The Charterhouse of Parma (43 page)

The following day, three great pieces of news stirred the high society of Parma, and even the bourgeoisie. Fabrizio’s execution was more certain than ever; and, a curious complement to this news, the Duchess did not appear too upset about it. To all appearances, she suffered only moderate regrets on account of her young lover; nonetheless she benefited with infinite art from the pallor due to a rather serious indisposition, occurring at the same time as Fabrizio’s arrest. The bourgeois easily recognized, from these details, the cold heart of a great lady of the Court. Yet out of decency, and as a sort of sacrifice to the shade of young Fabrizio, she had broken with Count Mosca.

“How immoral!” exclaimed the Jansenists of Parma.

But already the Duchess, incredibly enough, seemed disposed to listen to the flatteries of the handsomest young men at Court. It was noticed, among other singularities, that she had been extremely gay in a conversation with Count Baldi, the present lover of the Raversi woman, and had teased him mercilessly on his frequent visits to the Castle of Velleja. The petite bourgeoisie and the peasants were outraged by the death of Fabrizio, which these good people attributed to Count Mosca’s jealousy. Court circles were also much concerned with the Count, but to deride him. The third of the great pieces of news
we announced was none other, indeed, than the Count’s resignation; everyone was making fun of an absurd lover who, at the age of fifty-six, had sacrificed a magnificent position to the disappointment of being left by a heartless woman who had long since preferred a younger man. Only the Archbishop had the wit, or rather the heart, to divine that honor forbade the Count to remain Prime Minister in a country where a young man who was his protégé was to be decapitated without his even being consulted. The news of the Count’s resignation had the effect of curing General Fabio Conti of his gout, as we shall relate in the proper place, when we shall be speaking of how poor Fabrizio was spending his time in the Citadel, while the whole city was wondering about the hour of his execution.

The following day, the Count saw Bruno, that loyal agent he had sent to Bologna; the Count was waiting for the moment when this man would enter his cabinet; the sight of him recalled the happy state which he had enjoyed when he sent the man to Bologna, more or less in agreement with the Duchess. Bruno arrived from Bologna, where he had learned nothing; he had not been able to find Ludovic, whom the magistrate of Castelnovo had kept in the prison of that village.

“I’m sending you back to Bologna,” the Count said to Bruno; “the Duchess insists on the melancholy pleasure of learning all the details of Fabrizio’s misfortune. Inquire of the brigadier of police in command of the Castelnovo station.… No, wait!” the Count exclaimed, breaking off. “Leave right now for Lombardy, and distribute a good quantity of money to all our agents there. My purpose is to obtain reports of the most encouraging nature from all of these people.”

Bruno, having perfectly understood the purpose of his mission, set about writing his letters of credit; as the Count was giving him his final instructions, he received a patently false but very well written letter; it appeared to be from a friend writing to a friend to ask a favor. The friend who was writing was none other than the Prince. Having heard something about certain plans of a resignation, he beseeched his friend Count Mosca to remain at his post; he asked this of him in the name of friendship and with regard to the
dangers to the fatherland;
and commanded as much as his Sovereign. He added that since the King of —— had just put two Cordons of his Order at the writer’s disposal,
he would keep one for himself and send the other to his dear Count Mosca.

“This creature will be the ruin of me!” exclaimed the furious Count in the presence of a stupefied Bruno, “and he expects to seduce me by those same hypocritical phrases we so often devised together to beguile some fool or other …”

He rejected the Order that had been offered, and in his answer spoke of the state of his health as leaving him only very faint hopes of being able to perform the heavy duties of the Ministry in the future. The Count was furious. A moment later, the Fiscal Rassi was announced, whom he treated like a blackamoor.

“So now that I’ve made you a noble, you start playing the insolent with me! Why didn’t you come yesterday to thank me, as was your bounden duty, Baron Lackey?”

Rassi was beyond any such insults; this was the tone by which the Prince received him every day; but he craved being a Baron and excused his behavior with a certain wit. Nothing was easier.

“The Prince kept me nailed to a desk all day yesterday; I could not leave the palace. His Highness made me copy in my wretched attorney’s hand any number of diplomatic documents that were so stupid and so prolix that I truly believe that his sole purpose was to keep me prisoner. When I was finally able to take my leave, around five o’clock, dying of hunger, he ordered me to proceed directly home and not to go out at all that evening. As a matter of fact, I saw two of his private spies, well known to me, strolling up and down my street until midnight. This morning, as soon as I could, I sent for a carriage, which took me as far as the Cathedral doors. I got out very slowly and then, walking through the church as fast as I could, I came here. Your Excellency is at this very moment the one man in the world I most desire to please.”

“And I, Baron Joker, I am not in the least deceived by all these more or less plausible stories of yours! You refused to speak to me about Fabrizio the day before yesterday; I respected your scruples and your oaths of secrecy, though oaths for a creature like yourself are at most no more than means of evasion. Today I want the truth: what are these
absurd rumors about condemning this young man to death as the murderer of the actor Giletti?”

“No one can account for these rumors to your Excellency better than I, since it is I who started them on the Sovereign’s orders; and come to think of it, it may be to prevent me from informing you of such an incident that he kept me prisoner all day yesterday! The Prince, who does not take me for a madman, could have no doubts that I would come to you with my Cross and request that you fasten it in my buttonhole.”

“To the point!” exclaimed the Minister. “No more fine speeches.”

“Certainly the Prince would prefer to pass a death sentence upon Signor del Dongo, but he has been sentenced, as you doubtless know, to no more than twenty years in irons, commuted by His Highness the very day following the sentence to twelve years in the Fortress with fasting on bread and water every Friday, and other religious observances.”

“It is because I knew of this sentence to imprisonment only that I was alarmed by the rumors of imminent execution spreading through town; I remember the death of Count Palanza, so cleverly devised by you.”

“That was when I should have had my Cross!” exclaimed Rassi, in no way disconcerted. “I should have turned the screws while I held him in my hand, and while our man was eager to secure this death. What a fool I was then, and it is armed with this experience that I dare advise you not to follow my example today.” This comparison appeared in the very worst taste to his interlocutor, who was obliged to restrain himself to avoid kicking Rassi. “First of all,” he continued, with the logic of a jurist and the perfect assurance of a man whom no insult could offend, “first of all there can be no question of the execution of the said del Dongo; the Prince would not dare! Times have changed! And then too, I, a nobleman hoping by your intervention to become a Baron, I would not lend a hand. Now, as Your Excellency knows, it is exclusively from me that the executioner can receive orders, and I swear to you, Cavaliere Rassi will never give any against Signor del Dongo.”

“And you will be acting wisely,” said the Count, staring at him intensely.

“Let us make a distinction here,” Rassi continued with a smile. “I am involved only in the official deaths, and if Signor del Dongo were to die of a colic, I am not to be held responsible! The Prince is in a frenzy, and I do not know why, against the Sanseverina.” (Three days earlier, Rassi would have said “the Duchess,” but like the rest of the town, he knew of her break with the Prime Minister.)

The Count was struck by the suppression of the title in this man’s mouth, and what pleasure it gave him can be imagined; he shot Rassi a glance filled with the most intense hatred. “My beloved angel!” he said to himself later. “I can only show you my love by blindly obeying your orders.”

“I confess to you,” he observed to the Fiscal, “that I take no very passionate interest in Signora the Duchess’s whims; however, since she had introduced me to this unfortunate Fabrizio, who should indeed have remained in Naples and not come here to meddle in our business, I insist that he not be put to death during my tenure, and I am quite willing to give you my word that you shall be named Baron within the eight days which follow his release from prison.”

“In that case, Signor Count, I shall be a Baron only after twelve years have passed, for the Prince is furious, and his hatred against the Duchess is so intense that he seeks to conceal it.”

“His Highness is only too kind! What need has he of concealing his hatred, since his Prime Minister no longer protects the Duchess? I merely choose not to be accused of baseness, and above all not of jealousy: it is I who invited the Duchess to Parma, and if Fabrizio dies in prison, you shall not be a Baron, but you may well be stabbed. But enough of such details: the fact is that I have examined my fortune; I have found an income of scarcely twenty thousand a year, on which I intend to offer my humble resignation to the Sovereign. I have some hopes of being employed by the King of Naples: that great city will offer me certain distractions which I need at this moment, and which I cannot find in a hole like Parma; only if you might enable me to obtain the hand of Princess Isotta would I remain,” and so on.

The conversation on this subject was endless. As Rassi stood up to
take his leave, the Count said to him with an indifferent expression: “As you know, it has been said that Fabrizio was deceiving me, since he is accounted one of the Duchess’s lovers; I put no credence in such a rumor, and to give it the lie, I want you to see to it that this purse is given to Fabrizio.”

“But Signor Count,” said Rassi with alarm, eyeing the purse, “what you have there is an enormous sum, and the regulations …”

“For you, my dear, it may be enormous,” the Count continued with an expression of the most sovereign disdain. “A bourgeois like you, sending money to a friend who happens to be in prison, imagines he is ruining himself by bestowing ten sequins; it is my
wish
that Fabrizio receive these six thousand francs, and in particular that the Palace know nothing of such a gift.”

Even as the terrified Rassi sought to reply, the Count impatiently closed the door on him. “Such people,” he said to himself, “see power only when it is behind insolence.” Whereupon this great Minister gave himself up to an action so absurd that it affords us some pain to report it; he ran to take a miniature portrait of the Duchess out of his desk, and covered it with passionate kisses. “Forgive me, my darling angel,” he exclaimed, “if I failed to throw this lackey out of the window with my own hands, who dares speak of you in such familiar tones, but if I behave with such excessive forbearance, it is out of obedience to your wishes! And he will lose nothing by waiting!”

After a long conversation with this portrait, the Count, who felt his heart dying in his breast, had the notion of an absurd action to which he gave himself up with childish eagerness. He sent for a coat bearing all his decorations, and paid a visit to the old Princess Isotta; in all his life he had been presented in her apartments only once, on the occasion of New Year’s Day. Now he found her surrounded by a number of little dogs, and decked out in all her finery, including her diamonds, as if she were going to Court. When the Count instanced a certain fear of disturbing Her Highness’s arrangements, since she was doubtless about to leave for some occasion, Her Highness replied to the Minister that a Princess of Parma owed it to herself always to be in such array. For the first time since his misfortunes began, the Count experienced an impulse of gaiety. “I did well to come here,” he said to himself,
“and here and now I must make my declaration.” The Princess had been delighted to receive a visit from a man so renowned for his wit and a Prime Minister as well; the poor old maid was anything but accustomed to such attentions. The Count began by an adroit prologue, relative to the enormous distance which will ever separate the members of a ruling family from a mere nobleman.

“There are distinctions to be drawn,” the Princess said; “the daughter of a King of France, for instance, has no hope of ever succeeding to the Throne; but such is not the course of events in the family of Parma. That is why we Farnese must always preserve a certain external dignity; and I, a poor Princess as you find me today, I cannot say that it is absolutely impossible that one day you might indeed be my Prime Minister.”

The unexpected fantasy of this notion gave the poor Count a second moment of complete gaiety. As he left the apartments of the Princess Isotta, who had blushed deeply upon receiving the avowal of the Prime Minister’s passion, the Count encountered one of the palace footmen: the Prince had sent for him, and required his presence with all possible celerity.

“I am ill,” the Minister replied, delighted to be able to offer an affront to his Prince. “Aha, you drive me to the brink,” he exclaimed in a rage, “and then you want my services! But you will learn, my Prince, that to have received power from Providence no longer suffices in this day and age—it requires a great deal of intelligence and a strong character to succeed in being a tyrant.”

After dismissing the footman, who was deeply scandalized by this invalid’s perfect health, the Count found it agreeable to visit the two men of the Court who had the most influence over General Fabio Conti. What made the Minister tremble most particularly and robbed him of all courage was that the Governor of the Citadel was accused of having in the past done away with a captain, his personal enemy, by means of the
aquetta di Perugia
.