Amidst the general storm of invective, Archbishop Landriani alone
stood faithful to his young friend’s cause, and ventured, even at the
princess’s court, to quote that maxim of jurisprudence, according to
which the justification of an absent person must always be received with
unprejudiced ears.
On the very morning after Fabrizio’s escape, several persons received a
tolerable sonnet, which acclaimed his flight as one of the finest actions
of the century, and likened Fabrizio to an angel descending upon earth on
outspread wings. On the evening of the third day, every tongue in Parma
was repeating a really magnificent piece of verse. This purported to be
Fabrizio’s soliloquy as he swung himself down the rope, and reviewed
the various incidents of his life. Two magnificent lines insured this
second sonnet its proper place in public estimation. Every connoisseur
recognised the hand of Ferrante Palla.
But at this point, I myself ought to fall into the epic style. What
colours are bright enough to paint the torrents of indignation that
submerged the hearts of all well-conditioned folk at the incredible news
of the insolent illumination at Sacca! One shriek of horror went up
against the duchess; even genuine Liberals thought she had risked the
safety of the poor suspects in the various prisons in a most barbarous
fashion, and unnecessarily exasperated the sovereign’s feelings.
Count Mosca declared that only one course was left to the duchess’s
old friends—they must forget her. The concert of execration was quite
unanimous. Any stranger passing through the town must have been struck
by the strength of public opinion. Still, in this country, where the
delights of vengeance are thoroughly appreciated, the illuminations and
the splendid _fête_ given to over six thousand peasants in the park at
Sacca had a huge success. Everybody in Parma was saying that the duchess
had given a thousand sequins to her peasants, and this, it was added,
explained the somewhat rough reception given the thirty gendarmes the
police had been foolish enough to send into the village, thirty-six hours
after the splendid festivities, and the general drunkenness which had
followed on them, had come to an end. The gendarmes had been received
with volleys of stones, had taken to flight, and two of them had been
thrown into the river.
As to the bursting of the great reservoir at the Palazzo Sanseverina,
that had hardly been noticed. A few streets had been flooded during the
night, and in the morning people might have thought it had been raining.
Ludovico had carefully broken the glass in one of the palace windows,
which accounted for the entrance of the thieves, and a short ladder
had actually been found hard by. Count Mosca was the only person who
recognised the finger of his friend.
Fabrizio was quite resolved to get back to Parma as soon as he could. He
sent Ludovico with a long letter to the archbishop, and that faithful
servant came back to the first village in Piedmont—Sannazaro, to the
west of Pavia—and there posted the Latin epistle addressed by the worthy
prelate to his young friend. We must here add a detail, which, like
many others, doubtless, may strike people as wearisome, in a country
where caution is no longer necessary. The name “Fabrizio del Dongo” was
never written; all letters intended for him were addressed to Ludovico
San-Michele, either at Locarno in Switzerland, or at Belgirate in
Piedmont. The envelope was made of coarse paper, it was clumsily sealed,
the address was hardly legible, and occasionally adorned with additions
worthy of a cook, and all these letters were antedated, by six days, from
Naples.
From the Piedmontese village of Sannazaro, near Pavia, Ludovico hurried
back to Parma. He was charged with a mission which Fabrizio regarded as
of the utmost importance. He was ordered to do no less a thing than to
send Clelia Conti a silken handkerchief, on which one of Petrarch’s
sonnets had been printed. One word in the sonnet had, indeed, been
altered. Clelia found it on her table, two days after she had received
the thanks of the Marchese Crescenzi, who declared himself the happiest
of men; and I need not describe the impression this mark of unfailing
recollection produced upon her feelings.
Ludovico had received orders to collect every possible detail as to
what was happening in the citadel. He it was who brought Fabrizio the
sad news that the marriage with the Marchese Crescenzi appeared to be
a settled thing. Hardly a day passed that he did not offer Clelia some
form of festivity within the citadel walls. One decisive proof that the
marriage was settled was that the marchese, who was excessively rich, and
consequently, like most wealthy people in northern Italy, exceedingly
stingy, was making huge preparations—and that, although he was marrying
a dowerless girl. It is true that General Fabio Conti, whose vanity had
been sorely stung by this remark—the first which occurred to all his
fellow-countrymen—had just bought a landed property costing over three
hundred thousand francs, and that, though he had nothing of his own,
he had paid for it with ready money, presumably money belonging to the
marquis. He had also given out that he bestowed the property on his
daughter as a wedding gift. But the expenses of drawing up the deeds,
and others, which came to more than twelve thousand francs, struck the
Marchese Crescenzi, a man of very logical mind, as a very ridiculous
outlay. He, on his part, was having magnificent hangings—admirably
devised for delighting the eyes, by the famous Pallazzi, a Bolognese
painter—woven at Lyons. These hangings, each of which bore some part
of the Crescenzi family arms (the family, as all the world knows, is
descended from the famous Roman Consul Crescentius, who lived in 985),
were to furnish the seventeen saloons composing the ground floor of the
marchese’s palace. The hangings, clocks, and chandeliers, delivered in
Parma, cost over three hundred and fifty thousand francs. The value of
the new mirrors, added to those the house already contained, reached two
hundred thousand francs. With the exception of two rooms, famous as the
work of Parmegiano, the greatest painter of that country next to the
divine Correggio, all the apartments on the first and second floor were
now occupied by the most famous Florentine and Milanese painters, who
were adorning them with frescoes. Fokelberg, the great Swedish sculptor,
Tenerani, from Rome, and Marchesi, from Milan, had been working for a
year on ten bas-reliefs representing as many noble acts in the life of
that truly great man Crescentius. Most of the ceilings, which were also
painted in fresco, contained some allusion to his career. One particular
ceiling—on which Hayez, of Milan, had depicted Crescentius received in
the Elysian Fields by Francesco Sforza, Lorenzo the Magnificent, King
Robert, the Tribune Cola di Rienzi, Macchiavelli, Dante, and the other
great figures of the Middle Ages—was most generally admired. Expressed
admiration for these elect beings was considered to hint scorn of the
people in power at the moment.
All these splendid details absorbed the attention of the nobles and
burghers of Parma, and wrung our hero’s heart, when he read them, related
with artless admiration, in a long letter of over twenty pages which
Ludovico had dictated to a customs-officer at Casal Maggiore.
“And I am so poor!” said Fabrizio to himself. “I have four thousand
francs a year in all, and for everything. It is downright insolence for
me to dare to be in love with Clelia Conti, for whom all these marvels
are being prepared.”
One item in Ludovico’s letter, written in his own clumsy hand, informed
his master that he had happened, one night, on poor Grillo, his former
jailer, who had been thrown into prison and subsequently released, and
who now bore all the appearance of a man who was hiding. Grillo had
begged him, of his charity, to give him a sequin, and Ludovico had given
him four in the duchess’s name. The former jailers, twelve of them, who
had just been set at liberty, were making themselves ready to give the
new men who had succeeded them a “knifing entertainment” (_trattamento
di coltellate_) if they could contrive to come upon them outside the
citadel. Grillo had reported that there was a serenade at the fortress
every night, that the Signorina Clelia Conti looked very pale, was often
ill, and _other things of that sort_. As a consequence of this absurd
expression, Ludovico received orders, by return of post, to come back to
Locarno. He came, and the details he supplied by word of mouth were still
more distressing to Fabrizio’s feelings.
My readers may imagine how pleasant he made himself to the poor duchess;
he would have died a thousand deaths rather than have pronounced the name
of Clelia Conti in her presence.
The duchess loathed Parma, and to Fabrizio everything that reminded him
of that city was at once sublime and tender.
Less than ever had the duchess forgotten her vengeance. She had been so
happy before Giletti’s death, and now, what a fate was hers! She was
living in constant expectation of a frightful event, not a word of which
she dared mention to Fabrizio—she who, when she had made her arrangement
with Ferrante, had dreamed that one day she would rejoice Fabrizio’s
heart by assuring him that his day of vengeance would surely come.
My readers may conceive some idea of the agreeability of the
conversations between Fabrizio and the duchess. The dreariest silence
generally reigned between the two. To increase the enjoyment of their
intercourse the duchess had allowed herself to be tempted into playing a
trick upon her too beloved nephew. The count wrote to her almost every
day. Apparently he still sent couriers, as in the first days of their
love, for his letters always bore the postmark of some small Swiss
town. The poor man taxed his wits so as not to speak too openly of his
affection, and to devise amusing letters. All she did was to glance over
them carelessly. What, alas, is the fidelity of a lover she esteems, to a
woman whose heart is wrung by the coldness of the man she prefers!
In two months the duchess only sent him back one answer, and that was to
request him to sound the princess, and find out whether, in spite of the
insolent display of fireworks, a letter from the duchess would be well
received. The letter he was to present, if he thought it wise, prayed
the princess to appoint the Marchese Crescenzi to the post of lord in
waiting to her Serene Highness, which had lately fallen vacant, and
begged the position might be given him in consideration of his marriage.
The duchess’s letter was a masterpiece, full of the tenderest respect,
most perfectly expressed. Its courtier-like language did not contain a
single word of which the consequences, even the most distant, could have
been otherwise than agreeable to the princess, and the answer it elicited
breathed a tender friendship, which separation was putting to the torture.
“My son and I,” wrote the princess, “have not had one fairly pleasant
evening since your sudden departure. Has my dear duchess forgotten that
it is to her I owe the fact that I have regained a consulting voice in
the nomination of the officers of my household? Does she feel herself
obliged to give reasons for appointing the marchese, as though her
expressed desire were not the best of reasons to me? The marchese will
have the post if I can do anything toward it, and in my heart there will
always be a place—and the very first—for my delightful duchess. My son
uses absolutely the same expressions—though indeed they are rather strong
in the mouth of a great fellow of one-and-twenty—and begs you will send
him specimens of the minerals of the valley of Orta, near Belgirate.
You can address your letters to the count, who still detests you, and
whom I love all the better on account of this sentiment. The archbishop,
too, has remained faithful to you. We all hope to see you back some
day; remember, that must be! The Marchesa Ghisleri, my mistress of the
robes, is about to leave this world for a better one. The poor woman has
given me a great deal of trouble, and she displeases me now by departing
at such an unseasonable moment. Her illness makes me think of the name
which I should once have found such pleasure in substituting for hers—if,
indeed, I could have succeeded in obtaining this sacrifice of her
independence from the unique being who, when she left us, carried away
with her all the delights of my little court,” and so forth.
Thus, day after day, when the duchess met Fabrizio, she felt conscious
of having done all that in her lay to hurry on the marriage which was
driving him to despair, and they often spent four or five hours sailing
together upon the lake, without uttering a single word to each other.
Fabrizio’s kind-heartedness was complete and perfect, but he was thinking
of other things, and his simple and artless mind supplied him with no
subjects of conversation. The duchess saw this, and therein was her
torture.
I have forgotten to relate, in its proper place, that the duchess had
taken a house at Belgirate, a lovely village which fulfils all the
promise of its name (the view of a beautiful curve of the lake). Out of
the French window of the drawing-room, the duchess could step into her
boat. She had chosen a very ordinary one, for which four rowers would
have sufficed, but she hired twelve, and was careful to have one man from
each of the villages in the neighbourhood of Belgirate. The third or
fourth time she found herself in the middle of the lake, with all these
well-chosen men about her, she signed to them to cease rowing.
“I look upon you all as my friends,” she said, “and I am going to trust
you with a secret. My nephew Fabrizio has escaped from prison, and
perhaps some treacherous attempt may be made to lay hands upon him,
although he is on your lake, and in a free country. Keep your ears open,
and warn me of everything you may hear. I give you leave to come into my
room either by day or night.”
The men responded in the most enthusiastic manner; she had the talent
of making herself loved. But she did not think there would be any
question of trying to seize Fabrizio; it was for herself she was taking
these precautions, and before she had given the fatal order to open the
reservoir at the Palazzo Sanseverina, she would never have dreamed of
them.
Prudence had also led her to hire Fabrizio’s lodging in the Port of
Locarno. Every day he either came to see her, or she herself went to see
him in Switzerland. The delights of their perpetual _tête-à-tête_ may be
gauged by the following detail. The marchesa and her daughters came to
see them twice, and they were glad of the presence of these strangers—for
ties of blood notwithstanding, a person who knows nothing of one’s
dearest interests, and whom one does not see more than once a year, may
fairly be called a stranger.
One night, the duchess, with the marchesa and her two daughters, was at
Fabrizio’s rooms in Locarno. The archpriest of the neighbourhood and the
village priest had both come to pay their respects to the ladies. The
archpriest, who was interested in some commercial house, and kept himself
informed of the current news, happened to say:
“The Prince of Parma is dead.”
The duchess turned very pale. She could hardly find courage to inquire,
“Have you heard any details?”
“No,” replied the archpriest, “the report only mentions his death; but
that is quite certain.”
The duchess looked at Fabrizio. “It was for him I did it,” she said to
herself, “and I would have done a thousand times worse. And there he sits
in front of me, utterly indifferent, and thinking of another woman!”
It was beyond the duchess’s power to endure the dreadful thought; she
swooned away. Every one hastened to her assistance, but when she came
back to her senses she noticed that Fabrizio was far less perturbed than
the two priests; he was dreaming, as usual. “He is thinking he will go
back to Parma,” said the duchess to herself, “and perhaps that he will
break off Clelia’s marriage with the marchese. But I shall know how to
prevent that.” Then, recollecting the presence of the two ecclesiastics,
she hastily added:
“He was a great prince, and has been sorely slandered. He is a sore loss
to us all.”
The two priests took their leave, and the duchess, who longed to be
alone, announced her intention of going to bed.
“No doubt,” said she to herself, “prudence forbids my returning to Parma
for a month or two. But I feel I shall never have that patience; I suffer
too much here. Fabrizio’s perpetual silence and absorption are more than
my heart can bear. Who would have told me I ever could have felt weary
of sailing alone with him over this beautiful lake! And just at the
moment when, to avenge him, I have done more than I can ever tell him!
After such a sight as that, death seems nothing at all. Now, indeed,
I am paying for the ecstasies of happiness and childish delight I felt
in my palace at Parma, when Fabrizio joined me there on his return from
Naples. If I had said one word then, it would all have been settled;
and perhaps, if he had been bound to me, he never would have thought of
that little Clelia. But that word filled me with a horrible repugnance.
Now she has the better of me, and what can be more natural? She is only
twenty, and I, besides being altered by trouble and illness, am twice her
age.… I must die, I must make an end of it! A woman of forty is nothing
to any man, except those who have loved her in her youth. The only joys
left to me now are those of vanity. And do they make life worth living?
That’s another reason for going to Parma and amusing myself. If certain
things happened, I should be put to death; well, what matter? I will die
nobly, and just before the end, but not till then, I will tell Fabrizio,
‘Ungrateful boy, it was for you I did it!’… Yes, Parma is the only
place where I can find occupation for what little life remains to me.
I’ll play the great lady there. What a blessing it would be if I could
find enjoyment, now, in the glories which used to make the Raversi sick
with envy! In those days I only became aware of my happiness by seeing
it mirrored in jealous eyes.… My vanity has one piece of good fortune.
Except for the count, perhaps, not a soul can have guessed at what has
cut my affections at their root.… I will love Fabrizio, I will devote
myself to his fortunes, but he shall not break off Clelia’s marriage and
marry her himself.… No, that shall never be!”
So far had the duchess proceeded in her melancholy soliloquy when she
heard a great noise in the house.
“Hark!” she cried; “they are coming to arrest me! Ferrante has been taken
and has confessed. Well, all the better. I shall have something to do; I
must fight for my life. But to begin with, I mustn’t let them take me!”
Half dressed, the duchess fled to the bottom of her garden. She was just
meditating climbing over a low wall, and escaping into the open country,
when she caught sight of some one going into her room, and recognised
Bruno, the count’s confidential man. He was alone with her maid. She
approached the open window; the man was telling the maid about the wounds
he had received. The duchess came back into her room, and Bruno, casting
himself at her feet, besought her not to tell the count the absurd hour
at which he had arrived.
“The moment the prince was dead,” he added, “the count sent orders to
all the posting-houses that no horses were to be given to any Parmese
subject; consequently I travelled as far as the Po with our own horses.
But when we were getting off the ferry-boat my carriage was overturned,
smashed up, and destroyed, and I was so seriously hurt that I could not
ride, as it was my duty to have done.”
“Very good,” said the duchess, “it is three o’clock in the morning. I’ll
say it is midday. But don’t you dare to contradict me!”
“That is like the signora’s usual kindness.”
In a literary work, politics play the part of a pistol shot in the middle
of a concert—something rough and disagreeable, to which, nevertheless, we
can not refuse our attention.
I am now going to speak of very ugly matters, concerning which, for more
than one reason, I would gladly be silent. But I am compelled to refer to
certain events which come within our purview, seeing they are connected
with the lives of the persons I describe.
“But good God,” said the duchess to Bruno, “how did that great prince
come by his death?”
“He went out to shoot birds of passage in the marshes by the river, a few
leagues from Sacca. He fell into a hole, hidden by a tuft of grass; he
was in a violent perspiration, and the cold struck him. He was conveyed
to a lonely house, and there he died, within a few hours. Some declare
that Signore Catena and Barone are dead too, and that the whole accident
was caused by the saucepans in the peasant’s house, into which they were
taken, being full of verdigris—they all breakfasted in that house. Then
the hot-headed folk, the Jacobins, who say whatever suits them, talk
about poison. I know that my friend Toto, one of the court servants,
would have died but for the care lavished on him by a sort of lunatic
who seemed to know a great deal about medicine, and made him use very
strange remedies. But nobody talks about the prince’s death any more,
and, indeed, he was a cruel man. When I was starting, the populace was
collecting to murder Chief-Justice Rassi, and the people wanted to set
the gates of the citadel on fire, so as to try and save the prisoners.
But some people declared Fabio Conti would fire his cannon on them,
while others vowed the gunners in the fortress had poured water on
their gunpowder, and would not destroy their fellow-citizens. But here
is something far more interesting: While the surgeon at Sandolaro was
binding up my poor arm, a man came in from Parma, and told us that when
the people saw Barbone, that clerk from the citadel, in the streets, they
first of all thrashed him mercilessly, and then hanged him on the tree
in the square, nearest to the citadel. Then they set out to destroy that
fine statue of the prince that stands in the royal gardens, but the count
sent for a battalion of the guard, drew it up in front of the statue, and
sent the people word that no man who came into the garden should leave it
alive, and then every one was frightened.
“But a very strange thing, which the man from Parma, a former gendarme,
told me, over and over again, is that the count kicked General P⸺, the
commandant of the prince’s guard, tore off his epaulettes, and had him
marched out of the garden by two fusileers.”
“That’s just like the count!” exclaimed the duchess, in a transport of
delight, which she would have thought impossible a moment previously. “He
would never allow any one to insult our princess, and as for General P⸺,
he was so devoted to his legitimate masters that he would never serve the
usurper, whereas the count, whose feelings were less delicate, fought
through all the Spanish campaigns, a thing which was often cast in his
teeth at court.”
The duchess had opened the count’s letter, but over and over again she
stopped reading it to question Bruno.
It was a very comical letter. The count used the most lugubrious
language, and yet the most lively joy was evident in every word. He gave
no details as to the manner of the prince’s death, and ended his letter
with the following words:
“You will come back, of course, my dearest angel. But I would advise your
waiting a day or two for the messenger whom the princess will send you,
as I hope, either to-day or to-morrow. Your return must be as magnificent
as your departure was bold.
“As to the _great culprit_, who is with you, I fully expect to have him
tried by twelve judges, selected from every party in the state. But to
punish the wretch as he deserves, I must first of all be in a position to
make curl-papers out of the first sentence, if it exists.”
The count had reopened his letter:
“Here’s quite another business. I have just had cartridges served out to
the two battalions of the guards. I am going to fight, and do my best
to deserve that surname of ‘Cruel’ with which the Liberals have so long
honoured me. That old mummy, General P⸺, has dared to talk in barracks of
parleying with the populace, which is in a state of semi-revolt. I write
this in the middle of the street. I go hence to the palace, which no one
shall enter except across my dead body. Farewell! If I die, I die as I
have lived, worshipping you _in any case_. Don’t forget to send for the
three hundred thousand francs lodged in your name with D⸺ at Lyons.
“Here comes that poor devil Rassi, wigless and as pale as death; you’ve
no idea what a figure he is. The populace is bent on hanging him. That
would be too hard on him; he deserves to be drawn and quartered as well!
He would have taken refuge in my palace, and has run after me into the
street. I hardly know what to do with him.… I do not want to take him to
the prince’s palace; that would bring about a revolt in that quarter. F⸺
will see whether I care for him. My first words to Rassi were, ‘I must
have the sentence on Monsignore del Dongo, and all the copies you have of
it, and you will tell all those shameless judges, who have brought about
this revolt, that I will have them all hanged, and you, my friend, into
the bargain, if they breathe a single word of this sentence, which has
never existed.’ I am sending a company of grenadiers to the archbishop,
in Fabrizio’s name. Farewell, dear angel. My house will be burned, and I
shall lose those delightful pictures I have of you. I am hurrying off to
the palace to get that vile General P⸺ cashiered. He is working for his
own hand, flattering the populace as basely as he used to flatter the
late prince. All these generals are frightened out of their wits; I think
I’ll have myself appointed commander-in-chief.”
The duchess was spiteful enough not to send and rouse Fabrizio. She felt
a glow of admiration for the count, which strongly resembled love. “All
things considered,” said she to herself, “I really must marry him.” She
wrote him instantly to that effect, and sent off one of her servants.
That night the duchess had no time to feel unhappy.
The next day, toward noon, she saw a boat with six rowers swiftly
cleaving the waters of the lake. Fabrizio and she soon recognised a
man wearing the Prince of Parma’s livery. He was, in fact, one of his
couriers, who, before he jumped on shore, called out to the duchess: “The
revolt is put down.” This courier brought her several letters from the
count, a charming missive from the princess, and a parchment decree from
Prince Ranuzio-Ernest V which created her Duchess of San Giovanni, and
appointed her Mistress of the Robes to the Princess-Mother. The young
prince, who was learned in mineralogy, and whom she believed to be a
simpleton, had been clever enough to write her a little note, but there
was love at the end of it. The note began thus:
“The count says, my Lady Duchess, that he is pleased with me. As a
matter of fact, I have faced a few musket shots beside him, and my horse
was wounded. The fuss made over so small a thing has made me earnestly
desire to be present at a real battle, so long as it be not against my
own subjects. I owe everything to the count; all my generals, who know
nothing of war, have behaved like hounds. I believe two or three of
them have run away as far as Bologna. Since the day when a great and
deplorable event called me to power, I have signed no decree which gives
me so much pleasure as this, which appoints you my mother’s mistress of
the robes. My mother and I have remembered that one day you admired the
beautiful view from the Palazzetto San Giovanni, which once belonged to
Petrarch—at least, so we are told. My mother desired to give you this
little property, and I, not knowing what to give you, and not daring to
offer you all that belongs to you already, have made you a duchess in my
own country. I do not know whether you are so learned as to be aware that
Sanseverina is a Roman title. I have just given the ribbon of my Order to
our excellent archbishop, who has displayed a firmness very uncommon in a
man of sixty-two. You will not be angry with me for having recalled all
the banished ladies. I am told that in future I must never sign my name
without having written the words ‘_your affectionate_.’ It vexes me that
I should be thus made to squander an assurance which is not fully true,
except when I write myself ‘_your_ affectionate, Ranuzio-Ernest.’”
Who would not have thought, judging from this language, that the duchess
was about to enjoy the highest favour? Nevertheless, she found something
very odd in other letters from the count, which reached her two hours
later. These advised her, without further explanation, to put off her
return to Parma for a few days, and to write the princess word that she
was exceedingly unwell. Notwithstanding, the duchess and Fabrizio started
for Parma immediately after dinner; the duchess’s object, which, however,
she did not admit to herself, was to hurry on the Marchese Crescenzi’s
marriage. Fabrizio, for his part, performed the journey in a state of
wild happiness, which seemed perfectly ridiculous to his aunt. He had
hopes of seeing Clelia soon, and fully reckoned on carrying her off, in
spite of herself, if that should be the only means of breaking off her
marriage.
The journey of the duchess and her nephew was a very cheerful one. At the
last posting station before Parma, Fabrizio stopped a moment to put on
his churchman’s garb. As a rule he wore ordinary mourning dress. When he
came back to the duchess’s room—
“There seems to me something very odd and inexplicable,” she said, “in
the count’s letters. If you will be ruled by me you will stay here for a
few hours. I’ll send you a messenger as soon as I have had a talk with
the mighty minister.”
It was only very unwillingly that Fabrizio bowed to this sensible piece
of advice. The count received the duchess with transports of joy worthy
of a boy of fifteen, calling her “his wife.” It was long before he would
talk of politics. When they came back, at last, to the dull realms of
common sense—
“You did very wisely,” he said, “to prevent Fabrizio from arriving
openly. There is a great reaction going on here. Just guess the name of
the colleague the prince has imposed on me as Minister of Justice. Rassi,
my dear soul, Rassi, whom I treated like the blackguard he is, on the day
of our great excitements. By the way, I must warn you that everything
that happened here has been suppressed. If you read our Gazette, you will
perceive that a clerk at the citadel, of the name of Barbone, has been
killed by a fall from a carriage. As for the sixty-odd rogues I had shot
when they tried to wreck the prince’s statue in the gardens, they are
all quite well, but they have gone on long journeys. Count Zurla, the
Minister of the Interior, has personally visited each of these unlucky
heroes’ homes, and has made over fifteen sequins to their family or
friends, with strict orders to say that the dead man is travelling, and
a very direct threat that any one who ventures to hint anybody has been
killed will be forthwith shut up in prison. A man from my own office at
the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been sent to the journalists of
Milan and Turin, to prevent any mention of the ‘unfortunate event’—that’s
the correct term—and this man is to go as far as Paris and London, so
as to give an almost official denial to any newspaper reference to our
disturbances. Another agent has gone toward Bologna and Florence. I shrug
my shoulders.
“But the comical thing, at my age, is that I felt a flash of real
enthusiasm when I was addressing the soldiers of the guard, and when I
tore the epaulettes off that contemptible fellow, P⸺. At that moment I
would have given my life for the prince without the smallest hesitation.
I confess, now, it would have been a very silly way of ending it. At
this moment the prince, kind-hearted young fellow as he is, would give a
thousand crowns if I would die of some sickness. He dares not ask me to
resign, as yet, but we see each other as seldom as possible, and I send
him a quantity of small written reports, just as I did with the late
prince after Fabrizio was imprisoned. By the way, I have not turned his
sentence into curl-papers, for the excellent reason that that villain
Rassi never gave it to me. That is why you have done so wisely to prevent
Fabrizio from arriving publicly. The sentence is still valid. However, I
do not believe Rassi would dare to arrest our nephew to-day. Still, he
may possibly dare to do it within a fortnight. If Fabrizio absolutely
insists on coming into the city, let him come and live in my house.”
“But what is the reason of all this?” exclaimed the astonished duchess.
“The prince has been persuaded that I give myself the airs of a dictator,
and of the saviour of the country; that I want to lead him like a child,
and even that, in speaking of him, I used those fatal words ‘that child.’
This may be true; I was very much excited that day. But, indeed, I really
looked on him as a thorough man, because he was not frightened in face
of the first musketry firing he had ever heard in his life. He is by no
means a fool. His tone, indeed, is much better than his father’s, and—I
can not say it too often—at the bottom of his heart he is both good and
upright. But his honest young soul is stung when the story of some piece
of rascality is told him, and he thinks his own nature must be vile to
perceive such things. Think what his education has been.”
“Your Excellency should have remembered that he was to be our master some
day, and should have placed a clever man about his person.”
“In the first place, we have the instance of the Abbé de Condillac, who
was appointed by my predecessor, the Marchese di Felino, and turned his
pupil into a very king of simpletons. He walked in religious processions,
and in 1796 he failed to make terms with General Buonaparte, who would
have tripled the size of his dominions. And in the second place, I never
dreamed I should have been Prime Minister for ten successive years. Now
that my mind is disabused of that idea—that is to say, for the last
month—I am resolved to put together a million of francs before I leave
this Bedlam I have saved, to its fate. But for me, Parma would have spent
two months as a republic, with the poet Ferrante Palla as dictator!”
The duchess reddened at the words. The count knew nothing of that story.
“We are coming back, now, to the regular eighteenth-century monarchy,
ruled by the confessor and the mistress. At heart, all the prince cares
for is mineralogy—and perhaps, madam, for you! Since he has succeeded,
his body-servant, whose brother, a fellow with nine months’ service, I
have just made a captain—this body-servant, I say, has put an idea into
his head that he ought to be the happiest of men, because his profile
will appear on the coinage. That fine notion has brought boredom in its
train.
“Now he must have an aide-de-camp to help him out of his boredom. Well,
even if he were to offer me that precious million of money, which is so
necessary to insure our comfort at Naples or Paris, I would not undertake
to cure him of his boredom, and spend four or five hours every day in his
Highness’s company. Besides, as I am cleverer than he is, he would think
me a monster before the first month was out.
“The late prince was spiteful and envious, but he had fought as a
soldier, and commanded troops, and that had given him a certain sense
of deportment. There were the makings of a prince in him, and with him
I could behave as a minister, whether good or bad. But with this honest
son of his, in spite of all his candour and real kind-heartedness, I am
obliged to resort to intrigue. I find myself the rival of the veriest
old woman among his courtiers, and a rival in an inferior position,
too, for I shall certainly despise scores of precautions which I ought
to take. For instance, three days ago, one of those women who lay out
clean towels in all his rooms contrived to mislay the key of one of the
prince’s English writing-tables. Whereupon his Highness refused to attend
to any of the business, the papers for which were in that particular
receptacle. For twenty francs we might have had the board at the back of
the writing-table removed, or have had the lock opened with a false key.
But Ranuzio-Ernest V informed me that such a proceeding would give the
court locksmith bad habits.
“So far he has never contrived to be of the same mind three days running.
If the young prince had been born a marquis, with a large fortune, he
would have been one of the most worthy men about his own court—a sort
of Louis XVI. But how is that pious simplicity of his to escape all
the skilful ambushes that surround him? Thus your friend the Raversi’s
_salon_ is more powerful than ever. Its frequenters have discovered that
I, who had the populace fired on, and who was resolved, if necessary, to
kill three thousand of them, sooner than permit any insult to the statue
of the prince, who had been my master, am a violent Liberal; that I tried
to get a constitution signed, and more stuff of the same kind. With such
republican stories, these madmen would prevent us from enjoying even the
best of monarchies.… You, madam, in fine, are the only existing member
of that Liberal party at the head of which my enemies have placed me, of
whom the prince has not spoken in harsh terms. The archbishop, who is
still a perfectly upright man, is in thorough disgrace, because he used
reasonable language about what I did on the _unlucky day_.
“On the day after that which was not then, as yet, known as ‘unlucky,’
while it was still true that a revolt had taken place, the prince told
the archbishop that he was going to make me a duke, so that you might not
have to take an inferior title when you married me. To-day, I fancy, it
is Rassi, whom I ennobled for selling me the late prince’s secrets, who
will be made a count. In face of such promotion as that, I should look
like a fool.”
“And the poor prince will degrade himself.”
“No doubt of that. But, after all, _he is master_ here, and in less than
a fortnight, that fact will still the voice of _ridicule_. Therefore,
dear duchess, let us do as we should do if we were playing _tric-trac_.
_Let us withdraw._”
“But we shall be anything but rich!”
“After all, neither you nor I need luxury. If you will give me a seat
in your box at the San Carlo, and a horse to ride, I shall be more than
content. It will never be the luxury, greater or less, in which we live,
that will insure our position; it will be the pleasure the clever folk of
the place may find in drinking a cup of tea in your drawing-room.”
“But,” replied the duchess, “what would have happened on the _unlucky
day_ if you had held yourself apart, as I trust you will do in future?”
“The troops would have fraternized with the populace, there would have
been three days of killing and burning;—for it will be a century, yet,
before a republic can cease to be an anomaly in this country. After
that, a fortnight’s pillage, until two or three foreign regiments had
been sent in to quell the disorder. Ferrante Palla was in the midst of
the populace, as brave, and as raging mad, as usual. He had some dozen
friends backing him up, no doubt, and out of that Rassi will make a fine
conspiracy. One thing is certain; that, though he wore an incredibly
tattered coat, he was distributing money by handsful in every direction.”
Astounded by all this news, the duchess hurried off to present her
acknowledgments to the princess. The moment she entered the royal
apartment, the lady-in-waiting presented her with the little gold key, to
be worn at the waist, which is the symbol of supreme authority in that
portion of the palace ruled by the princess. Clara Paolina lost no time
in dismissing all her attendants. For the first moments after she was
left alone with her friend, her manner and speech were neither of them
absolutely frank. The duchess, who could not understand what this meant,
was very cautious in her answers. At last the princess burst into tears,
and throwing herself into the duchess’s arms, exclaimed:
“My misfortunes are beginning afresh. My son will treat me worse than his
father did.”
“I’ll take good care he does not,” replied the duchess vehemently. “But
in the first place,” she went on, “I must beg your Most Serene Highness
to condescend to accept all my gratitude and my humblest duty.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed the princess, alarmed at the thought of a
possible resignation.
“What I mean is, that whenever your Most Serene Highness gives me leave
to turn the shaking chin of yonder Chinese monster on the chimneypiece to
the right, you will give me permission, too, to call things by their real
names.”
“Is that all, my dear duchess?” exclaimed Clara Paolina, rising, and
herself placing the monster’s chin in the required position. “Speak now,
with perfect freedom,” she added, in the most gracious fashion.
“Madam,” replied the duchess, “your Highness has grasped the position
perfectly. Both you and I are in a most dangerous position. Fabrizio’s
sentence is not annulled. Consequently, whenever there is any desire to
get rid of me, and insult you, he will be cast into prison again. Our
position is as bad as ever it was. As regards myself personally, I am
going to marry the count, and we shall settle at Naples or in Paris. The
final stroke of ingratitude from which the count is suffering at the
present moment, has thoroughly sickened him; and save for your Serene
Highness’s sake, I should not advise him to have anything more to do with
this mess, unless the prince were to give him an enormous sum of money.
I will ask your Highness’s leave to explain that the count, who had a
hundred and thirty thousand francs when he first entered politics, owns
barely twenty thousand francs a year at the present time. In vain have I
besought him, this ever so long, to consider his own pocket. During my
absence he has picked a quarrel with the prince’s farmers-general, who
were scoundrels. The count has replaced them by other scoundrels, who
have given him eight hundred thousand francs.”
“What!” exclaimed the astonished princess. “Good heavens, how sorry I am
to hear that!”
“Madam,” replied the duchess, with the most absolute coolness, “shall I
turn the monster’s head to the left?”
“No, no, indeed!” exclaimed the princess; “but I am sorry that a man of
the count’s character should have thought of gain of that description.”
“But for this theft he would have been despised by all honest folk.”
“Good God! can that be possible?”
“Madam,” replied the duchess, “except my friend the Marchese Crescenzi,
who has four or five hundred thousand francs a year of his own, every
soul in this place steals. And how should they not steal, in a country
where gratitude for the greatest services does not last quite a month?
Therefore the only real thing which outlives disgrace is money. Madam, I
am about to venture on some terrible truths.”
“I give you leave,” said the princess with a deep sigh; “and yet they
hurt me cruelly!”
“Well, then, madam, the prince, your son, a perfectly upright man, may
make you far more wretched than his father did. The late prince’s nature
was very much like that of other men. Our present sovereign is never sure
of desiring the same thing for three days on end. Consequently, to be
sure of him, one must live perpetually with him, and never let him speak
to any one else. As this truth is not very difficult to divine, the new
ultra party, led by those two wise heads, Rassi and the Marchesa Raversi,
will endeavour to provide the prince with a mistress. This mistress will
be given ‘carte blanche’ to make her own fortune, and to dispose of some
inferior posts. But she will have to answer to the party for her master’s
constant good-will.
“To be thoroughly well-established at your Highness’s court, I must
have Rassi spurned and banished. Further, I must have Fabrizio tried
by the most upright judges who can be found. If, as I hope, these
judges recognise his innocence, it will be only natural to grant the
archbishop’s wish that Fabrizio shall be his coadjutor, and his ultimate
successor. If I fail, the count and I will forthwith retire. In that case
I leave your Serene Highness this farewell advice: You must never forgive
Rassi, and you must never leave your son’s dominions. So long as you keep
near him, your good son will never do you any serious harm.”
“I have followed your arguments with all the attention they deserve,”
replied the princess with a smile. “But am I, then, to undertake the care
of finding a mistress for my son?”
“Not that, indeed, madam! But see to it that your drawing-room shall be
the only one in which he finds amusement.”
On this subject the conversation ran on endlessly. The scales were
falling from the eyes of the innocent and intelligent princess. The
duchess sent a courier to Fabrizio, to tell him he might enter the city,
but that he must conceal himself. Hardly any one saw him. Dressed as a
peasant, he spent his whole time in the wooden booth which a chestnut
seller had set up under the trees of the square, just opposite the
citadel gates.