The Charterhouse of Parma (37 page)

“Sign that,” said the Prince, “and keep your mouth shut, whatever you hear people say in town. You will inform Councillor De Capitani, who voted for two years’ imprisonment and who even ventured to hold forth in favor of this absurd opinion, that I require him to reread the laws and regulations. Once again, silence and good night.”

Justice Rassi, very slowly, made three deep bows, to which the Prince paid no attention.

This occurred at seven in the morning. A few hours later, the news
of the Marchesa Raversi’s banishment spread through the city and in the cafés, everyone talking at once about this great event. For some time the Marchesa’s banishment rid Parma of that implacable foe of small towns and minor courts, boredom. General Fabio Conti, who had regarded himself as the new Minister, claimed to have suffered an attack of gout, and for several days did not emerge from his fortress. The bourgeoisie and subsequently the populace concluded, from what was happening, that evidently the Prince had resolved to confer the Archbishopric of Parma upon Monsignore del Dongo. The political pundits of the cafés went so far as to claim that Father Landriana, the present Archbishop, had been obliged to feign ill health and present his resignation; he would be receiving a generous pension based on tobacco duties: this rumor reached the ears of the Archbishop himself, who was greatly alarmed by it, and for several days his zeal for our hero was paralyzed to a great extent. Two months later, this fine piece of news appeared in the Paris newspapers, with one minor alteration, that it was Count de Mosca, nephew of the Duchess de Sanseverina, who was to be made Archbishop.

Marchesa Raversi raged in her castle at Valleja; she was not the sort of woman who regards herself as revenged by saying scandalous things about her enemies. The day following her disgrace, Cavaliere Riscara and three more of her friends presented themselves upon the Prince’s orders, and requested his permission to visit the lady in her castle. The Prince received these gentlemen with consummate graciousness, and their arrival at Valleja was a great consolation for the Marchesa. Before the end of the second week, she had thirty persons in her castle, all those whom the Liberal Ministry was to put in office. Each evening the Marchesa held a regular council of war with the best informed of her friends. One day when she had received many letters from Parma and from Bologna, she retired quite early: the favorite chambermaid introduced first the reigning lover, Count Baldi, a young man of fine appearance and utter insignificance, and later, Cavaliere Riscara, his predecessor: the latter was a short man, dark in character as in physique, who, having begun as a geometry tutor at the College of Nobles in Parma, now found himself Councillor of State and a Knight of several Orders.

“I have the good habit,” the Marchesa said to these two gentlemen, “of never destroying any document, and lucky it is for me: here are nine letters which Her Grace the Duchess Sanseverina has written me on various occasions. The two of you will leave for Genoa, and you will search among the convicts there for an ex-notary named Burati, like the great Venetian poet, or Durati. You, Count Baldi, sit at my desk and write what I am about to dictate to you:

“Do you understand, Riscara?”

“Perfectly; but the journey to Genoa is an unnecessary luxury; I know a man in Parma who, it is true, is not yet condemned to the galleys, but who will not fail to find himself there. He will admirably counterfeit the Duchess’s hand.”

At these words Count Baldi opened his fine eyes extremely wide; only now did he understand.

“If you know this worthy personage in Parma, whose interests you seek to advance,” the Marchesa said to Riscara, “apparently he knows you as well; his mistress, his confessor, his friend may be in the Duchess’s pay; I prefer to postpone this little joke for a few days, and not expose myself to any accident. Leave in two hours, like good little lambs, see no living soul in Genoa, and return as soon as you can.”

Cavaliere Riscara departed with a laugh, and, speaking through his nose like Punchinello, “We must pack our traps,” he whined, running along in a comical manner. He wanted to leave Baldi alone with the lady. Five days later, Riscara brought back to the Marchesa her Count
Baldi flayed alive: to shorten the journey by six leagues, they had made him cross a mountain on muleback; he swore that no one would ever again make him take
long journeys
. Baldi presented the Marchesa with three copies of the letter she had dictated to him, and five or six other letters in the same hand, composed by Riscara, which might perhaps be put to some subsequent use. One of these letters contained some very entertaining remarks concerning the Prince’s nocturnal anxieties, and the deplorable skinniness of the Marchesa Baldi, his mistress, who it was said left the mark of a pair of tongs on any armchair cushion she sat on for even a moment. Anyone would have sworn that all these letters were written in the Duchess Sanseverina’s hand.

“Now I know without the shadow of a doubt,” said the Marchesa, “that the beloved Fabrizio is in Bologna or somewhere thereabouts …”

“I am too unwell,” exclaimed Count Baldi, interrupting her; “I ask the favor of being excused from this second journey, or at least I should like to be granted a few days’ rest in order to recover my health.”

“I shall go plead your cause,” Riscara said, standing and whispering something to the Marchesa.

“Very well, I consent,” she answered with a smile. “Take comfort, you will not be leaving,” the Marchesa said to Baldi with a somewhat contemptuous expression.

“Thank you!” exclaimed the Count with a heartfelt look.

And as a matter of fact, Riscara rode alone in the post-chaise. He had been in Bologna no more than two days when he glimpsed Fabrizio and little Marietta in an open
calèche
. “What the Devil!” he said to himself. “Apparently our future Archbishop doesn’t waste any time; the Duchess must hear of this, she will be charmed by the news.” Riscara had only to follow Fabrizio in order to discover his lodgings; the next morning, our hero received by courier the letter of Genoese manufacture; he found it a bit brief, but otherwise suspected nothing. The notion of seeing the Duchess and the Count again made him wild with happiness, and no matter what Ludovic could say, he took a post-horse and set off at a gallop. Without being aware of it, he was closely followed by Riscara, who, arriving some six leagues from Parma at the post-stop before Castelnovo, had the pleasure of seeing a considerable
throng in the square in front of the local prison; our hero had just been installed there, recognized at the post-stop, where he was changing horses, by two
sbirri
selected and sent there by Count Zurla.

Cavaliere Riscara’s tiny eyes sparkled with delight; with exemplary patience he verified everything that had just occurred in this little village, then sent on a courier to Marchesa Raversi. After which, strolling through the streets as though to examine the remarkable church, and then to seek out a painting by
Parmigianino
he had been told was to be found somewhere in the place, he finally encountered the magistrate, who eagerly offered his respects to a Councillor of State. Riscara appeared amazed that this personage had not immediately sent to the Citadel of Parma the conspirator he had been so fortunate as to have arrested. “One might fear,” Riscara added coldly, “that his numerous friends who the day before yesterday attempted to gain passage for him through the States of His Serene Highness might encounter the police; there were indeed some twelve or fifteen of these rebels, all mounted.”

“
Intelligenti pauca!
” the magistrate exclaimed with a sly expression.

Two hours later, poor Fabrizio, fitted with handcuffs and attached by a long chain to the very
sediola
into which he had been made to climb, left for the Citadel of Parma, with an escort of eight members of the police. These had orders to bring with them all the police stationed in the villages the procession would pass through; the magistrate in person followed this important prisoner. At seven in the evening, the
sediola
, escorted by all the urchins of Parma as well as by thirty members of the police, crossed the fine promenade, passed in front of the little palazzo Fausta had inhabited some months previously, and finally presented itself at the outer gates of the Citadel just when General Fabio Conti and his daughter were about to leave. The Governor’s carriage stopped before reaching the drawbridge in order to allow the
sediola
to which Fabrizio was attached to enter; the General immediately shouted that the Citadel gates were to be closed, and hurried down to the turnkey’s office in order to see what was happening; he was not a little surprised when he recognized the prisoner, who had become quite stiff, chained as he was to his
sediola
for such a long journey; four members of the police had lifted him down and were carrying him into the turnkey’s office. “So now he’s in my power,” the conceited Governor said to himself, “this famous Fabrizio del Dongo who, it
would seem, all of Parma’s high society has vowed to concern itself with exclusively for almost a year now.”

Twenty times the General had encountered him at court functions, at the Duchess’s, and elsewhere; but he took care not to indicate he recognized Fabrizio for fear of compromising himself.

“Draw up,” he shouted to the prison clerk, “a full report of the transfer of this prisoner by the good magistrate of Castelnovo into my hands.”

Barbone, the clerk, an alarming personage for the volume of his beard and his martial bearing, assumed a more important air than usual, as if he were a German jailer. Believing he knew that it was chiefly the Duchess Sanseverina who had kept his master the Governor from becoming Minister of War, he was more than usually insolent toward the prisoner; he addressed him in the second-person plural, the form of speech used in Italy to speak to servants.

“I am a prelate of the Holy Roman Church,” Fabrizio said to him firmly, “and Grand Vicar of this Diocese; my birth alone entitles me to your respect.”

“I know nothing about that!” the clerk retorted rudely; “prove your assertions by showing the documents which give you a right to these highly respectable titles.”

Fabrizio had no documents, and did not answer. General Fabio Conti, standing beside his clerk, watched him write without raising his eyes to the prisoner, in order not to be obliged to say that he was indeed Fabrizio del Dongo.

All of a sudden Clélia Conti, waiting in the carriage, heard a dreadful racket in the guard-room. The clerk Barbone, who was writing up a long and insolent description of the prisoner’s person, ordered him to open his garments so that the number and the condition of the flesh-wounds received during the Giletti business could be attested and verified.

“I cannot do so,” said Fabrizio smiling bitterly; “I am not in a condition to obey the gentleman’s orders, prevented as I am by these handcuffs.”

“What!” exclaimed the General quite naïvely. “The prisoner is
handcuffed, inside the Fortress! That is counter to regulations, it requires an
ad hoc
order; take off the handcuffs.”

Fabrizio looked at him. “There’s a joking Jesuit,” he said to himself; “he’s seen these handcuffs, which are hurting me horribly, for at least an hour, and he pretends to be surprised!”

The handcuffs were removed by the police; they had just learned that Fabrizio was the nephew of the Duchess Sanseverina, and hastened to show him a honeyed politeness which contrasted with the clerk’s rudeness; the latter seemed annoyed by their behavior and said to Fabrizio, who stood stock still: “All right then, hurry up! Show us those scratches you got from poor Giletti, at the time of his murder.”

In one leap, Fabrizio threw himself on the clerk and gave him such a blow that Barbone fell off his chair against the General’s legs. The police seized Fabrizio’s arms, which remained motionless; the General himself and the two policemen beside him hurried to pull the clerk to his feet, for his face was bleeding profusely. Two other policemen ran to close the office door, in case the prisoner tried to escape. The brigadier in command thought that young del Dongo could not make a serious attempt at an escape, since he was inside the Citadel; nonetheless, by a professional instinct he went over to the window to prevent any disorder. Just outside this open window, and two steps away, stood the General’s carriage: Clélia had shrunk back inside it, in order not to witness the sad scene taking place in the office; when she heard the noise, she looked up.

“What is happening?” she asked the brigadier.

“Signorina, it is young Fabrizio del Dongo, who has just delivered a good blow to that insolent Barbone.”

“What, is it Signor del Dongo they’re taking to prison?”

“That’s for sure,” the brigadier said; “it’s on account of that poor young fellow’s high birth that they’re taking so much trouble. I thought the Signorina knew all about it.”

Clélia remained at the carriage window; when the police surrounding the table drew away, she caught sight of the prisoner.

“Who would have guessed that the next time I saw him, after our first encounter on the road from Lake Como, would be in this unfortunate
situation?… He gave me his hand to help me into his mother’s carriage.… He was already with the Duchess! Had their affair already begun back then?”

The reader must be informed that members of the Liberal party directed by Marchesa Raversi and General Conti chose to believe in the tender intimacy which doubtless existed between Fabrizio and the Duchess. The abhorred Count Mosca was the object of endless jokes for the deception being practiced upon him.