The Charterhouse of Parma (62 page)

The words
low birth
greatly pleased the Princess, who felt that the Count and his mistress had too exclusive an esteem for intelligence, always a little too closely related to Jacobinism.

During the brief moment of profound silence, filled by the Princess’s reflections, the Palace clock chimed three o’clock. The Princess stood up, curtsied deeply to her son, and said: “My health does not
permit me to extend this discussion any longer. No minister of
low birth
—ever! You will never free me of the notion that your Rassi has stolen half the money he has made you spend on spying!” The Princess took two candles out of their sconces and put them in the fireplace, so that they did not go out; then, coming close to her son, she added: “La Fontaine’s fable wins out, in my mind, over the just desire to avenge a husband. Does Your Highness permit me to burn these
writings
?”

The Prince remained motionless.

“He really has a stupid face,” the Duchess said to herself; “the Count is right: the late Prince would not have made us stay up till three in the morning before making up his mind.”

The Princess, still standing, added: “That little lawyer would be quite proud, were he to know that his miserable papers, stuffed with lies and arranged for his own advancement, have occupied the two greatest personages in the Kingdom all night long!”

The Prince hurled himself like a madman on one of the portfolios and emptied its entire contents into the fireplace. The mass of papers was about to extinguish the two candles; the room filled with smoke. The Princess saw in her son’s eyes that he was tempted to take up a carafe and save these papers, which had cost him eighty thousand francs.

“Then open the window!” she shrieked at the Duchess angrily. The Duchess hastened to obey; immediately all the papers caught fire at once; there was a great roar in the fireplace, and soon it was apparent that the chimney was on fire.

The Prince had a petty nature with regard to all money matters; he saw his Palace going up in flames, and all the treasures it contained destroyed; he ran to the window and summoned the guard in a voice quite different from his usual one. At the sound of the Prince’s voice, the soldiers rushed into the building in great confusion, and he returned to the fireplace, which was drawing air from the open window with a really terrifying noise. He lost patience, swore, walked back and forth in the study a few times like a man beside himself, and finally ran out of the room.

The Princess and her Mistress of the Robes remained standing, facing each other, preserving a profound silence.

“Is there going to be another fit of rage?” the Duchess asked herself. “My word, I’ve won my case.” And she was preparing to be quite impertinent in her replies when a sudden thought struck her; she saw the second portfolio intact. “No, my case is only half won!” And she said quite coolly to the Princess: “Does Her Highness order me to burn the rest of these papers?”

“And where will you burn them?” the Princess asked crossly.

“In the salon fireplace; if they are tossed in one by one, there will be no danger.”

The Duchess put the portfolio crammed with papers under her arm, took up a candle, and walked into the adjoining salon. She had time to notice that this portfolio was the one filled with depositions, put five or six bundles of paper in her shawl, and carefully burned the rest, then vanished without taking leave of the Princess. “There’s a fine piece of impertinence,” she said to herself laughing; “but with all that woman’s affectations of inconsolable widowhood, she nearly caused me to lose my head on the scaffold.”

Hearing the sound of the Duchess’s carriage, the Princess was filled with rage against her Mistress of the Robes.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the Duchess had the Count summoned; he was observing the fire at the Palace, but soon appeared with the news that it was all over. “The little Prince actually showed a good deal of courage, and I offered him my warmest compliments.”

“Give a quick look at these depositions, and then burn them at once.”

The Count read and turned pale. “My word, they were getting quite close to the truth; this business is cleverly put together, they’re right on Ferrante Palla’s heels; and if he talks, we’re in a tight spot.”

“But he won’t talk!” the Duchess exclaimed. “He is a man of honor, that Ferrante. Burn them, burn them!”

“Not yet. Allow me to copy out the names of twelve or fifteen dangerous witnesses, whom I shall take the liberty of removing, if our Rassi ever tries to begin again.”

“May I remind Your Excellency that the Prince has given his word to say nothing to his Minister of Justice concerning our nocturnal escapade.”

“Out of cowardice and fear of a scene, he will most likely keep it.”

“Now, my friend, this has been a night which brings our wedding a good deal closer; I would not have chosen to bring you a criminal file as a dowry, and especially for a sin which my interests in another man have made me commit.”

The Count was a man in love; he took the Duchess’s hand and uttered a great cry; there were tears in his eyes.

“Before leaving, give me some advice as to how I must behave with the Princess; I am dying of fatigue, I acted on the stage for an hour, and for five in that woman’s study.”

“You have taken sufficient revenge for the Princess’s nasty remarks, which were no more than weakness, by the impertinence of your departure just now. Tomorrow you will resume with her the tone you employed this morning; Rassi is not yet in prison or in exile, we have not yet torn up Fabrizio’s sentence. You were asking the Princess to reach a decision, which always makes Princes and even Prime Ministers cross; after all, you are her Mistress of the Robes, which is to say, her servant. By a reaction which is infallible in weak people, in three days Rassi will be in higher favor than ever; he’ll try to have someone hanged: so long as he hasn’t compromised the Prince, he’s sure of nothing.… There was a man hurt in the fire tonight, a tailor who showed, upon my word, extraordinary bravery. Tomorrow I shall oblige the Prince to take my arm and accompany me on a visit to that tailor; I’ll be armed to the teeth and I’ll keep my eyes open; moreover this young Prince is not yet hated. But I want to get him used to walking in the streets—it’s a trick I’m playing on Rassi, who will certainly succeed me and who will no longer be able to indulge in such rashness. On our way back from the tailor, I shall have the Prince pass in front of his father’s statue; he will notice the places where stones have broken the Roman toga that imbecile sculptor has wrapped around him; and finally the Prince will be quite a fool indeed if he doesn’t make this reflection on his own: ‘That’s what one gains by hanging Jacobins.’ To which I shall reply: ‘You must hang ten thousand or none:
Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre
destroyed the Protestants in France.’ … Tomorrow, dear friend, before my promenade with the Prince, have yourself announced at his Palace and tell him: ‘Last night I served you
as a Minister and gave you certain advice, and on your orders I have incurred the Princess’s displeasure; you must pay me for that.’ He will be expecting a request for money, and will frown; you will leave him plunged in this misery as long as you can, then you will say: ‘I beg Your Highness to order Fabrizio to be judged
in contraddittorio’
—which means he himself will be present—’by the twelve most respected judges in your Realm.’ And without wasting any time, you will ask him to sign a little text written in your own lovely hand, and which I shall dictate to you; I shall include in it, of course, the clause to the effect that the former sentence is quashed. There can be only one objection to this; but, if you proceed swiftly enough, it will not occur to the Prince. He may say to you: ‘Fabrizio must be made a prisoner in the Fortress.’ To which you will reply: ‘He will give himself up to the municipal prison.’ (You know that I am master there, and your nephew will come to see you every evening.) If the Prince answers you: ‘No, his escape has tainted the honor of my Fortress, and for form’s sake, I must have him return to the room where he was,’ you will answer in your turn: ‘No, for there he will be at the mercy of my enemy Rassi.’ And by one of those womanly phrases which you know how to insinuate so well, you will lead him to understand that in order to make Rassi yield, you might indeed tell him about tonight’s
auto-da-fé;
if the Prince insists, you will inform him that you are going to spend a fortnight on your Sacca estate.… You will have Fabrizio summoned and will consult him about this procedure which may put him back in prison. Let us anticipate all possibilities: if, while your nephew is under lock and key, Rassi has me poisoned in a fit of impatience, Fabrizio may run certain dangers. But that is highly unlikely; you know that I have hired a French cook, the merriest of men and inclined to punning; now, punning is incompatible with murder. I’ve already told our friend Fabrizio that I’ve collected all the witnesses of his fine and courageous action; it was clearly Giletti who wanted to kill
him
. I haven’t mentioned these witnesses to you because I wanted to surprise you, but that plan fell through; the Prince refused to sign. I told our Fabrizio that of course I would obtain a high ecclesiastical office for him; but I shall have great difficulties if his enemies can provide the papal court with an accusation of murder.… You realize, Signora, that
if he is not tried and judged quite formally, the name Giletti will cause him trouble for the rest of his life. It would be a great piece of cowardice not to be tried and judged, when one is certain of one’s innocence. Moreover, even if he were guilty, I would get him off. When I spoke to him, the hot-headed young man did not even let me finish; he took up the official almanac, and together we chose the twelve most learned and honorable judges; the list is drawn up, and we have erased six names, which we replaced by six learned attorneys, my personal enemies, and since we could discover only two such enemies, we have filled the list by four rascals devoted to Rassi.”

This proposal of the Count’s greatly alarmed the Duchess, and with good cause; at last she saw reason, and at the Minister’s dictation, wrote the document naming the judges.

The Count did not leave her until six in the morning; she attempted to sleep, but in vain. At nine o’clock, she breakfasted with Fabrizio, whom she found burning with a desire to be tried; at ten o’clock she waited on the Princess, who was not to be seen; at eleven she saw the Prince, who was holding his levee, and who signed the document without the slightest objection. The Duchess sent the document to the Count, and retired to bed.

It would perhaps be amusing to describe Rassi’s rage, when the Count compelled him to countersign, in the Prince’s presence, the document the latter had signed earlier that day; but the pressure of events forbids …

The Count discussed the merit of each judge, and offered to change the names. But the reader is perhaps a trifle weary of these procedural details, no less than of these Court intrigues. From all such matters, the moral can be drawn that the man who approaches a Court compromises his happiness, if he is happy, and in any case risks making his future depend on the intrigues of some chambermaid.

On the other hand, in America, in the Republic, one must waste a whole day in paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the streets, and must become as stupid as they are; and over there, no opera.

The Duchess, at her evening levee, had a moment of intense anxiety: Fabrizio was not to be found; finally, around midnight, at the Court performance, she received a letter from him. Instead of committing
himself to the municipal prison, where the Count was master, he had gone back to his old room in the Fortress, only too happy to be living a few feet away from Clélia.

This was an event of enormous importance: in such a place he was more exposed to poisoning than ever. This folly reduced the Duchess to despair; she forgave the cause of it, the passionate love for Clélia, because in a few days’ time the girl would be marrying the rich Marchese Crescenzi. This mad action restored to Fabrizio all his old influence over the Duchess’s heart.

“It is that cursed paper which I obliged the Prince to sign which will cause Fabrizio’s death! How insane these men are with their notions of honor! As if there was any reason to consider honor under absolute governments in realms where a Rassi is Minister of Justice! We ought to have accepted there and then the pardon the Prince would have signed just as readily as he signed the order convening that extraordinary tribunal. After all, what does it matter if a man of Fabrizio’s birth is more or less accused of having taken up a sword and killed an actor like that Giletti with his own hand!”

No sooner had she received Fabrizio’s letter than the Duchess ran to the Count, whom she found pale as death.

“Good God! My dear Duchess, I have an unlucky touch with that boy, and you’ll be angry with me all over again. I can prove to you that I summoned last night the jailer of the municipal prison; every day, your nephew could have come to take tea with you. The dreadful thing is that it is impossible for you and for me to tell the Prince that we fear poison, and poison administered by Rassi; such suspicion would seem to him the height of immorality. Yet if you insist upon it, I am ready to go to the Palace; but I am sure of the answer. I can tell you more; I offer you a means which I would not employ for myself: since I have held power in this realm, I have not put a single man to death, and you know that I am so sensitive in this regard that sometimes, at dusk, I still think of those two spies I had shot a little too lightheartedly in Spain. Well! Do you want me to get rid of Rassi for you? The danger he represents to Fabrizio is limitless; he has there a sure means of getting rid of
me
 …”

The Duchess was greatly tempted by this proposal, but she did not
accept it. “I cannot endure,” she said to the Count, “under that beautiful Neapolitan sky of ours, that you should suffer from such dark thoughts when night comes on.”

“But my dear friend, it seems to me that we have no choice except among dark thoughts. What will become of you, what would become of me indeed, if Fabrizio is carried off by some sickness?”