The Charterhouse of Parma (48 page)

It was a great effort of virtue, on Clélia’s part, to write the penultimate line of this letter. Everyone was claiming, in court circles, that Signora Sanseverina was becoming very friendly with Count Baldi, that handsome man, the former lover of the Marchesa Raversi. What was certain was that he had broken with the latter in the most scandalous fashion, though for six years she had been more than a mother to him and had established him in society.

Clélia had been obliged to begin this hastily written little note over again, because her first version betrayed something of these new amours which public malice attributed to the Duchess.

“How vile of me!” she had reproached herself, “to say something bad to Fabrizio about the woman he loves …!”

The next morning, long before daybreak, Grillo entered Fabrizio’s room, set down a heavy package, and vanished without saying a word. This package contained a good-sized loaf of bread speckled on all sides with tiny ink crosses. Fabrizio covered them with kisses; he was in love. Next to the loaf was a roll of something wrapped in many folds of paper; it held six thousand francs in sequins; and last of all, Fabrizio found a handsome brand-new missal: a hand he was beginning to know had written these words in the margin:

Fabrizio hurriedly effaced these beloved words which might compromise Clélia, and tore out a great many pages of the missal, with the help of which he made several alphabets; each letter was carefully drawn with crushed charcoal soaked in wine. These alphabets were dry when at three-quarters past eleven Clélia appeared two steps back from the aviary window. “The great thing now,” Fabrizio said to himself, “is to get her to use them.” But luckily it so happened that she had many things to say to the young prisoner concerning the attempted poisoning: a dog belonging to one of the serving-girls had died from having eaten a dish intended for him. Clélia, far from offering objections to using the alphabets, had prepared a splendid one with ink. The conversation undertaken by this means, quite inconvenient in its initial phrases, lasted no less than an hour and a half, in other words all the time Clélia could remain in the aviary. Two or three times when Fabrizio permitted himself forbidden subjects, she did not answer, and left for a moment to give her birds the care they needed. Fabrizio had persuaded her that after dark, when she sent him water, she should include one of the alphabets which she had drawn in ink and which was much easier to read. He lost no time in writing a very long letter in which he was careful not to express any tender thoughts, at least not in a fashion which might give offense. This stratagem succeeded; his letter was accepted.

The following day, in their conversation by alphabets, Clélia made him no reproaches; she informed him that there was less danger of poison now; Barbone had been attacked and almost killed by some men who were courting the serving-maids in the governor’s kitchen; it was likely that he would not dare reappear there. Clélia confessed that for Fabrizio’s sake she had dared steal an antidote from her father; she was sending it to him: the important thing was to refuse any food served to him which seemed to taste strange.

Clélia had put many questions to Don Cesare, without managing to discover the provenance of the six hundred sequins Fabrizio had received;
in any case, the gift was an excellent sign; the severity of his supervision was diminishing.

This episode of the poison enormously advanced our prisoner’s interests, yet he could never obtain the least avowal which might resemble love, though he had the felicity of living on the most intimate terms with Clélia. Every morning, and frequently in the afternoons, there was a long conversation with the alphabets; each evening, at nine, Clélia accepted a long letter, and occasionally answered it with a few words; she would send him the newspaper and some books; finally Grillo had been won over to the point of permitting Fabrizio some bread and wine, which were delivered daily by Clélia’s chambermaid. The jailer had concluded from this that the Governor was not in agreement with the men who had ordered Barbone to poison the young Monsignore, and he was relieved to think so, as were all his comrades, for it had become proverbial in the prison that “you need only look into Monsignore del Dongo’s eyes for him to give you money.”

Fabrizio had grown quite pale; the complete lack of exercise was bad for his health; with this exception he had never been so happy. The tone of his conversations with Clélia was intimate, and occasionally very merry. The only moments of Clélia’s life which were not haunted by dreadful forebodings and remorse were those which she spent in such dialogues. One day she was rash enough to tell him: “I admire your delicacy; knowing I am the Governor’s daughter, you never mention your desire to regain your freedom.”

“That is because I am careful not to have any such nonsensical desire,” Fabrizio answered. “Once back in Parma, how would I see you again? And then life would be unendurable if I couldn’t tell you everything I think.… No, not quite everything I think, you have seen to that; but after all, despite your cruelty, living without seeing you every day would be a much worse torment than this prison! I’ve never been so happy in my life!… Isn’t it funny to discover that happiness was waiting for me in a prison?”

“There are many things to say in that regard,” replied Clélia with an expression suddenly very serious and almost sinister.

“What do you mean?” cried Fabrizio, suddenly alarmed. “Am I
likely now to lose this tiny place which I’ve been able to win in your heart and which constitutes all the happiness I have in this world?”

“Yes,” she told him, “I have every reason to believe that you have failed to be truthful with me, though you may be regarded in society as a man of honor; but I do not wish to discuss this subject today.”

This singular opening cast a pall of embarrassment over their conversation, and frequently his eyes or hers filled with tears.

Chief Justice Rassi was still aspiring to a change of name: he was quite tired of the one he had made for himself and longed to become Baron Riva. Count Mosca, for his part, was endeavoring with all the skill he possessed to strengthen this venal judge’s passion for the title, even as he sought to redouble the Prince’s mad hope of becoming Constitutional Monarch of Lombardy. These were the only means he could devise to delay Fabrizio’s death.

The Prince said to Rassi: “Fifteen days of despair and fifteen of hope—it is by such a regime, patiently followed, that we shall succeed in overcoming the character of this haughty woman; it is by such alternating harshness and gentleness that even the fiercest steeds are tamed. Apply the caustic firmly.”

Indeed, every fortnight a new rumor circulated in Parma announcing Fabrizio’s imminent execution. This report plunged the unhappy Duchess into the deepest despair. Loyal to her resolve not to drag the Count to his ruin, she was punished for her cruelty toward this poor man by the continual alternations of black despair in which her life was now spent. In vain Count Mosca, overcoming the cruel jealousy inspired by the handsome Count Baldi’s attentions, wrote to the Duchess whenever he was unable to see her and kept her abreast of whatever information he owed to the future Baron Riva’s zeal; the Duchess, in order to resist the terrible rumors that kept circulating about Fabrizio, would have needed to spend her every waking moment in the company of a man of heart and wit comparable to Mosca himself; Baldi’s emptiness, leaving her to her thoughts, afforded a dreadful style of existence, and the Count failed to communicate to her his own reasons for hope.

By means of various ingenious excuses, this Minister had managed to persuade the Prince to deposit in a friendly castle near Saronno, in
the very heart of Lombardy, the archives of all the highly complicated intrigues by means of which Ranuccio-Ernesto IV nourished the utterly absurd hope of becoming Constitutional Monarch of that fair region.

More than twenty of these highly compromising documents were in the Prince’s hand or signed by him, and in the event of Fabrizio’s life being seriously threatened, the Count had planned to inform his Highness that he would communicate these documents to a great power who, by a word, could crush him.

Count Mosca regarded himself as sure of the future Baron Riva, and feared only poison; Barbone’s attempt had greatly alarmed him, and to such a degree that he had decided to risk an action quite insane to all appearances. One morning he arrived at the Citadel gates and asked for General Fabio Conti, who came down as far as the bastion over the gates; here, strolling in a friendly fashion after a bittersweet and conventional little preface, the Count did not hesitate to remark: “If Fabrizio dies under suspicious circumstances, this death may well be laid to my account; I shall pass for a jealous man, which would be an abominable absurdity for me, one I should be determined not to accept. Therefore, and to clear myself of it, were Fabrizio to die of some sickness, I should kill you with my own hands, you may count on that.”

General Fabio Conti made a splendid reply and spoke of his own valor, but he could not get the Count’s expression out of his mind.

A few days later, and as if he had conspired with the Count, Chief Justice Rassi allowed himself a singular indiscretion for such a man. The public scorn attached to his name which was proverbial among the common people had sickened him ever since he had nourished some definite hopes of being able to escape such a label. He sent General Fabio Conti an official copy of the sentence condemning Fabrizio to an imprisonment of twelve years in the Citadel. According to the law, this is what should have been done the very day after Fabrizio entered the prison; but what was unheard-of in Parma, that realm of secret measures, was that the courts should permit such a step without the Sovereign’s express orders to do so. Indeed, how to encourage hopes of redoubling the Duchess’s alarm every fortnight, and of taming this proud nature, as the Prince put it, once an official copy of the
sentence had left the Chancellery of Justice? The day before the day when General Fabio Conti received Chief Justice Rassi’s official communication, he learned that the clerk Barbone had been badly beaten upon returning somewhat late to the Citadel; from this he concluded that there was no longer any question in certain quarters of doing away with Fabrizio; and by a touch of prudence which saved Rassi from the immediate consequences of his folly, he made no mention to the Prince, upon the first audience he obtained with him, of the official copy of the prisoner’s sentence which had been transmitted to him. The Count had discovered, fortunately for the poor Duchess’s peace of mind, that Barbone’s clumsy attempt had been no more than an impulse of private revenge, and he had caused that clerk to be given the warning already mentioned.

Fabrizio was quite agreeably surprised when, after one hundred and thirty-five days in prison, in a rather narrow cell, the good chaplain Don Cesare arrived one Thursday to take him for a stroll on the esplanade of the Farnese Tower: Fabrizio had not been there ten minutes when, overcome by the freshness of the air, he was taken ill.

Don Cesare made the incident an excuse to grant Fabrizio half an hour’s such exercise every day. This was a piece of folly; such frequent strolls soon restored to our hero a strength which he abused.

There were several more serenades; the punctilious Governor permitted them only because they involved the Marchese Crescenzi with his daughter Clélia, whose character now alarmed him; he vaguely realized that there was no point of contact between her and himself, and still feared some action on her part. She might take refuge in a convent, and he would be quite helpless to prevent it. Furthermore, the General feared that all this music, whose sounds could penetrate to the deepest dungeons reserved for the blackest Liberals, might contain signals. The musicians themselves roused his jealousy for their own sake; hence no sooner was the serenade over than they were confined in the great lower halls of the Governor’s
palazzo
, which by day served as staff offices, and released only the next morning in broad daylight. It was the Governor himself who, standing on the slave’s bridge, had them searched in his presence and restored their liberty, not without repeating several times that he would immediately hang any man who
might have the audacity to bear messages of any kind to any prisoner. And it was known that in his fear of giving offense he was a man to keep his word, so that the Marchese Crescenzi was obliged to pay his musicians three times their usual fee, so distressed had they been to spend the night in prison.

All that the Duchess could obtain, and this with the greatest difficulty, from the cowardice of one of these men, was that he would take a letter which would be delivered to the Governor. The letter was addressed to Fabrizio, and in it the writer deplored the fatality which so arranged matters that after he had spent more than five months in prison, Fabrizio’s friends in the world outside had been unable to establish any correspondence with him whatsoever.

Upon entering the Citadel, this bribed musician flung himself at General Conti’s feet and confessed that a priest unknown to him had so insisted that he take a letter to Signor del Dongo that he had not dared refuse; but that knowing his duty, he now made haste to put it into His Excellency’s hands.

His Excellency was highly flattered: he knew the resources at the Duchess’s disposal, and was terrified of being hoaxed. In his delight, the General went so far as to present this letter to the Prince, who was delighted.

“So, the firmness of my administration has afforded me my revenge! This haughty woman has been suffering for five months! But one of these days we’ll have a scaffold built, and her wild imagination will not fail to believe that it is intended for young del Dongo!”