The Charterhouse of Parma (64 page)

The Duchess, in desperation, risked going into the salon where the Marchese Crescenzi, who was in attendance that day, happened to be. On the Duchess’s return to Parma, he had effusively thanked her for the title of
Cavaliere d’Onore
, to which, without her intervention, he would never have had any claim. There had been no lack of protestations of limitless devotion on his part. The Duchess addressed him with these words: “Rassi is prepared to poison Fabrizio, who is in the Fortress! I want you to put some chocolate in your pocket, and a bottle of water which I shall give you. Go up to the Fortress and save my life by telling General Fabio Conti that you’ll break off your engagement to his daughter if he does not allow you to give Fabrizio this water and this chocolate with your own hands.”

The Marchese turned pale and his face, far from being animated by these words, revealed the crassest embarrassment; he could not believe in so dreadful a crime in a city so law-abiding as Parma, ruled by so great a Prince, etc.; moreover he uttered these platitudes with singular deliberation. In a word, the Duchess was confronting an honest man but a very weak one unable to bring himself to act. After twenty
such phrases interrupted by the Duchess’s shrieks of impatience, he hit upon an excellent notion: the oath he had taken as
Cavaliere d’Onore
forbade him to take part in any actions against the government …

Who could conceive the Duchess’s anxiety and her despair, conscious as she was that time was flying?

“But at least go see the Governor, tell him I shall pursue Fabrizio’s murderers to hell itself!”

Despair seconded the Duchess’s natural eloquence, but all her intensity merely alarmed the Marchese further and increased his irresolution; after an hour, he was less disposed to take action than at the first moment.

The wretched woman, now in the extremities of desperation and realizing that the Governor would refuse nothing to so wealthy a son-in-law, went so far as to kneel at his feet, whereupon the Marchese Crescenzi’s cowardice seemed to increase further; he himself, viewing this strange spectacle, feared to be unwittingly compromised; but a singular thing happened: the Marchese, a good man at heart, was touched by the tears and by the position at his feet of so lovely and especially so powerful a woman. “I myself, noble and rich as I am,” he said to himself, “may one day also be at some Republican’s feet!” The Marchese began to shed tears, and finally it was agreed that the Duchess, in her capacity as Mistress of the Robes, would present the Marchese to the Princess, who would grant permission for him to give Fabrizio a little basket, the contents of which, he would declare, he was entirely ignorant.

The previous evening, before the Duchess knew of Fabrizio’s folly of presenting himself at the Fortress, there had been a
commedia dell’arte
performance at court, and the Prince, who always insisted on playing the lover’s part with the Duchess, had spoken of his feelings with such passion that he would have been quite ridiculous if, in Italy, a passionate man or a Prince could be any such thing!

The Prince, quite shy yet invariably taking any matter concerning love with the greatest seriousness, happened at that moment to encounter the Duchess in one of the corridors of the Palace; she was accompanying the Marchese Crescenzi, who appeared to be quite upset, to the Princess’s apartments. So dazzled was he by the beauty, heightened
by despair, of the Mistress of the Robes that for the first time in his life the Prince showed some character: with a more than imperious gesture, he dismissed the Marchese and proceeded to make the Duchess a formal declaration of love. No doubt the Prince had arranged his words long in advance, for some of them were fairly sensible.

“Since the conventions of my rank forbid me to grant myself the supreme happiness of marrying you, I swear to you on the Blessed Sacrament never to marry any other woman without your written permission. I am quite aware,” he added, “that I am causing you to forfeit the hand of a Prime Minister, a clever and agreeable man; but after all, he is fifty-six years old, and I am not yet twenty-two. I should be offering you an insult and deserving your refusal were I to refer to certain advantages which have nothing to do with love; but all who take some interest in money matters at my court speak admiringly of the proof of his love which the Count bestows upon you by making you the custodian of all he possesses. I would be only too happy to imitate him in this regard. You will make better use of my fortune than I myself, and you shall have the entire disposition of the annual amount which my Ministers hand over to the Intendant-General of my Crown; so that it shall be you, my dear Duchess, who will determine the sums I shall expend each month.”

The Duchess found all these details very long; Fabrizio’s perils were piercing her to the heart. “But don’t you understand, my dear Prince,” she exclaimed, “that at this very moment Fabrizio is being poisoned in your own Fortress? Save him! I believe all you say!”

Everything about this little speech was ill-advised. At the mere mention of poison, all the enthusiasm and good faith which this poor high-principled Prince had put into his words vanished in a twinkling; the Duchess realized her blunder only when there was no longer time to remedy her words, and her desperation increased, a phenomenon she would have imagined impossible. “If I had not mentioned poison,” she said to herself, “he would have granted Fabrizio his freedom for my sake. O beloved Fabrizio!” she added. “It is fated, then, that I must be the one to stab you to the heart by my stupidity!”

It took the Duchess a long time and a great many coquetries to bring the Prince back to his speeches of impassioned love; but he remained
deeply offended. It was his mind alone that was speaking; his heart had been frozen by the notion of poison first of all, and then by that other notion, quite as unflattering as the first was terrible: “Poison is being used in my realm, and without my being informed of it! Rassi intends to disgrace me in the eyes of all Europe! And God knows what I shall be reading next month in the Paris newspapers!”

Suddenly this shy young man’s soul fell silent within him; an idea had occurred to him. “My dear Duchess! You know how attached to you I am. Your horrid notions about poison are quite unfounded, I like to think; but at least they lead me to certain conclusions, they almost make me forget, for a moment, my passion for you, which is the only one I have felt in all my life. I feel that I am not attractive; I am no more than a boy who is deeply in love; but at least put me to the test.” The Prince grew quite animated in using such language.

“Save Fabrizio, and I shall believe it all! No doubt I have been carried away by maternal feelings; but send for Fabrizio at this very moment, have him taken from the Fortress so that I may see him. If he is still alive, send him from this Palace to the municipal prison, where he will remain for months on end, should Your Highness require it, until the date of his trial.”

With despair, the Duchess saw that the Prince, instead of immediately granting so simple a request, had turned quite morose; he blushed deeply, stared at the Duchess; then he lowered his eyes and his cheeks grew pale. The inopportune mention of poison had suggested an idea worthy of his father or of Philip II, though he dared not put it into words.

“Listen to me, my dear Duchess,” he said at last as though against his will and in a tone that was anything but gracious, “I am quite aware that you regard me as no more than a boy, and a graceless one to boot: I am now going to say something horrible to you, but something suggested to me at this very moment by my true and deep passion for you. If I believed for an instant in this matter of poison, I should already have taken action, as my duty commands; but I can see nothing in your request but a caprice of passion, of which, if I may say so, I do not entirely comprehend the significance. You want me to take action without consulting my Ministers, though I have been reigning for no more
than three months! You ask me to make a great exception to my usual mode of conduct, which I have always regarded as quite reasonable. It is you, Signora, who are Absolute Sovereign at this moment, it is you who give me hopes for the matter which is everything to me; but in an hour, when this fantasy of poison—when this nightmare—will have vanished, my presence will become importunate to you, and you will withdraw your favor from me. So I must have a promise: swear to me, Duchess, that if Fabrizio is restored to you safe and sound, I shall obtain from you, within the next three months, all the felicity my love can desire; you shall guarantee the happiness of my whole life by putting an hour of your own at my disposal, and you shall be wholly mine.”

At that moment, the Palace clock struck two. “Ah! It may be too late,” thought the Duchess. “I swear it,” she exclaimed, with a wild look in her eyes.

At once the Prince became a different man; he ran to the far end of the gallery, which led to the room of his aides-de-camp. “General Fontana, go to the Fortress immediately; as fast as you can, get up to the room where Signor del Dongo is being held, and bring him here to me, I must speak to him within twenty minutes—in fifteen if possible.”

“Ah, General!” exclaimed the Duchess, who had followed the Prince. “A single minute may determine my whole life. No doubt it is a false report which makes me fear that Fabrizio is being poisoned: shout to him as soon as you are within hearing that he is to eat nothing. If he has begun his meal, make him vomit—tell him I wish it, use force if necessary; tell him that I am following close behind you, and I shall be in your debt for life.”

“Your Grace, my horse is saddled, I am regarded as something of a horseman, and I am off at a gallop. I shall be at the Fortress eight minutes ahead of you.”

“And I, dear Duchess,” the Prince exclaimed, “ask you for four of those eight minutes.” The aide-de-camp had vanished, a man whose sole merit was knowing how to ride. No sooner had the door closed behind him than the young Prince, who appeared to have acquired some character, seized the Duchess’s hand. “Consent, Madame,” he
said in a passionate tone of voice, “to accompany me to the chapel.” At a loss for the first time in her life, the Duchess followed him without uttering a word. She and the Prince hurried along the whole length of the Grand Gallery, the chapel being at the far end. Once inside the chapel, the Prince fell to his knees, almost as much in front of the Duchess as before the altar. “Repeat your oath,” he said passionately. “If you had been fair, if this unfortunate accident of princely rank had not been my undoing, you would have granted out of pity for my love what you now owe me because you have sworn it.”

“If I see Fabrizio again, and not poisoned, if he is still alive in eight days, if His Highness appoints him Coadjutor and next in succession to Archbishop Landriani, I shall give up my honor, my dignity as a woman—I shall sacrifice everything and give myself to His Highness.”

“But
dear friend
,” said the Prince with a mixture of timid anxiety and tenderness which was quite appealing, “I fear some unforeseeable stratagem which might destroy my happiness—that would be the death of me. If the Archbishop opposes me with one of those ecclesiastical arguments which postpone such matters for years on end, what will become of me? You see that I am acting in entire good faith; are you playing the little Jesuit with me?”

“No, in good faith, if Fabrizio is rescued, if with all your powers you make him Coadjutor and eventually Archbishop, I shall dishonor myself and belong to you.… Your Highness undertakes to write
approved
in the margin of a request that Monsignore the Archbishop will present to you within eight days.”

“I shall sign a blank sheet for you—rule me and my country as well!” exclaimed the Prince, blushing with happiness and truly beside himself.

He insisted upon a second oath. He was so moved that he forgot the shyness so habitual to him, and in that Palace chapel where they were alone together he whispered things to the Duchess which, spoken three days earlier, would have quite changed her opinion of him. But the desperation Fabrizio’s danger had inspired in the Duchess now gave way to horror of the promise which had been wrested from her.

The Duchess was overwhelmed by what she had just done. If she did not entirely realize the dreadful bitterness of the promise she had
given, it was because her attention was fixed on one question: had General Fontana reached the Fortress in time?

In order to free herself from the impassioned speeches of this boy and to change the subject somewhat, she launched into extravagant praises of a famous canvas by Parmigianino hanging over the chapel’s high altar. “Kindly allow me to send it to you,” said the Prince.

“I accept,” the Duchess replied; “but now, permit me to leave you in order that I may meet Fabrizio.” In distraction, she told her coachman to set off at a gallop. On the bridge over the Fortress moat, she met General Fontana and Fabrizio, emerging on foot.

“Have you eaten?”

“No, miraculously enough.”

The Duchess flung her arms around Fabrizio’s neck and fell into a faint which lasted an hour and at first inspired fears for her life and later for her reason.

Governor Fabio Conti had turned pale with rage at the sight of General Fontana: he had been so slow in obeying the Prince’s orders that the aide-de-camp, who imagined that the Duchess would soon be in the position of reigning mistress, had finally lost his patience. The Governor was intending to extend Fabrizio’s malady two or three days, “And now,” he said to himself, “this courtier General will find the insolent fellow writhing in the agony which is my revenge for his escape.”

Fabio Conti, deep in thought, stopped in the guard-room on the ground floor of the Farnese Tower, from which he made haste to dismiss the soldiers; he wanted no witnesses for the scene which was about to occur. Five minutes later he was petrified with astonishment at hearing Fabrizio’s voice and seeing him, alive and alert, describing the prison to General Fontana. He vanished.

Fabrizio revealed himself the perfect gentleman in his interview with the Prince. First of all, he had no desire to seem to be a child frightened by everything and nothing. With kind condescension the Prince asked him how he was feeling.