on account of an enormous shock of bright-red hair, proudly displayed. This scholar imagined that his inn was charging him exorbitantly for every item, and he would not pay for the merest trifle without looking up the price in the travel-journals of one Mrs. Starke, which had achieved its twentieth edition by indicating to the prudent Englishman the cost of a turkey, an apple, a glass of milk, and so on.

The red-maned scholar, the very afternoon of the day when Fabrizio entered upon his forced procession, made a terrible scene at his inn and took out of his pocket two tiny pistols in order to revenge himself upon the waiter who was asking two soldi for a mediocre peach. He was arrested for the serious crime of carrying pocket pistols!

Since this irascible scholar was tall and thin, it occurred to the Count, the next morning, to pass him off in the Prince’s eyes as the foolhardy adventurer who, having attempted to steal Fausta from Count M——, had been hoaxed. Carrying pocket pistols is punishable in Parma by three years in the galleys; but this penalty is never applied. After fifteen days in prison, during which the scholar had seen no one but a lawyer who had inspired him with a dreadful fear of the harsh laws enacted by the cowardice of the officials in power upon those bearing concealed weapons, another lawyer visited the prison and described to the scholar the procession inflicted by Count M—— upon a rival who had remained unknown.

“The police are reluctant to confess to the Prince that they have not been able to determine the identity of this rival: confess that you sought to win Fausta for yourself, that fifty brigands kidnapped you while you were singing under her window, that for an hour you were paraded in a sedan-chair without hearing a single disrespectful word. Such a confession has nothing humiliating about it, you are merely being asked to utter the word. As soon as you do so, you will have relieved the police of their embarrassment, you will be sent off in a postchaise and taken to the border and wished good evening …”

For a month the scholar resisted: two or three times the Prince was on the point of having him brought before the Ministry of the Interior and being himself present at the interrogation. But finally he gave up any such notion when the historian, exhausted, decided to confess everything and was taken to the border. The Prince remained convinced that Count M——’s rival had a thicket of red hair.

Three days after the procession, while Fabrizio, in hiding in Bologna, was determining with Ludovic’s help how to find Count M——, he learned that he as well was in hiding in a mountain village
on the road to Florence. The Count had only three of his
buli
with him; the following day, at the moment when he was returning from a promenade, he was kidnapped by eight masked men who led him to believe they were police agents from Parma. He was taken, once he had been blindfolded, to an inn two leagues farther on in the mountains, where he was treated with every possible consideration and a copious supper. He was served the finest wines of Italy and Spain.

“Then am I a prisoner of State?” asked the Count.

“Not at all!” answered Ludovic very politely under his mask. “You have insulted a private individual by deciding to parade him through the streets in a sedan-chair; tomorrow morning, he wants to fight a duel with you. If you kill him, you will find two good horses, some money, and post-relays readied on the road to Genoa.”

“What is the name of this bully?” asked the Count in some irritation.

“His name is Bombace. You will have the choice of weapons and good, loyal witnesses, but it is necessary that one of you two die!”

“But that’s murder!” the Count exclaimed in alarm.

“Heaven forbid! It’s merely a duel to the death with the young man whom you paraded through the streets of Parma in the middle of the night, and who would remain dishonored if you were to remain alive. One of the two of you is superfluous on this earth, so try to kill him; you will have foils, pistols, sabers—all the weapons we have managed to obtain in a few hours, for haste is of the essence; the police in Bologna are extremely diligent, as you may know, and must not be permitted to prevent this duel necessary to the honor of the young man of whom you made such a fool.”

“But if this young man is a Prince …”

“He is a private individual like yourself, and indeed much less rich than you, but he seeks a duel to the death, and he will oblige you to fight, I warn you.”

“I am afraid of nothing in the world!” exclaimed Count M——.

“That is what your adversary most passionately desires,” replied Ludovic. “Tomorrow, very early in the morning, prepare yourself to defend your life; it will be attacked by a man who has reason to be
highly incensed and who will spare you nothing; I repeat that you will have the choice of weapons; and draw up your will.”

Toward six the following morning, Count M—— was served breakfast; then a door of the bedroom where he was kept under guard was opened and he was requested to pass into the courtyard of a country inn; this yard was surrounded by rather high hedges and walls, and the doors had been carefully closed.

In a corner, on a table which Count M—— was requested to approach, he found several bottles of wine and brandy, two pistols, two foils, two sabers, as well as paper and ink; some twenty peasants were at the windows of the inn overlooking the yard. The Count begged for mercy. “They’re going to murder me!” he screamed. “Save my life!”

“You deceive yourself, or you seek to deceive others,” exclaimed Fabrizio, who was in the opposite corner of the yard, beside a table covered with weapons.

He was in shirtsleeves, and his face was concealed by one of those wire masks such as are found in fencing establishments.

“I invite you,” Fabrizio added, “to put on the fencing-mask which is beside you, and then to advance upon me with a foil or with pistols; as you were told last night, you have the choice of weapons.”

Count M——made countless objections, and seemed quite reluctant to fight; Fabrizio, for his part, feared the arrival of the police, though they were in the mountains some five leagues outside Bologna; he ended by addressing the vilest insults to his rival; finally he had the good fortune to enrage Count M——, who snatched up a foil and advanced toward Fabrizio; the duel began rather languidly.

After a few minutes, it was interrupted by a tremendous noise. Our hero had been well aware that he was involving himself in an action which might be a subject of reproach or at least of calumnious imputations for the rest of his life. He had sent Ludovic into the countryside to recruit witnesses. Ludovic gave some money to some strangers passing through a nearby woods; they came running in, shouting, imagining that they were expected to kill an enemy of the man who was paying them. Having reached the inn, Ludovic requested them to keep
their eyes open and to determine whether one of these two young men engaged in combat was acting unfairly or taking illicit advantage of the other.

The duel momentarily interrupted by the shouts of these peasants was slow in starting over; Fabrizio once again offered insults to the Count’s conceit. “Signor Conte,” he shouted to him, “when one is insolent, one must be brave. I recognize that such a condition is hard for you; you prefer to pay others to be brave for you.”

The Count, stung once more, began shouting that he had long frequented the fencing-hall of the celebrated Battistin in Naples, and that he would punish such insolence; Count M——’s anger having finally reappeared, he fought with considerable determination, which did not keep Fabrizio from giving him a good deep thrust in the chest, which kept him in bed for several months. Ludovic, bestowing first aid upon the wounded man, whispered in his ear: “If you report this duel to the police, I shall have you stabbed in your bed.”

Fabrizio escaped to Florence; since he had remained in hiding in Bologna, it was only in Florence that he received all the Duchess’s reproachful letters; she could not forgive him for having come to her concert without attempting to speak to her. Fabrizio was delighted by the letters from Count Mosca, which breathed a sincere friendship and the noblest sentiments. He guessed that the Count had written to Bologna, in such a manner as to allay the suspicions which might weigh upon him with regard to the duel; the police behaved with perfect fairness: they reported that two strangers, of whom only one, the wounded man, was known (Count M——), had fought a duel with foils, before more than thirty peasants, among whom were found, toward the end of the skirmish, the village priest who had made vain efforts to separate the combatants. Since the name of Joseph Bossi had not been uttered, less than two months later Fabrizio made so bold as to return to Bologna, more convinced than ever that his fate had doomed him never to know the noble and intellectual side of love. This he indulged himself in explaining at great length to the Duchess; he was quite weary of his solitary life and passionately desired, now, to return to the charming evenings he had spent with the Count and his aunt. He had not tasted the pleasures of good society since that time.
I find so tedious the thought of the love I attempted to enjoy with Fausta,
he wrote to the Duchess
, that were her whims to favor me now, I would not travel twenty leagues to hold her to her word; therefore have no fears, as you say you have, that I will go to Paris, where I hear she is performing with tremendous success. I shall travel any number of leagues to spend an evening with you and with the Count, who is so good to his friends.

While Fabrizio was pursuing love in a village near Parma, Chief Justice Rassi, who had no idea he was in the vicinity, continued to deal with his case as if he had been a Liberal: he feigned being unable to find, or rather intimidated, any witnesses for the defense; and finally, after an extremely learned labor of nearly a year, and around two months after Fabrizio’s return to Bologna, on a certain Friday, the Marchesa Raversi, intoxicated with joy, informed her salon that the following day the sentence pronounced only an hour ago against young del Dongo would be presented for the Prince’s signature and approval. A few minutes later the Duchess learned of her enemy’s words. “The Count must be very ill served by his agents!” she mused. “Only this morning he believed that the sentence could not be rendered for another week. Perhaps he would not be sorry to send my young Grand Vicar away from Parma; but,” she added with a lilt in her voice, “we shall see him back here, and one of these days he will be our Archbishop.” The Duchess rang: “Gather all the servants in the antechamber,” she said to her footman, “even the cooks; go ask the officer on duty for the necessary permission to obtain four post-horses, and then have these horses harnessed to my landau within half an hour.”

All the women of the household were busily packing trunks, while the Duchess hurriedly selected a traveling costume, all without a word to the Count; the notion of playing a little trick on him filled her with delight.

“My friends,” she said to her assembled staff, “I have learned that my poor nephew is about to be condemned
in absentia
for having had the audacity to defend his life against a madman, that Giletti who attempted to kill him. Each of you has had occasion to observe how sweet and harmless Fabrizio’s character is. Rightfully outraged by this cruel insult, I am leaving for Florence: I am leaving each of you ten years’ wages. If you are unhappy, write me, and as long as I have a single sequin, there will be something for you.”

The Duchess believed just what she was saying, and at her last words the servants dissolved in tears; she too had moist eyes, and added in a moved tone of voice: “Pray to God for me and for Monsignore Fabrizio del Dongo, First Grand Vicar of the Diocese, who tomorrow morning will be sentenced to the galleys or, which would be less absurd, to the death penalty.”

The servants’ tears redoubled and gradually changed to virtually seditious cries; the Duchess got into her carriage and had herself driven to the Prince’s palace. Despite the undue hour, she had General Fontana, the aide-de-camp on duty, request an audience; she was not in court dress, which cast the general into a state of profound astonishment. As for the Prince, he was not at all surprised, and still less annoyed by this request for an audience. “We shall see tears shed by these fine eyes,” he said to himself, rubbing his hands. “She is coming to ask for a pardon; at last this proud beauty will be humbled! She was all too unendurable with her little airs of independence! Those expressive eyes always seemed to be telling me, whenever the slightest thing annoyed her,
Naples and Milan would provide a sojourn much more agreeable than your little town of Parma
. True, I do not rule over Naples or Milan, but finally this great lady is coming to ask me for something that depends on myself alone, something she is burning to have; I’ve always thought that this nephew’s arrival would bring me some advantage or other.”