Italian Chronicles

by Stendhal

  When it was the turn of the sisters Vittoria and Bernarda, who had witnessed the tortures inflicted upon Cesare, they admitted everything immediately. All the nuns were interrogated about the criminal, the man who fathered the child; most of them said that they had heard it was monsignor the bishop. One of the portresses reported the outrageous language she had heard the abbess using with the bishop while turning him out of the church door. She added: “When people talk like that to each other, you can tell they’ve been making love together for a long time. And in fact monsignor the bishop, who usually had a striking air of self-assurance, now looked sheepish when he left the church.”

  One of the sisters, interrogated in view of the torture instruments, said that the criminal must be the cat, because the abbess always held him in her arms and was always caressing him. Another nun claimed that the criminal must be the wind, because on windy days the abbess seemed happy and in a good mood; she exposed herself to the wind in a belvedere that she had had constructed for that very purpose; and whenever one went to her there to ask for some favor, she would never refuse. The baker’s wife, the nurse, and all the gossips from Montefiascone, frightened by the tortures inflicted on Cesare, told the truth.

  The young bishop was sick, or pretended to be sick, at Ronciglione, which gave his brothers (who were supported by the credit and the means of influence of Signora de Campireali) time to throw themselves repeatedly at the feet of the pope and ask him to suspend the trial until the bishop had recovered his health. Upon which the terrible Cardinal Farnese increased the number of soldiers guarding him in the prison. The bishop being unavailable for interrogation, the commissioners began every session by making the abbess submit to a new questioning. One day, when her mother had told her to be brave and continue to deny everything, she admitted everything.

  “Why did you inculpate Gian Battista Doleri at first?”

  “Out of pity for the bishop and his cowardice; and beyond that, I thought that if his life could be saved, he could help ensure that my son would be cared for.”

  After this avowal, the abbess was locked up in a room in the convent of Castro with walls and a ceiling both eight feet thick; the nuns never spoke of this chamber, which was called the monks’ room, with anything but terror in their voices; three women were stationed there to keep watch over the abbess.

  The health of the bishop having improved somewhat, three hundred sbirri, or soldiers, were sent to take him from Ronciglione, and he was transported to Rome on a litter; he was put in the prison called Corte Savella. A few days later, the nuns were also brought to Rome; the abbess was put in the Monastery of Santa Marta. Four nuns stood accused: Sisters Vittoria and Bernarda, the tourière sister,23 and the portress, who had heard the outrageous words the abbess used to the bishop.

  The bishop was interrogated by the auditor of the chamber, one of the highest-ranking personages in the judiciary. Poor Cesare del Bene was put to torture again, but he not only refused to admit anything but actually said some things that “caused the public ministry some embarrassment”; and this earned him another torture session. Preliminary torture was also inflicted upon the sisters Vittoria and Bernarda. The bishop stupidly denied everything, but with a fine stubbornness; he reported in very great detail everything he had done during the three evenings that he had in fact spent alone together with the abbess.

  Finally, the bishop and the abbess were confronted with each other; and even though she continued to admit the truth, she was tortured. Because she repeated what she had been saying ever since her first avowal, the bishop, staying faithful to his assumed role, hurled insults at her.

  After many more measures undertaken—reasonable in themselves, perhaps, but tarnished by that spirit of cruelty which prevailed all too often with the tribunals of Italy in the era following the reigns of Charles V and Philip II—the bishop was condemned to life imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo; the abbess was condemned to be locked up for the rest of her life in that Convent of Santa Marta where she was currently held. But already, Signora de Campireali was at work plotting a way to save her daughter by means of having a subterranean passage dug. This passage began in one of the sewers that were built during the era of ancient Rome’s magnificence, and was planned to terminate by opening up into the deep cellar where the mortal remains of Santa Marta’s deceased nuns were deposited. The passage was about two feet wide and was walled with wooden planks to hold back the earth on the left and the right; as the diggers advanced, for a roof, two boards were placed as joists in the figure of a capital A.

  They dug the tunnel about thirty feet below the ground. The important point was to ensure it went in exactly the right direction; they kept encountering old wells and the foundations of ancient houses, which forced the workers to make turns constantly. The other great problem was what to do with the excavated dirt; it would appear that they distributed it at night all over the streets of Rome. People were surprised to see all this dirt that had fallen, so to speak, from the sky overnight.

  No matter how much Signora de Campireali spent on the project to try to save her daughter, the subterranean passage would surely have been discovered, but Pope Gregory XIII died in 1585 and, while the throne was vacant, disorder reigned.

  Elena was miserable in Santa Marta; the reader may imagine how nuns who were both simple and poor might put some zeal into tormenting so wealthy an abbess convicted of such a crime. Elena impatiently awaited the results of her mother’s scheme. But suddenly, her heart underwent some strange emotions. Six months had already passed since Fabrizio Colonna, seeing the state of health that Gregory XIII was in and having great plans of his own for the period between popes, had sent one of his officers to Giulio Branciforte, now well known among the Spanish armies under the name of Colonel Lizzara. He called him back to Italy; Giulio was burning to see his native land again. Under an assumed name, he came ashore at Pascara, a little port town on the Adriatic near Chietti, in the Abruzzi, and from there he went by the mountain route to Petrella. The joy of the prince astonished everyone. He told Giulio that he had recalled him in order to make him his successor and to give him the command of his soldiers. To this Giulio replied that, from a military point of view, that command wasn’t worth much of anything, which he could easily prove: if the Spanish ever seriously wanted their territory, they could destroy every soldier of fortune in Italy, and without much trouble or expense.

  “But that being said,” added young Branciforte, “if you want it so, my prince, I am ready to march. You will always find in me the successor to the brave Ranuccio, killed at Ciampi.”

  Before Giulio’s arrival, the prince had ordered—as only he knew how to order—that no one in Petrella talk to Giulio about Castro and the trial of the abbess: the slightest reference would result in a death sentence with no possibility of remission. Amid the raptures of friendship with which he greeted Branciforte, he asked him not to go to Albano under any circumstances except in his company, and his manner of arranging this trip was to have the town occupied by a thousand of his men and to station twelve hundred more on the road to Rome. Giulio’s state may be imagined when the prince, who had summoned old Scotti, still alive, up to the house where he had set up his headquarters, had him enter the room where he was sitting with Branciforte. As the two old friends rushed to embrace each other:

  “Now, my poor colonel,” he said to Giulio, “ready yourself for the worst.”

  And with that, he snuffed out the candle and left, turning the key on the two friends.

  The next day, Giulio, who did not want to leave his room, sent to ask the prince for permission to return to Petrella and not to see him for a few days. But the messenger returned to tell him the prince had disappeared, along with his troops. During the night, he had learned of the death of Gregory XIII; he completely forgot his friend Giulio and was out in the countryside. All that remained were thirty men who belonged to Ranuccio’s old company. The reader should know that in those days, while the papal throne w
as vacant, laws were suspended and mute and everyone sought to satisfy his passions, as the only power now was power itself; this was why, before the day’s end, Prince Colonna had hanged more than fifty of his enemies. As for Giulio, though he had only forty men with him, he dared to turn and march on Rome.

  All the servants of the abbess of Castro had remained faithful to her; they were lodged in shoddy houses next to the Convent of Santa Marta. The death throes of Gregory XIII had lasted more than a week; Signora de Campireali waited patiently for the troubled days that would follow his death so as to finish the remaining fifty feet of her underground passage. It had to pass beneath the cellars of a number of inhabited houses, so she was very much afraid of being unable to keep her project from becoming public knowledge.

  Two days after Branciforte’s arrival at Petrella, the three former bravi of Giulio’s, the ones Elena had taken into her service, seemed to have gone mad. Though everyone knew only too well that she was being kept in total isolation and guarded zealously by three nuns who detested her, Ugone, one of the three bravi, came to the convent door insisting in the strangest way that he had to see his mistress and had to see her immediately. He was rejected and thrown out the door. In his desperation, the man remained right there and began handing out a bajoc (that is, a sou) to everyone attached in any way to the convent and who came out or went in, saying to them these exact words: “Rejoice with me; Signor Giulio Branciforte has returned; he is alive: tell it to all your friends.”

  The two comrades of Ugone spent the day ferrying bajocs to him, and they all continued to distribute them day and night, always using those same words, until they had not a single coin left. But the three bravi nonetheless continued to stand guard at the door to the Convent of Santa Marta, relieving each other in turn, always addressing every passerby with the same words, followed by a low bow: “Signor Giulio has returned,” etc.

  The idea of the three brave men worked: less than thirty-six hours after the first bajoc had been distributed, poor Elena, in isolation in the depths of her cell, knew that Giulio was alive; the phrase threw her into a kind of frenzy: “Oh, my mother, what harm you have done me!” A few hours later, the startling news was confirmed by little Marietta, who, sacrificing every gold ornament she owned, obtained permission to follow the tourière sister, who delivered meals to the prisoner. Elena flung herself into her arms, weeping with joy.

  “This is so beautiful,” she said to her, “but I shall not be with you much longer.”

  “Of course!” replied Marietta. “I am sure that the papal conclave will commute your sentence to simple exile.”

  “Oh, my dear friend! To see Giulio, to see him again! And to see him, guilty as I am!”

  In the middle of the third night after this exchange, part of the church floor collapsed with a tremendous crash; the nuns of Santa Marta believed the whole convent was going to fall down. The uproar was extreme, with people crying out about an earthquake. And one hour after the collapse of the marble floor in the church, Signora de Campireali, preceded by Elena’s three bravi, penetrated into the cell by the underground passage.

  The three bravi cried out, “Victory! Victory, signora!”

  Elena was in mortal terror; she feared that Giulio Branciforte would be with them. She was fully reassured, and her face took on again its severe expression when they explained that they had only Signora de Campireali with them and that Giulio was still in Albano, which he had just occupied with thousands of soldiers.

  After a few moments of waiting, Signora de Campireali appeared; she walked with great difficulty, leaning on the arm of her servant, who was dressed in a grand costume, with a sword at his side; but his magnificent suit of clothes was all soiled from the dirt of the tunnel.

  “Oh my dear Elena, I’ve come to rescue you!” cried Signora de Campireali.

  “And who told you that I wanted to be rescued?”

  Signora de Campireali stood there stunned; she gazed at her daughter wide-eyed; she seemed highly agitated.

  “Well, my dear Elena!” she said at last. “Fate forces me to admit to having done something quite natural, perhaps, after all the misfortune that befell our family, but I repent of it now, and I beg you to forgive me: Giulio … Branciforte … is alive… .”

  “And because he is alive, I do not want to live.”

  Signora de Campireali at first could not understand what her daughter was saying, and she went on to beg her in the tenderest terms; but she received no response: Elena turned toward her crucifix and began to pray without listening to her. Signora de Campireali tried in vain for an hour to get her to say one word or even to look at her. Finally, her daughter, growing impatient, said to her:

  “His letters were hidden beneath the marble of this same crucifix back in my little bedroom in Albano; it would have been better if you had let my father stab me to death! Go away—and leave some gold here for me.”

  Signora de Campireali wanted to stay and continue talking with her daughter despite the frightened signals her servant was making to her, but Elena had no more patience:

  “Leave me at least one hour of freedom; you have poisoned my life, and now you want to poison my death.”

  “This underground passage will be safe for another two or three hours; I dare to hope that you’ll change your mind,” cried the signora as she burst into tears. She turned and followed the passage back.

  “Ugone, stay with me,” said Elena to one of her bravi, “and have your arms ready, because you may need to defend me. Let me see your dagger, your sword, and your poniard!”

  The old soldier laid out his weapons, all in good condition.

  “Very well! Stand outside my prison; I want to write a long letter to Giulio, which you shall deliver yourself; I don’t want it to pass through anyone else’s hands but yours, as I have no way of sealing it. You may read everything I write. Put all this gold my mother left into your pockets; I need only fifty sequins; put that on my bed.”

  After saying this, Elena began to write.

  I have no doubt of you, my dear Giulio; if I am leaving, it is because I would die of sorrow in your arms, realizing there what my happiness might have been like if I had not committed the sin that I did. Never believe that I have ever loved anyone in the world after you; far from it: my heart was filled with contempt for the man I admitted into my chamber. My sin was born strictly out of ennui or, if you like, of libertinism. Picture to yourself my spirit, so enfeebled after that futile attempt I made at Petrella where that prince I venerated because you love him treated me so cruelly—picture, I beg you, how worn down my spirit was after twelve years of lies. Everything surrounding me was false, a lie, and I knew it. I received, at first, thirty letters from you; imagine the transport with which I opened the first ones! But in reading them, my heart froze over. I studied the handwriting, and I recognized it was yours, but I did not recognize your heart. Picture how this first lie so overwhelmed the very essence of my life as to make me have no pleasure in a letter written in your hand! That detestable announcement of your death killed off in me everything that remained of the happiness of our youth. My first idea, as you will perfectly understand, was to go to Mexico and touch with my own hands the shore on which they told me the savages had massacred you; and if I had followed through with that idea … we would be happy right now, because at Madrid, no matter how numerous and how adept the spies were that a wary hand had set upon me, because I would have worked to appeal to every heart in which a little pity and goodness still lived, it is probable that I would have learned the truth; because already, my dear Giulio, your heroic acts had drawn the attention of everyone to you, and there may have been someone in Madrid who knew that you were Branciforte. Do you want to know what it was that kept happiness away from us? It was, first, the memory of that atrocious, humiliating reception the prince gave me at Petrella; how many enormous obstacles between Castro and Mexico! You see, my soul had already been drained of its resources. Then, a thought born out of vanity came
to me. I had had great buildings constructed at the convent in order to be able to have my room occupy the same place as the portress’s lodge where you took refuge that night of battle. One day, I was staring down at that spot of earth where you had shed blood for me; I heard someone say something contemptuous, I raised my head, I saw three wicked faces; to avenge myself, I decided I would be abbess. My mother, who knew very well that you were still alive, managed heroic feats to get me that outrageous nomination. The position itself meant nothing to me except annoyances; it eventually rotted away my spirit; I found pleasure simply in showing my power by making others miserable; I committed injustices. I saw myself, at thirty years of age, virtuous in the eyes of the world, rich, respected, and for all that, perfectly wretched. Then came along that poor man who was goodness itself but also the embodiment of absurdity. His absurdity led me to accept his propositions. My heart was so miserable over all that had surrounded me since your departure that it did not have the strength to resist the smallest temptation. May I admit to you something a little indecent?—but I forget, everything is permitted for a dead woman. When you read these lines, worms will be devouring those supposed beauties that should have been yours alone. But I must say something that it pains me to say; I could not see why I should not try that more gross style of love that all the Roman ladies indulge in; I had a libertine temptation, but even so I was never able to give myself to that man without a feeling of horror and disgust that obliterated all pleasure. I could see you always at my side, in the garden of our palazzo in Albano, when the Madonna inspired you with that thought, apparently so generous but which in fact, after my mother, has been the one thing that has made our lives misery. You were never threatening, but tender and good as you always were; you looked at me; and then I felt such moments of rage at that other man that I went so far as to beat him with all my strength. There it is, the whole truth, my dear Giulio; I did not want to die without telling it all to you, and I thought also that perhaps having this conversation with you would take the idea of dying away from me. But now I can see only how much better seeing you again would have been if I had maintained myself so as to be worthy of you. Now I command you to live, and to continue with that military career which has given me such joy when I learned of your triumphs. Great God, what joy I would have felt if I had received your letters, especially after the battle of Achenne! Live, and always keep in your memory Ranuccio, killed at Ciampi, as well as Elena, who, to avoid seeing reproach in your eyes, is dead at Santa Marta.