by Stendhal
I will not attempt to add any graces to simplicity, to the harsh, sometimes shocking quality of the all too true tale I am about to submit to my indulgent reader; for example, I shall translate precisely the response that the Duchess of Palliano made to the declaration of love made to her by her cousin Marcel Capecce. This monograph concerning a family was found, I do not know why, at the end of the second volume of a manuscript history of Palermo, about which I can offer no detail.
The narration, which I shall abridge considerably to my great regret (I must suppress a whole host of fascinating circumstances), involves the last adventures of the unlucky Carafa family, rather than being an interesting tale of a single passion. My literary vanity whispers to me that perhaps I might augment the interest of certain situations by developing them somewhat—that is, by inferring and then reporting to the reader the details of what the characters thought and felt. But I, being a young Frenchman born in the north, in Paris—can I really be sure I can correctly infer what Italian minds thought and felt in 1559? The best I can hope for is to divine what might appear elegant and piquant to French readers in 1838.
That passionate kind of feeling that dominated Italy around 1559 requires action, not words. Thus, there will be very few conversations in the narrative that follows. This is a disadvantage for my translation, accustomed as we are nowadays to long conversations between the characters in our novels; for them, a conversation is like combat. This story, for which I request the reader’s indulgence, reveals a unique oddity that the Spanish introduced into Italian customs. I shall not go beyond the role of a translator in any way. The faithful reproduction of the way people felt in the sixteenth century, and even the ways of this storyteller—who to all appearances would seem to have been a gentleman attached to the house of the unfortunate Duchess of Palliano—these make up the whole merit of this tragic story, if indeed there is any merit to it at all.
The most severe Spanish etiquette reigned at the court of the Duke of Palliano. The reader should recall that every cardinal, every Roman prince, had a similar court, and you may then form some idea of the spectacle that made up, in 1559, the civilization of the city of Rome. Remember also that this was the era of the Spanish king Philip II, and that when he needed the services of two cardinals for one of his schemes, he gave each of them 200,000 livres in ecclesiastical benefices. Rome, without a formidable army of its own, was the capital of the world. Paris in 1559 was the home of pleasant-enough barbarians.
Exact Translation of an Old Narrative, Written around 1566
Jean-Pierre Carafa, though born to one of the noblest families in the kingdom of Naples, had the rough and violent manners more suited to a herdsman.4 He wore the “long coat” (that is, the cassock), and he went to Rome as a young man, where he was aided by the favor of his cousin Olivier Carafa, cardinal and archbishop of Naples. Pope Alexander VI, that great man who was all-knowing and all-powerful, made him his cameriere (which is more or less what we in our world would call a knight of the chamber). Julius II named him archbishop of Chieti; Pope Paul III made him a cardinal, and finally, on the twenty-third of May 1555, after much intrigue and many terrible disputes among the cardinals sequestered in the conclave, he was made pope and took the name Paul IV; at that time, he was seventy-eight years old. Even those who had called him to the throne of Saint Peter trembled at the thought of the harshness and the ferocious, inexorable piety of the master they had created for themselves.
The news of this unexpected election caused revolutions in Naples and Palermo. Within a few days, a great number of the illustrious Carafa family arrived in Rome. All were given places; but, as was most natural, the pope particularly distinguished his three nephews, sons of his brother the Count of Montorio.
Don Juan, the eldest and already married, was made Duke of Palliano. This duchy, snatched away from Marc-Antoine Colonna, to whom it actually belonged,5 included a great number of villages and small towns. Don Carlos, the second nephew of His Holiness, was a chevalier of Malta and had been to war; he was made cardinal, legate of Bologna, and first minister.6 He was a man of resolution; faithful to his family’s traditions, he dared to detest the most powerful king in the world (Philip II, king of Spain and the Indies) and to give him more than one proof of his hatred. As for the third nephew of the new pope, Don Antonio Carafa, because he was married, the pope named him Marquis of Montebello. Finally, the pope tried to give as wife to François, Dauphin of France and the son of King Henri II, a daughter that his brother had had from a second marriage; Pope Paul IV claimed that she would have for her dowry the kingdom of Naples, which would have meant taking it away from Philip II, king of Spain. The Carafa family hated that powerful king, who, aided by the family’s own missteps, would succeed in exterminating them, as you will see.
Once he ascended to the throne of Saint Peter, the most powerful in the world, which at this time eclipsed even that of the illustrious monarch of Spain, Paul IV, just as has been seen with most of his successors, proceeded to serve as an example of all the virtues. He was a great pope and a great saint; he applied himself to reforming the abuses within the church and by this means avoiding having to call a Council General, for which all parties at the papal court were clamoring, and which a wise politician would never have granted.
According to the norms of the time, norms that are wholly forgotten in our time, a sovereign was allowed to put his trust only in men whose interests coincided with his own, and thus the Papal States were governed despotically by the pope’s three nephews. The cardinal was first minister and was responsible for carrying out his uncle’s orders; the Duke of Palliano was made general of the troops of the holy church; and the Marquis of Montebello, captain of the palace guards, allowed entrance only to those persons he wished. Soon these young men were committing every sort of gross excess; they began by appropriating the property of families that had been opposed to their government. People did not know where to turn to seek justice. Not only did they have to fear for their goods but also, a horrible thing to say in the country of the chaste Lucrece, the very honor of their wives and their daughters was not secure. The Duke of Palliano and his brothers carried off the most beautiful women, who had done nothing but been unlucky enough to have pleased them. People watched, stupefied, as they showed no respect for rank or blood and, even worse, they were not impeded by the sacred enclosures around holy cloisters. The people were reduced to despair, with no one to hear their complaints, so great was the terror the three brothers inspired in everyone who approached the pope; they showed insolence even to foreign ambassadors.
The duke had married, before his uncle’s rise to greatness, Violante de Cardone, from a family of Spanish origin and of the highest level of nobility in Naples.
The family could boast of belonging to the Seggio di nido.7
Violante, celebrated for her rare beauty and for those graces that she knew how to deploy when she wanted to please, was even more celebrated for her titanic pride. But to be fair, it would have been difficult to find a more elevated, noble spirit, which she showed when, with her confessor and at the point of her own death, she admitted to nothing. She knew by heart, and could recite with an infinite grace, the superb Orlando by Messer Ariosto, the greater part of Petrarch’s sonnets, and the stories from the Pecorone, etc.8 But she was even more magnetic when she deigned to entertain the company with the remarkable ideas whose origin was her own mind.
She had a son who was called the Duke of Cavi. Her brother D. Ferrand, Count d’Aliffe, came to Rome, attracted there by the great good fortune of his brothers-in-law.
The Duke of Palliano maintained a splendid court; the young men from the finest families in Naples schemed to have the honor of being part of it. Among those who were most dear to him, Rome had distinguished for its own admiration Marcel Capecce (also from the Seggio di nido), a young cavalier celebrated in Naples for his wit as well as for the gift of divine beauty that heaven had given him.
The duchess had for her favor
ite Diane Brancaccio, then about thirty years old and a close relative of the Marquise of Montebello, her sister-in-law. People in Rome said that when it came to her favorite, the duchess had no pride; she confided all her secrets in her. But all her secrets had to do with political matters only; the duchess ignited passions, but she shared them with no one.
Following the counsel of Cardinal Carafa, the pope made war on the king of Spain, and the king of France sent the pope help in the form of an army commanded by the Duke of Guise.
But we must restrict ourselves to events within the court of the Duke of Palliano.
For some time, Capecce had seemed to have gone mad; people saw him committing some of the oddest acts; the fact is that the poor young man had fallen passionately in love with the duchess, his “mistress,” but he dared not let her know. Nevertheless, he did not despair absolutely of achieving his goal, for he observed the duchess deeply irritated by a husband who neglected her. The Duke of Palliano was all powerful in Rome, and the duchess knew without a doubt that practically every day, the Roman women most celebrated for their beauty would come to see her husband in his own palazzo, and this was an affront to which she could not accustom herself.9
Among the chaplains of the holy Pope Paul IV was a respectable clergyman with whom he would recite his breviary. This individual, at the risk of losing everything, and perhaps pushed into it by the Spanish ambassador, dared one day to tell the pope all the villainous deeds his nephews were involved in. The holy pontiff was sick with heartache at hearing this; he wanted not to believe it; but overwhelming proofs were reaching him from all sides. It was on the first day of the year 1559 that an event transpired to convince the pope of all his suspicions, and perhaps it decided His Holiness. This was the feast day of the Circumcision of Our Lord, a circumstance that significantly aggravated the sin in the eyes of so pious a sovereign: André Lanfranchi, secretary to the Duke of Palliano, gave a magnificent supper for Cardinal Carafa, and, desirous of ensuring that the excitations of sensuality would outstrip those of gourmandise, he brought to the supper La Martuccia, one of the most beautiful, most famous, and wealthiest courtesans in the noble city of Rome. As fate would have it, Capecce, the duke’s favorite and the man secretly in love with the duchess, and the man who was considered the handsomest man in the world’s capital, had been involved with La Martuccia for some time. This evening, he sought for her everywhere he thought she might be. Not finding her, and learning that there was a supper at the Lanfranchi place, he suspected what was afoot, and at midnight he presented himself at Lanfranchi’s, accompanied by a great number of armed men.
The door was opened to him, and he was encouraged to enter and sit down, to make himself part of the festivities; but after a few constrained exchanges, he made a sign to La Martuccia to get up and come away with him. While she hesitated, confused and half foreseeing what was going to happen, Capecce got up from his seat and, approaching the young lady, took her by the hand and attempted to pull her away with him. The cardinal, in whose honor she had come, vigorously protested her departure; Capecce persisted, forcing her out of the room with him.
The cardinal and first minister, who this evening had worn clothing quite different from the robes that would have announced his great dignity, took his sword in his hand and declared his opposition to the young woman’s leaving with all the vigor and bravery that all Rome knew quite well. Marcel, drunk with rage, called his men in; but they were Neapolitans, and when they recognized first the duke’s secretary and then the cardinal despite the extraordinary outfit he was wearing, they sheathed their swords, not wanting to fight, and attempted to smooth over the quarrel.
During all this tumult, La Martuccia, surrounded by men, and her left hand still in the grip of Marcel Capecce, managed to slip away and escape. When Marcel realized she was gone, he raced off after her, and everyone followed him.
But the obscurity of night lends authority to the strangest of tales, and during the early hours of January 2, the capital was flooded with stories of perilous combat taking place, it was said, between the nephew cardinal and Marcel Capecce. The Duke of Palliano, general in chief of the army of the church, thought the whole business was far more serious than it really was, and since he was not on very good terms with his brother the minister, that same night he had Lanfranchi arrested, and, early in the morning, Marcel himself was put in prison. Then it became clear that no one had been killed, and that the imprisonments only worsened the scandal, which fell entirely upon the cardinal. The prisoners were hurriedly released, and the immense power of the three brothers was deployed to snuff out gossip about the affair. At first, they expected they would be successful; but on the third day, the whole story came to the notice of the pope. He called for the two nephews and spoke to them using the kind of language one would expect from so pious and so profoundly offended a prince.
The fifth day of January saw a great number of cardinals united for the Congregation of the Holy Office, and the holy pope was the first to speak of this horrible affair, asking the cardinals to tell him whatever they had not dared to tell him before:
“You have been silent! And the scandal attaches to the sublime dignity of the robes you are wearing! Cardinal Carafa dared to appear in public wearing secular clothing and brandishing a naked sword. And why? In order to hold on to an infamous courtesan!”
One can imagine the deathly silence among all the assembled courtiers during this speech against the first minister. Here was an old man of eighty inveighing against his dearest nephew, the man who up to now carried out all his wishes. In his indignation, the pope spoke of removing his nephew from the ranks of the cardinals.
The rage of the pope was fanned by the ambassador of the grand duchy of Tuscany, who now came forward to complain of a recent insolence on the part of the cardinal first minister. The latter, so powerful until now, presented himself at the office of His Holiness as part of his daily duties. The pope made him wait for four full hours in the antechamber, exposed to everyone’s view, then sent him away without granting him an audience. One can imagine what this did to the enormous pride of the minister. The cardinal was irritated, but not defeated; he assumed that an old man overcome by his years, his whole life dominated by his love for his family, and little used to an efficient handling of temporal affairs would eventually be obliged to turn to him. But the virtue of the holy pope carried the day; he convoked the cardinals and, having looked out at them for a long while without speaking, ultimately broke into tears and wasted no time in making honorable amends:
“The weakness of age,” he told them, “and all the attention I have paid to religious matters—through which, as you know, I am trying to eliminate abuses—these have led me to confide my temporal authority in my three nephews; they have abused my trust, and I now banish them forever.”
Then an edict was read out, by which the nephews were despoiled of all their dignities and confined to miserable villages. The cardinal first minister was exiled to Civita Lavinia, the Duke of Palliano to Soriano, and the marquis to Montebello; by this edict, the duke was stripped of all his regular appointments, which had raised for him some 72,000 piastres (the equivalent of more than a million in 1838).
There could be no question of failing to obey these severe commands: the Carafa brothers had made the whole population of Rome their enemies, and they could not escape their watchful gaze, being so universally detested.
The Duke of Palliano, accompanied by the Count d’Aliffe, his brother-in-law, and Léonard del Cardine, went and established himself in the little village of Soriano, while the duchess and her mother-in-law set themselves up in Gallese, a wretched hamlet a short two leagues from Soriano.
The two locales are charming, but this was an exile, and they had been exiled from Rome, where they had till now reigned with insolence.
Marcel Capecce had followed his “mistress,” along with other courtiers, into the poor village of her exile. Instead of being showered with homages from all of Rome, thi
s woman, so powerful just a few days before, this woman who loved her social rank with all the rage of pride, now saw herself surrounded only by gaping peasants, whose very astonishment was a continual reminder of her fall. She had no consolations; the uncle was so old that he would probably be surprised by death before he would think of his nephews again, and what made it all even worse was that the three brothers detested each other. It was said that the duke and the marquis, who did not share the fiery passions of the cardinal, were so taken aback by his excesses that they had gone so far as to report them to the pope, their uncle.
In the midst of the horror of this whole episode of disgrace, a thing happened that, unluckily for the duchess as well as for Capecce himself, revealed that it had not been a real passion that had dragged him out in search of La Martuccia in Rome that night.
One day, when the duchess had called for him to give him some orders, he found himself alone with her, something that happened, at most, once or twice in a year. When he saw that there was no one in the room where the duchess had received him, Capecce stood still and silent. He moved over to the door to see if there was anyone who could overhear in the next room, and then he dared to speak to her thus:
“Madame, please do not be disturbed, and please do not be angry, at the things I am about to be so bold as to say to you. I have long loved you more than life itself. If, with too much impudence, I have dared to look upon your divine charms with the eyes of a lover, you must blame not me but rather the supernatural force that impels me and agitates me. I implore you, I love you; I do not ask for any kind of relief for the flame that is eating me up, but I ask only that in your generosity you look with pity upon your servant, filled as he is with deference and humility.”
The duchess appeared surprised and irritated:
“Marcel,” she said to him, “what have you seen in me that gives you the boldness to ask for my love? Is there something in my life, something in my conversation, that is so outside the bounds of decency, something that has seemed to authorize you to have the audacity to think that I could give myself to you or to any other man apart from my husband and lord? I forgive what you have said to me, because I believe you are in a kind of frenzy; but beware never again to make such a mistake, or I swear that I will have you punished not only for that second but also for this first insolence.”
