The Charterhouse of Parma (40 page)

“He is too clever not to realize I shall never leave behind that infamous tower where my heart is imprisoned. Now the man’s injured vanity can inspire him with the oddest notions; their strange cruelty will merely encourage his amazing conceit. If he brings up his old notions of stale gallantry, if he goes back to saying ‘Accept the homage of your slave, or else Fabrizio dies,’ then we have the old story of
Judith
.… Yes, but if that is no more than a suicide for me, it is a murder for Fabrizio; that idiot heir to the throne our Crown Prince and the vile executioner Rassi will see to it that Fabrizio is hanged as my accomplice.”

The Duchess screamed aloud: this apparently inescapable alternative tormented her wretched heart. Her troubled brain could find no other likelihood in the future. For ten whole minutes she struggled like
a madwoman; finally a sleep of exhaustion replaced this horrible condition for a few moments; life was overwhelmed. Minutes later, she wakened with a start, and found herself sitting on her bed; she seemed to be seeing the Prince ordering Fabrizio’s execution in her very presence. What wild glances the Duchess cast around her! When at last she managed to persuade herself that she was seeing neither the Prince nor Fabrizio, she fell back on her bed and was on the point of losing consciousness. Her physical debility was such that she no longer felt strong enough to change her position. “Good God! If I could only die!” she murmured.… “But what cowardice! To abandon Fabrizio in his wretchedness! I am raving.… Come now, let us get back to reality, with a cool head let us consider the dreadful position in which I have thrust myself as though of my own free will. What a fatal mistake—to take up residence in the Court of an absolute monarch! A tyrant who knows every one of his victims! To whom their every glance seems a test of his power. Alas! Neither the Count nor I saw as much when I left Milan: I was thinking of the pleasures of an agreeable court life; something of lesser quality, it is true, but something in the style of the happy days of Prince Eugène!

“From a distance, we can have no notion of the powers of a despot who knows all his subjects by sight. The outer form of such despotism is the same as that of other governments: there are judges, for instance, but they are Rassis; the monster would find nothing remarkable about having his father hanged if the Prince were to order him to do it … he would call that his duty.… To seduce Rassi! What a wretch I am! There is no way for me to do it. What can I offer him? Maybe a hundred thousand francs! And they claim that, during the last dagger-thrust which Heaven’s wrath against this miserable country allowed him to escape, the Prince sent him a chest filled with ten thousand gold sequins! Moreover, what mere sum of money could seduce the man? This base soul, which has never seen anything but scorn in men’s eyes, now has the pleasure of seeing fear and even respect—he may become Minister of Police, and why not? Then three-quarters of the country’s inhabitants will be his vile toadies and will tremble before him as basely as he himself trembles before the Sovereign.

“Since I cannot flee this hateful place, I must at least be useful to
Fabrizio while I am in it: what can I do for him living alone, in solitude and in despair? Come now,
Forward, march, wretched woman!
Do your duty, go into society, pretend you no longer have Fabrizio on your mind.… Pretend to forget you, beloved angel!…”

At this word, the Duchess dissolved in tears; at last she was able to weep. After an hour granted to this human weakness, she saw with a degree of consolation that her mind was beginning to clear. “If I had a magic carpet,” she said to herself, “if I could carry Fabrizio off from the Citadel and take refuge with him in some happy country out of reach of our pursuers. Paris, for instance. We would live, at first, on the twelve hundred francs his father’s notary allows me with such pleasing exactitude. I might gather together a hundred thousand francs from the ruins of my fortune!” The Duchess’s imagination reviewed with moments of inexpressible pleasure all the details of the life she would lead three hundred leagues from Parma. “There,” she said to herself, “he could enlist under some assumed name.… As an officer in some regiment of these brave French, young Valserra would soon win a reputation; at last he would be a happy man.”

These rosy images brought back her tears all over again, but this time they were gentle ones. Then happiness did exist somewhere! This last state persisted a long time; the poor woman was in terror of returning to the contemplation of the dreadful reality. Finally, as the dawn was beginning to mark the summit of the trees in her garden with a white line, she struggled violently to rouse herself. “In a few hours, I shall be on the battlefield; it will be a question of taking action; and if something vexing should happen to me, if the Prince should take it into his head to say something to me about Fabrizio, I am not sure of being able to keep my wits about me. Therefore I must, without wasting another moment,
make plans
.

“If I am declared a State criminal, Rassi will seize everything in this
palazzo
. On the first of this month the Count and I burned, as is the custom, all the papers the police might have turned to advantage, and he is the Minister of Police—that’s the joke. I have three diamonds worth something: tomorrow Fulgenzio, my old boatman from Grianta, will set off for Geneva, where he will put them in a safe place. If ever Fabrizio manages to escape (Lord, be good to me now!)”—here she
crossed herself—“the Marchese del Dongo’s unspeakable cowardice will discover that it is a sin to send bread to a man pursued by a legitimate Prince, though then, at least, he will find my diamonds and he will have bread.

“Dismiss the Count.… Being alone with him, after what has just happened, is the one thing impossible for me. The poor man! He is not a bad sort, quite the contrary; he is merely weak. That common soul is not up to our level. Poor Fabrizio! If only you could be here with me for a moment, to talk over our dangers!

“The Count’s meticulous prudence will ruin all my plans, and besides I must not destroy him in my wake.… For what’s to prevent this tyrant’s vanity from throwing me into prison as well? For ‘conspiring.’ … What could be easier to prove? If he sent me to his Citadel and I could buy my way to a conversation with Fabrizio, if only for a moment, how bravely we would stride together toward death! But enough of such madness; his Rassi would advise him to get rid of me by poison; my presence in the streets, standing on a tumbril, might trouble the sensibility of his beloved Parmesans.… But what is this? More romantic dreams! Alas, such follies must be forgiven a poor woman whose actual fate is so sad! The truth of all this is that the Prince will never send me to death; but what could be easier for him than to throw me into prison and keep me there; he will secrete in some corner of my
palazzo
all sorts of damning papers, as was done in the case of that poor L——. Then three judges, not even too corrupt, for there will be what are called
documentary proofs
, and a dozen false witnesses will suffice. So I can be sentenced to death as a conspirator, and the Prince, in his infinite mercy, considering that in the past I have had the honor to be admitted to his Court, will commute my sentence to ten years in the Fortress. But as for me, not to betray that violent character which has led the Marchesa Raversi and my other enemies to say so many stupid things, I shall bravely take poison. At least the public will be kind enough to believe it; but I wager that Rassi will appear in my cell, gallantly bringing me, on the Prince’s behalf, a little flask of strychnine, or Perugia opium.

“Yes, I must very publicly break off relations with the Count, for I do not wish to involve him in my ruin, that would be infamous; the
poor man has loved me so sincerely! My mistake has been to believe that a true courtier would retain enough soul to be capable of love. Very likely the Prince will find some pretext to throw me in prison; he will fear that I might pervert public opinion concerning Fabrizio. The Count is a man of honor; immediately he will commit what the sycophants of this Court, in their astonishment, will call a folly, he will leave the Court. I have flouted the Prince’s authority the evening of that letter, I can expect anything and everything from his wounded vanity: does a man born a Prince ever forget the sensation I afforded him that evening? Moreover the Count separated from me is in a better position to be useful to Fabrizio. But if the Count, whom my resolve will bring to the point of despair, sought revenge?… Now there is a notion that will never occur to him; he lacks the fundamentally base nature of a man like the Prince: the Count might, with a sigh, countersign a vile decree, but he is a man of honor. And then, what would he be taking revenge for? For the fact that, after having loved him five years without committing the slightest act of damage to his love, I say to him: ‘Dear Count, I had the happiness to love you: well, this flame has died, I no longer love you! But I know the depths of your heart, and I preserve the deepest esteem for you, and we shall always be the best of friends.’ What can a man of honor reply to so sincere a declaration? I shall take a new lover, or at least that is what people in society will believe. I shall tell him: ‘Actually the Prince is right to punish Fabrizio’s folly; but on his saint’s-day our gracious Sovereign will doubtless grant him his liberty.’ That way I gain six months. The new lover selected by prudence would be that forsworn judge, that infamous hangman, that Rassi … he would find himself ennobled, and in point of fact, I should be giving him
entrée
into good society. Forgive me, dear Fabrizio! Such an effort is beyond my powers. What! That monster, still covered with the blood of Count P—— and of D——! I would faint with horror the minute he approached me, or rather I would snatch up a knife and plunge it into his infamous heart. Do not ask me to do impossible things!

“Yes, above all forget Fabrizio! And not the shadow of vexation shown to the Prince, resume my usual gaiety of manner, which will appear agreeable enough to these wretched souls, first of all because I
will seem to be submitting with a good grace to their Sovereign, and second because, far from mocking them, I shall take care to play up all their pretty little virtues; for instance, I shall compliment Count Zurla on the beauty of the white feather in his hat which he has imported by courier from Lyons and which constitutes his chief happiness …

“To choose a lover from the Raversi faction.… If the Count goes, that will be the Ministerial party, and the power will be there. It will be a friend of the Marchesa Raversi’s who will rule over the Citadel, for Fabio Conti will move up to the Ministry. How can the Prince, a man of good society, a man of intelligence, accustomed to the Count’s delightful collaboration—how can the Prince conduct affairs with the assistance of this ox, this prize fool who has spent his whole life worrying one crucial problem: should His Highness’s soldiers wear seven buttons on their jackets or nine? These are the creatures, and all insanely jealous of me, who constitute your danger, dear Fabrizio! These are the animals who will decide my fate and yours! So we must not permit the Count to resign his post! Let him remain, even though he must suffer certain humiliations! If he still supposes that handing in his resignation is the greatest sacrifice a Prime Minister can make; and each time that his mirror tells him he is growing older, he offers me that sacrifice: hence, complete break; yes, and reconciliation only in the case where there will be no other means of keeping him from leaving his post. Naturally I shall give him his dismissal in the friendliest way possible; but after the diplomatic omission of the words
unjust proceedings
in the letter to the Prince, I feel that in order not to hate him, I need to spend some months without seeing him. On that decisive evening, I had no need of his cleverness; all he had to do was to write what I dictated to him, just that message,
which I had obtained
by my own character: his courtier manners carried him away. He told me the next day that he had not been able to make his Prince sign anything so absurd, that was what was needed was a
letter of pardon
: well, good Lord! With such people, such monsters of vanity and rancor known as the
Farnese
, you take what you can get.”

At the thought of this, all the Duchess’s rage revived. “The Prince has deceived me,” she said to herself, “and in such a cowardly fashion!… There is no excuse for this man: he has wit, discernment, the
capacity to reason; it is his passions which are the vile part of him. Twenty times the Count and I have noticed it—his mind becomes vulgar only when he imagines someone has tried to offend him. Well! Fabrizio’s crime has nothing to do with politics; it was one of those little murders that are counted by the hundreds in these happy territories, and the Count has sworn to me that he has obtained the most exact information, and that Fabrizio is innocent. That Giletti was not without courage: finding himself two steps away from the border, he was suddenly tempted to rid himself of an all too attractive rival.”

The Duchess paused a long while to consider if it was possible to believe in Fabrizio’s guilt: not that she considered it much of a sin, on the part of a gentleman of her nephew’s rank, to rid himself of an actor’s impertinence; but in her despair, she was beginning to feel somehow that she would be obliged to do battle in order to prove Fabrizio’s innocence. “No,” she said to herself at last, “here is a decisive proof; he is like poor Pietranera; he always has weapons in all his pockets, and on that day he was carrying only a miserable single-barreled rifle, and even that was borrowed from one of the workmen.

“I hate the Prince because he has deceived me, and deceived me in the most dastardly fashion; after his letter of pardon, he had the poor boy captured in Bologna, and so on. But these accounts will be settled.” Toward five in the morning, the Duchess, overwhelmed by this long fit of despair, rang for her serving-women, who shrieked when they saw her lying on her bed fully dressed, with all her diamonds, pale as her sheets and with her eyes closed: it was as if they were seeing her laid out on her bier after her death. They would have supposed her quite unconscious had they not remembered that she had just rung for them. A few scattered tears occasionally ran down her lifeless cheeks; her serving-women understood by a gesture that she wished to be put to bed.