Italian Chronicles

by Stendhal

  “Tell me the story about this latest escapade of yours with the two horses you borrowed from the archbishop.”

  After briefly narrating the adventure that the reader has already seen, Don Genarino added:

  “I didn’t recognize the livery, but I was sure the horses belonged to one of my friends. The same thing happened to me once before. A year ago, I was on that same road to Vesuvius and I borrowed a horse belonging to the Baron de Salerne, who, even though he’s much older than me, didn’t stoop to being offended by such nonsense, because he’s a man of wit and a real philosopher, as Your Majesty knows. Anyway, even if it’s a matter of crossing swords for a moment, I sent my compliments, and, after all, if anybody should be offended, it’s me by his refusing to receive them, which is what the archbishop did. My father’s groom insists that the horses don’t really belong to His Eminence, who’s never even made use of them.”

  “Well, I forbid you to do anything further about this affair,” the king replied with a severe air. “I do permit you to send your compliments again to see if His Eminence is good enough to accept them now.”

  Two days later, the affair became even more serious, as the cardinal archbishop claimed that the king had talked about him in such a way as to lead the young courtiers to mock him openly. At the same time, Princess d’Atella vigorously took the side of the handsome young man who had danced with her at all the balls; she argued that he had not recognized the livery worn by the servant who was leading the horses. And by some chance that no one could explain, one of Don Genarino’s servants was able to prove that it was not that of the archbishop.

  At this point, Don Genarino was far from refusing to discuss the matter with the owner, who was so ill humored as to be angry with him. He was inclined even to go tell the archbishop that he would feel real remorse if the horses he borrowed so readily were proved to belong to him.

  All this was a serious embarrassment to King Don Carlos. The archbishop saw to it that all the priests in Naples were making it known via their confessionals that the young men of the court had given themselves up to an impious mode of life and were seeking opportunities to affront the livery of the archbishop.

  One morning, the king went to the royal palace in Portici; he had secretly summoned there that same Baron de Salerne whom Don Genarino had mentioned in his first response to the king. This was a rich and powerful man who had the reputation of being one of the finest wits of the country; he was very wicked and seemed to seize every opportunity he could to speak ill of the king’s government. He subscribed to the Paris journal Le Mercure Galant, a fact that confirmed his reputation for genius. He was strongly allied to the cardinal archbishop, who in fact had stood godfather to his son. Parenthetically, this son took seriously the liberal sentiments that his father affected, to the point of being hanged for them in 1792. But in the period of our story, the Baron de Salerne saw the king under cover of the greatest of secrecy and informed him about a great many things. The king consulted him often concerning those acts which would be most appreciated by the higher levels of society in Naples. The next day, following the baron’s advice, word spread throughout Naples that a young relative of the cardinal who lived at the arch episcopal palace had heard, to his great terror, that Don Genarino was just as good with swords as he was at other exercises and that he had already proved this in three different encounters that, in general, ended very poorly for his adversaries and that, as a result of deep reflection on these sad truths, the young relative of the archbishop, whose courage was not the equal of his high birth, after having been so sensitive as to get angry about the borrowing of the horses, had had the prudence of declaring that they belonged to his uncle.

  That very evening, Don Genarino went to declare to the cardinal archbishop that he would have felt the greatest remorse if it had been proved that the horses did belong to him.

  By the end of the week, the relative of the cardinal, whose name was well known, was so covered in ridicule that he left Naples. One month later, Don Genarino was made sublieutenant of the First Regiment of the guard, and the king, who appeared to think his fortune was not commensurate with his high birth, gave him three superb horses chosen from his own stud.

  This mark of favor made quite an impact, because the king, Don Carlos, who was very generous, had the reputation of being stingy, thanks to the gossip spread by the clergy. On this occasion, the archbishop was punished for the false stories he had caused to be spread, because the people now believed that a gentleman from an impoverished family had nonetheless overcome that poverty to become so useful to the secret designs of the king that this very king had overcome his stinginess and had made a gift to the young man of three horses of the rarest beauty. The archbishop’s reputation had the worst of it. The archbishop reflected that any accident that might befall Don Genarino now would only augment his celebrity, and he resolved to put off his vengeance for a more favorable occasion; but because that enraged soul could not live without doing something to relieve the bitterness he felt, every confessional in Naples was ordered to spread the gossip that at the battle of Velletri, the king had shown no courage at all and that, on the contrary, everything that happened was the result of the Duke Vargas del Pardo’s actions and that the latter, with the violence and brusqueness that everyone recognized in his character, had virtually forced the king to escape from the dangers that surrounded him. The king, who was not a hero, was extremely sensitive to this new calumny that seemed to be repeated endlessly in Naples. Don Genarino’s new status of favorite seemed suddenly in doubt. If it had not been for the bad joke about borrowing horses from a stranger on the road to Vesuvius, which Don Genarino was imprudent enough to keep mentioning, no one would have thought of retelling the particulars of the morning of the battle of Velletri, which in fact the king had recalled all too often in his addresses to the troops.

  The king ordered the young sublieutenant Don Genarino to go visit his stud farm at ****** and to report to him on the number of completely black horses there, for use in a new squadron of light cavalry for the queen.

  The domestic tempests unleashed into the family of Prince d’Atella by Princess Ferdinanda’s stubbornness had greatly irritated that old man, already irritable over the situation of his three sons and their lack of fortune. The story of the diamond borrowed from her jewelry collection and not replaced had likewise left the princess in ill humor, and because she supposed that her husband would not be angry to have his clerical friends believe that his hand had been forced by the extraordinary favor the young queen showed to his wife and that he wanted to take advantage of the incident to get the princess to solicit some employment for her stepsons, the princess profited from the first morning visit that Don Genarino paid to her, just after he had heard about his orders to go to the stud farm at ******. The princess, who had a real minor ailment which had kept her away from court for several days without seeing him, now declared she was indisposed. One of her goals was to go against her husband, who, in the affair of the ring given by the queen, had made a decision that was ultimately not in her favor: for although the princess was thirty-two—that is to say, thirty-six years younger than her husband—she still was able to entertain some hope of inspiring passion in the young Don Genarino. Though a bit stout, she was still pretty, but it was her personality that kept her seeming young: she was very gay, imprudent, and likely to become inflamed over the slightest thing if she thought that her high birth was not being properly respected. During the brilliant parties of that winter of 1740, she was always seen surrounded by the most brilliant people of the court at Naples; she singled out the young Don Genarino above them all, though, because he combined the noble and slightly haughty manners of a Spaniard with the most gracious and gay appearance. His way of behaving in a lively, familiar way, the French way, struck Princess Ferdinanda as especially delicious for a descendant of one of the branches of the Medinaceli family who had been transplanted to Naples a mere 150 years earlier. Don Genarino’s hair and mu
stache were a very attractive blond, and he had expressive blue eyes. The princess was above all charmed by this [illegible word], which seemed clear proof of descent from a Gothic family. She remembered often that Don Genarino, always as audacious and as bold as his Gothic ancestors, had twice been wounded by brothers or husbands from families into which he had imported disorder. Genarino, who had been rendered more prudent by these little incidents, almost never spoke directly to young Rosalinde, even though she was incessantly at her stepmother’s side. But even though Genarino spoke to her only in those moments when her stepmother could not very well hear what he was saying, Rosalinde was nonetheless quite certain that she was beloved by this young man, and Genarino felt a pretty similar certainty about the feelings he was inspiring in her. It would be very difficult to explain to this France of ours, which likes to joke about everything, about the profound religious discretion with which feelings are shrouded in this kingdom of Naples, which has been subjected for 110 years to the whims and tyrannies of Spanish viceroys. Genarino, as he departed for the stud farm, vividly felt his cruel misfortune in being unable to speak even one word directly to Rosalinde. Not only was he jealous of the king, who was able to speak openly of his admiration for her, but beyond that, his extreme assiduity at the court had led him into a very well kept secret: that same Duke Vargas del Pardo who had once been so useful to Don Carlos on the day of the battle of Velletri had come to imagine that his enormous fortune of 200,000 piastres a year could make a young woman ignore his sixty-six years of age as well as the roughness of his personality; he had formed the project of asking Prince d’Atella for his daughter’s hand by offering to take it upon himself to settle fortunes upon her three stepbrothers. The duke, highly suspicious, as befits an aging Spaniard, was restrained in this scheme only by his love for the king, whose likely reaction to the matter was unclear. Would Don Carlos sacrifice everything to support a fantasy in order to stay closely allied to a favorite to whom he owed so much and who helped him with so many of the burdens of state, a favorite for whom thus far he had not hesitated to sacrifice every minister who in any way affronted the enormous pride of Vargas? Or could it be that the king was already vanquished by that combination of sweet melancholy with gaiety which defined Rosalinde’s character—that he already was in love with her himself?

  It was a similar uncertainty—about what might be the king’s amorous feelings and those of Vargas del Pardo—that plunged young Genarino, traveling on his way to the stud farm, into an unhappiness deeper than anything he had ever experienced. It was only then that he fell into the doubts that accompany all real passions; it had been only three days since he had seen Rosalinde, but already he had come to doubt the one thing of which he had been so sure in Naples: the emotion he had been sure he could read in Rosalinde’s eyes whenever she caught sight of him, and the vexation that she clearly felt whenever her stepmother showed those all too open signs of her violent passion for him.

  PLAN

  Develop the jealousy that brings Don Genarino to the end of his rope.26

  The archbishop Acquaviva promised a position for his canon in the cathedral as chaplain to Prince Bissignano [that is, d’Atella], if he succeeds in persuading Princess Ferdinanda that Don Genarino is in love with Rosalinde. By these means, the archbishop will frustrate and distress Don Genarino, who is not a deep thinker.

  Make it so that the style is simple, fitting the type of tale by word choice even: he wears a periwig, he takes snuff, etc.; make use of ideas like: at Naples, one often encounters eyes that accompany a magnificent figure, but those eyes, like those of Juno in Homer, communicate nothing. Eliminate everything that suggests the grand style, that grandiosity that deadens the heart, that throws things off; [it should have] a modest, natural, sensitive air, like German bonhomie.

  The queen says:

  “I advise you to marry as soon as possible, and once you have a husband, I will make you one of my waiting women. Once you are attached to me, the clergy will not dare do anything to you. Think about this: otherwise, you can expect all manner of persecutions. I don’t want to plead the cause of our Vargas and influence you to marry him, but consider that you would be making the king and me very happy.”

  The king is angry about Vargas’s having sent the battalion from the regiment of Bitonto to the gates of the noble Convent of San Petito.

  “Since the goal was obtained, why make a scandal about the means?”

  “The only excuse, for clergy so arrogant and attached to the court of Rome, to open the gate to an enemy from your estates was the accusation of flagrant conspiracy within the Convent of San Petito. As soon as I saw the severe expression and the cool gaze of that canon Cybo fixed upon me, I knew that I had to eliminate, at any price, the suspicion that we were there to liberate a novice. The presence of the Bitonto battalion made an impression on everyone in Naples, even on the priests, and it suggested that there was an Austrian conspiracy.

  “But,” continues the king, “Tanucci was vigorously against it. Where could I find another minister as good, another who works as hard, another who has refused millions to Rome? Would you like to take his place?”

  “I would not like to work that hard.”

  Duke Vargas takes care of the lay sister, keeping her safely hidden in Gênes under an assumed name.

  Don Genarino experiences a fit of religiosity, like the beautiful Boca at Via Capo le Case.27 Rosalinde is so greathearted that she returns to the convent. Don Genarino believes she is being persecuted by the Holy Virgin, cursed by the heavenly evil eye, and he is in despair over Rosalinde’s refusal to give in to him before marriage out of her fear that Genarino is in a state of mortal sin.

  Genarino, distressed by his suspicions, kills himself. This causes Rosalinde almost to go mad, and she now also believes she is being persecuted by the heavenly evil eye. A fanatic tries to murder her with a dagger.

  She marries Vargas, who is now sixty-nine years old.

  And on the condition that every year she will spend three months in the convent where Genarino killed himself. She weeps incessantly and is mad with despair the night before her wedding. “If Genarino can see me from his place in heaven, what must he think of me?”

  Ultimately, make Genarino a bit ridiculous; otherwise, Rosalinde will have to kill herself after him.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

  TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

  1.F. C. Green, Stendhal (1939; repr., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 306.

  2.The book was Vies de Hayden, de Mozart, et de Métastase (1815). For a good discussion of plagiarism in the era, and of Stendhal’s in particular, see Marilyn Randall, Pragmatic Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, and Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).

  3.Jean Starobinski, “Stendhal pseudonyme,” in L’Oeil vivant: Corneille, Racine, la Bruyère, Rousseau, Stendhal (1961; repr., Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 234. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations of passages cited in this introduction are my own.

  4.Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, trans. John Sturrock (New York: New York Review Books, 1995), 104—5. “Henry Brulard” is yet another of the pseudonyms Stendhal deployed, this time for an unflinching examination of his early life and inner self; he drafted the book in two phases, 1833 and 1836, but it was not published until after his death.

  5.Ibid., 383.

  6.Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist, trans. Andrew Brown (London: Hesperus, 2003), 29. This is Stendhal’s first, much briefer attempt at an autobiography, titled Souvenirs d’egotisme, written in June—July 1832 but first published in 1892, long after his death.

  7.Prosper Mérimée, Henri Beyle: Notice Biographique, 4th ed. (San Remo: J. Gay, 1874), 8.

  8.Stendhal, Life of Henry Brulard, 481.

  9.Ibid., 484.

  10. Stendhal, journal entry for September 8, i8ii, in Oeuvres intimes, ed. V. Del Litto (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), 1:736—37.

  11.Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn : A Study of Five French Realists (New Yor
k: Oxford University Press, 1963), 103.

  12.Ibid., 104.

  13.Stendhal, Life of Henry Brulard, 386.

  14.Stendhal, Rome, Naples, et Florence (1826 version), ed. Pierre Brunei (Paris: Folio, 2007), 270-72.

  15.Elodie Saliceto, Dans l’atelier néoclassique: Écrire l’Italie, de Chateaubriand à Stendhal (Paris: Garnier, 2014), 48.

  16.Stendhal, Vie de Napoleon, quoted in ibid., 52.

  17.The importance of Napoleon for Stendhal’s thought and work can hardly be overstated. Most discussions of Stendhal at least touch on the matter, but for a good broad introduction to it, see Gita May, Stendhal and the Age of Napoleon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

  18.Philippe Berthier, “Stendhal, les Grecs, et les Romains,” in Stendhal: Littérature, politique, et religion mêlées (Paris: Garnier, 2011), 21. A second essay in the same volume, “La Bibliothèque Latine de Stendhal,” is relevant here, too, in demonstrateing that Stendhal was far more than passingly familiar with classical literature.

  19.Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist, 60.

  20.Mariella Di Maio, Frontières du romanesque: Stendhal, Balzac (Paris: Garnier, 2013), 17.

  21.Stendhal, Memoirs of an Egotist, 45.

  22.Stendhal, letter to Louis Crozet (November 15, 1816), in Oeuvres romanesques complètes, ed. Yves Ansel, Philippe Berthier, and Xavier Bourdenet, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 4, 13, 16 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 2:1398.

  23.Stendhal, Oeuvres intimes, 2:177.

  24.Stendhal, inscription on the end pages of the first volume of his edition of Fielding’s Tom Jones; quoted in ibid. Stendhal scattered notes to himself everywhere.

  25.Stendhal, Oeuvres intimes, 2:181.

  26.A full narrative of Stendhal’s early work with the Caetani material is in Oeuvres romanesques completes, 2:1399—1409.

  27.Philippe Berthier notes that there are some anecdotes in Rome, Naples, et Florence that might have served as the seed for the story; and the Carbonari movement was discussed everywhere at the time, so Stendhal may have heard somewhere of similar events (ibid., 1:925). But without any further evidence, the story appears to be fiction.