by Stendhal
The following day, the Count saw Bruno, that loyal agent he had sent to Bologna; the Count was waiting for the moment when this man would enter his cabinet; the sight of him recalled the happy state which he had enjoyed when he sent the man to Bologna, more or less in agreement with the Duchess. Bruno arrived from Bologna, where he had learned nothing; he had not been able to find Ludovic, whom the magistrate of Castelnovo had kept in the prison of that village.
“I’m sending you back to Bologna,” the Count said to Bruno; “the Duchess insists on the melancholy pleasure of learning all the details of Fabrizio’s misfortune. Inquire of the brigadier of police in command of the Castelnovo station.… No, wait!” the Count exclaimed, breaking off. “Leave right now for Lombardy, and distribute a good quantity of money to all our agents there. My purpose is to obtain reports of the most encouraging nature from all of these people.”
Bruno, having perfectly understood the purpose of his mission, set about writing his letters of credit; as the Count was giving him his final instructions, he received a patently false but very well written letter; it appeared to be from a friend writing to a friend to ask a favor. The friend who was writing was none other than the Prince. Having heard something about certain plans of a resignation, he beseeched his friend Count Mosca to remain at his post; he asked this of him in the name of friendship and with regard to the dangers to the fatherland; and commanded as much as his Sovereign. He added that since the King of —— had just put two Cordons of his Order at the writer’s disposal, he would keep one for himself and send the other to his dear Count Mosca.
“This creature will be the ruin of me!” exclaimed the furious Count in the presence of a stupefied Bruno, “and he expects to seduce me by those same hypocritical phrases we so often devised together to beguile some fool or other …”
He rejected the Order that had been offered, and in his answer spoke of the state of his health as leaving him only very faint hopes of being able to perform the heavy duties of the Ministry in the future. The Count was furious. A moment later, the Fiscal Rassi was announced, whom he treated like a blackamoor.
“So now that I’ve made you a noble, you start playing the insolent with me! Why didn’t you come yesterday to thank me, as was your bounden duty, Baron Lackey?”
Rassi was beyond any such insults; this was the tone by which the Prince received him every day; but he craved being a Baron and excused his behavior with a certain wit. Nothing was easier.
“The Prince kept me nailed to a desk all day yesterday; I could not leave the palace. His Highness made me copy in my wretched attorney’s hand any number of diplomatic documents that were so stupid and so prolix that I truly believe that his sole purpose was to keep me prisoner. When I was finally able to take my leave, around five o’clock, dying of hunger, he ordered me to proceed directly home and not to go out at all that evening. As a matter of fact, I saw two of his private spies, well known to me, strolling up and down my street until midnight. This morning, as soon as I could, I sent for a carriage, which took me as far as the Cathedral doors. I got out very slowly and then, walking through the church as fast as I could, I came here. Your Excellency is at this very moment the one man in the world I most desire to please.”
“And I, Baron Joker, I am not in the least deceived by all these more or less plausible stories of yours! You refused to speak to me about Fabrizio the day before yesterday; I respected your scruples and your oaths of secrecy, though oaths for a creature like yourself are at most no more than means of evasion. Today I want the truth: what are these absurd rumors about condemning this young man to death as the murderer of the actor Giletti?”
“No one can account for these rumors to your Excellency better than I, since it is I who started them on the Sovereign’s orders; and come to think of it, it may be to prevent me from informing you of such an incident that he kept me prisoner all day yesterday! The Prince, who does not take me for a madman, could have no doubts that I would come to you with my Cross and request that you fasten it in my buttonhole.”
“To the point!” exclaimed the Minister. “No more fine speeches.”
“Certainly the Prince would prefer to pass a death sentence upon Signor del Dongo, but he has been sentenced, as you doubtless know, to no more than twenty years in irons, commuted by His Highness the very day following the sentence to twelve years in the Fortress with fasting on bread and water every Friday, and other religious observances.”
“It is because I knew of this sentence to imprisonment only that I was alarmed by the rumors of imminent execution spreading through town; I remember the death of Count Palanza, so cleverly devised by you.”
“That was when I should have had my Cross!” exclaimed Rassi, in no way disconcerted. “I should have turned the screws while I held him in my hand, and while our man was eager to secure this death. What a fool I was then, and it is armed with this experience that I dare advise you not to follow my example today.” This comparison appeared in the very worst taste to his interlocutor, who was obliged to restrain himself to avoid kicking Rassi. “First of all,” he continued, with the logic of a jurist and the perfect assurance of a man whom no insult could offend, “first of all there can be no question of the execution of the said del Dongo; the Prince would not dare! Times have changed! And then too, I, a nobleman hoping by your intervention to become a Baron, I would not lend a hand. Now, as Your Excellency knows, it is exclusively from me that the executioner can receive orders, and I swear to you, Cavaliere Rassi will never give any against Signor del Dongo.”
“And you will be acting wisely,” said the Count, staring at him intensely.
“Let us make a distinction here,” Rassi continued with a smile. “I am involved only in the official deaths, and if Signor del Dongo were to die of a colic, I am not to be held responsible! The Prince is in a frenzy, and I do not know why, against the Sanseverina.” (Three days earlier, Rassi would have said “the Duchess,” but like the rest of the town, he knew of her break with the Prime Minister.)
The Count was struck by the suppression of the title in this man’s mouth, and what pleasure it gave him can be imagined; he shot Rassi a glance filled with the most intense hatred. “My beloved angel!” he said to himself later. “I can only show you my love by blindly obeying your orders.”
“I confess to you,” he observed to the Fiscal, “that I take no very passionate interest in Signora the Duchess’s whims; however, since she had introduced me to this unfortunate Fabrizio, who should indeed have remained in Naples and not come here to meddle in our business, I insist that he not be put to death during my tenure, and I am quite willing to give you my word that you shall be named Baron within the eight days which follow his release from prison.”
“In that case, Signor Count, I shall be a Baron only after twelve years have passed, for the Prince is furious, and his hatred against the Duchess is so intense that he seeks to conceal it.”
“His Highness is only too kind! What need has he of concealing his hatred, since his Prime Minister no longer protects the Duchess? I merely choose not to be accused of baseness, and above all not of jealousy: it is I who invited the Duchess to Parma, and if Fabrizio dies in prison, you shall not be a Baron, but you may well be stabbed. But enough of such details: the fact is that I have examined my fortune; I have found an income of scarcely twenty thousand a year, on which I intend to offer my humble resignation to the Sovereign. I have some hopes of being employed by the King of Naples: that great city will offer me certain distractions which I need at this moment, and which I cannot find in a hole like Parma; only if you might enable me to obtain the hand of Princess Isotta would I remain,” and so on.
The conversation on this subject was endless. As Rassi stood up to take his leave, the Count said to him with an indifferent expression: “As you know, it has been said that Fabrizio was deceiving me, since he is accounted one of the Duchess’s lovers; I put no credence in such a rumor, and to give it the lie, I want you to see to
it that this purse is given to Fabrizio.”
“But Signor Count,” said Rassi with alarm, eyeing the purse, “what you have there is an enormous sum, and the regulations …”
“For you, my dear, it may be enormous,” the Count continued with an expression of the most sovereign disdain. “A bourgeois like you, sending money to a friend who happens to be in prison, imagines he is ruining himself by bestowing ten sequins; it is my wish that Fabrizio receive these six thousand francs, and in particular that the Palace know nothing of such a gift.”
Even as the terrified Rassi sought to reply, the Count impatiently closed the door on him. “Such people,” he said to himself, “see power only when it is behind insolence.” Whereupon this great Minister gave himself up to an action so absurd that it affords us some pain to report it; he ran to take a miniature portrait of the Duchess out of his desk, and covered it with passionate kisses. “Forgive me, my darling angel,” he exclaimed, “if I failed to throw this lackey out of the window with my own hands, who dares speak of you in such familiar tones, but if I behave with such excessive forbearance, it is out of obedience to your wishes! And he will lose nothing by waiting!”
After a long conversation with this portrait, the Count, who felt his heart dying in his breast, had the notion of an absurd action to which he gave himself up with childish eagerness. He sent for a coat bearing all his decorations, and paid a visit to the old Princess Isotta; in all his life he had been presented in her apartments only once, on the occasion of New Year’s Day. Now he found her surrounded by a number of little dogs, and decked out in all her finery, including her diamonds, as if she were going to Court. When the Count instanced a certain fear of disturbing Her Highness’s arrangements, since she was doubtless about to leave for some occasion, Her Highness replied to the Minister that a Princess of Parma owed it to herself always to be in such array. For the first time since his misfortunes began, the Count experienced an impulse of gaiety. “I did well to come here,” he said to himself, “and here and now I must make my declaration.” The Princess had been delighted to receive a visit from a man so renowned for his wit and a Prime Minister as well; the poor old maid was anything but accustomed to such attentions. The Count began by an adroit prologue, relative to the enormous distance which will ever separate the members of a ruling family from a mere nobleman.
“There are distinctions to be drawn,” the Princess said; “the daughter of a King of France, for instance, has no hope of ever succeeding to the Throne; but such is not the course of events in the family of Parma. That is why we Farnese must always preserve a certain external dignity; and I, a poor Princess as you find me today, I cannot say that it is absolutely impossible that one day you might indeed be my Prime Minister.”
The unexpected fantasy of this notion gave the poor Count a second moment of complete gaiety. As he left the apartments of the Princess Isotta, who had blushed deeply upon receiving the avowal of the Prime Minister’s passion, the Count encountered one of the palace footmen: the Prince had sent for him, and required his presence with all possible celerity.
“I am ill,” the Minister replied, delighted to be able to offer an affront to his Prince. “Aha, you drive me to the brink,” he exclaimed in a rage, “and then you want my services! But you will learn, my Prince, that to have received power from Providence no longer suffices in this day and age—it requires a great deal of intelligence and a strong character to succeed in being a tyrant.”
After dismissing the footman, who was deeply scandalized by this invalid’s perfect health, the Count found it agreeable to visit the two men of the Court who had the most influence over General Fabio Conti. What made the Minister tremble most particularly and robbed him of all courage was that the Governor of the Citadel was accused of having in the past done away with a captain, his personal enemy, by means of the aquetta di Perugia.
The Count knew that in the last eight days the Duchess had expended enormous sums to obtain informants in the Citadel; but in his opinion there were few hopes of success, all eyes being, at this time, still too wide open. We shall not describe for the reader all the attempts at corruption made by this unfortunate woman: she was in despair, and agents of all kinds, utterly devoted to her service, were assisting her. But there is perhaps only one kind of business which is performed to perfection in the courts of minor despots, which is the custody of political prisoners. The Duchess’s gold produced no effect other than securing the dismissal from the Citadel of eight or ten men of all ranks.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thus, for all their devotion to the prisoner, the Duchess and the Prime Minister had been able to do very little for him. The Prince was in a rage; the Court as well as the people were vexed by Fabrizio and delighted to see him come to grief; he had been too happy. Despite the gold disbursed by the handfuls, the Duchess had not advanced a step in her siege of the Citadel; no day passed without the Marchesa Raversi or Cavaliere Rassi having some new report to communicate to General Fabio Conti. They buttressed his weakness.
As we have said, on the day of his imprisonment, Fabrizio was first taken to the Governor’s palazzo: this was a pretty little building erected in the last century on Vanvitelli’s plans, who placed it one hundred and eighty feet above ground on the platform of the huge round tower. From the windows of this little palazzo, isolated on the back of the enormous tower like a camel’s hump, Fabrizio could glimpse the countryside and far in the distance the Alps; at the Citadel’s foot, he followed by sight the course of the River Parma, a sort of torrent which, turning right four leagues from the town, flung itself into the Po. Beyond the left bank of this river, which formed something like a series of huge white patches amid the green fields, his delighted eyes clearly identified each of the peaks of the vast wall by which the Alps enclose northern Italy. These peaks, perennially covered with snow, even in August as it now was, provide a certain reminder of coolness in the midst of this scorching countryside; the eye can follow their tiniest details, and yet they are more than thirty leagues from the Citadel of Parma. This extensive view from the handsome Governor’s palazzo is interrupted toward the south corner by the Farnese Tower, in which a room was being hastily prepared for Fabrizio. This second tower, as the reader may recall, was built upon the platform of the great tower in honor of a certain Crown Prince who, unlike Hippolytus the son of Theseus, had not rejected the advances of a young stepmother. The Princess died in a few hours; the Prince’s son regained his freedom only seventeen years later, ascending the throne upon his father’s death. This extremely ugly Farnese Tower, to which, after waiting three-quarters of an hour, Fabrizio was led, was built another fifty feet above the platform of the main tower and adorned with any number of lightning-rods. The Prince, who, in his displeasure with his wife, had ordered the construction of this prison visible from all parts of the country, had had the singular notion of convincing his subjects that it had existed for ages: hence he gave it the name Farnese Tower. It was forbidden to speak of this edifice, though from every point of the city of Parma and the neighboring plains it was easy enough to see the masons laying each of the stones which composed this pentagonal structure. In order to prove its great age, there had been placed above the entrance door two feet wide and four feet high a magnificent bas-relief representing the celebrated General Alessandro Farnese forcing Henri IV to withdraw from Paris. This Farnese Tower, granted such an eminence, consisted of a ground-floor hall at least forty feet long, of comparable width, and filled with squat columns, for this disproportionately large room was no more than fifteen feet high. It was used as a guard-room and in its center an openwork iron staircase no more than two feet wide led upward, spiraling around one of the columns. Up this staircase, which trembled under the tread of the jailers escorting him, Fabrizio reached some huge rooms over twenty feet high, forming a splendid piano nobile; they had once been furnished with the greatest luxury for the young Prince who was to spend the best seventeen years of his life there. At one end of this
apartment the new prisoner was shown a magnificent chapel, the walls of its vault entirely covered with black marble; black marble columns as well, and of the noblest proportions, were placed in rows along black walls though without touching them, and these walls were embellished with any number of white marble skulls, of colossal size, elegantly carved and supported, each one, by crossbones. “Now here is an invention of the hatred which cannot kill,” Fabrizio said to himself, “and what a devilish notion to show me this!”
A light openwork iron staircase, also spiraling around a column, led up to the second floor of this prison, and it was in the rooms of this second floor, which were some fifteen feet high, that for a year now General Fabio Conti had given proof of his genius. First of all, under his direction, the windows of those rooms once occupied by the Prince’s servants, and which were more than thirty feet above the flagstones forming the platform of the great round tower, were solidly barred. It was by a dark corridor located in the center of the structure that one reached these rooms which each possessed two windows; and in this very narrow corridor Fabrizio noticed three successive iron gates formed of enormous iron bars and extending up to the ceiling. For two years, the plans, cross-sections, and elevations of all these fine inventions had entitled the General to a weekly audience with his master. A conspirator placed in one of these rooms could not complain to public opinion that he was being treated inhumanely, indeed could have no communication with the outside world, nor make the slightest movement without being heard. The General had had placed in each room huge oak planks forming a sort of trestle some three feet high, and this was his capital invention, the one which entitled him to a claim to the Ministry of Police. Upon these trestles he had set up an echoing cell of planks about ten feet high, which touched the wall only on the window side. On the three other sides there was a narrow corridor some four feet wide between the actual wall of the prison, composed of enormous stone blocks, and the plank walls of the cell. These walls, formed of four double planks of walnut, oak, and maple, were solidly attached together by iron bolts and countless nails.
