The old man’s discourse, Fabrizio’s deep attention to it, and his own
excessive weariness, had thrown him into a state of feverish excitement.
He found it very difficult to sleep, and his slumber was broken by dreams
which may have been omens of the future. At ten o’clock next morning, he
was disturbed by the rocking of the tower, and a frightful noise which
seemed to be coming from without. Terrified, he leaped to his feet, and
thought the end of the world must have come. Then he fancied himself in
prison, and it was some time before he recognised the sound of the great
bell which forty peasants had set swinging in honour of the great San
Giovità. Ten would have done it just as well.
Fabrizio looked about for a place whence he might look on without being
seen. He observed that from that great height he could look all over his
father’s gardens, and even into the inner courtyard of his house. He had
forgotten it. The thought of his father, now nearing the close of his
life, changed all his feelings toward him. He could even distinguish the
sparrows hopping about in search of a few crumbs on the balcony of the
great dining-room.
“They are the descendants of those I once tamed,” he thought. This
balcony, like all the others, was adorned with numerous orange trees,
set in earthenware vases, large and small. The sight of them touched
him. There was an air of great dignity about this inner courtyard, thus
adorned, with its sharply cut shadows standing out against the brilliant
sunshine.
The thought of his father’s failing health came back to him. “It really
is very odd!” he said to himself. “My father is only thirty-five years
older than I am—thirty-five and twenty-three only make fifty-eight.” The
eyes which were gazing at the windows of the room occupied by the harsh
parent, whom he had never loved, brimmed over with tears. He shuddered,
and a sudden chill ran through his veins when he fancied he recognised
his father crossing an orange-covered terrace on the level of his
chamber. But it was only a man-servant. Just beneath the tower a number
of young girls in white dresses, and divided into several groups, were
busily outlining patterns in red, blue, and yellow flowers on the soil of
the streets along which the procession was to pass. But there was another
sight which appealed yet more strongly to Fabrizio’s soul. From his tower
he could look over the two arms of the lake for a distance of several
leagues, and this magnificent prospect soon made him forget every other
sight. It stirred the most lofty feelings in his breast. All his childish
memories crowded on his brain; and that day spent prisoned in a church
tower was perhaps one of the happiest in his life.
His felicity carried him to a frame of thought considerably higher than
was as a rule natural to him. Young as he was, he pondered over the
events of his past life as though he had already reached its close. “I
must acknowledge that never, since I came to Parma,” he mused at last,
after several hours of the most delightful reverie, “have I known calm
and perfect delight such as I used to feel at Naples, when I galloped
along the roads of Vomero, or wandered on the coasts of Misena.
“All the complicated interests of that spiteful little court have made
me spiteful, too.… I find no pleasure in hating anybody; I even think
it would be but a poor delight to me to see my enemies humiliated, if
I had any. But, hold!” he cried; “I have an enemy—Giletti! Now, it is
curious,” he went on, “that my pleasure at the idea of seeing that ugly
fellow going to the devil should have outlived the very slight fancy I
had for little Marietta.… She is not to be compared to the Duchess d’A⸺,
to whom I was obliged to make love, at Naples, because I had told her I
had fallen in love with her. Heavens, how bored I used to be during those
long hours of intimacy with which the fair duchess used to honour me! I
never felt anything of that sort in the shabby room—bedroom and kitchen,
too—in which little Marietta received me twice, and for two minutes each
time!
“And heavens, again! What do those people eat? It was pitiful! I ought
to have given her _mamaccia_ a pension of three beefsteaks a day.… That
little Marietta,” he added, “distracted me from the wicked thoughts with
which the neighbourhood of the court had inspired me.
“Perhaps I should have done better to take up with the ‘_café_ life,’ as
the duchess calls it. She seemed rather to incline to it, and she is much
cleverer than I am. Thanks to her bounty—or even with this income of four
thousand francs a year, and the interest of the forty thousand francs
invested at Lyons, which my mother intends for me—I should always have
been able to keep a horse and to spend a few crowns on making excavations
and forming a collection. As I am apparently never destined to know
what love is, my greatest pleasures will always lie in that direction.
I should like, before I die, to go back once to the battle-field of
Waterloo, and try to recognise the meadow where I was lifted from my
horse in such comical fashion, and left sitting on the grass. Once that
pilgrimage had been performed, I would often come back to this noble
lake. There can be nothing so beautiful in the whole world—to my heart,
at all events! Why should I wander so far away in search of happiness? It
lies here, under my very eyes.
“Ah,” said Fabrizio again, “but there is a difficulty—the police forbid
my presence near the Lake of Como. But I am younger than the people who
direct the police. Here,” he added with a laugh, “I shall find no Duchess
d’A⸺, but I should have one of the little girls who are scattering
flowers down yonder, and I am sure I should love her just as much. Even
in love matters, hypocrisy freezes me, and our fine ladies aim at too
much sublimity in their effects. Napoleon has given them notions of
propriety and constancy.
“The devil!” he exclaimed a moment later, pulling his head in suddenly,
as if afraid he might be recognised, in spite of the shadow cast by the
huge wooden shutters which kept the rain off the bells. “Here come the
gendarmes in all their splendour!” Ten gendarmes, in fact, four of whom
were non-commissioned officers, had appeared at the head of the principal
street of the village. The sergeant posted them a hundred paces apart,
along the line the procession was to follow. “Everybody here knows me. If
I am seen, I shall be carried at one bound from the shores of Como to the
Spielberg, where I shall have a hundred-and-ten-pound weight of fetters
fastened to each of my legs. And what a grief for the duchess!”
It was two or three minutes before Fabrizio was able to realize that, in
the first place, he was eighty feet above other people’s heads, that the
spot where he stood was comparatively dark, that anybody who might glance
upward would be blinded by the blazing sun, and, last of all, that every
eye was staring wide about the village streets, the houses of which had
been freshly whitewashed in honour of the feast of San Giovità. In spite
of the cogency of these arguments, Fabrizio’s Italian soul would have
been incapable of any further enjoyment if he had not interposed a rag of
old sacking, which he nailed up in the window, between himself and the
gendarmes, making two holes in it so that he might be able to look out.
The bells had been crashing out for ten minutes, the procession was
passing out of the church, the _mortaretti_ were exploding loudly.
Fabrizio turned his head and looked at the little esplanade, surrounded
by a parapet, on which his childish life had so often been endangered
by the _mortaretti_, fired off close to his legs, because of which his
mother always insisted on keeping him beside her, on feast days.
These _mortaretti_ (or little mortars), it should be explained, are
nothing but gun barrels sawn off in lengths of about four inches. It is
for this purpose that the peasants so greedily collect the musket barrels
which European policy, since the year 1796, has sown broadcast over the
plains of Lombardy. When these little tubes are cut into four-inch
lengths, they are loaded up to the very muzzle, set on the ground in a
vertical position, and a train of powder is laid from one to the other;
they are ranged in three lines, like a battalion, to the number of some
two or three hundred, in some clear space near the line of procession.
When the Holy Sacrament approaches, the train of powder is lighted, and
then begins a sharp, dropping fire of the most irregular and ridiculous
description, which sends all the women wild with delight. Nothing more
cheery can be imagined than the noise of these _mortaretti_, as heard
from a distance across the lake, and softened by the rocking of the
waters. The curious rattle which had so often been the delight of his
childhood put the overserious notions which had assailed our hero to
flight. He fetched the Father’s big astronomical telescope, and was able
to recognise most of the men and women taking part in the procession.
Many charming little girls, whom Fabrizio had left behind him as slips
of eleven and twelve years old, had now grown into magnificent-looking
women, in all the flower of the most healthy youth. The sight of them
brought back our hero’s courage, and for the sake of exchanging a word
with them, he would have braved the gendarmes willingly.
When the procession had passed, and re-entered the church by a side door,
which was out of Fabrizio’s range of vision, the heat at the top of the
tower soon became intense. The villagers returned to their homes, and
deep silence fell over the place. Several boats filled with peasants
departed to Bellagio, Menaggio, and other villages on the shores of the
lake. Fabrizio could distinguish the sound of every stroke of the oars.
This detail, simple as it was, threw him into a perfect ecstasy; his
delight at that moment was built up on all the unhappiness and discomfort
which the complicated life of courts had inflicted upon him. What a
pleasure would it have been, at that moment, to row a league’s distance
over that beautiful calm lake, in which the depths of the heavens were so
faithfully reflected! He heard somebody open the door at the bottom of
the tower—Father Blanès’s old servant, laden with a big basket; it was
as much as he could do to refrain from going to speak to her. “She has
almost as much affection for me as her master has,” he thought. “And I am
going away at nine o’clock to-night. Would she not keep silence, as she
would swear to me to do, even for those few hours? But,” said Fabrizio to
himself, “I should displease my friend; I might get him into trouble with
the gendarmes.” And he let Ghita depart without saying a word to her. He
made an excellent dinner, and then lay down to sleep for a few minutes.
He did not wake till half-past eight at night. Father Blanès was shaking
his arm, and it had grown quite dark.
Blanès was exceedingly weary; he looked fifty years older than on the
preceding night; he made no further reference to serious matters. Seating
himself in his wooden chair, “Kiss me,” he said to Fabrizio. Several
times over he clasped him in his arms. At last he spoke: “Death, which
will soon end this long life of mine, will not be so painful as this
separation. I have a purse which I shall leave in Ghita’s care, with
orders to use its contents for her own need, but to make over whatever
it may contain to you, if you should ever ask her for it. I know her;
once I have given her this command she is capable, in her desire to save
for you, of not eating meat four times in the year, unless you give her
explicit orders on the subject. You may be reduced to penury yourself,
and then your old friend’s mite may be of service to you. Expect nothing
but vile treatment from your brother, and try to earn money by some
labour that will make you useful to society. I foresee strange tempests;
fifty years hence, perhaps, no idle man will be allowed to live. Your
mother and your aunt may fail you; your sisters must obey their husbands’
will——” Then suddenly, he cried: “Go! Go! Fly!” He had just heard a
little noise in the clock, a warning that it was about to strike ten. He
would not even give Fabrizio time for a farewell embrace.
“Make haste! make haste!” he cried. “It will take you at least a minute
to get down the stairs. Take care you do not fall; that would be a
terrible omen.” Fabrizio rushed down the stairs, and once out on the
square, he began to run. He had hardly reached his father’s castle
before the clock struck ten.
Every stroke echoed in his breast, and filled him with a strange sense of
agitation. He paused to reflect, or rather to give rein to the passionate
feelings inspired by the contemplation of the majestic edifice at which
he had looked so coolly only the night before. His reverie was disturbed
by human footsteps; he looked up, and saw himself surrounded by four
gendarmes. He had two excellent pistols, the priming of which he had
renewed during his dinner; the click he made as he cocked them attracted
one of the gendarme’s notice, and very nearly brought about his arrest.
He recognised his danger, and thought of firing at once. He would have
been within his rights, for it was his only chance of resisting four
armed men. Fortunately for him, the gendarmes, who were going round to
clear the wine-shops, had not treated the civilities offered them in
several of these hospitable meeting-places with absolute indifference.
They were not sufficiently quick in making up their minds to do their
duty. Fabrizio fled at the top of his speed. The gendarmes ran a few
steps after him, shouting, “Stop! stop!” Then silence fell on everything
once more. Some three hundred paces off Fabrizio stopped to get his
breath. “The noise of my pistols very nearly caused my arrest. It would
have served me right if the duchess had told me—if ever I had been
allowed to look into her beautiful eyes again—that my soul delights in
contemplating things that may happen ten years hence, and forgets to look
at those which are actually under my nose.”
Fabrizio shuddered at the thought of the danger he had just escaped. He
hastened his steps, but soon he could not restrain himself from running,
which was not over-prudent, for he attracted the attention of several
peasants on their homeward way. Yet he could not prevail upon himself to
stop till he was on the mountain, over a league from Grianta, and even
then he broke into a cold sweat, whenever he thought of the Spielberg.
“I’ve been in a pretty fright!” said he to himself, and at the sound of
the word he felt almost inclined to be ashamed. “But does not my aunt
tell me that the thing I need most is to learn how to forgive myself? I
am always comparing myself with a perfect model, which can have no real
existence. So be it, then. I will forgive myself my fright, for, on the
other hand, I was very ready to defend my liberty, and certainly those
four men would not all have been left to take me to prison. What I am
doing at this moment,” he added, “is not soldierly. Instead of rapidly
retiring after having fulfilled my object, and possibly roused my enemy’s
suspicions, I am indulging a whim which is perhaps more absurd than all
the good father’s predictions.”
And, in fact, instead of returning by the shortest road, and gaining
the banks of the Lago Maggiore, where the boat awaited him, he was
making a huge detour for the purpose of seeing his tree—my readers will
perhaps recollect Fabrizio’s affection for a chestnut tree planted by
his mother some three-and-twenty years previously. “It would be worthy
of my brother,” he thought, “if he had had that tree cut down; but such
creatures as he have no feeling for delicate matters. He will not have
thought of it, and besides,” he added resolutely, “it would not be an
evil omen.” Two hours later there was consternation in his glance;
mischievous hands, or a stormy wind, had broken off one of the chief
branches of the young tree, and it was hanging withered. With the help of
his dagger Fabrizio cut it off carefully, and closely pared the wound,
so that the rain might not enter the trunk. Then, though time was very
precious to him, for it was nearly dawn, he spent a good hour in digging
up the ground round the _beloved tree_. When all these follies were
accomplished, he rapidly proceeded on his way toward the Lago Maggiore.
He did not feel depressed on the whole; the tree was doing well, it was
stronger than ever, and in five years it had almost doubled in size. The
broken branch was a mere accident, of no consequence.
Now that it had been lopped off, the tree would not suffer, and would
even grow the taller, as its limbs divided at a greater height.
Before Fabrizio had travelled a league, a brilliant strip of white
light in the east outlined the peaks of the Resegon di Lek, a well-known
mountain in that country. The road he was now following was full of
peasants, but instead of thinking of military matters, Fabrizio was
filled with emotion by the sublime or touching aspects of the forest
round the Lake of Como. They are perhaps the most lovely in the world. I
do not mean those which bring in the greatest number of “_new crowns_,”
as they say in Switzerland, but those which appeal most strongly to
the human soul. For a man in Fabrizio’s position, exposed to all the
attentions of the gendarmes of Lombardy and Venetia, it was mere
childishness to listen to their language. At last he said to himself: “I
am half a league from the frontier. I shall meet the customs officers and
the gendarmes making their round. This fine cloth coat of mine will rouse
their suspicions; they will ask me for my passport. The said passport
bears a name doomed to a prison, written in fair characters, and so I
find myself under the agreeable necessity of committing murder. If the
gendarmes walk two together, as they generally do, I dare not wait till
one of them seizes me by the collar before I fire; if he should hold me
for one instant before he falls, I shall find myself at the Spielberg.”
Fabrizio—filled with a special horror at the idea of firing first,
and possibly on an old soldier who had served under his uncle, Count
Pietranera—ran to hide himself in the hollow trunk of a huge chestnut
tree. He was putting fresh caps into his pistols when he heard a man
coming through the wood, singing, as he came, in a charming voice, a
delightful air by Mercadante, then fashionable in Italy.
“That’s a good omen!” said Fabrizio to himself; he listened attentively
to the melody, and the sound of it wiped out the little touch of anger
which had begun to season his arguments. He looked carefully up and down
the high-road and saw nobody. “The singer will come up some side road,”
thought he to himself. Almost at that very moment he saw a servant, very
neatly dressed in the English style, ride slowly up the road on a hack,
leading a very fine blood-horse, perhaps a trifle too thin.
“Ah,” said Fabrizio to himself, “if I had reasoned like Mosca, who is
perpetually telling me that the risk a man runs always marks the ratio
of his rights over his neighbour, I should crack this serving-man’s
skull with a pistol-shot, and once I was on that horse, I should snap my
fingers at all the gendarmes in the world. Then, as soon as I got back to
Parma, I would send money to the man or his widow. But that would be an
abominable action.”