by Stendhal
“This poor woman must have terrible enemies,” Vanina said to herself, “for my father, who is usually so easygoing, not to dare confide in anyone, and to give himself the trouble of coming up twenty stair steps every day.”
One evening, while Vanina was quietly peering in through the unknown’s window, their eyes met, and the secret was out. Vanina went down on her knees, and cried out:
“I love you, and I will be your devoted friend.”
The unknown gestured for her to enter the room.
“I owe you my apologies,” Vanina exclaimed, “and how offensive my foolish curiosity must be to you! I swear to keep your secret, and if you demand it of me, I will go away and never come back.”
The unknown replied, “Who would not find it a joy to see you? Do you live here in the palazzo?”
“Of course,” said Vanina. “But I can see you don’t know me: I am Vanina, the daughter of Don Asdrubal.”
The unknown looked at her with an astonished air, blushed deeply, and then said: “Please, allow me to hope that you will come and visit me every day; but I ask you not to let the prince know of your visits.” Vanina’s heart was beating wildly; the unknown’s manner seemed highly distinguished. The poor young woman must have offended some powerful man; perhaps, in a fit of jealousy, she had killed her lover? Vanina could not imagine any vulgar cause for her present situation. The unknown told her that she had suffered a wound in her shoulder, one that had penetrated down into her chest and was causing her great pain.
Cried Vanina, “But you have no surgeon!”
The unknown replied, “You know that here in Rome, the surgeons must give the police a complete report on all the wounds they treat. The prince has been so kind as to dress my wounds with this bandage himself.”
The unknown avoided self-pity with a perfect grace; Vanina loved her madly. But one thing did surprise the young princess greatly, and that was that in the middle of what was clearly a perfectly serious conversation, the unknown seemed to have a great deal of trouble keeping herself from bursting into laughter.
Vanina said, “I would be happy to learn your name.”
“They call me Clémentine.”
“Well then, my dear Clémentine, I will come back to see you tomorrow at five.” But the next day, Vanina found her new friend in great pain.
Embracing her, Vanina said, “I want to bring a surgeon to see you.”
“I would rather die,” said the unknown. “Do you want me to compromise my benefactors?”
“The surgeon of Signor Savelli-Catanzara, the governor of Rome, is the son of one of our servants,” Vanina replied quickly; “he is devoted to us, and because of his position, he fears no one. My father fails to do justice to his loyalty; I am going to ask for him.”
“I want no surgeon!” the unknown cried out, with an intensity that startled Vanina. “Come and visit me, and if God wants to call me to him, I will die happy in your arms.”
The next day, the unknown was even worse. When Vanina was leaving, she said, “If you love me, you’ll let me bring a surgeon.”
“If he comes, my happiness will go.”
“I am going to send to try to find him,” Vanina replied. But without saying anything, the unknown held her back and covered her hand with kisses. There was a long silence; the eyes of the unknown were filled with tears.
Finally, she let go of Vanina’s hand, and with a voice that sounded as if she were about to die, she said: “I have something to confess to you. The other day, I lied when I said my name was Clémentine; I am an unlucky carbonaro… .” Vanina, shocked, fell back into her chair and then quickly stood up.
“I know,” the carbonaro continued, “that this confession is going to make me lose the only thing that makes me want to go on living, but it is unworthy of me to continue deceiving you. My name is Pietro Missirilli; I am nineteen years old; my father is a poor surgeon in Sant’Angelo in Vado, and I am a carbonaro. My venti was betrayed;3 I was transported, in chains, from the Romagna to Rome. Thrown into a cell lit day and night by a single lamp, I stayed there for thirteen months. A charitable soul came up with the idea for how I might escape. They dressed me up as a woman. As I was leaving the prison and passing by the guards at the final gate, I heard one of them cursing the carbonari; I struck him. I assure you that this was no act of bravado but a simple reflex. That imprudence led to my being hunted all night long through the streets of Rome and wounded by bayonet thrusts; losing my strength, I turned into a house where the door happened to be open; I heard the soldiers running in behind me; I leaped into the garden; I landed at the feet of a woman who happened to be walking there… .”
“The countess Vittelleschi! My father’s friend!” said Vanina.
“What? She has told you about it?” cried Missirilli. “In any case, that lady, whose name must be kept secret, saved my life. Just as the soldiers were coming in to capture me, your father got me into his coach. I am in great pain; for several days now, one bayonet thrust into my shoulder has made it hard for me to breathe. I am going to die, and in despair because I will not see you anymore.”
Vanina had listened impatiently; now she rushed out quickly. Missirilli could discover no pity in those so-beautiful eyes, only the haughty demeanor of someone who has suffered an affront.
That evening, the surgeon appeared; he was alone. Missirilli was in despair; he feared he would never see Vanina again. He put some questions to the surgeon, who bled him but made no reply. The next days brought only the same silence. Pietro never took his eyes off the terrace from which Vanina used to enter his room; he was quite miserable. One time, near midnight, he thought he saw someone in the shadows on the terrace: was it Vanina?
Vanina came every night, pressing her cheek against the window of the young carbonaro. “If I speak to him,” she said to herself, “I am lost! No, I must never see him again!” This resolution once taken, she imagined despite herself the friendship she had felt for the young man when she had, so stupidly, taken him for a woman. ‘After a sweet intimacy like that, the only thing is to forget him!” In her most rational moments, Vanina was frightened by the extreme changes taking place in her thinking. Ever since Missirilli had told her his real name, all the things she had been accustomed to thinking had somehow grown faded, as if covered up by a veil, and now seemed very far away.
Less than a week had passed when Vanina, pale and trembling, came back into the young carbonaro’s chamber, accompanying the surgeon. She had earlier come to tell him to get the prince to let a domestic take his place. She had stayed less than ten seconds; but a few days later, she came back with the surgeon, out of humanity. One evening, when Missirilli was much better and no longer needed to fear for his life, she dared to come back alone. Seeing her pitched Missirilli to the very heights of happiness, but he tried to hide his feelings of love; after all, he did not want to betray the dignity that a man ought to maintain. Vanina, who had entered the room with her face blushing bright red and fearing to hear him talk of love, was taken aback to find him instead receiving her in a spirit of noble and devoted friendship, though not of the tender kind. She left without his trying to detain her.
A few days later, when she came back, she encountered the same behavior and the same respectful assurances of eternal devotion and gratitude. Far from having to restrain the feelings of the young carbonaro, Vanina began to ask herself if she were the only one in love. This girl, up to now so very proud, now felt bitterly the full extent of her madness. She affected an air of gaiety and even of coldness, and she came less often to his room, but she could not make herself cease coming to see the young invalid.
Missirilli, burning with love but remembering his own obscure origins and what they demanded of him, promised himself not to stoop to speaking of love unless Vanina were to stay away from him for an entire week. The pride of the young princess matched his at every move.
“Well,” she said to herself at last, “if I come to see him, I do it solely for myself, for my own p
leasure, and I will never admit what it is that makes me come to him.” She made lengthy visits to him, and he spoke to her the same way he would have if there had been twenty other persons present. One evening, after having spent the whole day detesting him and promising herself to be even colder and more severe with him than usual, she told him that she loved him. Soon, there was nothing left that she could refuse him.
Great as her folly was, it must be admitted that Vanina was perfectly happy. Missirilli no longer thought about what he owed to masculine dignity; he loved the way one does love when one is in love for the first time, nineteen, and in Italy. He felt all the scruples of passion-love,4 to the point of admitting to this haughty young princess the method he had used to make her fall in love with him. He was stunned by the sheer excess of his happiness. Four months passed by quickly. One day, the surgeon declared his young patient fully healed. Missirilli wondered, “What shall I do? Should I stay here, hidden in the house of one of Rome’s most beautiful creatures? And while I do so, the vile tyrants who threw me into prison for thirteen months, not allowing me so much as a glimpse of the light of day, will believe that I am defeated! Oh, Italy, you are truly unfortunate if your children abandon you so quickly and for so little cause!”
Vanina never doubted that Pietro’s greatest happiness would always lie in remaining closely attached to her; he seemed too happy; but a word from General Bonaparte was echoing in the young man’s heart, influencing all his conduct toward women. In 1796, when General Bonaparte left Brescia, the local officials who accompanied him to the city gates said that Brescians loved liberty more than any other Italians did. “Oh yes,” he replied, “they love to chat about it with their mistresses.”
In a constrained voice, Missirilli said to Vanina, “As soon as night falls, I must be gone.”
“Well, be careful to get back inside the palazzo before dawn; I’ll be waiting for you.”
“No, at dawn I shall be very far from Rome.”
Vanina replied coldly, “Fine. Where are you going?”
“To the Romagna, for revenge.”
“Since I am wealthy,” Vanina said, somewhat more calmly, “I trust you will accept arms and money from me.”
Missirilli looked at her for a moment without blinking; then, throwing his arms around her: “O soul of my life, you will make me forget everything,” he said, “even my duty. But your heart is a noble one, so you must understand me.” Vanina wept a great deal, and it was agreed that he would not depart for two days.
The next day, she said to him, “Pietro, you have often said that a well-known man, a Roman prince, for example, who could raise a great deal of money, would be capable of doing great things for the cause of liberty, if Austria were ever engaged in some great war far away.”
Pietro, surprised, said, “Yes, of course.”
“Well, then! You have the spirit for it; all you lack is high position; I am offering you my hand, along with my annual income of 200,000 livres. I will take it upon myself to gain my father’s consent.”
Pietro threw himself down at her feet; Vanina was radiant with joy. “I love you passionately,” he said to her; “but I am a poor servant of my country; yet the more Italy is oppressed, the more I must remain faithful to her. In order to get Don Asdrubal’s consent, I will have a sorry part to play for many years. Vanina, I must refuse you.” Missirilli hastened to bind himself to what he was saying. Courage was failing him. “My misfortune,” he cried, “is to love you more than life itself, and for me, leaving Rome is the greatest of tortures. Oh, if only Italy were delivered from the barbarians! Then, with what pleasure would I embark with you, to go live together in America!”
Vanina stood there frozen. This refusal of her hand had injured her pride; but soon, she was back in the arms of Missirilli. “You have never seemed so lovable to me,” she exclaimed; “yes, my little country surgeon, I am yours always. You are as great a man as the ancient Romans.” All thoughts of her future, all the sad little warnings suggested by good sense evaporated: it was a moment of perfect love. When they were again able to speak rationally: “I will be in the Romagna almost as soon as you,” Vanina said. “I will have myself ordered to go to the baths in Poretta Terme. I will stop at a castle we own in San Nicolo, close to Forli… .”
“And there I shall live with you,” cried Missirilli.
“From this day on, my lot is to dare everything,” said Vanina with a sigh. “I will ruin myself for you, but it does not matter… . But can you love a dishonored woman?”
“Are you not my wife, and the woman I shall always adore? I will know how to love and protect you.”
Vanina had to go out for some social visits. As soon as she was gone, Missirilli began to view his own behavior as barbaric. He asked himself, “What is this ‘country’? It is not a being to whom we owe gratitude for some benefits bestowed, some person who can be suffering and who can curse us if we abandon it. ‘Country’ and ‘liberty’—I wear these like my cloak; they are a thing that is useful to me but a thing that I must purchase, since I did not inherit it from my father; but still, I love my country and I love liberty, because they are useful to me. If they were not useful, if they were like a heavy cloak in the month of August, what would be the point of purchasing them, and at such an enormous price?
“Vanina is so beautiful! Her character is so unique! Others will seek to please her; she will forget me. And where is the woman who has had only one lover? These Roman princes whom I so detest have so many advantages over me! They will be so easy for her to love! Oh, but if I leave her, I will lose her forever.”
In the middle of the night, Vanina came to see him; he told her about the uncertainties into which he had been plunged and the critical thoughts he had had, because he loved her, about that great word country. Vanina was extremely happy. She said to herself, “If he had to choose absolutely between country and me, he would choose me.”
The bells of the nearby church sounded out three o’clock; the moment for their final adieu had come. Pietro tore himself away from the arms of his love. He was already descending the little stairwell when Vanina, holding back her tears, said to him with a smile: “If you had been nursed back to health by some poor woman out in the countryside, would you not give her something for her trouble? Would you not find some way to pay her? The future is uncertain, and you are going out among your enemies: pay me back by giving me the next three days, as if I were the poor country woman who had taken care of you.” Missirilli stayed. Finally, he did leave Rome. Thanks to a passport he purchased from a foreign embassy, he reached his family safely. This was a great joy to them; they had thought he was dead. His friends wanted to celebrate his arrival by killing a carabinier or two (that is the term they use for police in the Papal States).
But Missirilli said, “Let us not unnecessarily kill any Italian who knows how to bear arms; our country is not an island like England: what we lack are soldiers to resist the interventions of the European monarchs.” Some time after this, Missirilli was being closely pursued by carabinieri and ended up killing two of them, using the pistols Vanina had given him. There was now a price on his head.
Vanina did not arrive in Romagna; Missirilli thought he had been forgotten. His vanity was wounded; he began to contemplate the difference in rank between himself and his mistress. In a particularly emotional moment, feeling sorrow over the happiness he had lost, he had the idea of returning to Rome to see what Vanina was doing. This mad thought was about to drive him away from what he thought was his duty when, that evening, the mountain church bells rang the Angelus in a peculiar manner, as though the bell ringer had let himself be distracted. This was the signal for Missirilli’s Romagna venti of carbonari to meet. That same night, they all came together in a certain hermitage in the forest. The two anchorites, stupefied by opium, had no idea of the usage to which their little dwelling was put. Missirilli arrived at the place in a sorrowful mood, and he there learned that the chief of the venti had been arrested and that h
e himself, scarcely twenty years old, had been elected chief of a venti that counted among its members men of more than fifty years of age, men who had been involved in the Murat expedition in 1815.5 Upon being given this unexpected honor, Pietro felt his heart beating stronger. When he was again alone, he resolved to think no more about the Roman woman who had forgotten him, and to concentrate all his thoughts on the goal of “delivering Italy from the barbarians.”6
Two days later, Missirilli read in the reports given to him as chief concerning arrivals and departures in the region that Princess Vanini had just arrived at her castle in San Nicolo. Reading that name gave his heart more trouble than pleasure. It was in vain that he tried to assure himself of his fidelity to his country by not flying off that very evening to the San Nicolo castle; the thought of Vanina, which he had evaded of late, now kept him from fulfilling his duties in a rational manner. He saw her the next day; she loved him still, just as she had in Rome. Her father, who had wanted to get her married, had delayed her departure. She had 2,000 sequins with her.7 This unlooked-for bounty did wonders for Missirilli’s prestige in his new position. His men arranged for daggers to be made in Corfu; they gained control of the legate’s private secretary, charged with hunting down carbonari. And they got hold of the list of priests who were acting as government spies.
