The Charterhouse of Parma

by Stendhal

  “No,” he replied, with the expression of a Roman emperor, “but I want to conduct myself properly.”

  This remark was capable of various interpretations; Fabrizio lacked the courage to proceed any further and to run the risk of wounding this adorable woman. He was too young, too susceptible to emotion; his mind supplied him with no graceful turn of phrase to express all he meant. In a natural transport of feeling and despite all his reasoning, he took this charming woman in his arms and covered her with kisses. At the same moment, they heard the sound of the Count’s carriage entering the courtyard, and at almost the same moment the Count himself appeared in the salon; he seemed greatly moved.

  “You inspire very singular passions,” he said to Fabrizio, who remained nearly thunderstruck by the remark. “Tonight the Archbishop had the audience which His Serene Highness grants him every Thursday; the Prince has just informed me that the Archbishop, seeming quite troubled, began with a set speech he had got by heart, filled with learned allusions which at first left the Prince completely in the dark. Landriani ended by declaring that it was important for the Church of Parma that Monsignore Fabrizio del Dongo be named his first Vicar-General, and then, immediately after his twenty-fourth birthday, his Coadjutor with eventual succession. I must confess this expression alarmed me,” the Count continued, “and I feared some sort of outburst from the Prince. But he merely looked at me with a smile and said in French: ‘I recognize your hand in this, Monsieur.’ ‘I swear before God and Your Highness,’ I exclaimed with all possible unction, ‘that I am perfectly unaware of the expression future succession.’ Then I told the truth, the very thing we’ve been saying right here for the last few hours; I added, with some feeling, that in the future I should consider myself extremely favored by His Highness if he deigned to grant me a minor bishopric to begin with. The Prince must have believed me, for he found it suitable to be gracious; with tremendous simplicity, he told me: ‘This is official business between the Archbishop and myself, you have no say in the matter. The good man,’ the Prince went on to say, ‘then delivered an extremely long and quite tedious report, after which came an official proposal; I replied rather coolly that the person in question was still quite young and, moreover, a very recent arrival at my court; that I would risk giving the impression that I was honoring a bill of exchange drawn upon me by the Emperor, by offering so high a dignity to the son of one of the principal officers of his Lombardo-Venetian realm. The Archbishop protested that no such recommendation had ever been made. This was a stupid thing to say to me; it surprised me coming from a man of his understanding; but he always loses his head when he has to speak to me, and that evening he was more troubled than ever, which suggested to me that he passionately desired the thing. I remarked that I knew better than he that there was no higher recommendation in del Dongo’s favor, that no one at my court denied his abilities, that no one spoke too badly of his morals, but that I feared he was liable to enthusiasm, and that I had determined never to raise to high office such lunatics with whom a prince could never be sure of anything. And then,’ his Highness continued, ‘I was forced to endure a pathetic narrative almost as long as the first: the Archbishop launched into praises of the House of God. Bungler! I said to myself, he is losing his way and compromising an appointment which was virtually granted; he should have stopped there and thanked me effusively. Nothing of the sort: he continued his homily with absurd insistence; I tried to find a response which would not be too unfavorable to young del Dongo; I managed this, indeed a rather felicitious one, as you will judge: “Monsignore,” I said to him, “Pius VII was a great pope and a great saint; he alone of all sovereigns dared to say no to the tyrant who held all Europe at his feet! Yet he too was liable to enthusiasm, which led him, when he was Bishop of Imola, to write his celebrated Pastoral Letter of the Citizen-Cardinal Chiaramonti in favor of the Cisalpine Republic.” My poor Archbishop appeared quite stupefied, and to complete the effect I told him, as seriously as I could manage: “Farewell, Monsignore, I shall take twenty-four hours to reflect upon your proposition.” The poor fellow added several rather clumsy and inopportune supplications after I had pronounced the word farewell. And now, Count Mosca della Rovere, I request that you inform the Duchess that I do not wish to delay by twenty-four hours a thing which may be agreeable to her; sit down here and write to the Archbishop that letter of approval which will conclude this whole business.’ I wrote the letter, the Prince signed it, and said: ‘Take it immediately to the Duchess.’ Here, Madame, is the letter, and it is this matter which has afforded me a pretext for the happiness of seeing you once again this evening.”

  The Duchess read the letter with rapture. During the Count’s long narrative, Fabrizio had had time to recover himself: he did not appear the least surprised by this incident, but took the matter like a true grand seigneur who quite naturally believed he was invariably entitled to such extraordinary advancements, to these strokes of fortune which would unhinge any bourgeois person; he referred to his gratitude, but in moderate terms, and ended by remarking to the Count: “A good courtier must indulge the ruling passion; yesterday you expressed the fear that your workmen in Sanguigna would steal the fragments of whatever ancient statues they might unearth; I too am very fond of such excavations; if you will be so good as to permit me, I shall go and supervise the workmen. Tomorrow evening, after the suitable expression of gratitude to the Prince and the Archbishop, I shall leave for Sanguigna.”

  “But can you guess,” the Duchess asked the Count, “the source of our good Archbishop’s sudden passion for Fabrizio?”

  “I have no need to guess; the Grand-Vicar, whose brother is one of my captains, told me only yesterday: ‘Father Landriani proceeds on this unwavering principle, that the Titular Bishop is superior to the Coadjutor,’ and he is beside himself with joy at having a del Dongo under his orders and at having put him under obligation. Anything which emphasizes Fabrizio’s high birth adds to his secret happiness: that he should have such a man as his aide-de-camp! In the second place Monsignore Fabrizio delighted him, did not intimidate him at all; and lastly for ten years he has been nourishing a well-watered hatred for the Bishop of Piacenza, who has publicly paraded the claim to succeed him to the See of Parma, and worse still, is merely the son of a miller. It is with this prospect of a future succession that the Bishop of Piacenza has formed very close relations with the Marchesa Raversi, and now these liaisons greatly alarm the Archbishop as to the success of his cherished scheme, to have a del Dongo on his staff, and to give him orders.”

  Two days later, early in the morning, Fabrizio was overseeing the excavations at Sanguigna, opposite Colorno (the Versailles of the Princes of Parma); these diggings extended across the plain quite close to the high-road leading from Parma to the bridge of Casalmaggiore, the first town over the Austrian border. The men were working on a long trench eight feet deep but as narrow as possible; they were engaged in searching, along the old Roman road, for the ruins of a second temple which, according to local report, still existed in the Middle Ages. Despite the Prince’s orders, several peasants regarded these long ditches across their property with a certain hostility. No matter what they were told, they imagined that a treasure hunt was being conducted there, and Fabrizio’s presence was particularly suitable to prevent the outbreak of any little disturbance. He was far from bored, and followed the excavations with passionate interest; occasionally, some medal would be unearthed, and Fabrizio endeavored to keep the workmen from conspiring to make off with it.

  The day was fine; it was about six in the morning: he had borrowed an old single-loading rifle and had shot a few larks, one of which, wounded, would land on the high-road; pursuing it, Fabrizio noticed in the distance a carriage from Parma heading for the Casalmaggiore frontier. He had just reloaded his gun when the carriage, an extremely dilapidated one, approached so slowly that he recognized little Marietta, flanked by the lout Giletti and the old woman she passed off as her mother.

  Giletti ima
gined that Fabrizio had posted himself there in the middle of the road, holding his rifle, to insult him and perhaps even to rob him of little Marietta. As a man of valor, he jumped out of the carriage; in his left hand he was holding a huge rusty pistol, and in his right a sword still in its scabbard, which he used when the company’s needs obliged him to assume the part of some nobleman.

  “So, you brigand!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad to find you here a league from the border; I’ll take care of you now, where you’re no longer protected by your purple stockings.”

  Fabrizio was busy smiling at little Marietta and quite unconcerned with Giletti’s jealous cries when suddenly he noticed three feet from his chest the barrel of the rusty pistol; he had just time to knock the weapon away with his own rifle: the pistol went off, but without wounding anyone.

  “Stop here, you asshole!” Giletti shouted to the coachman. At the same time he was shrewd enough to leap at the barrel of his adversary’s gun, holding it away from his body; Fabrizio and he each pulled at the gun with all their might. Giletti, a much stronger man, placing one hand in front of the other, kept moving up toward the trigger, and was about to seize the weapon when Fabrizio, to prevent this, managed to fire. He had previously noticed that the gun barrel was more than three inches above Giletti’s shoulder: the detonation occurred quite close to the man’s ear. He remained stunned a moment, then recovered almost at once. “So you want to blow my brains out, you scum! I’ll settle your hash for you now.” Giletti threw away the scabbard of his nobleman’s sword and with admirable dispatch made for Fabrizio, who was unarmed and gave himself up for lost.

  He ran toward the carriage, which had stopped a dozen paces behind Giletti; he passed to the left and, grabbing the carriage-spring, quickly turned around and passed beside the door on the right-hand side, which stood open. Giletti, who had started forward on his long legs and who had not thought of catching hold of the carriage-spring, made several steps in the wrong direction before he could stop. At the moment Fabrizio passed the open door, he heard Marietta whisper:

  “Watch out, he’ll kill you! Here!”

  At the same moment, Fabrizio saw what looked like a big hunting-knife falling out of the carriage-door; he leaned down to pick it up, but at that very second was touched on the shoulder by a swipe of Giletti’s sword. Straightening up, Fabrizio found himself six inches from Giletti, who gave him a furious blow on the face with his sword-hilt; the blow was launched with such force that it left Fabrizio completely dazed; at this moment he was on the point of being killed. Fortunately for him, Giletti was still too close to be able to run him through. Coming to his senses, Fabrizio took to his heels as fast as he could run, and as he did so threw away the sheath of the hunting knife and then, quickly turning around, found himself three paces away from his pursuer. Giletti was upon him; Fabrizio struck at him with the tip of the knife; Giletti had time enough to push the knife upward with his sword, but received the wound full in his left cheek. He passed right by Fabrizio, who felt a stab in his thigh—this was Giletti’s knife, which the latter had had time to open. Fabrizio leaped to the right; he turned around, and now the two adversaries found themselves at a proper fighting range.

  Giletti was swearing like a lost soul. “Now I’ll slit your throat for you, you damned priest!” he kept repeating.

  Fabrizio was quite out of breath and unable to speak; his face was hurting terribly where the sword-hilt had struck it, and his nose was bleeding copiously; he warded off several blows with his hunting-knife and made a number of lunges without really knowing what he was doing; he had a vague sense of being on display. This notion had been suggested to him by the presence of his workmen, who had formed a circle of some twenty-five or thirty men around the combatants, but at a very respectful distance, for at every moment the two men would leap up and fling themselves upon each other.

  The duel seemed to be slackening a little; the blows no longer succeeded each other with the same speed, when Fabrizio said to himself: “From the pain I feel in my face, he must have disfigured me.” Furious at this idea, he leaped upon his foe, knife-point at the ready, so that it entered the right side of Giletti’s chest and emerged near the left shoulder; at the same instant, Giletti’s sword ran at full length into Fabrizio’s upper arm, but the blade slid under the skin, and the wound was not serious.

  Giletti had fallen; at the moment when Fabrizio advanced toward him, staring at his left hand, which was holding a knife, this hand opened quite mechanically and released his weapon. “The bugger is dead,” Fabrizio said to himself.

  He looked at Giletti’s face: blood was pouring out of his mouth. Fabrizio ran to the carriage. “Do you have a mirror?” he shouted to Marietta, who had gone dead white and stared at him without answering. The old woman opened a green workbag with great aplomb and handed Fabrizio a little mirror with a handle, no bigger than his hand. Studying his face, Fabrizio worked his features. “My eyes are all right,” he said to himself, “which is something, anyway.” He looked at his teeth, none of which was broken. “Why am I in such pain?” he asked himself half-aloud.

  The old woman answered: “Because the top of your cheek was crushed between Giletti’s sword-hilt and the bone there. Your cheek is horribly swollen and discolored: put some leeches on it right away and it will be nothing.”

  “Oh yes, leeches, right away,” Fabrizio said with a laugh as he recovered his composure. He saw that the workmen had surrounded Giletti and were staring at him without daring to touch him.

  “Help that man!” he shouted to them. “Open his coat …” He was going to continue, but looking up he saw five or six men about three hundred yards away on the high-road, walking deliberately toward the scene of the action. “Those must be the police,” he realized, “and since there’s been a man killed, they’ll arrest me and I’ll have the honor of making a solemn entry into the city of Parma. What a story for the courtiers on Marchesa Raversi’s side who detest my aunt!”

  With lightning speed, he tossed all the money in his pockets to the workmen and leaped into the carriage. “Keep the police from coming after me,” he shouted to his men, “and I’ll make your fortunes for you; tell them I’m innocent, tell them this man attacked me and tried to kill me. And you,” he said to the coachman, “see how fast your horses can gallop. Four gold napoleons for you if you cross the Po before those men can get hold of me.”

  “Right you are!” the coachman said. “But there’s no need to fear: those men back there are on foot, and even trotting these little fellows of mine would leave them far behind.” With these words, he put his horses to a gallop.

  Our hero was startled by the word fear the coachman had employed: the fact is that he had indeed been in extreme fear after receiving the sword-hilt blow to his face.

  “We might run into people riding toward us,” the cautious coachman remarked, thinking of his four napoleons, “and the men behind us might call out to them to stop us.” Which meant, reload your weapons …

  “Oh, how brave you are, my dearest Abbé!” exclaimed Marietta, embracing Fabrizio.

  The old woman looked out the door of the carriage; after a little while she pulled her head back inside. “No one is after you, sir,” she said to Fabrizio quite coolly; “and there’s no one on the road ahead. You know how finicky the Austrian police can be: if they see you coming at a gallop like this, along the banks of the Po, they’ll be sure to stop you, have no doubt about that.”

  Fabrizio looked out the carriage door. “Trot the horses,” he told the coachman. “What passport do you have?” he asked the old woman.

  “Three, instead of one,” she answered, “and each one cost us four francs: isn’t it a shame for poor dramatic artists like ourselves, traveling all year round! Here’s Monsieur Giletti’s passport, dramatic artist, that will be you; here are our two passports, for Marietta and me. But Giletti had all our money in his pocket; what will become of us?”

  “How much did he have?” asked Fabrizio.

&
nbsp; “Forty good scudi worth five francs,” the old woman answered.

  “In other words, six francs and change,” said Marietta laughing; “I don’t want anyone cheating my dearest Abbé.”

  “Isn’t it only natural, sir,” the old woman went on with the greatest sang-froid, “that I should try to gouge you out of thirty-four scudi? What are thirty-four scudi to you? And we—we’ve lost our protector; who will take care of us and find us lodgings and argue about charges with the coachman when we’re traveling, and scare everyone off? Giletti may not have been handsome, but he was very useful, and if the child here weren’t such a fool as to have fallen in love with you first, Giletti would never have noticed a thing, and you would have given us good money. I can promise you we’re poor as church mice.”

  Fabrizio was touched; he took out his purse and gave the old woman several napoleons. “As you see,” he told her, “fifteen are all I have left, so there’s no use trying any more tricks on me.” Little Marietta threw her arms around his neck, and the old woman kissed his hands. The carriage trotted on. When they saw the black-and-yellow-striped barriers up ahead announcing Austrian territory, the old woman said to Fabrizio:

  “It would be better if you were to cross on foot, with Giletti’s passport in your pocket; we’re going to stop here for a while with the excuse of refreshing our toilette. Besides, the customs officers will be going through our things. If you trust me, you’ll stroll quite casually through Casalmaggiore; you might even go into a café and drink a glass of brandy; once past the village, don’t waste any time. The police are watchful as the devil in Austrian territory: they’ll soon know there’s been a man killed: you’re traveling with a passport that’s not your own; that’s enough to get you two years in prison. Head for the Po on your right as you leave town, rent a boat, and make your escape to Ravenna or Ferrara; leave the Austrian States as fast as you can. With two louis you should be able to buy another passport from some customs-officer—the one you have would be fatal to you; remember that you’ve killed the man.”