The Charterhouse of Parma

by Stendhal

  Clélia resigned herself; she had not yet seen Fabrizio and still hoped he had not come to this party. But at the moment the music was about to begin, the Princess having permitted the ladies to be seated, Clélia, who paid no attention to such matters of precedence, let all the best chairs near the Princess be taken and was obliged to look for a place at the back of the room, in the very corner where Fabrizio had taken refuge. As she reached her chair, the singular costume in such a place of the Father Superior of the Minorite Brothers caught her eye, and at first she did not notice the slender man wearing a simple black soutane who was talking to him; yet a certain secret movement attracted her glance to this person. “Everyone here has uniforms or gold-embroidered coats: who can this young man in black be?” She was giving him a closer look when a lady, coming to take a seat beside her, caused her chair to move. Fabrizio looked around: she did not recognize him, so changed was his countenance. At first she said to herself: “There’s someone who looks like him, it could be his older brother; but I thought he was only a few years older, and this is a man of forty.” Suddenly she recognized him from a twitch of his lips. “How the poor fellow must have suffered!” she said to herself, and she looked down in distress—not in order to keep her vow. Her heart was overcome by pity. “He didn’t look anything like that after nine months in prison!” She did not look at him again; but without exactly turning her eyes in his direction, she noticed all his movements.

  After the concert, she saw him go over to the Prince’s card table, placed a few steps from the throne; she breathed again when Fabrizio was now some distance away from her.

  But the Marchese Crescenzi had been deeply offended to see his wife relegated to a place so far from the throne; all evening he had been busily persuading a lady who was sitting three chairs away from the Princess and whose husband owed him money that she would do well to change places with his wife. When the poor lady resisted, as was only natural, he went to look for the indebted husband, who enabled his better half to hear the sad voice of reason, and at last the Marchese had the pleasure of effecting the exchange, and went to find his wife. “You’re always too self-effacing,” he told her; “why walk that way with your eyes down? People will take you for one of those middle-class women who is surprised to find herself here and whom everyone else is surprised to see here as well! That madwoman of a Mistress of the Robes is always doing such things! Yet people talk of keeping Jacobinism down! You must realize that your own husband occupies the first position among gentlemen at the Princess’s Court; and even if the Republicans managed to suppress the Court, and the nobility as well, your husband would still be the richest man in the country! That is a notion you never keep sufficiently in mind.”

  The chair in which the Marchese had the pleasure of installing his wife was only six paces away from the Prince’s card-table; she could see only Fabrizio’s profile, but she found him grown so thin, and above all seeming to be so far above anything likely to happen in this world, he who once let no incident pass without commenting upon it, that Clélia ended by coming to this dreadful conclusion: Fabrizio had altogether changed; he had forgotten her; if he was now so thin, that was the effect of the severe fasting to which his piety subjected him. She was confirmed in this sad conclusion by the conversation of everyone around her: the Coadjutor’s name was on everyone’s lips; everyone speculated as to the signal favor of which he was the object, young as he was, to make up the Prince’s whist party! People admired the polite indifference and the look of pride with which he tossed down his cards, even when he was trumping His Highness. “That’s really incredible!” exclaimed some old courtiers. “His aunt’s favor has completely turned his head … but thanks be to Heaven, it will not last; our Sovereign hates people to assume those little airs of superiority.”

  The Duchess approached the Prince; the courtiers who were standing at a respectful distance from the card-table, unable to hear more than a few random words of the Prince’s conversation, noticed that Fabrizio was blushing a good deal. “His aunt must be teaching him a lesson,” they were thinking, “about those grand airs of his.” Fabrizio had just heard Clélia’s voice; she was answering the Princess, who, in making the rounds of the ballroom, had addressed the wife of her Cavaliere d’Onore. The moment came when Fabrizio had to change places at the whist table; he now found himself directly opposite Clélia, and abandoned himself repeatedly to the pleasure of looking at her. The poor Marchesa, feeling his eyes upon her, was quite embarrassed. Several times she forgot about her vow altogether: in her desire to discover what was happening in Fabrizio’s heart, she fixed her eyes upon him.

  Now that the Prince’s game of whist was finished, the ladies stood up to proceed into the room where supper was being served. There was a moment of confusion. Fabrizio found himself close to Clélia; he was still quite determined, but he happened to recognize a very faint fragrance which she used on her gowns; this sensation overcame all his resolutions. He approached her and repeated in a whisper, as though to himself, two lines of that sonnet by Petrarch which he had sent her from Lake Maggiore, printed on a silk handkerchief:

  Happiest was I when all believed me sad,

  How changed today is all my lot in life!

  “So he has not forgotten me,” Clélia exulted, in a transport of joy. “That beautiful soul has never wavered!” And she ventured to murmur to herself two more lines of Petrarch:

  No, never shall you see a change in me,

  Fair eyes that have taught me what love is.

  The Princess withdrew immediately after supper; the Prince had followed her to her apartments, and did not return to the reception rooms. As soon as this became known, everyone sought to leave at the same time; there was utter confusion in the antechambers; Clélia found herself standing quite close to Fabrizio; the deep melancholy ingrained in his features moved her to pity. “Let us forget the past,” she said to him, “and keep this souvenir of friendship.” And with these words, she put out her fan so that he could take it from her.

  Everything changed in Fabrizio’s eyes; in an instant he was another man; the very next day he declared that his retreat was concluded, and he returned to occupy his splendid apartment in the Palazzo Sanseverina. The Archbishop said and believed that the favor the Prince had shown him in inviting him to his whist-table had completely turned this new saint’s head; the Duchess realized that he had come to some agreement with Clélia. This thought, coming to redouble the misery afforded by the memory of a fatal promise, quite determined her to absent herself from Court. Her caprice was marveled at: What! Leave the Court just when the favor she was enjoying seemed to have no bounds! The Count, entirely happy since he believed that there was no such thing as love between Fabrizio and the Duchess, said to his friend: “Our new Prince is virtue incarnate, but I used to call him that child—will he ever forgive me? I see only one way of returning to his good graces, which is to disappear. I shall show myself to be a model of good manners and the deepest respect, after which I shall be ill and request a leave of absence. You will allow me this, since Fabrizio’s fortunes are now assured. But will you make this great sacrifice for me,” he added with a laugh, “of exchanging the sublime title of Duchess for a much inferior one? For my own amusement, I am leaving affairs here in incredible confusion; I had four or five workmen in my various Ministries—I have pensioned them off during the last two months, for reading the French newspapers, and they have been replaced by incredible dummies.… Following our departure, the Prince will find himself in such difficulties that despite his horror of Rassi’s character, I have no doubts he will be compelled to recall him, and I myself am merely awaiting orders from the tyrant who disposes of my fate to write a letter of tender friendship to my friend Rassi, informing him that I have every reason to hope that justice will soon be done to his true merits.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  This serious conversation took place the day after Fabrizio’s return to the Palazzo Sanseverina; the Duchess was still
appalled by the joy so luminous in all of Fabrizio’s actions. “Incredible!” she said to herself. “That pious little ninny deceived me! She couldn’t hold out against her lover for even three months.”

  The certainty of a happy outcome had inspired that cowardly creature, the young Prince, with the courage to love; he had heard something of the preparations for departure being made at the Palazzo Sanseverina; and his French valet, who put little trust in the virtue of great ladies, encouraged him with regard to the Duchess. Ernesto V permitted himself to take a step which was severely reproved by the Princess and indeed by every sensible member of the Court; by commoners it was regarded as the seal of the remarkable favor the Duchess enjoyed. The Prince came to see her in her own palazzo.

  “You are leaving,” he said to her in a serious tone which the Duchess found odious; “you are leaving: you are betraying me and breaking your word! And yet if I had delayed ten minutes in granting you Fabrizio’s pardon, he would have been a dead man. And you leave me a wretched one! I must confess that without your promises I should never have had the courage to love you as I do! Have you no sense of honor?”

  “Just think a moment, Your Highness. In your entire life has there ever been a period equal in happiness to the four months which have just passed? Your glory as a Sovereign and, I daresay, your happiness as a man of feeling have never risen to such a pitch. Here is the compact I propose: if you deign to consent to it, I shall not be your mistress for a fleeting moment and by virtue of a promise extorted from me by fear, but I shall devote every moment of my life to procuring your happiness, I shall always be what I have been the last four months, and perhaps love will come to crown friendship. I would not swear to the contrary.”

  “Well then,” said the Prince, delighted, “play another part, be still more than you have been, rule both me and my Kingdom—be my Prime Minister; I offer you the kind of marriage permitted by the regrettable conventions of my rank; we have an example of such a thing close at hand: the King of Naples has just married the Duchess of Partana. I offer you all I can—a marriage of the same sort. I shall add a distressing political consideration to show you that I am no longer a child, and that I have given the matter some thought. I lay no stress on the condition which I impose on myself of being the last Sovereign of my house, and suffering the disappointment of seeing in my lifetime the Great Powers control my succession; I bless these very real disadvantages, since they offer me a further means of proving to you both my esteem and my passion.”

  The Duchess did not hesitate for a second; she found the Prince tedious and the Count quite lovable; to him there was only one man in the world she could prefer. Moreover, she ruled the Count, whereas the Prince, yielding to the demands of his rank, would have ruled her, more or less. Then too, he might well turn unfaithful and take mistresses; the difference in their ages might seem, in a few years, to entitle him to take such a step.

  From the very first moment, the prospect of boredom had settled the whole matter; nonetheless the Duchess, who sought to be as charming as possible, asked for time to reflect. It would take too long to record here the quasi-tender turns of phrase and the infinitely gracious terms in which she managed to swathe her refusal. The Prince lost his temper; he saw all his happiness escaping him. What would become of him once the Duchess had left his Court? Besides, how humiliating to be rejected! “After all, what will my French valet say when I tell him of my defeat?”

  The Duchess managed to calm the Prince, and little by little to bring the negotiations to her actual terms. “If Your Highness deigns not to demand the fulfillment of a fatal promise, one that is horrible in my eyes, obliging me, as it does, to incur my own contempt, I shall spend my life at his Court, and this Court will always be what it has been this winter; my every moment will be dedicated to contributing to your happiness as a man, and to your glory as a Sovereign. If Your Highness requires me to keep my promise, you will have spoiled the rest of my life, and immediately afterward will see me leave your realm, never to return. The day I shall have lost my honor will also be the last day I shall ever see you.”

  But the Prince was stubborn, like all cowards; moreover, his pride as a man and as a Sovereign was vexed by the rejection of his hand; he thought of all the difficulties he would have had to gain acceptance for such a marriage, which he was nonetheless determined to vanquish.

  For three hours the same arguments were repeated on either side, frequently mingled with very strong language. The Prince exclaimed: “Do you wish to persuade me, Signora, that you have no sense of honor? Had I hesitated so long the day General Fabio Conti gave poison to Fabrizio, you would even now be erecting a tomb to him in one of the churches of Parma.”

  “No, not in Parma, this country of poisoners.”

  “Very well then, go, Signora Duchess,” the Prince retorted angrily, “and take my contempt with you.”

  As he was leaving, the Duchess said to him in a whisper: “All right, come here at ten tonight, in the strictest incognito, and you shall have your fool’s bargain. You will then have seen me for the last time, though I would have devoted my life to making you as happy as any absolute monarch can be in this Jacobin age. Just think what your Court will be like when I am no longer here to extricate it by force from the boredom and spite which are its natural conditions.”

  “For your part, you reject the crown of Parma, and more than the crown, for you would not have been any ordinary Princess, married for dynastic reasons without love; my heart is entirely yours, and you would have seen yourself ever the absolute mistress of my actions as of my government.”

  “Yes, but the Princess your mother would have been in a position to regard me as a vile scheming woman.”

  “In that case I would have banished the Princess with a pension.”

  There followed another three-quarters of a hour of sharp exchanges. The Prince, who had a sensitive soul, could not bring himself either to use his rights or to allow the Duchess to leave. He had been told that after a first success was obtained, no matter how, all women come round.

  Dismissed by the indignant Duchess, he ventured to reappear, trembling and altogether wretched, at three minutes to ten. At ten-thirty, the Duchess stepped into her carriage and left for Bologna. She wrote to the Count once she was beyond Parma’s borders:

  The sacrifice has been made. Do not ask me to be cheerful for the next month. I shall not see Fabrizio again; I await you at Bologna, and whenever you wish, I shall be Countess Mosca. I ask only one thing of you: never force me to reappear in the country I am leaving, and always remember that instead of an income of one hundred and fifty thousand lire, you will have thirty or forty thousand at most. All the fools were watching you open-mouthed, and for the future you will be respected only insofar as you condescend to sink to their petty level. Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!

  Eight days later, the wedding was celebrated in Perugia, in a church where the Count’s ancestors have their tombs. The Prince was in despair. The Duchess had received three or four couriers from him, and had not failed to return his letters, in fresh envelopes, with their seals unbroken. Ernesto V had granted the Count a magnificent pension, and awarded the Grand Cordon of his order to Fabrizio.

  “That is what pleased me most in his farewells. We parted,” said the Count to the new Countess Mosca della Rovere, “the best of friends; he awarded me a Spanish Grand Cordon, and gave me some diamonds worth every bit as much as the Cordon. He told me he would make me a Duke, but wanted to keep that in reserve in case he might tempt you back to his realm. So I have the responsibility of informing you—a fine mission for a husband—that if you deign to return to Parma, even if only for a month, I shall be made a Duke, under any name you choose, and you will have a fine estate.”

  Which the Duchess refused with every appearance of horror.

  After the scene which had occurred at the Court ball, and which seemed quite decisive, Clélia seemed no longer to remember the love she had appeared to share so briefly; the
most violent remorse had seized this virtuous and pious soul. This Fabrizio understood quite well, and despite all the hopes he attempted to sustain, the blackest misery filled his soul. This time, however, such misery did not lead him into retreat, as at the period of Clélia’s marriage.

  The Count had requested his nephew to keep him well informed as to what was happening at Court, and Fabrizio, who was beginning to realize all he owed him, had promised to carry out this mission in all good faith.

  Like everyone in town and at court, Fabrizio had no doubt that his friend intended to return to the Ministry, and with even more power than he had previously wielded. The Count’s anticipations very soon proved to be accurate: less than six weeks after his departure, Rassi was Prime Minister; Fabio Conti, the Minister of War; and the prisons, which the Count had nearly emptied, were teeming once again. The Prince, summoning such men to power, believed he was taking his revenge on the Duchess; he was madly in love and especially detested Count Mosca as his rival.

  Fabrizio had a great deal to do; Monsignore Landriani, at the age of seventy-two, had fallen into a dreadful lethargy, and almost never left his Palace, so that it was up to his Coadjutor to perform virtually all his functions.

  The Marchesa Crescenzi, overwhelmed with remorse, and alarmed by her spiritual director, had found an excellent way of avoiding Fabrizio’s attentions. Taking as an excuse the last months of her first confinement, she had turned her own Palace into a sort of prison; but this Palace had an enormous garden. Fabrizio managed to make his way there, and placed on Clélia’s favorite path bouquets of flowers arranged such a way as to convey a message, just as she had once done for him on his last evenings of imprisonment in the Farnese Tower.

  The Marchesa was extremely annoyed by this effort; her emotions were swayed now by remorse, now by passion. For several months she did not permit herself to venture into her own Palace garden; she even had scruples about looking down into it.