A heavy weight seemed to have been lifted from the serjeant's mind.
"Very well, General, you are under arrest and I shall take you to Milan. And you, who are you?" he said to Fabrizio.
"My son," replied the Contessa; "Ascanio, son of the Divisional General Pietranera."
"Without a passport, Signora Contessa?" said the serjeant, in a much gentler tone.
"At his age, he has never had one; he never travels alone, he is always with me."
During this colloquy General Conti was standing more and more on his dignity with the constables.
"Not so much talk," said one of them; "you are under arrest, that's enough!"
"You will be glad to hear," said the serjeant, "that we allow you to hire a horse from somecontadino; otherwise, never mind all the dust and the heat and the Chamberlain of Parma, you would have to put your best foot foremost to keep pace with our horses."
The General began to swear.
"Will you kindly be quiet!" the constable repeated. "Where is your general's uniform? Anybody can come along and say he's a general."
The General grew more and more angry. Meanwhile things were looking much brighter in the carriage.
The Contessa kept the constables running about as if they had been her servants. She had given a scudo to one of them to go and fetch wine, and, what was better still, cold water from a cottage that was visible two hundred yards away. She had found time to calm Fabrizio, who was determined, at all costs, to make a dash for the wood that covered the hill. "I have a good brace of pistols," he said. She obtained the infuriated General's permission for his daughter to get into the carriage. On this occasion the General, who loved to talk about himself and his family, told the ladies that his daughter was only twelve years old, having been born in 1803, on the 27th of October, but that, such was her intelligence, everyone took her to be fourteen or fifteen.
"A thoroughly common man," the Contessa's eyes signalled to the Marchesa. Thanks to the Contessa, everything was settled, after a colloquy that lasted an hour. A constable, who discovered that he had some business to do in the neighbouring village, lent his horse to General Conti, after the Contessa had said to him: "You shall have ten francs." The serjeant went off by himself with the General; the other constables stayed behind under a tree, accompanied by four huge bottles of wine, almost small demi-johns, which the one who had been sent to the cottage had brought back, with the help of acontadino, Clelia Conti was authorised by the proud Chamberlain to accept, for the return journey to Milan, a seat in the ladies' carriage, and no one dreamed of arresting the son of the gallant General Pietranera. After the first few minutes had been devoted to an exchange of courtesies and to remarks on the little incident that had just occurred, Clelia Conti observed the note of enthusiasm with which so beautiful a lady as the Contessa spoke to Fabrizio; certainly, she was not his mother. The girl's attention was caught most of all by repeated allusions to something heroic, bold, dangerous to the last degree, which he had recently done; but for all her cleverness little Clelia could not discover what this was.
She gazed with astonishment at this young hero whose eyes seemed to be blazing still with all the fire of action. For his part, he was somewhat embarrassed by the remarkable beauty of this girl of twelve, and her steady gaze made him blush.
A league outside Milan Fabrizio announced that he was going to see his uncle, and took leave of the ladies.
"If I ever get out of my difficulties," he said to Clelia, "I shall pay a visit to the beautiful pictures at Parma, and then will you deign to remember the name: Fabrizio del Dongo?"
"Good!" said the Contessa, "that is how you keep your identity secret. Signorina, deign to remember that this scapegrace is my son, and is called Pietranera, and not del Dongo."
That evening, at a late hour, Fabrizio entered Milan by the Porta Renza, which leads to a fashionable gathering-place. The dispatch of their two servants to Switzerland had exhausted the very modest savings of the Marchesa and her sister-in-law; fortunately, Fabrizio had still some napoleons left, and one of the diamonds, which they decided to sell.
The ladies were highly popular, and knew everyone in the town. The most important personages in the Austrian and religious party went to speak on behalf of Fabrizio to Barone Binder, the Chief of Police. These gentlemen could not conceive, they said, how anyone could take seriously the escapade of a boy of sixteen who left the paternal roof after a dispute with an elder brother.
"My business is to take everything seriously," replied Barone Binder gently; a wise and solemn man, he was then engaged in forming the Milan police, and had undertaken to prevent a revolution like that of 1746, which drove the Austrians from Genoa. This Milan police, since rendered so famous by the adventures of Silvio Pellico and M. Andryane, was not exactly cruel; it carried out, reasonably and without pity, harsh laws. The Emperor Francis II wished these overbold Italian imaginations to be struck by terror.
"Give me, day by day," repeated Barone Binder to Fabrizio's protectors, "acertifiedaccount of what the young Marchesino del Dongo has been doing; let us follow him from the moment of his departure on the 8th of March to his arrival last night in this city, where he is hidden in one of the rooms of his mother's apartment, and I am prepared to treat him as the most well-disposed and most frolicsome young man in town. If you cannot furnish me with the young man's itinerary during all the days following his departure from Grianta, however exalted his birth may be, however great the respect I owe to the friends of his family, obviously it is my duty to order his arrest. Am I not bound to keep him in prison until he has furnished me with proofs that he did not go to convey a message to Napoleon from such disaffected persons as may exist in Lombardy among the subjects of His Imperial and Royal Majesty? Note farther, gentlemen, that if young del Dongo succeeds in justifying himself on this point, he will still be liable to be charged with having gone abroad without a passport properly issued to himself, and also with assuming a false name and deliberately making use of a passport issued to a common workman, that is to say to a person of a class greatly inferior to that to which he himself belongs."
This declaration, cruelly reasonable, was accompanied by all the marks of deference and respect which the Chief of Police owed to the high position of the Marchesa del Dongo and of the important personages who were intervening on her behalf.
The Marchesa was in despair when Barone Binder's reply was communicated to her.
"Fabrizio will be arrested," she sobbed, "and once he is in prison, God knows when he will get out! His father will disown him!"
Signora Pietranera and her sister-in-law took counsel with two or three intimate friends, and, in spite of anything these might say, the Marchesa was absolutely determined to send her son away that very night.
"But you can see quite well," the Contessa pointed out to her, "that Barone Binder knows that your son is here; he is not a bad man."
"No; but he is anxious to please the Emperor Francis."
"But, if he thought it would lead to his promotion to put Fabrizio in prison, the boy would be there now; it is showing an insulting defiance of the Barone to send him away."
"But his admission to us that he knows where Fabrizio is, is as much as to say: 'Send him away!' No, I shan't feel alive until I can no longer say to myself: 'In a quarter of an hour my son may be within prison walls.' Whatever Barone Binder's ambition may be," the Marchesa went on, "he thinks it useful to his personal standing in this country to make certain concessions to oblige a man of my husband's rank, and I see a proof of this in the singular frankness with which he admits that he knows where to lay hands on my son. Besides, the Barone has been so kind as to let us know the two offences with which Fabrizio is charged, at the instigation of his unworthy brother; he explains that each of these offences means prison: is not that as much as to say that if we prefer exile it is for us to choose?"
"If you choose exile," the Contessa kept on repeating, "we shall never set eyes on him again as long as we live." Fabrizio, who was present at the whole conversation, with an old friend of the Marchesa, now a counsellor on the tribunal set up by Austria, was strongly inclined to take the key of the street and go; and, as a matter of fact, that same evening he left thepalazzo, hidden in the carriage that was taking his mother and aunt to the Scala theatre. The coachman, whom they distrusted, went as usual to wait in anosteria, and while the footmen, on whom they could rely, were looking after the horses, Fabrizio, disguised as acontadino, slipped out of the carriage and escaped from the town. Next morning he crossed the frontier with equal ease, and a few hours later had established himself on a property which his mother owned in Piedmont, near Novara, to be precise, at Romagnano, where Bayard was killed.
It may be imagined how much attention the ladies, on reaching their box in the Scala, paid to the performance. They had gone there solely to be able to consult certain of their friends who belonged to the Liberal party and whose appearance at thepalazzodel Dongo might have been misconstrued by the police. In the box it was decided to make a fresh appeal to Barone Binder. There was no question of offering a sum of money to this magistrate who was a perfectly honest man; moreover, the ladies were extremely poor; they had forced Fabrizio to take with him all the money that remained from the sale of the diamond.
It was of the utmost importance that they should be kept constantly informed of the Barone's latest decisions. The Contessa's friends reminded her of a certain Canon Borda, a most charming young man who at one time had tried to make advances to her, in a somewhat violent manner; finding himself unsuccessful he had reported her friendship for Limercati to General Pietranera, whereupon he had been dismissed from the house as a rascal. Now, at present this Canon was in the habit of going every evening to playtarocchiwith Baronessa Binder, and was naturally the intimate friend of her husband. The Contessa made up her mind to take the horribly unpleasant step of going to see this Canon; and the following morning, at an early hour, before he had left the house, she sent in her name.
When the Canon's one and only servant announced: "Contessa Pietranera," his master was so overcome as to be incapable of speech; he made no attempt to repair the disorder of a very scanty attire.
"Shew her in, and leave us," he said in faint accents. The Contessa entered the room; Borda fell on his knees.
"It is in this position that an unhappy madman ought to receive your orders," he said to the Contessa who that morning, in a plain costume that was almost a disguise, was irresistibly attractive. Her intense grief at Fabrizio's exile, the violence that she was doing to her own feelings in coming to the house of a man who had behaved treacherously towards her, all combined to give an incredible brilliance to her eyes.
"It is in this position that I wish to receive your orders," cried the Canon, "for it is obvious that you have some service to ask of me, otherwise you would not have honoured with your presence the poor dwelling of an unhappy madman; once before, carried away by love and jealousy, he behaved towards you like a scoundrel, as soon as he saw that he could not win your favour."
These words were sincere, and all the more handsome in that the Canon now enjoyed a position of great power; the Contessa was moved to tears by them; humiliation and fear had frozen her spirit; now in a moment affection and a gleam of hope took their place. From a most unhappy state she passed in a flash almost to happiness.
"Kiss my hand," she said, as she held it out to the Canon, "and rise." (She used the second person singular, which in Italy, it must be remembered, indicates a sincere and open friendship just as much as a more tender sentiment.) "I have come to ask your favour for my nephew Fabrizio. This is the whole truth of the story without the slightest concealment, as one tells it to an old friend. At the age of sixteen and a half he has done an intensely stupid thing. We were at the castle of Grianta on the Lake of Como. One evening at seven o'clock we learned by a boat from Como of the Emperor's landing on the shore of the Gulf of Juan. Next morning Fabrizio went off to France, after borrowing the passport of one of his plebeian friends, a dealer in barometers, named Vasi. As he does not exactly resemble a dealer in barometers, he had hardly gone ten leagues into France when he was arrested on sight; his outbursts of enthusiasm in bad French seemed suspicious. After a time he escaped and managed to reach Geneva; we sent to meet him at Lugano. . . ."
"That is to say, Geneva," put in the Canon with a smile.
The Contessa finished her story.
"I will do everything for you that is humanly possible," replied the Canon effusively; "I place myself entirely at your disposal. I will even do imprudent things," he added. "Tell me, what am I to do as soon as this poor parlour is deprived of this heavenly apparition which marks an epoch in the history of my life?"
"You must go to Barone Binder and tell him that you have loved Fabrizio ever since he was born, that you saw him in his cradle when you used to come to our house, and that accordingly, in the name of the friendship he has shown for you, you beg him to employ all his spies to discover whether, before his departure for Switzerland, Fabrizio was in any sort of communication whatsoever with any of the Liberals whom he has under supervision. If the Barone's information is of any value, he is bound to see that there is nothing more in this than a piece of boyish folly. You know that I used to have, in my beautiful apartment in thepalazzoDugnani, prints of the battles won by Napoleon: it was by spelling out the legends engraved beneath them that my nephew learned to read. When he was five years old, my poor husband used to explain these battles to him; we put my husband's helmet on his head, the boy strutted about trailing his big sabre. Very well, one fine day he learns that my husband's god, the Emperor, has returned to France, he starts out to join him, like a fool, but does not succeed in reaching him. Ask your Barone with what penalty he proposes to punish this moment of folly?"
"I was forgetting one thing," said the Canon, "you shall see that I am not altogether unworthy of the pardon that you grant me. Here," he said, looking on the table among his papers, "here is the accusation by that infamouscollo-torto" (that is, hypocrite), "see, signed Ascanio Valserra del Dongo, which gave rise to the whole trouble; I found it yesterday at the police headquarters, and went to the Scala in the hope of finding someone who was in the habit of going to your box, through whom I might be able to communicate it to you. A copy of this document reached Vienna long ago. There is the enemy that we have to fight." The Canon read the accusation through with the Contessa, and it was agreed that in the course of the day he would let her have a copy by the hand of some trustworthy person. It was with joy in her heart that the Contessa returned to thepalazzodel Dongo.
"No one could possibly be more of a gentleman than that reformed rake," she told the Marchesa. "This evening at the Scala, at a quarter to eleven by the theatre clock, we are to send everyone away from our box, put out the candles, and shut our door, and at eleven the Canon himself will come and tell us what he has managed to do. We decided that this would be the least compromising course for him."
This Canon was a man of spirit; he was careful to keep the appointment; he shewed when he came a complete good nature and an unreserved openness of heart such as are scarcely to be found except in countries where vanity does not predominate over every other sentiment. His denunciation of the Contessa to her husband, General Pietranera, was one of the great sorrows of his life, and he had now found a means of getting rid of that remorse.
That morning, when the Contessa had left his room, "So she's in love with her nephew, is she," he had said to himself bitterly, for he was by no means cured. "With her pride, to have come to me! . . . After that poor Pietranera died, she repulsed with horror my offers of service, though they were most polite and admirably presented by Colonel Scotti, her old lover. The beautiful Pietranera reduced to living on fifteen hundred francs!" the Canon went on, striding vigorously up and down the room. "And then to go and live in the castle of Grianta, with an abominableseccatorelike that Marchese del Dongo! . . . I can see it all now! After all, that young Fabrizio is full of charm, tall, well built, always with a smile on his face . . . and, better still, a deliciously voluptuous expression in his eye . . . a Correggio face," the Canon added bitterly.
"The difference in age . . . not too great . . . Fabrizio born after the French came, about '98, I fancy; the Contessa might be twenty-seven or twenty-eight: no one could be better looking, more adorable. In this country rich in beauties, she defeats them all, the Marini, the Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua, she is far and away above any of them. They were living happily together, hidden away by that beautiful Lake of Como, when the young man took it into his head to join Napoleon. . . . There are still souls in Italy! In spite of everything! Dear country! No," went on this heart inflamed by jealousy, "impossible to explain in any other way her resigning herself to vegetating in the country, with the disgusting spectacle, day after day, at every meal, of that horrible face of the Marchese del Dongo, as well as that unspeakable pasty physiognomy of the Marchesino Ascanio, who is going to be worse than his father! Well, I shall serve her faithfully. At least I shall have the pleasure of seeing her otherwise than through an opera-glass."
Canon Borda explained the whole case very clearly to the ladies. At heart, Binder was as well-disposed as they could wish; he was delighted that Fabrizio should have taken the key of the street before any orders could arrive from Vienna; for Barone Binder had no power to make any decision, he awaited orders in this case as in every other. He sent every day to Vienna an exact copy of all the information that reached him; then he waited.
It was necessary that, in his exile at Romagnano, Fabrizio
(1) Should hear mass daily without fail, take as his confessor a man of spirit, devoted to the cause of the Monarchy, and should confess to him, at the tribunal of penitence, only the most irreproachable sentiments.
(2) Should consort with no one who bore any reputation for intelligence, and, were the need to arise, must speak of rebellion with horror as a thing that no circumstances could justify.
(3) Must never let himself be seen in thecaffè, must never read any newspaper other than the officialGazetteof Turin and Milan; in general he should shew a distaste for reading, and never open any book printed later than 1720, with the possible exception of the novels of Walter Scott.
(4) "Finally" (the Canon added with a touch of malice), "it is most important that he should pay court openly to one of the pretty women of the district, of the noble class, of course; this will shew that he has not the dark and dissatisfied mind of an embryo conspirator."
Before going to bed, the Contessa and the Marchesa each wrote Fabrizio an endless letter, in which they explained to him with a charming anxiety all the advice that had been given them by Borda.
Fabrizio had no wish to be a conspirator: he loved Napoleon, and, in his capacity as a young noble, believed that he had been created to be happier than his neighbour, and thought the middle classes absurd. Never had he opened a book since leaving school, where he had read only texts arranged by the Jesuits. He established himself at some distance from Romagnano, in a magnificentpalazzo, one of the masterpieces of the famous architect Sanmicheli; but for thirty years it had been uninhabited, so that the rain came into every room and not one of the windows would shut. He took possession of the agent's horses, which he rode without ceremony at all hours of the day; he never spoke, and he thought about things. The recommendation to take a mistress from anultrafamily appealed to him, and he obeyed it to the letter. He chose as his confessor a young priest given to intrigue who wished to become a bishop (like the confessor of the Spielberg[9]); but he went three leagues on foot and wrapped himself in a mystery which he imagined to be impenetrable, in order to read theConstitutionnel, which he thought sublime. "It is as fine as Alfieri and Dante!" he used often to exclaim. Fabrizio had this in common with the young men of France, that he was far more seriously taken up with his horse and his newspaper than with his politicallysoundmistress. But there was no room as yet forimitation of othersin this simple and sturdy nature, and he made no friends in the society of the large country town of Romagnano; his simplicity passed as arrogance: no one knew what to make of his character. "He is a younger son who feels himself wronged because he is not the eldest" was theparroco'scomment.
[8]Silvio Pellico has given this name a European notoriety: it is that of the street in Milan in which the police headquarters and prisons are situated.
[8]Silvio Pellico has given this name a European notoriety: it is that of the street in Milan in which the police headquarters and prisons are situated.
[9]See the curious Memoirs of M. Andryane, as entertaining as a novel, and as lasting as Tacitus.
[9]See the curious Memoirs of M. Andryane, as entertaining as a novel, and as lasting as Tacitus.
Let us admit frankly that Canon Borda's jealousy was not altogether unfounded: on his return from France, Fabrizio appeared to the eyes of Contessa Pietranera like a handsome stranger whom she had known well in days gone by. If he had spoken to her of love she would have loved him; had she not already conceived, for his conduct and his person, a passionate and, one might say, unbounded admiration? But Fabrizio embraced her with such an effusion of innocent gratitude and good-fellowship that she would have been horrified with herself had she sought for any other sentiment in this almost filial friendship. "After all," she said to herself, "some of my friends who knew me six years ago, at Prince Eugène's court, may still find me good-looking and even young, but for him I am a respectable woman—and, if the truth must be told without any regard for my vanity, a woman of a certain age." The Contessa was under an illusion as to the period of life at which she had arrived, but it was not the illusion of common women. "Besides, at his age," she went on, "boys are apt to exaggerate the ravages of time. A man with more experience of life . . ."
The Contessa, who was pacing the floor of her drawing-room, stopped before a mirror, then smiled. It must be explained that, some months since, the heart of Signora Pietranera had been attacked in a serious fashion, and by a singular personage. Shortly after Fabrizio's departure for France, the Contessa who, without altogether admitting it to herself, was already beginning to take a great interest in him, had fallen into a profound melancholy. All her occupations seemed to her to lack pleasure, and, if one may use the word, savour; she told herself that Napoleon, wishing to secure the attachment of his Italian peoples, would take Fabrizio as his aide-de-camp. "He is lost to me!" she exclaimed, weeping, "I shall never see him again; he will write to me, but what shall I be to him in ten years' time?"
It was in this frame of mind that she made an expedition to Milan; she hoped to find there some more immediate news of Napoleon, and, for all she knew, incidentally news of Fabrizio. Without admitting it to herself, this active soul was beginning to be very weary of the monotonous life she was leading in the country. "It is a postponement of death," she said to herself, "it is not life." Every day to see those powdered heads, her brother, her nephew Ascanio, their footmen! What would her excursions on the lake be without Fabrizio? Her sole consolation was based on the ties of friendship that bound her to the Marchesa. But for some time now this intimacy with Fabrizio's mother, a woman older than herself and with no hope left in life, had begun to be less attractive to her.
Such was the singular position in which Signora Pietranera was placed: with Fabrizio away, she had little hope for the future. Her heart was in need of consolation and novelty. On arriving in Milan she conceived a passion for the fashionable opera; she would go and shut herself up alone for hours on end, at the Scala, in the box of her old friend General Scotti. The men whom she tried to meet in order to obtain news of Napoleon and his army seemed to her vulgar and coarse. Going home, she would improvise on her piano until three o'clock in the morning. One evening, at the Scala, in the box of one of her friends to which she had gone in search of news from France, she made the acquaintance of Conte Mosca, a Minister from Parma; he was an agreeable man who spoke of France and Napoleon in a way that gave her fresh reasons for hope or fear. She returned to the same box the following evening; this intelligent man reappeared and throughout the whole performance she talked to him with enjoyment. Since Fabrizio's departure she had not found any evening so lively. This man who amused her, Conte Mosca della Rovere Sorezana, was at that time Minister of Police and Finance to that famous Prince of Parma, Ernesto IV, so notorious for his severities, which the Liberals of Milan called cruelties. Mosca might have been forty or forty-five; he had strongly marked features, with no trace of self-importance, and a simple and light-hearted manner which was greatly in his favour; he would have looked very well indeed, if a whim on the part of his Prince had not obliged him to wear powder on his hair as a proof of his soundness in politics. As people have little fear of wounding one another's vanity, they quickly arrive in Italy at a tone of intimacy, and make personal observations. The antidote to this practice is not to see the other person again if one's feelings have been hurt.
"Tell me, Conte, why do you powder your hair?" Signora Pietranera asked him at their third meeting. "Powder! A man like you, attractive, still young, who fought on our side in Spain!"
"Because, in the said Spain, I stole nothing, and one must live. I was athirst for glory; a flattering word from the French General, Gouvion Saint-Cyr, who commanded us, was everything to me then. When Napoleon fell, it so happened that while I was eating up my patrimony in his service, my father, a man of imagination, who pictured me as a general already, had been building me apalazzoat Parma. In 1813 I found that my whole worldly wealth consisted of a hugepalazzo, half-finished, and a pension."
"A pension: 3,500 francs, like my husband's?"
"Conte Pietranera commanded a Division. My pension, as a humble squadron commander, has never been more than 800 francs, and even that has been paid to me only since I became Minister of Finance."
As there was nobody else in the box but the lady of extremely liberal views to whom it belonged, the conversation continued with the same frankness. Conte Mosca, when questioned, spoke of his life at Parma. "In Spain, under General Saint-Cyr, I faced the enemy's fire to win a cross and a little glory besides, now I dress myself up like an actor in a farce to win a great social position and a few thousand francs a year. Once I had started on this sort of political chessboard, stung by the insolence of my superiors, I determined to occupy one of the foremost posts; I have reached it. But the happiest days of my life will always be those which, now and again, I manage to spend at Milan; here, it seems to me, there still survives the spirit of your Army of Italy."
The frankness, thedisinvolturawith which this Minister of so dreaded a Prince spoke pricked the Contessa's curiosity; from his title she had expected to find a pedant filled with self-importance; what she saw was a man who was ashamed of the gravity of his position. Mosca had promised to let her have all the news from France that he could collect; this was a grave indiscretion at Milan, during the month that preceded Waterloo; the question for Italy at that time was to be or not to be; everyone at Milan was in a fever, a fever of hope or fear. Amid this universal disturbance, the Contessa started to make inquiries about a man who spoke thus lightly of so coveted a position, and one which, moreover, was his sole means of livelihood.
Certain curious information of an interesting oddity was reported to Signora Pietranera. "Conte Mosca della Rovere Sorezana," she was told, "is on the point of becoming Prime Minister and declared favourite of Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, the absolute sovereign of Parma and one of the wealthiest Princes in Europe to boot. The Conte would already have attained to this exalted position if he had cared to shew a more solemn face: they say that the Prince often lectures him on this failing.
"'What do my manners matter to Your Highness,' he answers boldly, 'so long as I conduct his affairs?'
"This favourite's bed of roses," her informant went on, "is not without its thorns. He has to please a Sovereign, a man of sense and intelligence, no doubt, but a man who, since his accession to an absolute throne, seems to have lost his head altogether and shews, for instance, suspicions worthy of an old woman.
"Ernesto IV is courageous only in war. On the field of battle he has been seen a score of times leading a column to the attack like a gallant general; but after the death of his father Ernesto III, on his return to his States, where, unfortunately for him, he possesses unlimited power, he set to work to inveigh in the most senseless fashion against Liberals and liberty. Presently he began to imagine that he was hated; finally, in a moment of ill temper, he had two Liberals hanged, who may or may not have been guilty, acting on the advice of a wretch called Rassi, a sort of Minister of Justice.
"From that fatal moment the Prince's life changed; we find him tormented by the strangest suspicions. He is not fifty, and fear has so reduced him, if one may use the expression, that whenever he speaks of Jacobins, and the plans of the Central Committee in Paris, his face becomes like that of an old man of eighty; he relapses into the fantastic fears of childhood. His favourite Rassi, the Fiscal General (or Chief Justice), has no influence except through his master's fear; and whenever he is alarmed for his own position, he makes haste to discover some fresh conspiracy of the blackest and most fantastic order. Thirty rash fellows have banded themselves together to read a number of theConstitutionnel, Rassi declares them to be conspirators, and sends them off to prison in that famous Citadel of Parma, the terror of the whole of Lombardy. As it rises to a great height, a hundred and eighty feet, people say, it is visible from a long way off in the middle of that immense plain; and the physical outlines of the prison, of which horrible things are reported, makes it the queen, governing by fear, of the whole of that plain, which extends from Milan to Bologna."
"Would you believe," said another traveller to the Contessa, "that at night, on the third floor of his palace, guarded by eighty sentinels who every quarter of an hour cry aloud a whole sentence, Ernesto IV trembles in his room. All the doors fastened with ten bolts, and the adjoining rooms, above as well as below him, packed with soldiers, he is afraid of the Jacobins. If a plank creaks in the floor, he snatches up his pistols and imagines there is a Liberal hiding under his bed. At once all the bells in the castle are set ringing, and an aide-de-camp goes to awaken Conte Mosca. On reaching the castle, the Minister of Police takes good care not to deny the existence of any conspiracy; on the contrary, alone with the Prince, and armed to the teeth, he inspects every corner of the rooms, looks under the beds, and, in a word, gives himself up to a whole heap of ridiculous actions worthy of an old woman. All these precautions would have seemed highly degrading to the Prince himself in the happy days when he used to go to war and had never killed anyone except in open combat. As he is a man of infinite spirit, he is ashamed of these precautions; they seem to him ridiculous, even at the moment when he is giving way to them, and the source of Conte Mosca's enormous reputation is that he devotes all his skill to arranging that the Prince shall never have occasion to blush in his presence. It is he, Mosca, who, in his capacity as Minister of Police, insists upon looking under the furniture, and, so people say in Parma, even in the cases in which the musicians keep their double-basses. It is the Prince who objects to this and teases his Minister over his excessive punctiliousness. 'It is a challenge,' Conte Mosca replies; 'think of the satirical sonnets the Jacobins would shower on us if we allowed you to be killed. It is not only your life that we are defending, it is our honour.' But it appears that the Prince is only half taken in by this, for if anyone in the town should take it into his head to remark that they have passed a sleepless night at the castle, the Grand Fiscal Rassi sends the impertinent fellow to the citadel, and once in that lofty abode, and in thefresh air, as they say at Parma, it is a miracle if anyone remembers the prisoner's existence. It is because he is a soldier, and in Spain got away a score of times, pistol in hand, from a tight corner, that the Prince prefers Conte Mosca to Rassi, who is a great deal more flexible and baser. Those unfortunate prisoners in the citadel are kept in the most rigorously secret confinement, and all sorts of stories are told about them. The Liberals assert that (and this, they say, is one of Rassi's ideas) the gaolers and confessors are under orders to assure them, about once a month, that one of them is being led out to die. That day the prisoners have permission to climb to the platform of the huge tower, one hundred and eighty feet high, and from there they see a procession file along the plain with some spy who plays the part of a poor devil going to his death."
These stories and a score of others of the same nature and of no less authenticity keenly interested Signora Pietranera: on the following day she asked Conte Mosca, whom she rallied briskly, for details. She found him amusing, and maintained to him that at heart he was a monster without knowing it. One day as he went back to his inn the Conte said to himself: "Not only is this Contessa Pietranera a charming woman; but when I spend the evening in her box I manage to forget certain things at Parma the memory of which cuts me to the heart."—This Minister, in spite of his frivolous air and his polished manners, was not blessed with a soul of the French type; he could notforgetthe things that annoyed him. When there was a thorn in his pillow, he was obliged to break it off and to blunt its point by repeated stabbings of his throbbing limbs. (I must apologise for the last two sentences, which are translated from the Italian.) On the morrow of this discovery, the Conte found that, notwithstanding the business that had summoned him to Milan, the day spun itself out to an enormous length; he could not stay in one place, he wore out his carriage-horses. About six o'clock he mounted his saddle-horse to ride to theCorso; he had some hope of meeting Signora Pietranera there; seeing no sign of her, he remembered that at eight o'clock the Scala Theatre opened; he entered it, and did not see ten persons in that immense auditorium. He felt somewhat ashamed of himself for being there. "Is it possible," he asked himself, "that at forty-five and past I am committing follies at which a sub-lieutenant would blush? Fortunately nobody suspects them." He fled, and tried to pass the time by strolling up and down the attractive streets that surround the Scala. They are lined withcaffèwhich at that hour are filled to overflowing with people. Outside each of thesecaffècrowds of curious idlers perched on chairs in the middle of the street sip ices and criticise the passers-by. The Conte was a passer-by of importance; at once he had the pleasure of being recognised and addressed. Three or four importunate persons of the kind that one cannot easily shake off seized this opportunity to obtain an audience of so powerful a Minister. Two of them handed him petitions; the third was content with pouring out a stream of long-winded advice as to his political conduct.
"One does not sleep," he said to himself, "when one has such a brain; one ought not to walk about when one is so powerful." He returned to the theatre, where it occurred to him that he might take a box in the third tier; from there his gaze could plunge, unnoticed by anyone, into the box in the second tier in which he hoped to see the Contessa arrive. Two full hours of waiting did not seem any too long to this lover; certain of not being seen he abandoned himself joyfully to the full extent of his folly. "Old age," he said to himself, "is not that, more than anything else, the time when one is no longer capable of these delicious puerilities?"
Finally the Contessa appeared. Armed with his glasses, he studied her with rapture: "Young, brilliant, light as a bird," he said to himself, "she is not twenty-five. Her beauty is the least of her charms: where else could one find that soul always sincere, which never actswith prudence, which abandons itself entirely to the impression of the moment, which asks only to be carried away towards some new goal? I can understand Conte Nani's foolish behaviour."
The Conte supplied himself with excellent reasons for behaving foolishly, so long as he was thinking only of capturing the happiness which he saw before his eyes. He did not find any quite so satisfactory when he came to consider his age and the anxieties, sometimes of the saddest nature, that burdened his life. "A man of ability, whose spirit has been destroyed by fear, gives me a sumptuous life and plenty of money to be his Minister; but were he to dismiss me to-morrow, I should be left old and poor, that is to say everything that the world despises most; there's a fine partner to offer the Contessa!" These thoughts were too dark, he came back to Signora Pietranera; he could not tire of gazing at her, and, to be able to think of her better, did not go down to her box. "Her only reason for taking Nani, they tell me, was to put that imbecile Limercati in his place when he could not be prevailed upon to run a sword, or to hire someone else to stick a dagger into her husband's murderer. I would fight for her twenty times over!" cried the Conte in a transport of enthusiasm. Every moment he consulted the theatre clock which, with illuminated figures upon a black background, warned the audience every five minutes of the approach of the hour at which it was permissible for them to visit a friend's box. The Conte said to himself: "I cannot spend more than half an hour at the most in the box, seeing that I have known her so short a time; if I stay longer, I shall attract attention, and, thanks to my age and even more to this accursed powder on my hair, I shall have all the bewitching allurements of a Cassandra." But a sudden thought made up his mind once and for all. "If she were to leave that box to pay someone else a visit, I should be well rewarded for the avarice with which I am hoarding up this pleasure." He rose to go down to the box in which he could see the Contessa; all at once he found that he had lost almost all his desire to present himself to her.
"Ah! this is really charming," he exclaimed with a smile at his own expense, and coming to a halt on the staircase; "an impulse of genuine shyness! It must be at least five and twenty years since an adventure of this sort last came my way."
He entered the box, almost with an effort to control himself; and, making the most, like a man of spirit, of the condition in which he found himself, made no attempt to appear at ease, or to display his wit by plunging into some entertaining story; he had the courage to be shy, he employed his wits in letting his disturbance be apparent without making himself ridiculous. "If she should take it amiss," he said to himself, "I am lost for ever. What! Shy, with my hair covered with powder, hair which, without the disguise of the powder, would be visibly grey! But, after all, it is a fact; it cannot therefore be absurd unless I exaggerate it or make a boast of it." The Contessa had spent so many weary hours at the castle of Grianta, facing the powdered heads of her brother and nephew, and of various politicallysoundbores of the neighbourhood, that it never occurred to her to give a thought to her new adorer's style in hairdressing.
The Contessa's mind having this protection against the impulse to laugh on his entry, she paid attention only to the news from France which Mosca always had for her in detail, on coming to her box; no doubt he used to invent it. As she discussed this news with him, she noticed this evening the expression in his eyes, which was good and kindly.
"I can imagine," she said to him, "that at Parma, among your slaves, you will not wear that friendly expression; it would ruin everything and give them some hope of not being hanged!"
The entire absence of any sense of self-importance in a man who passed as the first diplomat in Italy, seemed strange to the Contessa; she even found a certain charm in it. Moreover, as he talked well and with warmth, she was not at all displeased that he should have thought fit to take upon himself for one evening, without ulterior consequences, the part of squire of dames.
It was a great step forward, and highly dangerous; fortunately for the Minister, who, at Parma, never met a cruel fair, the Contessa had arrived from Grianta only a few days before: her mind was still stiff with the boredom of a country life. She had almost forgotten how to make fun; and all those things that appertain to a light and elegant way of living had assumed in her eyes as it were a tint of novelty which made them sacred; she was in no mood to laugh at anyone, even a lover of forty-five, and shy. A week later, the Conte's temerity might have met with a very different sort of welcome.
At the Scala, it is not usual to prolong for more than twenty minutes or so these little visits to one's friends' boxes; the Conte spent the whole evening in the box in which he had been so fortunate as to meet Signora Pietranera. "She is a woman," he said to himself, "who revives in me all the follies of my youth!" But he was well aware of the danger. "Will my position as an all-powerful Bashaw in a place forty leagues away induce her to pardon me this stupid behaviour? I get so bored at Parma!" Meanwhile, every quarter of an hour, he registered a mental vow to get up and go.
"I must explain to you, Signora," he said to the Contessa with a laugh, "that at Parma I am bored to death, and I ought to be allowed to drink my fill of pleasure when the cup comes my way. So, without involving you in anything and simply for this evening, permit me to play the part of lover in your company. Alas, in a few days I shall be far away from this box which makes me forget every care and indeed, you will say, every convention."
A week after this monstrous visit to the Contessa's box, and after a series of minor incidents the narration of which here would perhaps seem tedious, Conte Mosca was absolutely mad with love, and the Contessa had already begun to think that his age need offer no objection if the suitor proved attractive in other ways. They had reached this stage when Mosca was recalled by a courier from Parma. One would have said that his Prince was afraid to be left alone. The Contessa returned to Grianta; her imagination no longer serving to adorn that lovely spot, it appeared to her a desert. "Should I be attached to this man?" she asked herself. Mosca wrote to her, and had not to play a part; absence had relieved him of the source of all his anxious thoughts; his letters were amusing, and, by a little piece of eccentricity which was not taken amiss, to escape the comments of the Marchese del Dongo, who did not like having to pay for the carriage of letters, he used to send couriers who would post his at Como or Lecco or Varese or some other of those charming little places on the shores of the lake. This was done with the idea that the courier might be employed to take back her replies. The move was successful.
Soon the days when the couriers came were events in the Contessa's life; these couriers brought her flowers, fruit, little presents of no value, which amused her, however, and her sister-in-law as well. Her memory of the Conte was blended with her idea of his great power; the Contessa had become curious to know everything that people said of him; the Liberals themselves paid a tribute to his talents.
The principal source of the Conte's reputation for evil was that he passed as the head of theUltraParty at the Court of Parma, while the Liberal Party had at its head an intriguing woman capable of anything, even of succeeding, the Marchesa Raversi, who was immensely rich. The Prince made a great point of not discouraging that one of the two Parties which happened not to be in power; he knew quite well that he himself would always be the master, even with a Ministry formed in Signora Raversi's drawing-room. Endless details of these intrigues were reported at Grianta. The bodily absence of Mosca, whom everyone described as a Minister of supreme talent and a man of action, made it possible not to think any more of his powdered head, a symbol of everything that is dull and sad; it was a detail of no consequence, one of the obligations of the court at which, moreover, he was playing so distinguished a part. "It is a ridiculous thing, a court," said the Contessa to the Marchesa, "but it is amusing; it is a game that it is interesting to play, but one must agree to the rules. Who ever thought of protesting against the absurdity of the rules of piquet? And yet, once you are accustomed to the rules, it is delightful to beat your adversary withrepiqueandcapot."
The Contessa often thought about the writer of these entertaining letters; the days on which she received them were delightful to her; she would take her boat and go to read them in one of the charming spots by the lake, the Pliniana, Belan, the wood of the Sfrondata. These letters seemed to console her to some extent for Fabrizio's absence. She could not, at all events, refuse to allow the Conte to be deeply in love; a month had not passed before she was thinking of him with tender affection. For his part, Conte Mosca was almost sincere when he offered to hand in his resignation, to leave the Ministry and to come and spend the rest of his life with her at Milan or elsewhere. "I have 400,000 francs," he added, "which will always bring us in an income of 15,000."—"A box at the play again, horses, everything," thought the Contessa; they were pleasant dreams. The sublime beauty of the different views of the Lake of Como began to charm her once more. She went down to dream by its shores of this return to a brilliant and distinctive life, which, most unexpectedly, seemed to be coming within the bounds of possibility. She saw herself on the Corso, at Milan, happy and gay as in the days of the Viceroy: "Youth, or at any rate a life of action would begin again for me."
Sometimes her ardent imagination concealed things from her, but never did she have those deliberate illusions which cowardice induces. She was above all things a woman who was honest with herself. "If I am a little too old to be doing foolish things," she said to herself, "envy, which creates illusions as love does, may poison my stay in Milan for me. After my husband's death, my noble poverty was a success, as was my refusal of two vast fortunes. My poor little Conte Mosca had not a twentieth part of the opulence that was cast at my feet by those two worms, Limercati and Nani. The meagre widow's pension which I had to struggle to obtain, the dismissal of my servants, which made some sensation, the little fifth floor room which brought a score of carriages to the door, all went to form at the time a striking spectacle. But I shall have unpleasant moments, however skilfully I may handle things, if, never possessing any fortune beyond my widow's pension, I go back to live at Milan on the snug little middle-class comfort which we can secure with the 15,000 lire that Mosca will have left after he retires. One strong objection, out of which envy will forge a terrible weapon, is that the Conte, although separated long ago from his wife, is still a married man. This separation is known at Parma, but at Milan it will come as news, and they will put it down to me. So, my dear Scala, my divine Lake of Como, adieu! adieu!"
In spite of all these forebodings, if the Contessa had had the smallest income of her own she would have accepted Mosca's offer to resign his office. She regarded herself as a middle-aged woman, and the idea of the court alarmed her; but what will appear in the highest degree improbable on this side of the Alps is that the Conte would have handed in that resignation gladly. So, at least, he managed to make his friend believe. In all his letters he implored, with an ever increasing frenzy, a second interview at Milan; it was granted him. "To swear that I feel an insane passion for you," the Contessa said to him one day at Milan, "would be a lie; I should be only too glad to love to-day at thirty odd as I used to love at two-and-twenty! But I have seen so many things decay that I had imagined to be eternal! I have the most tender regard for you, I place an unbounded confidence in you, and of all the men I know, you are the one I like best." The Contessa believed herself to be perfectly sincere; and yet, in the final clause, this declaration embodied a tiny falsehood. Fabrizio, perhaps, had he chosen, might have triumphed over every rival in her heart. But Fabrizio was nothing more than a boy in Conte Mosca's eyes: he himself reached Milan three days after the young hothead's departure for Novara, and he hastened to intercede on his behalf with Barone Binder. The Conte considered that his exile was now irrevocable.
He had not come to Milan alone; he had in his carriage the Duca Sanseverina-Taxis, a handsome little old man of sixty-eight, dapple-grey, very polished, very neat, immensely rich but not quite as noble as he ought to have been. It was his grandfather, only, who had amassed millions from the office of Farmer General of the Revenues of the State of Parma. His father had had himself made Ambassador of the Prince of Parma to the Court of ——, by advancing the following argument: "Your Highness allots 30,000 francs to his Representative at the Court of ——, where he cuts an extremely modest figure. Should Your Highness deign to appoint me to the post, I will accept 6,000 francs as salary. My expenditure at the Court of —— will never fall below 100,000 francs a year, and my agent will pay over 20,000 francs every year to the Treasurer for Foreign Affairs at Parma. With that sum they can attach to me whatever Secretary of Embassy they choose, and I shall shew no curiosity to inquire into diplomatic secrets, if there are any. My object is to shed lustre on my house, which is still a new one, and to give it the distinction of having filled one of the great public offices."
The present Duca, this Ambassador's son and heir, had made the stupid mistake of coming out as a Semi-Liberal, and for the last two years had been in despair. In Napoleon's time, he had lost two or three millions owing to his obstinacy in remaining abroad, and even now, after the re-establishment of order in Europe, he had not managed to secure a certain Grand Cordon which adorned the portrait of his father. The want of this Cordon was killing him by inches.
At the degree of intimacy which in Italy follows love, there was no longer any obstacle in the nature of vanity between the lovers. It was therefore with the most perfect simplicity that Mosca said to the woman he adored:
"I have two or three plans of conduct to offer you, all pretty well thought out; I have been thinking of nothing else for the last three months.
"First: I hand in my resignation, and we retire to a quiet life at Milan or Florence or Naples or wherever you please. We have an income of 15,000 francs, apart from the Prince's generosity, which will continue for some time, more or less.
"Secondly: You condescend to come to the place in which I have some authority; you buy a property, Sacca, for example, a charming house in the middle of a forest, commanding the valley of the Po; you can have the contract signed within a week from now. The Prince then attaches you to his court. But here I can see an immense objection. You will be well received at court; no one would think of refusing, with me there; besides, the Princess imagines she is unhappy, and I have recently rendered her certain services with an eye to your future. But I must remind you of one paramount objection: the Prince is a bigoted churchman, and, as you already know, ill luck will have it that I am a married man. From which will arise a million minor unpleasantnesses. You are a widow; it is a fine title which would have to be exchanged for another, and this brings me to my third proposal.
"One might find a new husband who would not be a nuisance. But first of all he would have to be considerably advanced in years, for why should you deny me the hope of some day succeeding him? Very well, I have made this curious arrangement with the Duca Sanseverina-Taxis, who, of course, does not know the name of his future Duchessa. He knows only that she will make him an Ambassador and will procure him the Grand Cordon which his father had and the lack of which makes him the most unhappy of mortals. Apart from this, the Duca is by no means an absolute idiot; he gets his clothes and wigs from Paris. He is not in the least the sort of man who would do anythingdeliberatelymean, he seriously believes that honour consists in his having a Cordon, and he is ashamed of his riches. He came to me a year ago proposing to found a hospital, in order to get this Cordon; I laughed at him then, but he did not by any means laugh at me when I made him a proposal of marriage; my first condition was, you can understand, that he must never set foot again in Parma."
"But do you know that what you are proposing is highly immoral?" said the Contessa.
"No more immoral than everything else that is done at our court and a score of others. Absolute Power has this advantage, that it sanctifies everything in the eyes of the public: what harm can there be in a thing that nobody notices? Our policy for the next twenty years is going to consist in fear of the Jacobins—and such fear, too! Every year, we shall fancy ourselves on the eve of '93. You will hear, I hope, the fine speeches I make on the subject at my receptions! They are beautiful! Everything that can in any way reduce this fear will besupremely moralin the eyes of the nobles and the bigots. And you see, at Parma, everyone who is not either a noble or a bigot is in prison, or is packing up to go there; you may be quite sure that this marriage will not be thought odd among us until the day on which I am disgraced. This arrangement involves no dishonesty towards anyone; that is the essential thing, it seems to me. The Prince, on whose favour we are trading, has placed only one condition on his consent, which is that the future Duchessa shall be of noble birth. Last year my office, all told, brought me in 107,000 francs; my total income would therefore be 122,000; I invested 20,000 at Lyons. Very well, choose for yourself; either, a life of luxury based on our having 122,000 francs to spend, which, at Parma, go as far as at least 400,000 at Milan, but with this marriage which will give you the name of a passable man on whom you will never set eyes after you leave the altar; or else the simple middle-class existence on 15,000 francs at Florence or Naples, for I am of your opinion, you have been too much admired at Milan; we should be persecuted here by envy, which might perhaps succeed in souring our tempers. Our grand life at Parma will, I hope, have some touches of novelty, even in your eyes which have seen the court of Prince Eugène; you would be wise to try it before shutting the door on it for ever. Do not think that I am seeking to influence your opinion. As for me, my mind is quite made up: I would rather live on a fourth floor with you than continue that grand life by myself."
The possibility of this strange marriage was debated by the loving couple every day. The Contessa saw the Duca Sanseverina-Taxis at the Scala Ball, and thought him highly presentable. In one of their final conversations, Mosca summed up his proposals in the following words: "We must take some decisive action if we wish to spend the rest of our lives in an enjoyable fashion and not grow old before our time. The Prince has given his approval; Sanseverina is a person who might easily be worse; he possesses the finestpalazzoin Parma, and a boundless fortune; he is sixty-eight, and has an insane passion for the Grand Cordon; but there is one great stain on his character: he once paid 10,000 francs for a bust of Napoleon by Canova. His second sin, which will be the death of him if you do not come to his rescue, is that he lent 25 napoleons to Ferrante Palla, a lunatic of our country but also something of a genius, whom we have since sentenced to death, fortunately in his absence. This Ferrante has written a couple of hundred lines in his time which are like nothing in the world; I will repeat them to you, they are as fine as Dante. The Prince then sends Sanseverina to the Court of ——, he marries you on the day of his departure, and in the second year of his stay abroad, which he calls an Embassy, he receives the Grand Cordon of the ——, without which he cannot live. You will have in him a brother who will give you no trouble at all; he signs all the papers I require in advance, and besides you will see nothing of him, or as little as you choose. He asks for nothing better than never to shew his face at Parma, where his grandfather the tax-gatherer and his own profession of Liberalism stand in his way. Rassi, our hangman, makes out that the Duca was a secret subscriber to theConstitutionnelthrough Ferrante Palla the poet, and this slander was for a long time a serious obstacle in the way of the Prince's consent."
Why should the historian who follows faithfully all the most trivial details of the story that has been told him be held responsible? Is it his fault if his characters, led astray by passions which he, unfortunately for himself, in no way shares, descend to conduct that is profoundly immoral? It is true that things of this sort are no longer done in a country where the sole passion that has outlived all the rest is that for money, as an excuse for vanity.
Three months after the events we have just related, the Duchessa Sanseverina-Taxis astonished the court of Parma by her easy affability and the noble serenity of her mind; her house was beyond comparison the most attractive in the town. This was what Conte Mosca had promised his master. Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, the Reigning Prince, and the Princess his Consort, to whom she was presented by two of the greatest ladies in the land, gave her a most marked welcome. The Duchessa was curious to see this Prince, master of the destiny of the man she loved, she was anxious to please him, and in this was more than successful. She found a man of tall stature but inclined to stoutness; his hair, his moustache, his enormous whiskers were of a fine gold, according to his courtiers; elsewhere they had provoked, by their faded tint, the ignoble wordflaxen. From the middle of a plump face there projected to no distance at all a tiny nose that was almost feminine. But the Duchessa observed that, in order to notice all these points of ugliness, one had first to attempt to catalogue the Prince's features separately. Taken as a whole, he had the air of a man of sense and of firm character. His carriage, his way of holding himself were by no means devoid of majesty, but often he sought to impress the person he was addressing; at such times he grew embarrassed himself, and fell into an almost continuous swaying motion from one leg to the other. For the rest, Ernesto IV had a piercing and commanding gaze; his gestures with his arms had nobility, and his speech was at once measured and concise.
Mosca had warned the Duchessa that the Prince had, in the large cabinet in which he gave audiences, a full length portrait of Louis XIV, and a very fine table by Scagliola of Florence. She found the imitation striking; evidently he sought to copy the gaze and the noble utterance of Louis XIV, and he leaned upon the Scagliola table so as to give himself the pose of Joseph II. He sat down as soon as he had uttered his greeting to the Duchessa, to give her an opportunity to make use of thetabouretbefitting her rank. At this court, duchesses, princesses, and the wives of Grandees of Spain alone have the right to sit; other women wait until the Prince or Princess invites them; and, to mark the difference in rank, these August Personages always take care to allow a short interval to elapse before inviting the ladies who are not duchesses to be seated. The Duchessa found that at certain moments the imitation of Louis XIV was a little too strongly marked in the Prince; for instance, in his way of smiling good-naturedly and throwing back his head.
Ernesto IV wore an evening coat in the latest fashion, that had come from Paris; every month he had sent to him from that city, which he abhorred, an evening coat, a frock coat, and a hat. But by an odd blend of costume, on the day on which the Duchessa was received he had put on red breeches, silk stockings and very close-fitting shoes, models for which might be found in the portraits of Joseph II.
He received Signora Sanseverina graciously; the things he said to her were shrewd and witty; but she saw quite plainly that there was no superfluity of warmth in his reception of her.—"Do you know why?" said Conte Mosca on her return from the audience, "it is because Milan is a larger and finer city than Parma. He was afraid, had he given you the welcome that I expected and he himself had led me to hope, of seeming like a provincial in ecstasies before the charms of a beautiful lady who has come down from the capital. No doubt, too, he is still upset by a detail which I hardly dare mention to you; the Prince sees at his court no woman who can vie with you inbeauty. Yesterday evening, when he retired to bed, that was his sole topic of conversation with Pernice, his principal valet, who is good enough to confide in me. I foresee a little revolution in etiquette; my chief enemy at this court is a fool who goes by the name of General Fabio Conti. Just imagine a creature who has been on active service for perhaps one day in his life, and sets out from that to copy the bearing of Frederick the Great. In addition to which, he aims also at copying the noble affability of General La Fayette, and that because he is the leader, here, of the Liberal Party (God knows what sort of Liberals!)."
"I know your Fabio Conti," said the Duchessa; "I had a good view of him once near Como; he was quarrelling with the police." She related the little adventure which the reader may perhaps remember.
"You will learn one day, Signora, if your mind ever succeeds in penetrating the intricacies of our etiquette, that young ladies do not appear at court here until after their marriage. At the same time, the Prince has, for the superiority of his city of Parma over all others, a patriotism so ardent that I would wager that he will find some way of having little Clelia Conti, our La Fayette's daughter, presented to him. She is charming, upon my soul she is; and was still reckoned, a week ago, the best-looking person in the States of the Prince.
"I do not know," the Conte went on, "whether the horrors that the enemies of our Sovereign have disseminated against him, have reached the castle of Grianta; they make him out a monster, an ogre. The truth is that Ernesto IV was full of dear little virtues, and one may add that, had he been invulnerable like Achilles, he would have continued to be the model of a potentate. But in a moment of boredom and anger, and also a little in imitation of Louis XIV cutting off the head of some hero or other of the Fronde, who was discovered living in peaceful solitude on a plot of land near Versailles, fifty years after the Fronde, one fine day Ernesto IV had two Liberals hanged. It seems that these rash fellows used to meet on fixed days to speak evil of the Prince and address ardent prayers to heaven that the plague might visit Parma and deliver them from the tyrant. The wordtyrantwas proved. Rassi called this conspiracy; he had them sentenced to death, and the execution of one of them, Conte L——, was atrocious. All this happened before my time. Since that fatal hour," the Conte went on, lowering his voice, "the Prince has been subject to fits of panicunworthy of a man, but these are the sole source of the favour that I enjoy. But for this royal fear, mine would be a kind of merit too abrupt, too harsh for this court, where idiocy runs rampant. Would you believe that the Prince looks under the beds in his room before going to sleep, and spends a million, which at Parma is the equivalent of four millions at Milan, to have a good police force; and you see before you, Signora Duchessa, the Chief of that terrible Police. By the police, that is to say by fear, I have become Minister of War and Finance; and as the Minister of the Interior is my nominal chief, in so far as he has the police under his jurisdiction, I have had that portfolio given to Conte Zurla-Contarini, an imbecile who is a glutton for work and gives himself the pleasure of writing eighty letters a day. I received one only this morning on which Conte Zurla-Contarini has had the satisfaction of writing with his own hand the number 20,715."
The Duchessa Sanseverina was presented to the melancholy Princess of Parma, Clara-Paolina, who, because her husband had a mistress (quite an attractive woman, the Marchesa Balbi), imagined herself to be the most unhappy person in the universe, a belief which had made her perhaps the most trying. The Duchessa found a very tall and very thin woman, who was not thirty-six and appeared fifty. A symmetrical and noble face might have passed as beautiful, though somewhat spoiled by the large round eyes which could barely see, if the Princess had not herself abandoned every attempt at beauty. She received the Duchessa with a shyness so marked that certain courtiers, enemies of Conte Mosca, ventured to say that the Princess looked like the woman who was being presented and the Duchessa like the sovereign. The Duchessa, surprised and almost disconcerted, could find no language that would put her in a place inferior to that which the Princess assumed for herself. To restore some self-possession to this poor Princess, who at heart was not wanting in intelligence, the Duchessa could think of nothing better than to begin, and keep going, a long dissertation on botany. The Princess was really learned in this science; she had some very fine hothouses with quantities of tropical plants. The Duchessa, while seeking simply for a way out of a difficult position, made a lifelong conquest of Princess Clara-Paolina, who, from the shy and speechless creature that she had been at the beginning of the audience, found herself towards the end so much at her ease, that, in defiance of all the rules of etiquette, this first audience lasted for no less than an hour and a quarter. Next day, the Duchessa sent out to purchase some exotic plants, and posed as a great lover of botany.
The Princess spent all her time with the venerable Father Landriani, Archbishop of Parma, a man of learning, a man of intelligence even, and a perfectly honest man, but one who presented a singular spectacle when he was seated in his chair of crimson velvet (it was the privilege of his office) opposite the armchair of the Princess, surrounded by her maids of honour and her two ladiesof company. The old prelate, with his flowing white locks, was even more timid, were such a thing possible, than the Princess; they saw one another every day, and every audience began with a silence that lasted fully a quarter of an hour. To such a state had they come that the Contessa Alvizi, one of the ladies of company, had become a sort of favourite, because she possessed the art of encouraging them to talk and so breaking the silence.
To end the series of presentations, the Duchessa was admitted to the presence of H.S.H. the Crown Prince, a personage of taller stature than his father and more timid than his mother. He was learned in mineralogy, and was sixteen years old. He blushed excessively on seeing the Duchessa come in, and was so put off his balance that he could not think of a word to say to that beautiful lady. He was a fine-looking young man, and spent his life in the woods, hammer in hand. At the moment when the Duchessa rose to bring this silent audience to an end:
"My God! Signora, how pretty you are!" exclaimed the Crown Prince; a remark which was not considered to be in too bad taste by the lady presented.
The Marchesa Balbi, a young woman of five-and-twenty, might still have passed for the most perfect type ofleggiadria italiana, two or three years before the arrival of the Duchessa Sanseverina at Parma. As it was, she had still the finest eyes in the world and the most charming airs, but, viewed close at hand, her skin was netted with countless fine little wrinkles which made the Marchesa look like a young grandmother. Seen from a certain distance, in the theatre for instance, in her box, she was still a beauty, and the people in the pit thought that the Prince shewed excellent taste. He spent every evening with the Marchesa Balbi, but often without opening his lips, and the boredom she saw on the Prince's face had made this poor woman decline into an extraordinary thinness. She laid claim to an unlimited subtlety, and was always smiling a bitter smile; she had the prettiest teeth in the world, and in season and out, having little or no sense, would attempt by an ironical smile to give some hidden meaning to her words. Conte Mosca said that it was these continual smiles, while inwardly she was yawning, that gave her all her wrinkles. The Balbi had a finger in every pie, and the State never made a contract for 1,000 francs without there being some littlericordo(this was the polite expression at Parma) for the Marchesa. Common report would have it that she had invested six millions in England, but her fortune, which indeed was of recent origin, did not in reality amount to 1,500,000 francs. It was to be out of reach of her stratagems, and to have her dependent upon himself, that Conte Mosca had made himself Minister of Finance. The Marchesa's sole passion was fear disguised in sordid avarice: "I shall die on straw!" she used occasionally to say to the Prince, who was shocked by such a remark. The Duchessa noticed that the ante-room, resplendent with gilding, of the Balbi'spalazzo, was lighted by a single candle which guttered on a priceless marble table, and that the doors of her drawing-room were blackened by the footmen's fingers.
"She received me," the Duchessa told her lover, "as though she expected me to offer her a gratuity of 50 francs."
The course of the Duchessa's successes was slightly interrupted by the reception given her by the shrewdest woman of the court, the celebrated Marchesa Raversi, a consummate intriguer who had established herself at the head of the party opposed to that of Conte Mosca. She was anxious to overthrow him, all the more so in the last few months, since she was the niece of the Duca Sanseverina, and was afraid of seeing her prospects impaired by the charms of his new Duchessa. "The Raversi is by no means a woman to be ignored," the Conte told his mistress; "I regard her as so far capable of sticking at nothing that I separated from my wife solely because she insisted on taking as her lover Cavaliere Bentivoglio, a friend of the Raversi." This lady, a tall virago with very dark hair, remarkable for the diamonds which she wore all day, and the rouge with which she covered her cheeks, had declared herself in advance the Duchessa's enemy, and when she received her in her own house made it her business to open hostilities. The Duca Sanseverina, in the letters he wrote from ——, appeared so delighted with his Embassy, and above all, with the prospect of the Grand Cordon, that his family were afraid of his leaving part of his fortune to his wife, whom he loaded with little presents. The Raversi, although definitely ugly, had for a lover Conte Baldi, the handsomest man at court; generally speaking, she was successful in all her undertakings.
The Duchessa lived in the greatest style imaginable. ThepalazzoSanseverina had always been one of the most magnificent in the city of Parma, and the Duca, to celebrate the occasion of his Embassy and his future Grand Cordon, was spending enormous sums upon its decoration; the Duchessa directed the work in person.