by Stendhal
Fabrizio hastened to obey, and sent the arranged signals, which were followed by the indicated replies; then he went on reading the letter.
We may expect the worst; I have heard as much from the three men in whom I place the most trust, after I made them swear on the Gospels to tell me the truth, however cruel it may be to me. The first of these men threatened the surgeon who denounced you in Ferrara that he would attack him with a knife; the second is the one who told you, when you came back from Belgirate, that it would have been wiser, actually, to have used your pistol on the footman who came singing through the woods leading that skinny horse; you don’t know the third man, who is a highwayman of my acquaintance, a man of action if ever there was one, and as brave as yourself; that is why I have asked him, in particular, to tell me what you should do. All three have told me, each without knowing that I consulted the other two, that it would be better to risk breaking your neck than to spend another eleven years and four months in the continual fear of a very likely poisoning.
You must continue exercising in your room for a month, climbing up and down a knotted rope. Then, when the Fortress garrison has been given a holiday ration of wine, you will make the great attempt. You will have three silk-and-hemp ropes the thickness of a swan’s quill, the first eighty feet long, by which to get down the thirty-five feet from your window to the orange-trees, the second of three hundred feet, which is a problem because of its weight, to get down the hundred and eighty feet of the wall of the great tower; and a third rope thirty feet long is to be used to get you down the ramparts. I spend my life studying the great wall on the eastern side of the tower, that is, toward Ferrara: a gap caused by an earthquake has been filled by a buttress which forms an inclined plane there. My highwayman tells me that it would be easiest to get down on this side, risking no more than a few bruises, if you slide down the inclined plane formed by this buttress. The vertical distance is no more than twenty-eight feet to the bottom; this side is the least well guarded.
However, all things considered, my highwayman, who has escaped from prison three times and whom you would like if you knew him, though he has no use for people of your sort—my highwayman, who I assure you is as nimble and clever as you yourself, thinks it would be better to get down on the west side, exactly opposite the little Palace once occupied by Fausta, as you well know. What determined this choice is that the wall, although very steep, is covered with bushes; there are branches as big as your little finger which might easily scratch your eyes out if you’re not careful but which are also good things to hold on to. This very morning I was studying this west side with a spyglass; the place to choose is just under a new stone that was set in the upper parapet two or three years back. Directly under this stone, you will find first of all a bare space of some twenty feet; here you must proceed very slowly (you can imagine how my heart pounds as I give you these terrible instructions, but courage consists in knowing how to choose the lesser evil, dreadful though it appears); after the bare space, you will find eighty or ninety feet of big bushes where you can see birds flying around, then a space of thirty feet where there is nothing but grass and vines and wall-flowers. Then, closer to the ground, twenty feet of bushes, and finally twenty-five or thirty feet of newly plastered wall.
The reason for preferring this side is that here, straight down from the new stone in the upper parapet, there is a wooden shack built by a soldier in his garden, and which the captain of the Fortress engineers wants to have pulled down; it is seventeen feet high, and has a thatched roof which abuts onto the main wall of the Fortress. It is this roof which tempts me; in the dreadful case of an accident, it would break your fall. Once you get to this point, you are inside the circle of ramparts that are not very well guarded; if you are stopped here, fire your pistol and defend yourself for a few minutes. Your friend from Ferrara and another trusty fellow, the one I call my highwayman, will have ladders and will lose no time scaling this low rampart and flying to your rescue.
The rampart is only twenty-three feet high, and an easy slope. I will be at the foot of this last wall with a good number of armed men.
I have every hope of getting five or six letters into your hands by the same means as this one. I shall keep repeating the same things in other words, so that we are sure to reach an understanding. You can guess my feelings when I tell you that the man who said it would have been better to shoot the footman, who after all is the best of fellows and is dying of remorse, thinks that you will get off with no worse than a broken arm. The highwayman, who has more experience in such enterprises, thinks that if you climb down very carefully, and above all without hurrying, your freedom will cost you no more than a few bruises. The big problem is to get you the ropes; this has been my sole thought for the last fifteen days, during which this tremendous project has obsessed my every waking moment.
I have no answer to make to that madness, the only senseless thing you ever said in your life: “I don’t want to escape!” The man who advised shooting the footman exclaimed that boredom had driven you mad. I shall not conceal from you that we fear an imminent peril which may hasten the day of your escape. To warn you of this danger, the lamp-signal will tell you several times in succession: The castle is on fire! and you will answer: Are my books burned?
This letter contained another five or six pages of details; it was written in microscopic characters on extremely thin paper.
“All this is very fine and very well thought out,” Fabrizio said to himself; “I owe eternal gratitude to the Count and the Duchess; they may believe that I am afraid, but I shall not attempt to escape. Who has ever escaped from a place where he is rapturously happy to fling himself into a dreadful exile where he lacks everything, including the air to breathe? What would I do after a month in Florence? I would assume some disguise to come back and prowl around the gates of this Fortress and try to catch one of her glances!”
The next day, Fabrizio was indeed afraid; he was at his window, around eleven in the morning, considering the splendid landscape and waiting for the happy moment when he might see Clélia, when Grillo came into the room quite out of breath.
“Quick, quick! Monsignore, throw yourself on your bed, pretend to be sick, there are three judges coming up the stairs! They’re going to question you: think carefully before you answer; they’re coming to snare you!” As he said these words, Grillo hurriedly closed the opening in the shutter, pushed Fabrizio onto his bed, and threw two or three coats over him. “Tell them you’re very sick and don’t talk much— above all make them repeat their questions to give yourself time to think!”
The three judges entered. “Three escaped jailbirds,” Fabrizio said to himself as he glanced at these vile countenances, “and not three judges at all”; they were wearing long black gowns. They bowed gravely, and without a word sat down in the three chairs that were in the room.
“Signor Fabrizio del Dongo,” said the oldest one, “we are grieved by the melancholy mission which we must perform in your regard. We are here to inform you of the death of His Excellency, Signor the Marchese del Dongo, your father, Second Grand Major-domo Major of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, Knight Grand Cross of the Orders of …” etc., etc., etc.
Fabrizio burst into tears; the judge continued. “Signora the Marchesa del Dongo, your mother, has written to inform you of this news by a hand-written letter, but since she has included in her missive certain unsuitable reflections, by a decree issued yesterday, the Court of Justice has decided that her letter would be imparted to you only in extracts, and it is this extract which Signor Bona, Clerk of the Court, will now read to you.”
Once this reading was concluded, the judge came over to Fabrizio where he lay and showed him in his mother’s letter the very passages of which copies had just been read to him. Fabrizio saw in the letter the words unjust imprisonment … cruel punishment for a crime which is no such thing … and realized what had motivated the judges’ visit. However, in his scorn of magistrates without honor he said no more
than these specific words: “I am ill, gentlemen, and perishing of weakness, and you will excuse me for not standing …”
Once the judges had left, Fabrizio wept a good deal more, and then said to himself: “Am I such a hypocrite? It seems to me I never loved him at all.”
On that day and those following, Clélia was extremely sad; she called to him several times, but scarcely had the heart to say more than a few words. The morning of the fifth day after this interview, she told him that she would come that evening to the marble chapel.
“I can only say a few words to you,” she told him as she came in. She was trembling so much that she had to lean on her chambermaid for support. After having sent the girl to the chapel entrance, she added in a voice that was scarcely audible: “You must give me your word of honor—your word of honor that you will obey the Duchess, and attempt to escape on the day she tells you to do so, in the way she will instruct you, or tomorrow morning I shall take refuge in a convent, and I swear to you here and now that I shall never speak another word to you in all my life.”
Fabrizio remained silent.
“Promise,” said Clélia, tears in her eyes and almost beside herself, “or else we are speaking here for the last time. The life you are forcing me to lead is dreadful: you are here on my account, and each day may be the last of your life.” At this moment Clélia was so weak that she was compelled to support herself on a huge armchair that had long ago been placed in the middle of the chapel for the use of the imprisoned Prince; she was on the point of fainting.
“What must I promise?” Fabrizio asked, looking overcome.
“You know.”
“All right, I promise to fling myself knowingly into dreadful misfortunes, and to condemn myself to live far from all that I love in the world.”
“Promise real things.”
“I promise to obey the Duchess and to make my escape when and how she tells me to. And what will become of me, once I have lost you?”
“Promise to escape, whatever may happen.”
“Then you have made up your mind to marry the Marchese Crescenzi once I am no longer here?”
“Oh, Heavens! What kind of heart do you think I have?… But promise, or my soul won’t have another moment’s peace.”
“All right, I promise to escape from this place when the Duchess Sanseverina tells me to, and whatever may happen between now and then.”
Having obtained this promise, Clélia was now so faint that she was compelled to leave, once she had thanked Fabrizio. “Everything was prepared for my flight tomorrow morning,” she told him, “had you persisted in remaining. I would have seen you now for the very last time in my life, I had made a vow to the Madonna. Now, as soon as I am able to leave my room, I shall go examine that terrible wall under the new stone in the parapet.”
The next day, he found her so pale as to alarm him. She told him from the aviary window: “Let us not deceive ourselves, dear friend; as there is something sinful in our relationship, I cannot doubt that some sort of misfortune awaits us. You will be discovered when you attempt to escape, and lost forever, or worse; yet we must satisfy what human prudence asks of us—it asks us to make every effort. To get down the outside of the great tower, you will need a strong rope over two hundred feet long. For all my efforts since I learned of the Duchess’s plans, the only ropes I’ve been able to obtain add up, altogether, to no more than fifty feet. The Governor has issued orders that all the ropes found in the Fortress be burned, and every evening they remove the well-ropes, which are so weak that they often break in bringing up nothing heavier than their buckets. But may God forgive me, I am betraying my father and working, unnatural daughter that I am, for his eternal grief. Pray to God for me, and if your life is saved, promise to dedicate every moment of it to His glory.
“One idea has occurred to me: in eight days I’ll be leaving the Fortress to attend the wedding of one of the Marchese Crescenzi’s sisters. I shall be back that same evening if I can, but I shall do everything possible to return only very late, and perhaps Barbone will not dare search me too closely. All the greatest ladies of the court will attend this wedding of the Marchese’s sister, no doubt including the Duchess Sanseverina. In God’s name, have one of these ladies give me a bundle of ropes tightly packed, not too heavy and not too big. Were I to expose myself to a thousand deaths, I shall use every means, even the most dangerous, to bring this bundle inside the Fortress, in defiance, alas! of all my duties. If my father learns of it I shall never see you again; but whatever my fate, I shall be happy within the limits of a sister’s friendship if I can help to save you.”
That very evening, by the nocturnal signals sent by lamp flashes, Fabrizio informed the Duchess of the unique opportunity of getting a sufficient length of rope into the Fortress. But he begged her to keep the secret from the Count himself, strange as it seemed. “He is mad,” the Duchess thought, “prison has changed him, he is taking things tragically now.” The next day, a ball of lead, catapulted into his room, brought the prisoner the news of the greatest possible danger; the person responsible for bringing ropes into the Fortress, he was told, would literally be saving his life. Fabrizio hastened to give this news to Clélia. This ball of lead also brought Fabrizio a very precise plan of the western wall down which he was to climb from the top of the great tower into the space enclosed within the bastions; from this place, it was easy enough to escape afterward, the ramparts being only twenty-three feet high and scantily guarded. On the back of the plan, written in a tiny, delicate hand, was a splendid sonnet; a generous soul exhorted Fabrizio to make his escape, and not to let his spirit be corrupted and his body wasted by the years of captivity which still remained for him to endure.
Here a necessary detail, one which partly accounts for the Duchess’s courage in advising Fabrizio to attempt such a dangerous course, compels us to interrupt, momentarily, the story of this bold enterprise.
Like all factions not in power, the Raversi party was not closely united. Cavaliere Riscara detested Chief Justice Rassi, whom he accused of having forced him to lose an important case in which, as it had happened, Riscara himself had been in the wrong.
Through Riscara, the Prince received an anonymous message informing him that a copy of Fabrizio’s sentence had been officially addressed to the Governor of the Fortress. The Marchesa Raversi, that adroit leader of her party, was exceedingly annoyed by this misstep, and immediately informed her friend the Chief Justice about it; she regarded it as natural enough that he should have wanted to secure something from Count Mosca so long as Mosca remained the Minister in power. Rassi presented himself quite intrepidly at the Palace, imagining that he would be let off with a few slaps on the wrist; the Prince could not do without a skilled jurisconsult, and Rassi had managed to banish, as Liberals, a judge and a barrister, the only men in the country who might have replaced him.
The Prince, beside himself with rage, covered Rassi with insults and advanced upon him with the intention of delivering a blow.
“Really, Sire, it’s no more than a clerk’s error,” Rassi replied quite coolly; “the thing is laid down by law, it should have been done the day of Signor del Dongo’s confinement in the Fortress. The over-zealous clerk imagined he had forgotten about it, and made me sign the covering letter as a matter of form.”
“And you expect to make me believe lies like that?” shrieked the outraged Prince. “The fact is that you’ve sold yourself to that rascal Mosca, which is why he’s given you your Cross. By God, you won’t get off with a few kicks—I’ll have you brought to justice and publicly disgraced.”
“I defy you to bring me to justice!” Rassi replied quite confidently (knowing that this was a sure method of calming the Prince). “The law is on my side, and you don’t have another Rassi to get around it for you. You won’t disgrace me, because there are times when your nature is severe; then you crave blood, but at the same time you want to keep the esteem of reasonable Italians, which is a sine qua non of your ambition. So yo
u will recall me for the first severe action your nature requires of you, and as usual I shall obtain for you a perfectly regular sentence passed by timid and quite honest judges which will nonetheless satisfy your passions. Find another man in your State as useful as myself!”
On these words, Rassi made his escape; he had been let off with a sharp reprimand and a few kicks. Once he left the Palace he set out for his estate of Riva. He was somewhat apprehensive of a dagger-thrust in the first impulse of the Prince’s rage, but also had no doubt that before two weeks had passed a courier would recall him to the capital. He employed his time in the country in organizing a reliable means of correspondence with Count Mosca; he was madly in love with the title of Baron, and felt that the Prince had too much regard for that sublime thing, nobility, ever to confer it upon him; while the Count, all too proud of his birth, respected only nobility proved by titles which dated from before the year 1400.
The Chief Justice had not been mistaken in his anticipations; he had been not more than eight days on his estate when one of the Prince’s friends, who happened to pass by, advised him to return to Parma without delay; the Prince received him with a smile, then assumed a very serious expression and made him swear on the Gospels that he would keep the secret concerning what he was about to confide to him; Rassi swore in all seriousness, and the Prince, his eyes inflamed with hatred, exclaimed that he would not be master in his own house so long as Fabrizio del Dongo was alive.
“I can neither,” he added, “banish the Duchess nor endure her presence; her eyes defy me and my life is poisoned by her.”
After allowing the Prince to explain himself at great length, Rassi, pretending to be extremely embarrassed, finally exclaimed: “Your Highness will be obeyed, of course, but the case is horribly difficult: there is no likelihood of condemning a del Dongo to death for the murder of a Giletti; it is already a remarkable achievement to have managed to put him away in the Fortress for a dozen years. Moreover, I suspect the Duchess has discovered three of the peasants who were working at the Sanguigna diggings and who happened to be outside the trenches at the moment when that ruffian Giletti attacked del Dongo.”
