The Charterhouse of Parma (4 page)

The peasants dreaded Abbé Blanès as a great magician: for his part, on account of the fear inspired by his belfry sessions, he kept them from stealing. His fellow priests in the neighboring parishes envied his influence and detested him accordingly; the Marchese del Dongo merely despised him because he reasoned too much for a man of such low station. Fabrizio worshiped him: in order to please him, he sometimes spent whole evenings adding or multiplying enormous sums. Then he would climb up into the belfry: this was a great privilege which the priest had never granted anyone; but he loved this child for his naïveté. “If you do not become a hypocrite,” he would tell him, “you will perhaps be a man.”

Two or three times a year, Fabrizio, bold and passionate in pursuit of his pleasures, risked drowning himself in the lake. He was the leader of all the exploits performed by the peasant boys of Grianta and Cadenabbia. These children had managed to obtain certain small keys, and after dark attempted to open the locks on the chains mooring the boats to some boulder or tree close to the water’s edge. It must be explained that the fishermen on Lake Como set night-lines far out from shore, their upper ends attached to a cork-lined plank, and a supple hazel twig, tied to this plank, supported a little bell which jingled when a fish, taking the bait, shook the line.

The great object of these nocturnal sorties which Fabrizio commanded was to visit the night-line before the fishermen heard the warning given by the little bells. Stormy weather was the preferred time for these dangerous ventures, and the boys set out an hour before dawn. As they climbed into the boat, these children believed they were
running the greatest dangers, this being the creditable aspect of their foray, and following their fathers’ example they would devoutly recite an
Ave Maria
. Now it frequently happened that upon the moment of embarkation, and immediately after the
Ave Maria
, Fabrizio would be struck by an omen. This was all the fruit he had gathered from the astrological studies of his friend the Abbé, in whose predictions he otherwise had no confidence whatever. Spurred on by his boyish imagination, such omens informed him without question as to the success or failure of the expedition, and since he was more resolute than any of his comrades, the entire band gradually became so accustomed to omens that if, at the moment of pushing off, someone glimpsed a priest on the shore or a raven flying away to the left, the locks would be restored to the boat-chains at once, and everyone went back to bed. Thus Abbé Blanès had not imparted his rather abstruse learning to Fabrizio, but unwittingly had instilled in him a limitless trust in signs which can foretell the future.

The Marchese felt that an accident occurring to his coded correspondence might place him at his sister’s mercy; hence every year, on the Feast of Saint Angela, Countess Pietranera’s patron saint, Fabrizio was given permission to spend eight days in Milan. He lived the whole year in the hope or the recollection of these eight days. Upon this great occasion, to defray the expenses of this politic journey, the Marchese handed his son four scudi, and as was his habit, gave nothing to his wife, who was accompanying the boy. But one of the cooks, six lackeys, and a coachman and pair left for Como the eve of the journey, and every day in Milan the Marchesa would find a carriage at her disposal and a table set for twelve.

The sort of sullen life led by the Marchese del Dongo was anything but diverting, yet it had this advantage: it permanently enriched the families who were so good as to give themselves up to it. The Marchese, whose annual income exceeded two hundred thousand francs, did not expend a quarter of this sum; he lived on hopes. During the thirteen years that had passed since 1800, he continually and firmly believed that Napoléon would be overthrown before six months had passed. Judge of his delight when, early in 1813, he learned of the disasters of the
Beresina
! The capture of Paris and Napoléon’s fall made
him nearly lose his mind, and he permitted himself the most outrageous remarks to his wife and his sister. Finally, after a wait of fourteen years, he had the inexpressible joy of seeing the Austrian troops re-enter Milan. Following orders from Vienna, the Marchese del Dongo was received by the Austrian general with a consideration bordering upon respect; an offer was immediately tendered of one of the highest positions in the government, which the Marchese accepted as the payment of a debt. His elder son received a lieutenancy in one of the Monarchy’s finest regiments, but his younger obdurately rejected the proposed rank of cadet. The Marchese’s triumph, in which he revelled with unusual insolence, lasted but a few months and was followed by a humiliating reversal. He had never possessed a talent for business, and fourteen years spent in the country among his lackeys, his notary, and his doctor, combined with the petulance of his advancing years, had rendered him utterly incompetent. Now it is impossible, under Austrian rule, to retain an important position without possessing the kind of talent required by the slow, complex, but entirely logical administration of that ancient Monarchy. The Marchese del Dongo’s blunders scandalized the staff and even obstructed the progress of business. His ultra-monarchical observations irritated the very populations who were to be lulled into slumbrous apathy. One fine day, he learned that His Gracious Majesty had deigned to accept his resignation from the post he occupied in the government, and had simultaneously conferred upon him the rank of
Second Grand Major-domo Major
of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. The Marchese was outraged by the cruel injustice of which he was the victim; he published a Letter to a Friend, he who so loathed the freedom of the press! And even wrote to the Emperor that his ministers were betraying him, being no better than Jacobins. These things done, he sadly returned to his Castle of Grianta. There was one consolation. After Napoléon’s fall, certain powerful persons in Milan fomented a street attack upon Count Prina, former minister of the King of Italy and a man of the first order. Count Pietranera risked his life to save the Minister, who was beaten to death by umbrellas and whose agony lasted some five hours. A priest who happened to be the Marchese del Dongo’s confessor might have saved Prina by opening the grille of San Giovanni, in front of which the unfortunate
Minister had been dragged and even for a moment left in the gutter; but this priest jeeringly refused to open his grille, and six months later the Marchese had the happiness of securing for him a handsome preferment.

He loathed Count Pietranera, his brother-in-law, who, without fifty louis’ income, dared to be content with his lot, determined to show himself loyal to what he had loved all his life, and had the insolence to display that spirit of justice without consideration of persons, which the Marchese called an infamous Jacobinism. The Count had refused to take service with Austria; this refusal was made known to the authorities, and some months after Prina’s death the same persons who had hired his assassins managed to have General Pietranera thrown into prison. Whereupon his wife the Countess obtained a passport and requested post-horses for Vienna, in order to tell the Emperor the truth. Prina’s assassins were intimidated, and one of them, a cousin of Countess Pietranera, brought her at midnight, an hour before she was to leave, her husband’s order of release. The next day the Austrian general sent for Count Pietranera, received him with every possible distinction, and assured him that his pension as a retired officer would be paid on the most advantageous terms. The worthy General Bubna, a man of discernment as well as of feeling, appeared to be quite ashamed of Prina’s murder and of the Count’s imprisonment.

After this squall, staved off by the Countess’s firm character, the pair lived as well as they could upon the retirement pension which, thanks to General Bubna’s recommendation, was paid forthwith. Fortunately, it so happened that for the last five or six years, the Countess had enjoyed cordial relations with an extremely wealthy young man who was also an intimate friend of the Count, and who lost no time in placing at their disposal the finest pair of English horses to be seen in Milan, his box at La Scala, and his villa in the country. But the Count, whose generous spirit had the conscience of his very bravery, was a man readily carried away and at such times allowed himself to speak inopportunely. One day when he was hunting with some young men, one of them, who had served under other ensigns than the Count’s, began making jokes about the courage of the soldiers of the Republic on the other side of the Alps; the Count slapped his face, a fracas immediately
ensued, and the Count, who was the sole exponent of his point of view amid all these young men, was killed. There was a great deal of talk about this duel, if duel it was, and the persons involved then decided to make a journey to Switzerland.

That absurd courage known as resignation, the courage of a fool who lets himself be hanged without uttering a word, was not among the Countess’s qualities. Outraged by her husband’s death, she would have had Limercati, the wealthy young man who was her faithful friend, undertake the journey to Switzerland forthwith and there offer Count Pietranera’s murderer either a slap in the face or a bullet in the breast.

Limercati treated such an enterprise as a consummate absurdity, and the Countess immediately realized that her disdain had killed her love. She multiplied her attentions to Limercati, seeking to awaken his love and subsequently to forsake him, reducing him to despair. In order to render such a scheme of revenge intelligible to French readers, I should explain that in Milan, a region quite remote from our own, a man may still be driven to despair by love. The Countess who, in her mourning robes, easily eclipsed all her rivals, flirted with the young men of good society, and one of them, Count Nani, who had long since observed that he had found Limercati’s merit somewhat heavy, somewhat starched for a woman of such spirit, fell madly in love with the Countess. She wrote to Limercati:

Will you for once behave like a man with a brain? Imagine that you have never known me.

I remain, with a trace of contempt perhaps, your most humble servant.

Gina Pietranera

Upon reading this missive, Limercati departed for one of his castles; maddened by passion, he spoke of blowing his brains out, an unheard-of thing in countries where Hell is a reality. The day after he arrived in the country, he had written the Countess to offer her his hand and his income of two hundred thousand francs. She returned his letter unopened, employing Count Nani’s groom for the commission. Whereupon Limercati was to spend three years on his estates, returning
to Milan every two months but without ever having the courage to remain there, and boring all his friends with his passion for the Countess, and with a detailed narrative of the favors she had once shown him. In the early stages, he added that she was ruining herself with Count Nani, and that she would be dishonored by such a liaison.

The fact is that the Countess had no love whatever for Count Nani, as she declared to him once she was quite certain of Limercati’s despair. The Count, a man of the world, implored her not to divulge the sad truth she had confided to him:

“If you will be so kind,” he added, “as to continue receiving me, with all the marks of distinction granted to a reigning lover, I shall perhaps gain a suitable position for myself.”

Having received this heroic declaration, the Countess had no further need of Count Nani’s horses or his box at the opera. But for fifteen years she had been accustomed to a life of the greatest elegance: she was now obliged to solve this difficult or, frankly, impossible problem: how to live in Milan on a pension of fifteen hundred francs. She left her
palazzo
, rented a couple of rooms in an attic, and dismissed all her servants, even her chambermaid, whom she replaced by an old charwoman. This sacrifice was in fact less heroic and less painful than it appears to us; in Milan poverty is not a matter for ridicule, and therefore does not show itself to frightened souls as the worst of evils. After some months of such noble poverty, during which the Countess was besieged by continual letters from Limercati, as well as from Count Nani, who also sought her hand, it occurred to the Marchese del Dongo, in general so detestably stingy, that his enemies might well gloat over his sister’s reduced circumstances. What! A del Dongo reduced to living on a pension from the Viennese court, which had given him such offense!

He wrote her that an apartment and an allowance worthy of his sister would await her at the Castle of Grianta. The Countess’s volatile soul enthusiastically embraced the notion of this new kind of life; it had been twenty years since she had lived in this venerable castle rising majestically amid the old chestnut-trees planted in the days of the Sforzas. “There,” she mused, “I shall find repose, and at my age, is that not happiness?” (Since she was all of thirty-one, she regarded herself
as having reached the period of seclusion.) “On that sublime lake where I was born, a calm and happy life awaits me at last.”

I do not know whether she was deceiving herself, but there can be no doubt that this passionate soul, who had just found it so easy to reject the offer of one enormous fortune after the next, brought happiness to the Castle of Grianta. Her two nieces were mad with joy. “You have brought back to me the happy days of my youth,” the Marchesa exclaimed as she took her in her arms; “the day before you came I was a hundred years old!”

The Countess began revisiting, accompanied by Fabrizio, all those enchanting places surrounding Grianta, so celebrated by travelers: Villa Melzi, which affords such a fine view of the castle from the opposite side of the lake; beyond, the sacred grove of the Sfondrati and the bold promontory separating the lake’s two arms, the one toward Como so voluptuously beautiful, and the one toward Lecco so austere: sublime and enchanting aspects which the most celebrated site in the world, the Bay of Naples, may equal but not surpass. It was with delight that the Countess regained the memories of her first youth and compared them to her present sensations: “Lake Como,” she mused, “is not surrounded, like Lake Geneva, by great fenced-in fields cultivated according to the best modern methods, things suggestive of money and speculation. Here on all sides I see varying hills covered with groves of trees planted by Chance, and which the hand of man has not yet spoiled and forced
to bring in a return
. Amid these wondrously shapely hills sloping down to the lake, I may retain all the illusions of the descriptions in Tasso and Ariosto. Everything is noble and tender, everything speaks of love, nothing recalls the defects of civilization. The villages half-way up the hills are hidden by dense groves, and above the treetops rises the charming architecture of their lovely belfries. If some little field fifty paces wide occasionally interrupts the clumps of chestnuts and wild cherry-trees, the contented eye sees growing there crops more vigorous and happier than anywhere else in the world. Beyond these hills, whose crests afford a glimpse of hermitages one longs to take refuge in, one after the next, the astonished gaze perceives the Alpine peaks, ever covered with snow, and their austerity reminds one of life’s miseries, and just how
much of them are necessary to increase one’s present joys. The imagination is stirred by the distant sound of the bell in some little hamlet hidden under the trees: such sounds, borne over the waves that sweeten them, assume a tinge of gentle melancholy and resignation, they seem to be telling man: life is fleeting, do not be so hard on the happiness which offers itself to you, make haste to enjoy it!” The language of these ravishing locales, which are unparalleled the world over, restored to the Countess her heart as it was at sixteen. How could she have lived so many years without seeing her lake again? “Is it when old age begins,” she mused, “that happiness finds a refuge?” She bought a boat, which she and Fabrizio and the Marchesa decorated with their own hands, for there was not enough money to pay for such things, despite the castle’s sumptuous state; ever since his disgrace, the Marchese del Dongo had multiplied its aristocratic splendors. For instance, in order to wrest ten feet from the lake, near the famous avenue of plane-trees leading to Cadenabbia, he was constructing an embankment which would cost eighty thousand francs. At its far end was rising, according to the plans of the famous Marchese Cagnola, a mortuary chapel made entirely of enormous granite blocks, and inside it Marchesi, the fashionable sculptor from Milan, was carving him a tomb on which numerous bas-reliefs were to represent the heroic deeds of his ancestors.