by Stendhal
Her prudence had also committed her to rent an apartment for Fabrizio at the port of Locarno; every day he came to see her, or she herself crossed over into Switzerland. One may judge of the vitality of their perpetual tête-à-têtes by this detail: the Marchesa and her daughters came to see them twice, and the presence of these “strangers” gave them pleasure; for despite the ties of blood, we may call a person who knows nothing of our dearest interests and whom we see but once a year a stranger.
The Duchess happened to be at Fabrizio’s apartment in Locarno one evening, with the Marchesa and her two daughters; the district Archpriest and the parish priest as well had come to pay their respects to these ladies: the Archpriest, who had interests in a commercial establishment and kept abreast of current happenings, suddenly ventured to say: “The Prince of Parma is dead!”
The Duchess turned very pale; she had scarcely the courage to say: “Have any details been made known?”
“No,” the Archpriest replied; “the report merely cites the death, which is certain.”
The Duchess looked at Fabrizio. “I have done this for him,” she said to herself; “I would have done a thousand worse things, and here he is, in front of me, indifferent and dreaming of another!”
It was beyond her powers to endure this dreadful thought; she fell into a dead faint. Everyone hastened to her assistance; but as she came to, she noticed that Fabrizio was less concerned than the Archpriest and the curate; he was daydreaming as usual.
“He’s thinking of returning to Parma,” the Duchess said to herself, “and perhaps of breaking off Clélia’s wedding to the Marchese; but I’ll be able to keep him from doing that.” Then, remembering the presence of the two priests, she made haste to add: “He was a great Prince, and has been greatly maligned! This is a great loss for us all!”
The two priests took their leave, and the Duchess, in order to be alone, announced that she was taking to her bed. “No doubt,” she said to herself, “prudence would have me wait a month or two before returning to Parma; but I feel that I shall never have such patience; I am suffering too much here. This continual daydreaming of Fabrizio’s and this silence are an intolerable spectacle for my heart. Who could have predicted that I would find it tedious to sail around this delightful lake, the two of us together, and just when I have done more to avenge him than I can ever tell him! After such a spectacle, death is nothing. I am paying now for those childish transports of happiness I was taking in my palazzo at Parma when I received Fabrizio there on his way back from Naples! Had I spoken one word, everything would have been settled, and perhaps, involved with me, he would not have given a thought to that little Clélia; but that word was deeply repugnant to me. Now it overwhelms me. What could be simpler? She is twenty and I—transformed by anxiety, ill as I am, I am twice her age!… One must die, end it all! A woman of forty is no longer something for the men who have loved her in her youth! Now I shall find no more than the pleasures of vanity; and do they make life worth living? All the more reason for going to Parma, and for amusing myself. If matters took a certain turn, I should lose my life. Well! What’s so bad about that? I’d die a splendid death, and before it was over, but only then, I’d say to Fabrizio: ‘Ingrate! It was for you!’ … Yes, only in Parma can I find something to do with what life remains to me; I’ll play the grande dame there. What a blessing if I could be aware now of all those distinctions which used to be the bane of the Raversi’s life! In those days, in order to see my own happiness, I needed to look into the eyes of envy.… My vanity has one satisfaction; with the exception of the Count perhaps, no one can have guessed the event that has put an end to my heart’s life.… I’ll go on loving Fabrizio, I’ll be devoted to his interests; but he must not break off Clélia’s wedding and marry her himself.… No, that must never be!”
The Duchess had reached this point in her mournful monologue when she heard a loud noise in the house. “Good!” she said to herself. “Now they’re coming to arrest me; Ferrante will have let himself get caught, he must have confessed. And so much the better! Now I’ll have an occupation: fighting for my life. But first of all not to let myself be captured.” Half-dressed, the Duchess fled into her garden: she was already planning to climb over a little wall and escape into the countryside; but she noticed that someone was entering her bedroom. She recognized Bruno, the Count’s confidential servant: he was alone, along with her chambermaid. She approached the French door. The man was telling the chambermaid about the wounds he had received. The Duchess entered her room; Bruno virtually flung himself at her feet, imploring her not to tell the Count the absurd hour he had chosen to make his appearance. “Right after the Prince’s death,” he added, “the Signor Count gave orders to all the posting-stations not to furnish horses to the subjects of the State of Parma. So I reached the Po on our own horses, but when I was getting out of the boat, my carriage was overturned, broken, smashed to bits, and I had such serious bruises that I couldn’t ride a horse, as was my duty.”
“Even so,” said the Duchess, “it is three in the morning: I’ll say you arrived at noon; you won’t contradict me.”
“I am grateful for the Signora’s kindness.”
Politics in a literary work are a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, a crude affair though one impossible to ignore. We are about to speak of very ugly matters, which for more than one reason we should rather suppress, but which we are forced to discuss by events which fall within our province, since the hearts of our characters constitute their theater.
“But for God’s sake, how did the Prince happen to die?” the Duchess asked Bruno.
“He was out shooting migratory birds in the marshes along the Po, two leagues from Sacca. He fell into a hole concealed by a tuft of grass; he was perspiring heavily, and caught a chill; he was taken to a lonely farmhouse, where he died in a few hours. Some people claim that Signors Catena and Borone died as well, and that the whole business happened because of the copper pots in the peasant’s farmhouse where they were—pots filled with mold. They had eaten food out of them. And of course the excitable people, the Jacobins, say what they like and talk of poison.… I know that my friend Toto, a groom at Court, would have died if it hadn’t been for the generous care of a country bumpkin who seemed to have considerable medical knowledge and supplied him with some very strange remedies. But people have already stopped talking about the Prince’s death: the truth is, he was a cruel man. When I left, a mob was gathering to slaughter Chief Justice Rassi: they wanted to go and set fire to the gates of the Fortress, in order to try to save the prisoners. But it was claimed that Fabio Conti would fire his cannons. Other people declared that the Fortress cannoneers had poured water over their gunpowder, being unwilling to massacre their fellow citizens. But what’s more interesting is that while Sandolaro was tying up my poor arm, a man came from Parma saying that people had found Barbone in the streets—you know, that famous clerk of the Fortress—and had beaten him and then hanged him from the tree on the promenade closest to the Fortress. The people were on the way to break that fine statue of the Prince which stands in the Court gardens, but the Signor Count took a battalion of the Guard, posted it in front of the statue, and announced that no one entering the gardens would leave alive, and people were afraid. But the strangest thing of all, which that man from Parma, who is a former police-officer, told me several times, is that the Signor Count actually kicked General P——, in command of the Prince’s Guard, and had him taken out of the gardens by two fusiliers, after tearing off his epaulettes.”
“I know my Count!” exclaimed the Duchess in a transport of joy she would not have believed possible a moment earlier. “He would never permit an offense to our Princess; and as for General P——, in his devotion to his legitimate masters, he would never consent to serve the usurper, while the Count, being less delicate, fought in all the Spanish campaigns, which he was frequently reproached for at Court.”
The Duchess had opened the Count’s letter, but interrupted her
reading to ask Bruno a hundred questions. The letter was highly entertaining; the Count used the most lugubrious terms, yet the liveliest pleasure broke through at each word; he avoided details concerning the manner of the Prince’s death, and ended his letter with these words:
No doubt you will return, my angel! But I advise you to wait a day or two for the message which the Princess will be sending you, as I hope, either today or tomorrow; your return must be as splendid as your departure was bold. As for that great criminal who is with you, I certainly count on having him judged by a dozen magistrates summoned from all parts of this State. But in order to have this monster punished as he deserves, I must first be able to tear the first sentence to shreds, if it exists.
The Count had reopened his letter to add:
Now for a very different business: I have just had cartridges distributed to two battalions of the Guard; I shall do battle and deserve as best I can that sobriquet “the Cruel” with which the Liberals have honored me for so long. That old mummy General P—— has dared to speak in the barracks of parleying with the people, who are more or less in rebellion. I write you from the middle of the street; now I’m going to the Palace, which shall be entered only over my dead body. Farewell! If I die, it will be as your votary, even as I have lived! Don’t forget to take the three hundred thousand francs left in your name at the banker D——’s, in Lyons.
Here is that poor devil Rassi, pale as death and without his wig; you can’t imagine what he looks like! The people are determined to hang him, which would be doing him a great wrong, he deserves to be drawn and quartered. He sought refuge in my palazzo, and has run after me into the street; I’m not sure what to do with him.… I don’t want to lead him to the Prince’s Palace, which would cause the rebellion to break out there. F—— will see how much I love him; my first word to Rassi was: I must have the sentence of Signor del Dongo, and all the copies of it you can obtain, and I want you to inform all those iniquitous judges who are the cause of this rebellion that I’ll have them all hanged, like yourself, my dear friend, if they breathe a word of this sentence, which has never existed. In Fabrizio’s name, I’m sending a company of grenadiers to the Archbishop. Fare-well, my angel! My palazzo will be burned to the ground and I shall lose my charming portraits of you. I’m off to the Palace to strip that wretched General P—— of his rank, who is up to his usual tricks; he is basely flattering the populace, as he used to flatter the late Prince. All these generals are scared out of their wits; I believe I shall have myself made Commander in Chief.
The Duchess was unkind enough not to have Fabrizio wakened; she felt a burst of admiration for the Count which closely resembled love. “All things considered,” she said to herself, “I must marry him.” She wrote him immediately, and sent one of her men with the letter. That night, the Duchess had no time to be unhappy.
The next day, around noon, she saw a boat manned by ten oarsmen rapidly cleaving the waters of the lake; she and Fabrizio soon recognized a man wearing the livery of the Prince of Parma: indeed this was one of his couriers, who, before disembarking, shouted to the Duchess: “The rebellion has been put down!”
This courier handed her several letters from the Count, an admirable communication from the Princess, and a decree of Prince Ranuccio-Ernesto V, on parchment, which created her Duchess of San Giovanni and Mistress of the Robes of the Dowager Princess. This young Prince, so learned in mineralogy and whom she had supposed an imbecile, had possessed sufficient wit to write her a brief note; but there was love at the end of it. The note began as follows:
The Count tells me, Signora Duchess, that he is pleased with me; the fact is that I have withstood a few rifle shots beside him, and that my horse was grazed: considering the fuss made over such trifles, I am particularly eager to participate in a real battle, but not one against my own subjects. I owe everything to the Count; all my generals, who have no experience of warfare, behaved like so many hares; I believe that two or three have fled as far as Bologna. Since a great and deplorable event has put me in power, I have signed no decree which has been so agreeable to me as the one which appoints you my mother’s Mistress of the Robes. My mother and I well recall that one day you admired the fine view to be had from the palazzetto of San Giovanni, which once belonged to Petrarch, or so it is said; my mother has desired to present you with this little estate; and I, uncertain what to give you, and not daring to offer all that belongs to you—I have made you Duchess in my country; I do not know if you are so learned as to know that Sanseverina is a Roman title. I have just awarded the Grand Cordon of my Order to our worthy Archbishop, who has shown a resolve rare in men of seventy. You will not disapprove my having recalled all the ladies who were banished. I am told that I must no longer sign my name without having written the words your affectionate: I am vexed that I must lavish assurances which are not quite true except when I write you.
Your affectionate
Ranuccio-Ernesto
Who would not have said, judging from this language, that the Duchess was to enjoy the highest favor? Yet she found something quite odd in other letters from the Count, which she received two hours later.
Without offering any further explanation, he advised her to postpone her return to Parma for several days, and to write to the Princess that she was quite unwell. Nonetheless, the Duchess and Fabrizio left for Parma immediately after dinner. The Duchess’s purpose, which she still did not acknowledge, was to hasten the Marchese Crescenzi’s marriage; Fabrizio, for his part, made the journey in transports of wild joy, which seemed quite absurd to his aunt. He had hopes of seeing Clélia again soon; and was counting on carrying her off, even against her will, if that were to be the only means of breaking off this marriage.
The journey of the Duchess and her nephew was very gay. At the posting station before Parma, Fabrizio stopped a moment in order to change into his ecclesiastical habit; ordinarily he was dressed in mourning. When he came into the Duchess’s room, she said to him: “I find something inexplicable and rather sinister in the Count’s letters. If you want my advice, you’ll spend a few hours here. I’ll send you a courier once I’ve spoken to that great Minister.”
It was with great reluctance that Fabrizio followed this reasonable advice. Transports of joy worthy of a boy of fifteen marked the reception the Count gave to the Duchess, whom he addressed as his wife. It was some time before he was willing to talk politics, and when at last he did, they discovered the sad reason for this:
“You were quite right to keep Fabrizio from arriving officially; we are in the grip of reaction here. Can you guess the colleague the Prince has bequeathed me as Minister of Justice? It’s Rassi, my dear, Rassi, whom I’ve treated as the ruffian that he is, on the day of our grand adventure. By the way, I must inform you that everything that has taken place here has been suppressed. If you read our gazette, you will see that a clerk of the Fortress, one Barbone, has died from a fall from a carriage. As for the sixty-some rascals I had shot, when they attacked the Prince’s statue in the gardens, they are enjoying the best of health, but happen to be traveling abroad. Count Zurla, Minister of the Interior, has himself gone to the residence of each of these unfortunate heroes, and has bestowed fifteen sequins to their families or to their friends, with orders to say that the deceased is traveling, and threatens a term in prison if any mention is made that the man was shot. A man in my own Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been sent on a mission to the journalists of Milan and Turin so that no mention will be made of the unfortunate event, which is the consecrated phrase; this fellow will push on to Paris and London, in order to place a denial in every newspaper, semi-officially, of anything that might be said of our troubles. Another agent has headed for Bologna and Florence. I merely shrugged my shoulders.
“But the amusing thing, at my age, is that I have experienced a moment of enthusiasm in speaking to the soldiers of the Guard and in ripping the epaulettes from that booby General P——. At that moment I would have given my life, without a qualm,
for the Prince; I now confess that it would have been a very stupid way of ending it. Today, the Prince, fine young man that he is, would give a hundred scudi for me to die of some disease; he does not yet dare ask me to resign, but we speak to each other as seldom as possible, and I am sending a quantity of little reports in writing, as I did with the late Prince, after Fabrizio’s imprisonment. Apropos, I have not yet torn up the sentence signed against him, for the good reason that our scoundrel Rassi has not yet given it back to me. So you did the right thing to keep Fabrizio from arriving here officially. The sentence is still in effect; though I don’t believe that Rassi would dare to have your nephew arrested now, it is still possible that he will do so in a fortnight. If Fabrizio insists on returning to the city, let him come and stay with me.”
“But what is the reason for all this?” exclaimed the Duchess in amazement.
“The Prince has been convinced that I am giving myself the airs of a dictator and a savior of the fatherland, and that I want to lead him about like a child; furthermore, in alluding to him, I am reported to have pronounced the fatal word: this child. Which may be quite true, I was overexcited that day: for instance, I saw him as a great man because he wasn’t too frightened at the first gunshots he had ever heard in his life. He’s not entirely without brains, he certainly has a better style than his father: in short, I can’t say it too often, his heart is sound; but this sound young heart hardens when someone tells him of a nasty trick and he imagines that one must have a very dark soul himself to realize such things: consider the education he has been given …!”
“Your Excellency should have realized that one day he would be master here, and put an intelligent man at his side.”
