“Will it really never be possible for me,” the vulgar-minded general would often think, “to turn this daughter of mine, the most beautiful and the most virtuous creature in our sovereign’s dominions, to some account for my own advancement? My life is too isolated; I have nobody but her in the whole world, and a family which would give me social support is a necessity to me, in order that in a certain number of houses my worth, and, above all, my fitness for ministerial functions, may be accepted as the indispensable basis of every political argument. Well, my daughter—beautiful, good, and pious as she is—loses her temper whenever any young man in a good position about court attempts to induce her to accept his advances. As soon as the suitor is dismissed, she takes a less gloomy view of his character, and she is almost gay until another marrying man puts in an appearance. The handsomest man at court, Count Baldi, paid his addresses, and failed to please her. The wealthiest man in his Highness’s dominions, the Marchese Crescenzi, has succeeded him. She vows he would make her wretched.”
At other times the general would muse thus: “There is no doubt about it, my daughter’s eyes are much finer than the duchess’s, especially because their expression now and then is infinitely deeper. But when is that splendid expression of hers to be seen? Never in a drawing-room, where it might make her fortune, but when we are out of doors, and she is moved to pity, for instance, by the sufferings of some wretched rustic. ‘Pray keep some memory of that splendid glance for the drawing-rooms in which we shall appear to-night,’ I sometimes say to her. Not a bit of it. If she does condescend to go out with me, her pure and noble countenance bears a somewhat haughty, and anything but encouraging, expression of passive obedience.” The general had spared no pains, as my readers will perceive, toprovide himself with a suitable son-in-law. But he spoke the truth.
Courtiers, having nothing to look at within their own souls, are very observant of external matters. The Parmese courtiers had remarked that it was especially when Clelia could not persuade herself to cast off her beloved reveries, and feign interest in outside things, that the duchess was fond of hovering near her, and tried to make her talk. Clelia had fair hair, which contrasted, very softly, with her delicate colouring, somewhat too pale, as a general rule. A careful observer would have judged, from the very shape of her forehead, that her look of dignity, and her general demeanour, so far above any vulgar seeking after graceful effect, were the outcome of her profound indifference to all vulgar things. They arose from an absence of any interest in anything—not from any incapacity for such interest. Since her father had held the governorship of the citadel, Clelia had lived happy, or, at all events, free from sorrow, in her rooms in that lofty building. The huge number of steps leading to the governor’s palace, which stood on the terrace of the great tower, kept away tiresome visitors, and for this reason Clelia enjoyed a quite conventual freedom. This almost constituted the ideal of happiness which she had once thought of seeking in the religious life. A sort of horror seized her at the very idea of placing her beloved solitude, and her inmost thoughts, at the mercy of a young man whose title of “husband” would give him the right to disturb her whole inner life. If her solitude had not brought her happiness, it had at all events enabled her to avoid sensations which would have been too painful.
The day Fabrizio had been taken to the fortress, the duchess met Clelia at a party given by the Minister of the Interior, Count Zurla. There was a ring of admirers round them. That evening, Clelia looked even more beautiful than the duchess. There was a look in the young girl’s eyes, so strange, so deep, as to be well-nigh indiscreet. There was pity in that look. There was indignation, too, and anger. The gay talk and brilliant fancies of the duchess seemed at moments to throw Clelia into a state of distresswhich almost amounted to horror. “What sobs and moans that poor woman will pour out when she hears that her lover—that noble-hearted and noble-looking young man—has been cast into prison! And the sovereign’s eyes, that condemned him to death. Oh, absolute power, when wilt thou cease to crush our Italy? Oh, vile, base beings! And I—I am a jailer’s daughter; and I did not fail to act up to that noble part when I would not condescend to answer Fabrizio. And once he was my benefactor! What can he think of me now, as he sits alone in his room, beside his little lamp?”
Sickened by the thought, Clelia gazed, with horror in her eyes, round the minister’s splendidly lighted rooms.
“Never,” whispered the circle of courtiers who gathered round the two reigning beauties, and strove to join in their conversation, “never have they talked together so eagerly, and at the same time with such an air of intimacy. Can it be that the duchess, who is always trying to soothe the hatreds roused by the Prime Minister, has pitched on some great marriage for Clelia?” This conjecture was strengthened by a circumstance which had never, hitherto, been noticed at court. There was more light, so to speak, more passion, in the young girl’s eyes than in those of the lovely duchess. She, on her side, was astonished, and to her credit we may say it, delighted, by the new charms she was discovering in the youthful recluse. For over an hour she had been gazing at her with a pleasure such as is not often felt at the sight of a rival.
“But what can be happening?” wondered the duchess. “Never has Clelia looked so lovely, and I may say, so touching. Can it be that her heart has spoken?… But if it be so, her love is an unhappy one; there is a gloomy pain at the bottom of this new-found animation.… But an unhappy love keeps silence. Is she trying to tempt back some faithless swain by her social successes?” And the duchess scrutinized all the young men standing round. She noted no very striking expression in any one of them. They all wore the same appearance of more or less self-satisfied conceit. “There is some miracle here,” thought theduchess, nettled at not being able to guess what it all meant. “Where is Count Mosca, that cleverest of beings? No, I am not mistaken. Clelia certainly does look at me as if I had roused quite a new sense of interest in her. Is it the result of the bestowal of some order on that crawling courtier, her father? I fancied her young and high-souled nature incapable of descending to matters of pecuniary gain. Can General Fabio Conti have any important request to make to the count?”
Toward ten o’clock one of the duchess’s friends came up to her and murmured something in a low voice. She turned very white. Clelia took her hand, and ventured to squeeze it.
“I thank you, and now I understand you.… You have a noble heart,” said the duchess with a great effort. She was hardly able to say the few words. She smiled profusely at the lady of the house, who left her seat to conduct her to the door of the outer drawing-room. Such an honour was due to princesses of the blood only, and the duchess felt its cruel irony in connection with her present position. So she smiled and smiled to the Countess Zurla; but though she tried desperately hard, she could not articulate a single word.
Clelia’s eyes filled with tears as she watched the duchess pass out of the rooms, crowded with all the most brilliant society of the city. “What will become of that poor woman,” she thought, “when she finds herself alone in her carriage? It would be indiscreet of me to offer to go with her. I dare not.… How it would console the poor prisoner, sitting in some miserable room, if he could know how deeply he is loved! Into what horrible solitude they have cast him! And we are here, in these brightly lighted rooms. It is monstrous! Could I find means of sending him a line? Good heavens! That would be to betray my father. His position between the two parties is so delicate. What will become of him if he exposes himself to the hatred of the duchess, who rules the Prime Minister, the master of three parts of the business of the state? And then, the prince keeps a close eye on everything that happens in the fortress,and he will have no joking on that subject. Terror makes people cruel.… In any case, Fabrizio” (Clelia had ceased saying Monsignore del Dongo) “is far more to be pitied.… He has much more at stake than the mere danger of losing a lucrative appointment. And the duchess!… What a frightful passion love is! And yet all these liars in society talk of it as a source of happiness. One hears old women pitied because they can no longer feel love nor inspire it. Never shall I forget what I have just seen—that sudden change. How the duchess’s eyes, so lovely, so shining, grew sad and dim after the Marchese N⸺ whispered those fatal words in her ear! Fabrizio must be very worthy to be so much loved.”
Amid these very serious reflections, which quite filled Clelia’s mind, the complimentary remarks around her were more offensive to her than ever. To escape them she moved toward an open window, half shaded by a silken curtain. She had a hope that no one would dare to follow her into this retreat. The window opened on a little grove of orange trees, planted in the ground; as a matter of fact, it was necessary to roof them over every winter. Clelia breathed the perfume of the flowers with the greatest delight, and with this enjoyment, a certain amount of peace came back into her heart. “I thought him a very noble-looking fellow,” she mused. “But imagine his inspiring so remarkable a woman with such a passion! She has had the glory of refusing the prince’s own advances; and if she had condescended to desire it she might have been the queen of these dominions. My father says that the sovereign’s passion was so great that he would have married her if ever he had been free. And this love of hers for Fabrizio has lasted so long. For it is quite five years since we met them near the Lake of Como. Yes, quite five years,” she reiterated after a moment’s thought. “It struck me even then, when so many things were unperceived by my childish eyes. How both those ladies seemed to admire Fabrizio!”
Clelia noticed with delight that none of the young men who were so eager to talk to her had ventured to come near her balcony. One of them, the Marchese Crescenzi, hadmade a few steps in her direction, and then had stopped beside a card-table. “If only,” she said, “I could see some pretty orange trees like these out of my window in the palace in the fortress—the only one which has any shade at all—my thoughts might be less sad. But there is nothing to be seen but those great hewn stones of the Farnese Tower. Ah!” she said, starting, “perhaps that is where they have put him! How I long for a talk with Don Cesare; he will be less strict than the general. My father will certainly tell me nothing as we drive back to the fortress, but I shall get everything out of Don Cesare. I have some money. I might buy a few orange trees, and set them under the window of my aviary, so that they would prevent me from seeing the great walls of the Farnese Tower. How much more I shall hate them now that I know one of the persons shut up within them!… Yes, this is the third time I have seen him: once at court, at the princess’s birthday ball; to-day, standing with three gendarmes round him, while that horrible Barbone was asking that the handcuffs might be put upon him; and then that time at the Lake of Como—that is quite five years ago. What a young rascal he looked then! How he looked at the gendarmes, and how strangely his mother and his aunt looked at him! There was some secret that day, certainly—something they were hiding among themselves. I had an idea at the time that he, too, was afraid of the gendarmes.” Clelia shuddered. “But how ignorant I was! No doubt, even then, the duchess was interested in him.… How he made us laugh after a few minutes when, in spite of their evident anxiety, the two ladies had grown somewhat accustomed to a stranger’s presence!… And this evening I could not answer anything he said to me.… Oh, ignorance and timidity, how often you resemble the vilest things on earth! And that is my case even now, when I am past twenty.… I was quite right to think of taking the veil—I am really fit for nothing but the cloistered life. ‘Worthy daughter of a jailer,’ he must have said to himself. He despises me, and as soon as he is able to write to the duchess he will tell her of my unkindness, and the duchess will think me a verydeceitful girl, for this evening she may have believed I was full of sympathy for her misfortune.”
Clelia perceived that somebody was drawing near, with the apparent intention of standing beside her on the iron balcony in front of the window. This vexed her, though she reproached herself for the feeling. The dreams thus disturbed were not devoid of a certain quality of sweetness. “Here comes some intruder. I’ll give him a cold reception,” she thought. She turned her head with a scornful glance, and perceived the archbishop’s timorous figure edging toward her balcony by almost invisible degrees. “This holy man has no knowledge of the world,” thought Clelia to herself. “Why does he come and disturb a poor girl like me? My peace is the only thing I have!” She was greeting him with a respect not untinged with haughtiness when the prelate spoke:
“Signorina, have you heard the dreadful news?”
The expression of the young girl’s eyes had completely changed already, but, obedient to her father’s instructions, reiterated a hundred times over, she replied, with an air of ignorance which her eyes utterly belied:
“I have heard nothing, monsignore.”
“My chief grand vicar, poor Fabrizio del Dongo, who is no more guilty of the death of that ruffian Giletti than I am, has been carried off from Bologna, where he was living under the name of Giuseppe Bossi, and shut up in your citadel. He arrived therechainedto the carriage which brought him. A kind of jailer of the name of Barbone, who was pardoned years ago, after having murdered one of his own brothers, tried to use personal violence to Fabrizio, but my young friend is not a man to endure an insult. He threw the vile fellow on the ground, and was immediately carried down to a dungeon, twenty feet below the earth, with handcuffs on his wrists.”
“Not handcuffs. No.”
“Ah, you know something,” exclaimed the archbishop, and the old man’s features lost their expression of deep despondency; “but before all things, since somebody might come near this balcony, and interrupt us, would you do methe charity of giving Don Cesare this pastoral ring of mine with your own hands?” The young girl had taken the ring and did not know where to bestow it so as to avoid the risk of losing it. “Put it on your thumb,” said the archbishop, and he slipped it on himself. “May I rely on your giving him this ring?”
“Yes, monsignore.”
“Will you promise me secrecy as to what I am going to add, even if you should not think it proper to grant my request?”
“Yes, indeed, monsignore,” replied the young girl, alarmed by the grave and gloomy aspect assumed by the old man. “Our honoured archbishop,” she added, “can give me no orders that are not worthy of himself and of me.”
“Tell Don Cesare that I recommend my adopted son to his care. I know that the police officers who carried him off did not even give him time to take his breviary; I beg Don Cesare to give him his own, and if your uncle will send to-morrow to the palace, I undertake to replace the book given by him to Fabrizio. I also beg Don Cesare to pass on the ring, now on your pretty hand, to Monsignore del Dongo.” The archbishop was here interrupted by General Fabio Conti, who came to fetch his daughter and take her to her carriage. A short conversation ensued, during which the prelate showed himself to be not devoid of cunning. Without referring in the smallest degree to the newly made prisoner, he contrived that the current of talk should lead up to his own enunciation of certain political and moral sentiments, as, for instance: “There are certain critical moments in court life which decide the existence of important personages for considerable periods. It would be eminently imprudent to transform a condition of political coolness, which is a frequent and very simple result of party opposition, into a personal hatred.” Then the archbishop, somewhat carried away by the great grief which this unexpected arrest had occasioned him, went so far as to say that while a man must certainly preserve the position he enjoyed, it would be wanton imprudence to bring down desperate hatreds on his own head by allowing himselfto be drawn into certain things which never could be forgotten.
When the general was in his coach with his daughter—
“These may be called threats,” he cried. “Threats, to a man like me!” Not another word was exchanged between father and daughter during their twenty minutes’ drive.
When Clelia had received the pastoral ring from the archbishop, she had fully determined that when she was in the carriage with her father she would speak to him of the trifling service the prelate had asked of her. But when she heard the word “threats,” and the furious tone in which it was uttered, she became convinced that her father would intercept the message. She hid the ring with her left hand and clasped it passionately. All the way from the minister’s house to the citadel she kept asking herself whether it would be a sin not to speak to her father. She was very pious, very timid, and her heart, usually so quiet, was throbbing with unaccustomed violence. But the challenge of the sentinel on the rampart above the gate rang out over the approaching carriage before Clelia could pitch on words appropriate to persuade her father not to refuse, so great was her fear that he might do so. Neither could she think of any as she climbed the three hundred and eighty steps which led up to the governor’s palace.
She lost no time in speaking to her uncle; he scolded her, and refused to have anything to do with the business.
“Well,” cried the general, as soon as he caught sight of his brother Don Cesare, “here is the duchess ready to spend a hundred thousand crowns to make a fool of me and save the prisoner.”
But for the present we must leave Fabrizio in his prison, high up in the citadel of Parma. He is well guarded there, and when we come back we shall find him safe enough, though perhaps a trifle changed. We must now turn all our attention to the court, where his fate is to be decided by the most complicated intrigues, and, above all, by the passions of a most unhappy woman. As Fabrizio, watched by the governor, climbed the three hundred and eighty steps which led to his dungeon in the Farnese Tower he felt, greatly as he had dreaded that moment, that he had no time to think of his misfortune.
When the duchess reached home after leaving Count Zurla’s party she waved her women from her, and then, throwing herself, fully dressed, upon her bed, she moaned aloud: “Fabrizio is in the hands of his enemies, and, because of me, perhaps they will poison him.” How can I describe the moment of despair which followed this summing up of the situation in the heart of a woman so unreasonable, so enslaved by the sensation of the moment, and, though she did not acknowledge it to herself, so desperately in love with the young prisoner?
There were inarticulate exclamations, transports of rage, convulsive movements, but not one tear. She had sent away her women that they might not see her weep. She had thought she must burst into sobs the moment she was left alone, but tears, the first relief of a great sorrow, were denied her utterly. Her haughty soul was too full of rage,indignation, and the sense of her own inferiority to the prince.
“Is not this humiliation enough?” she cried. “I am insulted, and, what is far worse, Fabrizio’s life is risked! And shall I not avenge myself? Beware, my prince! you may destroy me—so be it; that is in your power—but after you have done it, I will have your life. Alas, my poor Fabrizio, and what good will that do you? What a change from the day on which I was about to leave Parma! And yet I thought myself unhappy then.… What blindness! I was on the point of breaking up all the habits of a pleasant life. Alas, all unknowingly, I stood on the brink of an event which was to settle my fate forever. If the count’s vile habits of slavish toadyism had not made him suppress the words ‘unjust proceedings’ in that fatal note which I had wrung from the prince’s vanity, we should have been safe. More by good luck than by good guidance, I must acknowledge, I had nettled his vanity about his beloved city of Parma. Then it was I who threatened to depart. Then I was free.… My God! now I am nothing but a slave. Here I lie, nailed to this vile sewer; and Fabrizio lies chained in the citadel—that citadel which has been death’s antechamber to so many men. And I—I can no longer hold that wild beast by his fear of seeing me forsake his lair!
“He is too clever not to feel that I shall never go far from the hateful tower to which my heart is fettered. The man’s wounded vanity may inspire him with the most extraordinary notions; their whimsical cruelty would only tickle his astounding vanity. If he puts forward his nauseous attempts at love-making again, if he says, ‘Accept the homage of your slave or else Fabrizio dies,’ well, then it will be the old story of Judith.… Yes, but though that would be suicide for me, it would be murdering Fabrizio. That booby who would come after him, our prince royal, and Rassi, his infamous torturer, would hang Fabrizio as my accomplice.”
The duchess cried out in her distress. This alternative, from which she could see no escape, put her agonized heartto torture. Her bewildered mind could see no other probability in the future. For some ten minutes she tossed about like a mad woman; this horrible restlessness was followed at last, for a few moments, by the slumber of exhaustion; she was worn out. But in a few minutes she woke again, with a start, and found herself sitting on her bed. She had fancied the prince was cutting off Fabrizio’s head before her very eyes. The duchess cast distracted glances all about her. When she had convinced herself, at last, that neither the prince nor Fabrizio were in her presence, she fell back upon her bed, and very nearly fainted. So great was her physical weakness that she had not strength to alter her position. “O God, if only I could die!” she said. “But what cowardice! Could I forsake Fabrizio in his misfortunes? My brain must be failing. Come, let me look at the truth; let me coolly consider the horrible position into which I have sprung, as though to please myself. What mad folly to come and live at the court of an absolute prince, a tyrant who knows every one of his victims! To him every glance they give seems a threat against his own power. Alas! neither the count nor I thought of that when I left Milan. All I considered were the attractions—a pleasant court, something inferior, indeed, still somewhat resembling the happy days under Prince Eugène.
“One has no idea, at a distance, of what the authority of a despot, who knows all his subjects by sight, really means. The external forms of despotism are the same as those of other governments. There are judges, for instance, but they are men like Rassi. The monster! He would not think it the least odd to hang his own father at the prince’s order.… He would call it his duty.… I might buy over Rassi, but—unhappy that I am—I have no means of doing it. What have I to offer him? A hundred thousand francs, perhaps. And the story goes that when Heaven’s wrath against this unhappy country last saved him from a dagger thrust, the prince sent him ten thousand gold sequins in a casket. And besides, what sum of money could possibly tempt him? That grovelling soul, which has never read anything but scorn in other men’s eyes, has the pleasure,now, of being looked at with fear, and even with respect. He may become Minister of Police—and why not? Then three quarters of the inhabitants of the country will pay him abject court, and tremble before him as slavishly as he himself trembles before the sovereign.
“As I can not fly this odious place, I must be useful to Fabrizio. If I live on alone, solitary, despairing, what, then, am I to do for Fabrizio? No! forward, miserable woman! Do your duty. Go out into the world. Pretend you have forgotten Fabrizio. Pretend to forget you, dear angel?”
At the words the duchess burst into tears—she could weep at last. After an hour claimed by the natural weakness of humanity, she became aware, with some sense of consolation, that her ideas were beginning to grow clearer. “If I had a magic carpet,” said she, “if I could carry off Fabrizio from the citadel, and take refuge with him in some happy country where they could not pursue us—in Paris, for instance—we should have the twelve hundred francs his father’s agent sends me with such comical regularity, to live on, at first; and I am sure I could get together another three hundred thousand, out of the remnants of my fortune.” The imagination of the duchess dwelt with inexpressible delight upon all the details of the life she would lead three hundred leagues from Parma. “There,” thought she to herself, “he might enter the army under an assumed name. In one of those brave French regiments, young Valserra would soon make himself a reputation, and he would be happy at last.”
These dreams of delight brought back her tears again, but this time, they were softer. There was still such a thing as happiness, then, somewhere. This frame of mind continued for a long time. The poor woman shrank with horror from the contemplation of the terrible reality. At last, just as the dawn began to show a white light above the tree tops in her garden, she made a great effort. “Within a few hours,” said she to herself, “I shall be on the battle-field. I shall have to act, and if anything irritating should happen to me, if the prince took it into his head to say anything about Fabrizio, I am not sure that I shall be able to keepmy self-control. Therefore, here and without delay, I must take my resolution.
“If I am declared a state criminal, Rassi will seize everything there is in the palace. On the first of the month, the count and I, according to our custom, burned all the papers of which the police might take advantage—and he is Minister of Police; there lies the beauty of the joke. I have three rather valuable diamonds. To-morrow Fulgenzio, my old boatman from Grianta, shall go to Geneva and place them in safe-keeping. If ever Fabrizio escapes (O God! be favourable to me!” and she crossed herself), “the Marchese del Dongo will perceive, in his unspeakable meanness, that it is a sin to provide support for a man who has been prosecuted by a legitimate prince. Then Fabrizio will get my diamonds, and so he will have bread at all events.
“I must dismiss the count.… After what has happened I never could bear to be alone with him again. Poor fellow! he is not wicked—far from it—he is only weak. His commonplace soul can not rise to the height of ours. My poor Fabrizio, would you could be with me for an instant, so that we might take counsel together about our danger!
“The count’s scrupulous prudence would interfere with all my plans, and besides, I must not drag him down into my own ruin.… For why should not that tyrant’s vanity make him cast me into prison? I shall have conspired … what is more easy to prove? If he would only send me to his citadel, and I could contrive to buy even one instant’s conversation with Fabrizio, how bravely we would go to death together! But a truce to such folly—his Rassi would advise him to get rid of me by poison. My appearance in the streets, dragged along in a cart, might touch the hearts of his dear subjects … but what! more fancies? Alas! such foolery must be forgiven to a poor woman whose real fate is so sad. The truth in all this is that the prince will not send me to death, but nothing would be easier for him than to cast me into prison and keep me there. He can have all sorts of compromising papers hidden in a cornerof my palace, as was done in the case of poor L⸺. Then three judges—who need not be too great rogues, for there will be authentic evidence—and a dozen false witnesses, will do the rest. Thus I may be sentenced to death for conspiracy, and the prince, in his boundless mercy, and considering that I had formerly had the honour of being received by him, will commute the penalty to ten years in the fortress. But I, not to belie the violent character which has drawn so many foolish remarks from the Marchesa Raversi and my other enemies, shall coolly poison myself—so, at least, the public will kindly believe. But I will undertake that Rassi will make his appearance in my dungeon, and politely offer me a phial of strychnine or laudanum, in the prince’s name.
“Yes, I must have a very open rupture with the count, for I will not drag him down with my own fall. That would be infamy. The poor man has loved me so sincerely. It was my own folly which led me to believe any true courtier’s soul had room in it for love. The prince will very probably find some pretext for throwing me into prison. He will be afraid of my perverting public opinion with regard to Fabrizio. The count has a deep sense of honour; that instant he will do what the court hangers-on, in their overwhelming astonishment, will style an act of madness—he will leave the court. I braved the prince’s authority the night he wrote that note; I must be prepared for anything from his wounded self-love. Can a man who was born a prince ever forget the sensation I gave him that evening? And besides, if the count is at variance with me, he will be in a better position to serve Fabrizio. But supposing the count, whom my decision will throw into despair, were to avenge himself.… But that is an idea that would not occur to him. He is not an intrinsically mean man, like the prince. The count may countersign an infamous decree, and groan as he does it, but he is honourable. And then, what should he avenge? The fact that after having loved him for five years, and never given his love a single cause for complaint, I say to him: ‘Dear count, I was happy enough to love you. Well, the flame has burned out; I donot love you any more. But I know the very bottom of your heart; I have the deepest regard for you, and you will always be the dearest of all my friends.’
“What reply can an honourable gentleman make to such a declaration?
“I will take a new lover, or, at all events, the world will think so. I will say to that lover: ‘After all, the prince is quite right to punish Fabrizio’s blunder. But on his fête day our gracious sovereign will, no doubt, set him at liberty!’ Thus I shall gain six months. This new lover, whom prudence recommends, should be that venal judge, that vile torturer, Rassi. He would be ennobled, and as a matter of fact, I should give him theentréeinto the best society. Forgive me, Fabrizio, dearest, that effort is beyond my powers. What! that monster! still stained with the blood of Count P⸺ and of D⸺? I should swoon with horror if he came near me, or, rather, I should seize a knife and plunge it into his vile heart. Ask me not things which are impossible!
“Yes, above all things, I must forget Fabrizio. I must not betray a shadow of anger against the prince. I must be as cheerful as ever. And my cheerfulness will seem yet more attractive to these sordid souls. First, because I shall appear to submit to their sovereign with a good grace; and secondly, because, far from making game of them, I shall take pains to show off their pretty little points—for instance, I will compliment Count Zurla on the beauty of the white feather in the hat he has just sent a courier to fetch from Lyons, and which is his great delight.
“I might choose a lover in the Raversi’s party. If the count retires, that will be the ministerial party, and there the power will lie. The man who rules the citadel will be a friend of the Raversi, for Fabio Conti will be one of the ministers. How will the prince, a well-bred man, a clever man, accustomed to the count’s delightful methods, endure doing business with that ox, that arch-fool, whose whole life has been taken up with the all-important problem of whether his Highness’s soldiers ought to wear seven buttons on the breasts of their tunics, or nine? It is such idioticbrutes as these—all very jealous of me, and there lies your danger, my dear Fabrizio—it is such idiotic brutes as these who will decide my fate and yours. Therefore the count will not resign. He always fancies resignation is the greatest sacrifice that can be made by a Prime Minister, and every time his looking-glass tells him he is growing old, he offers to make that sacrifice for me. Therefore my rupture with him must be complete. Yes, and there must be no reconciliation unless that should appear my only means of preventing his retirement. I will dismiss him, indeed, with all the kindness possible. But after his courtier-like suppression of the words ‘unjust proceedings’ in the prince’s note, I feel that if I am not to hate him I must spend some months without seeing him at all. On that decisive evening I had no need of his intelligence; all he had to do was to write under my dictation. He had only to write that one sentence, which I had won by my own resolution. His cringing courtier’s instinct was too much for him. He told me next morning that he could not ask his prince to sign anything so ridiculous—that he would have had to issue letters of pardon. But, good heavens, when one has to deal with such people—those monsters of vanity and spite known as the Farnese—one takes what one can get.”
At the thought, the anger of the duchess blazed up afresh. “The prince deceived me,” she said, “and how basely!… There is no excuse for that man. He has intellect, he has cleverness, he has logic; the only mean things in him are his passions. We have remarked it a score of times, the count and I. He is never vulgar-minded, except when he thinks there has been an intention to insult him. Well, Fabrizio’s crime has nothing to do with politics; it is a mere trifle of an assassination, such as occur by the hundred every year within his happy dominions, and the count has sworn to me that he has made the most careful inquiries, and that Fabrizio is innocent. Giletti was not devoid of courage. When he saw himself close to the frontier, he was suddenly tempted to get rid of a rival who found favour in the eyes of his mistress.”
The duchess pondered long over the question of Fabrizio’spossible culpability. Not that she considered it a very heavy sin on the part of a nobleman of her nephew’s rank to rid himself of an impertinent actor, but, in her despair, she was beginning to have a vague feeling that she would have to struggle desperately to prove Fabrizio’s innocence. “No,” said she at last, “here is a decisive proof. He is like poor Pietranera; he always carries arms in his pockets, and that day all he had was a broken-down single-barrelled gun, which he had borrowed from one of the workmen.
“I hate the prince, because he has deceived me, and deceived me after the most cowardly fashion. After he had signed his pardon, he had the poor boy carried off from Bologna. But this account shall be settled between us.”
Toward five o’clock in the morning the duchess, worn out by her long fit of despair, rang for her women. When they entered her room they screamed aloud. Seeing her stretched on her bed, fully dressed, with all her diamonds, her face white as her sheets, and her eyes closed, they almost fancied she was lying in state after her death. They would have thought her in a dead faint, if they had not recollected that she had just rung. Every now and then a slow tear coursed down her cheeks; her women understood, on a sign from her, that she desired to be put to bed.
Twice that morning, after Count Zurla’s party, the count had called upon the duchess. Finding no admittance, he wrote that he desired her advice for himself. Ought he to continue minister after the affront which had been put upon him? “The young man is innocent; but even if he had been guilty, ought he to have been arrested without any warning to me, his declared protector?”
The count had no virtue; we may even add that what Liberals understand byvirtue(to seek the happiness of the greatest number) seemed to him folly. He believed his first duty to be to seek the happiness of Count Mosca della Rovere; but when he spoke of resigning, he was thoroughly honourable and perfectly sincere. Never in all his life had he spoken an untruth to the duchess. She, however, paid not the slightest attention to his letter. Her course,and a very painful one, was settled: she was to pretend to forget Fabrizio. After that effort, everything else was quite indifferent to her.
Toward noon next morning the count, who had called quite ten times at the Palazzo Sanseverina, was at last admitted. He was thunder-struck when he saw the duchess. “She looks forty,” said he to himself, “and yesterday she was so brilliant, so young; every one tells me that during her long conversation with Clelia Conti she looked quite as young as she, and far more bewitching.”
The duchess’s voice and manner of speaking were just as strange as her appearance. Her tone—passionless, devoid of all human interest, of any touch of anger—drove the colour from the count’s face. It reminded him of one of his friends who, a few months previously, when on the point of death, and after having received the sacrament, had desired to speak with him. After a few minutes, the duchess was able to speak to him. She looked at him, but her eyes were still dim.
“Let us part, my dear count,” she said, in a voice that was weak, but quite articulate, and which she did her best to render kind. “Let us part! It must be done. Heaven is my witness that for the last five years my conduct toward you has been above reproach. You have given me a brilliant life in place of the boredom which would have been my dreary lot at Grianta. But for you, old age and I would have met together some years earlier.… On my part, my one care has been to endeavour to make you happy. It is because I care for you that I propose this separation, ‘à l’amiable,’ as they say in France.”
The count did not understand her. She was obliged to repeat herself several times over. Then he grew deadly pale, and, casting himself on his knees beside her bed, he poured out all that the deepest astonishment, followed by the liveliest despair, could inspire in the heart of a clever man who was desperately in love. Over and over again he offered to send in his resignation, and follow his friend to some safe retreat a thousand leagues from Parma.
“You dare to speak to me of departure,” she cried atlast, “and Fabrizio is here!” But seeing that the name of Fabrizio pained the count, she added, after a moment’s rest, and with a slight pressure of his hand: “No, dear friend, I will not tell you that I have loved you with those passionate transports which nobody, it appears to me, can feel after thirty, and I am long past that age. You will have been told that I love Fabrizio, for I know that story has been rife at thiswickedcourt.” For the first time during this conversation, her eyes flashed as she spoke the wordwicked. “I swear to you, before God, and on Fabrizio’s life, that not the smallest thing has ever happened between him and me, which a third person might not have seen. Neither will I tell you that I love him exactly as a sister would love him. I love him, so to speak, by instinct. I love his courage, so simple and so perfect that he may be said to be unaware of it himself. I remember that this admiration began when he returned from Waterloo. He was still a child, in spite of his seventeen years. His great anxiety was to know whether he really had been present at the battle; and if that were so, whether he could say he had fought, seeing he had not shared in the attack on any battery or any column of the enemy’s forces. It was during our serious discussion of this important subject that I began to notice his perfect charm. His great soul was revealed to me. What skilful lies a well-brought-up young man would have put forward in his place! Well, if he is not happy, I can not be happy. There; that sentence exactly describes the condition of my heart. If it is not the truth, it is, at all events, as much of the truth as I can see.” Encouraged by her tone of frankness and friendliness, the count tried to kiss her hand. She drew it away with a sort of horror. “Those days are over,” she said. “I am a woman of seven-and-thirty; I am on the threshold of old age. I feel all its despondency already; perhaps, indeed, I am very near my grave. That moment is a terrible one, so I have heard, and yet I think I long for it. I have the worst symptom of old age. This horrible misfortune has killed my heart; there is no love left in me. When I look at you, dear count, I only seem to see the shadow of some onewho was once dear to me! I will say more. It is only my gratitude which makes me speak to you thus.”
“What is to become of me?” reiterated the count; “of me, who feel I love you more passionately than when I first saw you at the Scala?”
“Shall I tell you something, dear friend? Your talk of love wearies me, and strikes me as indecent. Come,” she said, and she tried to smile, but failed, “take courage; act like a clever man, a judicious man, full of resource to meet events. Be with me that which you really are in the eyes of the outside world—the cleverest man and the greatest politician whom Italy has produced for centuries.”
The count rose to his feet and walked up and down for some moments in silence.
“Impossible, dear friend,” said he at last. “I am torn in pieces by the most violent passion, and you ask me to appeal to my own reason. There is no reason for me at present.”
“Let us not speak of passion, I beg of you,” she replied in a hard tone, and for the first time in their two hours’ conversation there was some expression in her voice. In spite of his own despair, the count endeavoured to console her.
“He has deceived me,” she exclaimed, without making any answer to the reasons for hope which the count was putting before her; “he has deceived me in the basest manner,” and for an instant her deadly pallor disappeared. But the count remarked that even at that moment she had not strength to raise her arms.
“Good God!” thought he, “can it be possible that she is only ill? In that case this must be the beginning of some very serious illness.” And, overcome with anxiety, he proposed sending for the famous Razori, the chief physician of that country, and the best in Italy.
“Would you, then, give a stranger the pleasure of knowing all the depths of my despair?… Is that the counsel of a traitor or of a friend?” and she looked at him with wild eyes.
“It is all over,” said he to himself in despair, “Shehas no more love for me, and, what is worse, she does not even reckon me among men of ordinary honour.”
“I must tell you,” added the count, speaking rapidly, “that I was determined, in the first instance, to know all the details of the arrest which has thrown us into despair, and, curiously enough, I know nothing positive as yet. I have had the gendarmes at the next post questioned. They saw the prisoner come in by the road from Castelnovo, and were ordered to follow hissediola. I immediately sent off Bruno, with whose zeal and devotion you are acquainted. He has orders to go back from one post to another, and to find out where and how Fabrizio was arrested.”
At the sound of Fabrizio’s name the duchess was seized with a slight convulsion.
“Excuse me, my friend,” she said to the count, as soon as she could speak. “These details interest me. Tell them all to me; help me to understand the smallest incidents.”
“Well, signora,” continued the count, striving to speak lightly, in the hope of distracting her thoughts a little. “I am rather tempted to send a confidential message to Bruno, and tell him to push on as far as Bologna. It is there, perhaps, that they may have laid hands upon our young friend. What is the date of his last letter?”
“Tuesday; that is five days ago.”
“Had it been opened in transmission?”
“There was not a sign of that. I must tell you that it was written on the most horrible paper; the address is in a woman’s handwriting, and bears the name of an old washerwoman who is related to my waiting-maid. The washerwoman believes the letters have to do with a love affair, and Cecchina repays her the charges for delivery, and gives her nothing more.” The count, who had now quite taken up the tone of a business man, endeavoured, in talking the matter over with the duchess, to discover on what day Fabrizio might have been carried off from Bologna. It was only then that he, generally so full of tact, discovered that this was the tone he had better take. These details interested the unhappy woman, and seemed to distract her thoughts a little. If the count had not been sodesperately in love, this simple idea would have occurred to him as soon as he entered her room.
The duchess dismissed him, so that he might send orders to the faithful Bruno without delay. When they touched, for a moment, on the question of finding out whether the sentence had actually been pronounced, when the prince had signed the note addressed to the duchess, she, with a sort of eagerness, seized the opportunity of saying to the count: “I will not reproach you with having omitted the words ‘unjust proceedings’ from the note which you wrote, and he signed. That was your courtier’s instinct, which was too strong for you. Unconsciously, you were preferring the interests of your master to the interests of your friend. Your acts, my dear count, have been subservient to my orders, and that for a very long time. But it is not within your power to change your nature. As a minister you have great talents, but you have the instincts of your trade as well. The suppression of the word ‘unjust’ has worked my ruin. But far be it from me to reproach you with it in any way. The fault lay with your instincts, and not with your will.
“Remember,” she added in an altered voice, and in the most imperious fashion, “that I am not too much overwhelmed by Fabrizio’s imprisonment, that it has never occurred to me to leave this country, and that my feeling for the prince is one of the most profound respect. That is what you have to say. And this is what I have to say to you: As I propose, in future, to direct my course alone, I wish to part from you ‘à l’amiable’—that is to say, as good old friends. You must consider that I am sixty years old, that youth is dead within me, that I can never feel anything very strongly again, that love is no longer possible to me. But I should be still more miserable than I am if I should happen to compromise your future. It may become part of my plans to give myself the appearance of having taken a young lover, and I should not like to see you pained on that account. I can swear to you, on Fabrizio’s happiness”—and she paused a minute on the words—“that I have never been unfaithful to you once in all these five years—thatis a very long time,” she said. She tried to smile; there was a movement on her pallid cheeks, but there was no curve upon her lips. “I will even swear to you that I have never planned such a thing, nor even thought of it. Now I have made that clear, so pray leave me.”
The count left the Palazzo Sanseverina in a state of despair. He saw the duchess was thoroughly resolved to separate from him, and he had never been so desperately in love with her. This is one of the matters to which I am constantly obliged to return, because, outside Italy, their improbability is so great. As soon as he reached his own house he sent off six different people along the road from Castelnovo and Bologna, all of them carrying letters. “But this is not all,” said the unhappy count to himself. “The prince may take it into his head to have the unhappy boy executed, just to avenge himself for the tone the duchess took with him on the day of that fatal note. I felt then that the duchess had overstepped a boundary beyond which one should never go, and it was to patch things up that I fell into the incredible folly of suppressing the words ‘unjust proceedings,’ the only ones which bound the sovereign. But pooh! is there anything that binds a man in his position? It was certainly the greatest mistake of my whole life, and has risked everything which made it worth living to me. I must use all my activity and skill to repair the blunder now. But if I utterly fail to gain anything, even by sacrificing a certain amount of my dignity, I will leave this man in the lurch, and we’ll see whom he will find to replace me, and realize his mighty political dreams, and his idea of making himself constitutional King of Lombardy! Fabio Conti is a mere fool, and Rassi’s talent amounts to finding legal reasons for hanging a man whom the ruler dislikes.”
Once the count had thoroughly made up his mind to resign his post if the severity with which Fabrizio was treated exceeded that of an ordinary imprisonment, he said to himself: “If an imprudent defiance of that man’s vain whim costs me my life, I will preserve my honour at all events.… By the way, now that I snap my fingers atmy ministerial portfolio, I can venture to do a hundred things which would have seemed impossible to me, even this morning. For instance, I will attempt anything within the bounds of human possibility to help Fabrizio to escape.… Good God!” exclaimed the count, breaking off suddenly, and his eyes dilated immensely, as if he had caught sight of some unexpected joy. “The duchess said nothing about escape to me! Can she have failed in sincerity for once in her life, and is her quarrel with me merely founded on her desire that I should deceive the prince? My faith, the thing is done!”
The count’s eyes had regained their old expression of satirical shrewdness. “That charming creature Rassi is paid by his master for all those sentences of his which dishonour us in the eyes of Europe. But he is not the man to refuse payment from me for betraying his master’s secrets. The brute has a mistress and a confessor. But the mistress is too vile a creature for me to converse with; all the fruit hucksters in the neighbourhood would know the details of our interview by the next morning.” The count, revived by this gleam of hope, was already on his way to the cathedral. Astounded at the hastiness of his own action, he laughed, in spite of his sorrow. “See what it is,” he said, “to be no longer minister.”
This cathedral, like many Italian churches, was used as a passage from one street to another. In the distance the count noticed one of the archbishop’s grand vicars crossing the aisle.
“As I have met you,” said he, “I am sure you will be good enough to save my gouty feet from the deadly fatigue of climbing up the archbishop’s staircase. I should be profoundly grateful to him if he would be so kind as to come down to the sacristy.” The archbishop was delighted at the message. He had a thousand things to say to the minister about Fabrizio; but the minister guessed these things were nothing but empty phrases, and would not listen to any of them.
“What sort of a man is Dugnani, the curate of San Paolo?”
“A small mind and a huge ambition,” replied the archbishop; “very few scruples, and excessive poverty, because of his vices.”
“Zounds! Monsignore,” exclaimed the minister, “your descriptions are worthy of Tacitus,” and he took leave of him with a smile. As soon as he was back in his palace he sent for Father Dugnani.
“You direct the conscience of my excellent friend Chief-Justice Rassi. Is there not anything he would like to say to me?” and without more words, or further ceremony, he dismissed the priest.
The count considered himself as already out of office. “Let me see,” thought he to himself, “how many horses shall we be able to keep after my disgrace, for that is what my retirement will be called?” The count reckoned up his fortune. When he had entered the ministry he had possessed eighty thousand francs. He now discovered, to his great astonishment, that his whole possessions did not amount to five hundred thousand francs. “That makes twenty thousand francs a year at the most,” he mused. “I really am a terrible blunderer. There is not a vulgar fellow at Parma who does not believe I have saved a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year. And on that particular point the prince is more vulgar-minded than anybody else. When they see me in poverty they will only say I am very clever about concealing my wealth. By Jove!” he exclaimed, “if I am in office for three months longer that fortune shall be doubled!” This idea suggested an excuse for writing to the duchess, and he seized it eagerly. But to gain forgiveness for writing at all, in their present terms, he filled his letter up with figures and calculations. “We shall only have twenty thousand francs a year,” he said, “to keep us all three at Naples—Fabrizio, you, and I. Fabrizio and I will keep one saddle horse between us.” The minister had only just sent his letter off, when Chief-Justice Rassi was announced. He received him with a haughtiness that bordered closely on impertinence.
“How is this, sir?” he cried; “you have a conspirator in whom I am interested carried off from Bologna, and you would fain cut off his head, and all this without a word to me. May I inquire if you know my successor’s name? Is he to be General Conti or yourself?”
Rassi was struck dumb. He had too little social experienceto be able to judge whether the count was speaking seriously or not. He turned very red, and mumbled some unintelligible words. The count watched him, and enjoyed his confusion.
All at once Rassi gave himself a shake, and exclaimed with perfect glibness, just like Figaro when he is caught red-handed by Almaviva:
“Upon my word, count, I’ll not mince matters with you. What will you give me if I answer all your questions just as I would answer those of my confessor?”
“The Cross of St. Paul” (the Parmese order), “or, if you can furnish me with a pretext for granting it to you, I will give you money.”
“I would rather have the Cross of St. Paul, because that gives me noble rank.”
“What, my dear sir! You still have some regard for our poor advantages?”
“If I had been nobly born,” replied Rassi, with all the impudence of his trade, “the relations of the people whom I have hanged would hate me, but they would not despise me.”
“Well,” returned the count, “I will save you from their scorn. Do you enlighten my ignorance. What do you intend to do with Fabrizio?”
“Indeed, the prince is sorely puzzled. He is very much afraid that, tempted by Armida’s lovely eyes—excuse this glowing language, I use the sovereign’s own words—he is afraid that, fascinated by those exquisite eyes, of which he himself has felt the charm, you may leave him in the lurch, and you are the only man capable of managing this Lombard business. I will even tell you,” added Rassi, lowering his voice, “that you have a fine opportunity here, quite worth the Cross of St. Paul that you are giving me. The prince would confer on you, as a reward from the nation, a fine property worth six hundred thousand francs, which he would cut off his own domains, or else a grant of three hundred thousand crowns, on condition of your undertaking not to interfere about Fabrizio del Dongo, or at all events only to mention the matter to him in public.”
“I expected something better than that,” said the count. “If I don’t interfere about Fabrizio I must quarrel with the duchess.”
“Well, that again is just what the prince says. Between ourselves, the fact is that he is furiously angry with the duchess, and he is afraid that to console yourself for your quarrel with that charming lady you may ask him, now that your wife is dead, to grant you the hand of his cousin, Princess Isota—she is not more than fifty years old.”
“He has guessed aright,” replied the count. “Our master is the cleverest man in his own dominions.”
Never had the whimsical notion of marrying this elderly princess entered the count’s head. Nothing could have been more uncongenial to a man with his mortal hatred of court ceremonial. He began rapping his snuff-box on the top of a little marble table, close to his arm-chair.
Rassi took his perplexed gesture to be the possible harbinger of a stroke of good fortune; his eyes shone.
“I beg of you, count,” he cried, “if your Excellency proposes to accept either the property worth six hundred thousand francs, or the money grant, not to choose anybody but myself to negotiate the matter for you. I would undertake,” he added, dropping his voice, “to get the money grant increased, or even to add a considerable tract of forest to the landed property. If your Excellency would only condescend to impart a little gentleness and caution into your manner of speaking of the brat shut up yonder, the landed property bestowed on you by the nation’s gratitude might be turned into a duchy. I tell your Excellency again, the prince, at the present moment, loathes the duchess. But he is in a very great difficulty—to such a point, indeed, that I have sometimes imagined there must be some secret matter which he does not dare to acknowledge to me. At any rate, there is a perfect gold mine for us both in the business, for I can sell you his most private secrets, and very easily, too, seeing I am looked on as your sworn enemy. After all, furious though he is with the duchess, he believes, as we all do, that you are the only person in the world who can successfully carry through the secret arrangementsabout the Milanese territory. Will your Excellency give me leave to repeat the sovereign’s expression, word for word?” said Rassi, growing more eager. “Often there are features in the mere positions of words which no paraphrase can render, and you may see more in them than I do.”
“I give you full leave,” said the count, who was still rapping the marble table absently with his gold snuff-box; “I give you full leave, and I shall be grateful.”
“If you will give me an hereditary patent of nobility, independently of the Cross, I shall be more than satisfied. When I mention the idea of nobility to the prince, he answers: ‘Turn a rascal like you into a noble! I should have to shut up shop the very next day; not a soul in Parma would ever seek for rank again.’ To come back to the Milanese business, the prince said to me, only three days ago: ‘That knave is the only man who can carry on the thread of our intrigues. If I turn him away, or if he follows the duchess, I may as well give up all hope of one day seeing myself the Liberal and adored ruler of all Italy.’”
At these words the count breathed more freely. “Fabrizio will not die,” said he to himself.
Never before, in the whole of his life, had Rassi been admitted to familiar conversation with the Prime Minister. He was beside himself with delight. He felt himself on the eve of bidding farewell to that cognomen of Rassi, which had become synonymous with everything that was mean and vile throughout the whole country. The common people called all mad dogsRassi; only quite lately soldiers had fought duels because the name had been applied to them by some of their comrades. Never a week passed that the unlucky name did not appear in some piece of low doggerel. His son, an innocent schoolboy of sixteen years of age, dared not show himself in thecafésbecause of his name.
The scalding memory of all these delightful features of his position drove him to commit an imprudence.
“I have a property,” said he to the count, edging his seat close to the Prime Minister’s arm-chair; “it is called Riva. I should like to be Baron Riva.”
“Why not?” said the Prime Minister. Rassi quite lost his head.
“Well, then, count, I will dare to be indiscreet; I will venture to guess the object of your desire. You aspire to the hand of Princess Isota, and that is a noble ambition. Once you are related to the prince, you are safe from all disgrace; you have a tight hold upon our friend. I will not conceal from you that the idea of this marriage with Princess Isota is odious to him. But if your business were in the hands of a skilful man, well paid, we need not despair of success.”
“I, my dear Baron, should certainly despair. I repudiate beforehand everything you may say in my name. But, on the day when that illustrious alliance at last crowns my earnest hopes, and raises me to that mighty position in the state, I will either give you three hundred thousand francs of my own, or else I will advise the prince to show you some mark of favour, which you yourself may prefer to that sum of money.”
This conversation may seem a lengthy one to the reader, yet we have suppressed more than half of it. It lasted for another two hours. Rassi left the count’s house, half delirious with delight. The count remained, with great hopes of saving Fabrizio, and more determined than ever to resign.
He felt convinced it would be a good thing to renew his credit by the presence of such men as Rassi and Conti in power. He dwelt with the keenest delight on a method of revenging himself on the prince which had just occurred to him. “He may drive the duchess out,” he exclaimed, “but, by my soul! he shall give up his hope of being constitutional King of Lombardy.” The whole idea was a ridiculous fancy; the prince, though a clever man, had dreamed over it till he had fallen desperately in love with it.
The count flew on wings of delight to retail this conversation with the chief justice to the duchess. He found her door closed; the porter hardly dared to tell him that he had received the order from his mistress’s own lips. Sadly the count retraced his steps to the ministry; the misfortunewhich had befallen him had quite wiped out the joy caused by his conversation with the prince’s confidant. Too disheartened to do anything else, he was wandering drearily up and down his picture gallery, when, a quarter of an hour later, the following note was delivered to him:
“Since it is true, dear and kind friend, that we are now no more than friends, you must only come to see me three times a week. After a fortnight we will reduce these visits, to which my heart still clings, to two in the month. If you desire to please me, you will give publicity to this rupture of ours. If you would bring back almost all the love I once felt for you, you would choose another woman to be your friend. As for me, I intend to be very gay; I propose to go out a great deal; perhaps I shall even find some clever man who may help me to forget my sorrows. As a friend, indeed, you will always hold the first place in my heart, but I do not wish it to be said that my action has been dictated by your wisdom. And above all things, I wish it to be well known that I have lost all influence over your decisions. In a word, dear count, believe that you will always be my dearest friend, and never anything else. I beg you will not nurse any thought of change; this is the very end. You may reckon on my unchanging regard.”
The last words were too much for the count’s courage; he wrote an eloquent letter to the prince, resigning all his posts, and sent it to the duchess, with the request that she would send it over to the palace. In a few moments his resignation came back to him, torn into four pieces, and on one of the blank spaces on the paper the duchess had condescended to write, “No! a thousand times No!”
It would be difficult to describe the poor minister’s despair. “She is right. I admit it,” he reiterated over and over again. “My omission of the words ‘unjust proceedings’ is a terrible misfortune. It will end, perhaps, in Fabrizio’s death, and that will involve my own.”
It was with a sick weight at his heart that the count, who would not appear at the palace without being sent for, wrote out, with his own hand, themotu propriowhich appointed Rassi a Knight of the Order of St. Paul, and conferred onhim a title of hereditary nobility. To this document the count added a report, covering half a page, which laid the state reasons rendering this step desirable, before the prince. It was a sort of melancholy pleasure to him to make fair copies of these two papers, and send them to the duchess.
His brain was full of conjectures. He strove to guess at the future line of conduct of the woman he loved. “She knows nothing about it herself,” he thought. “Only one thing is certain—that nothing in the world would induce her to relinquish the decisions she has once expressed.” His misery was increased by the fact that he could not contrive to see that the duchess was in the wrong. “She conferred a favour on me when she loved me. She loves me no longer because of a fault, involuntary, indeed, but which may have horrible consequences. I have no right to complain.” The next morning the count heard the duchess had begun to go into society again. She had appeared the night before in all the houses that had been open to guests. What would have become of him if he had met her in the same drawing-room? How was he to speak to her? The following day was terribly gloomy. The general report was that Fabrizio was to be put to death; the whole town was stirred. It was added that the prince, out of regard to his high birth, had condescended to give orders that his head should be cut off.
“It is I who will have killed him,” thought the count. “I can never expect to see the duchess again.” In spite of this somewhat simple reasoning, he could not refrain from calling at her house three times over. It must be said that he went on foot so as to avoid comment. In his despair he even dared to write to her. He had sent twice for Rassi, but the chief justice had not appeared. “The rascal is playing me false,” said the count to himself.
The next morning three great pieces of news stirred the upper ranks, and even the middle classes, of Parma. Fabrizio’s execution was more than ever certain, and a very curious thing in connection with this information was that the duchess did not seem overmuch distressed about heryoung lover. At all events she took admirable advantage of the pallor resulting from a somewhat serious indisposition, from which she had suffered just at the moment of Fabrizio’s arrest. In these details the middle classes were sure they recognised the dried-up heart of a great court lady. Yet, out of decency, or as a sacrifice to the memory of young Fabrizio, she had broken with Count Mosca. “What immorality!” exclaimed the Jansenists of Parma. But already the duchess (and this was incredible) seemed inclined to listen to the addresses of the handsomest young men about the court. Among other symptoms it was remarked that she had held a very merry conversation with Count Baldi, the Raversi’s lover, and had rallied him greatly on his constant expeditions to Velleia. The lower middle class and the populace were furious about Fabrizio’s death, which the worthy folk ascribed to Count Mosca’s jealousy. Court society also devoted a great deal of attention to the count, but only to mock at him. The third of the great pieces of intelligence to which we have referred was no other, indeed, than the count’s resignation. Everybody laughed at this absurd lover of fifty-six, who was sacrificing a magnificent position to the grief of seeing himself forsaken by a heartless woman, who, for a considerable time, had preferred a younger man to himself. The archbishop was the only man whose intelligence—or shall we say his heart?—enabled him to guess that the count’s honour forbade him to continue Prime Minister in a country the ruler of which was about to behead a young man who had been hisprotégé, without even consulting him. The news of the count’s resignation cured General Fabio Conti’s gout, as we shall duly relate, when we speak of the manner in which Fabrizio was spending his time in the citadel, while all the town was expecting to hear the hour fixed for his execution.
The following day the count saw Bruno, the trusty agent whom he had sent to Bologna. The count was greatly moved when the man entered his study. The sight of him brought back the memory of his own happiness, the day he had despatched him to Bologna at the request of the duchess. Bruno had just arrived from Bologna, where hehad found out nothing at all. He had not been able to discover Ludovico, whom thepodestàof Castelnovo had detained in the prison of his village.
“I shall send you back to Bologna,” said the count to Bruno. “The duchess will value the sad pleasure of knowing every detail of Fabrizio’s misfortune. Apply to the officer commanding the gendarmes at Castelnovo——”
“But, no!” cried the count, breaking off suddenly. “You shall start instantly for Lombardy, and there you shall distribute money, and plenty of it, to all our correspondents. My object is to have reports of the most encouraging nature sent in by all those people.”
Bruno, having thoroughly realized the object of his mission, set to work to write out his letters of credit. The count, just as he was giving him his last instructions, received a thoroughly deceitful letter, but admirably expressed. It might have been taken for a missive from one friend, asking another to do him a service. The friend who wrote this letter was none other than the prince. He had heard some talk of resignation, and besought his friend Count Mosca to continue at his post. He begged him to do this in the name of friendship, and the dangers threatening the country, and as his master, he commanded him. He added that the King of *** had just placed two ribbons of his Order at his disposal; he was keeping one for himself, and sent the other to his dear friend Count Mosca.
“This creature is my curse!” exclaimed the count in his fury, and to Bruno’s amazement. “He thinks he can take me in with the very same hypocritical phrases we have so often strung together to catch some fool.” He declined the proffered Order, and in his reply, wrote that the state of his health left him very little hope of being able to perform the arduous duties of his ministry much longer. The count was frantic. A moment afterward, Chief-Justice Rassi was announced; he treated him like a negro slave.