Our hero’s arrival threw Clelia into a condition of despair. The poor
girl, earnestly pious and thoroughly honest with herself, could not blink
the fact that she could never know happiness apart from Fabrizio. But
when her father had been half poisoned, she had made a vow to the Madonna
that she would sacrifice herself to him by marrying the marchese. She had
also vowed she would never see Fabrizio again, and she was already torn
by the most cruel remorse, on account of the admission into which she
had slipped in her letter to Fabrizio the night before his flight. How
shall I describe the feelings that swelled that shadowed heart when, as
she sadly watched her birds fluttering hither and thither, she raised her
eyes, instinctively, and lovingly, to the window whence Fabrizio had once
gazed at her, and saw him stand there once again, and greet her with the
tenderest respect.
At first she thought it was a vision, which Heaven had sent her as a
punishment. At last the hideous truth forced itself on her mind. “They
have taken him,” she thought, “and now he is lost!” She remembered the
language used within the fortress after his escape—the very humblest
jailer had felt himself mortally humiliated by it. Clelia looked at
Fabrizio, and in spite of herself, her eyes spoke all the passion that
was driving her to despair. “Can you believe,” she seemed to say to
Fabrizio, “that I shall find happiness in the sumptuous palace that is
being prepared for me? My father tells me, till I am sick of hearing it,
that you are as poor as we are. Heavens! how gladly would I share that
poverty! But, alas, we must never see each other again!”
Clelia had not the strength to make any use of the alphabets. Even as
she gazed at Fabrizio, she turned faint, and dropped upon a chair beside
the window. Her head rested upon the window ledge, and as she had striven
to look at him till the last moment her face, turned toward Fabrizio,
was fully exposed to his gaze. When, after a few moments, she opened her
eyes, her first glance sought Fabrizio. Tears stood in his eyes, but
they were tears of utter happiness. He saw that absence had not made her
forget him. For some time the two poor young creatures remained as though
bewitched by the sight of each other. Fabrizio ventured to say a few
words, as though singing to a guitar, something to this effect: “It is to
see you again that I have come back to prison; I am to be tried.”
These words seemed to stir all Clelia’s sense of virtue. She rose swiftly
to her feet, covered her eyes, and endeavoured to make him understand, by
the most earnest gestures, that she must never see him again. This had
been her promise to the Madonna, which she had forgotten when she had
looked at him. When Fabrizio still ventured to give expression to his
love, Clelia fled indignantly, swearing to herself that she would never
see him again. For these were the exact terms of her vow to the Madonna:
“_My eyes shall never look on him again._” She had written them on a slip
of paper which her uncle Cesare had allowed her to burn on the altar, at
the moment of the elevation, while he was saying mass.
But in spite of every vow, Fabrizio’s presence in the Farnese Tower drove
Clelia back into all her former habits. She now generally spent her
whole day alone in her room, but hardly had she recovered from the state
of agitation into which Fabrizio’s appearance had thrown her, than she
began to move about the palace, and renew acquaintance, so to speak, with
all her humbler friends. A very talkative old woman, who worked in the
kitchens, said to her, with a look of mystery, “Signor Fabrizio will not
get out of the citadel this time.”
“He will not commit the crime of getting over the walls,” said Clelia,
“but he will go out by the gate if he is acquitted.”
“I tell your Excellency, and I know what I am saying, that he will never
go out till he is carried out feet foremost.”
Clelia turned deadly pale; the old woman remarked it, and her eloquence
was checked. She felt she had committed an imprudence in speaking thus
before the daughter of the governor, whose duty it would be to tell every
one Fabrizio had died of illness. As Clelia was going back to her rooms
she met the prison doctor, an honest, timid kind of man, who told her,
with a look of alarm, that Fabrizio was very ill. Clelia could hardly
drag herself along; she hunted high and low for her uncle, the good
priest Cesare, and found him at last in the chapel, praying fervently;
his face betrayed the greatest distress. The dinner bell rang. Not a word
was exchanged between the two brothers at table, but toward the end of
the meal the general addressed some very tart remark to his brother. This
latter looked at the servants, who left the room.
“General,” said Don Cesare to the governor, “I have the honour to inform
you that I am about to leave the citadel. I give you my resignation.”
“Bravo! Bravissimo!… to cast suspicion on me! And your reason, may I
inquire?”
“My conscience.”
“Pooh! you’re nothing but a shaveling priest. You know nothing about
honour.”
“Fabrizio is killed!” said Clelia to herself. “They’ve poisoned him at
his dinner, or else they’ll do it to-morrow.” She flew to her aviary,
determined to sing and accompany herself on the piano. “I will confess
it all,” said she to herself. “I shall be given absolution for breaking
my vow to save a man’s life.” What was her consternation, on reaching
the aviary, to perceive that the screens had been replaced by boards,
fastened to the iron bars. Half distracted, she endeavoured to warn the
prisoner by a few words, which she screamed rather than sang. There was
no answer of any sort. A deathlike silence already reigned within the
Farnese Tower. “It’s all over,” she thought. Distraught, she ran down the
stairs, then ran back again, to fetch what money she had, and her little
diamond earrings. As she went by she snatched up the bread remaining from
dinner, which had been put on a sideboard. “If he is still alive, it is
my duty to save him.” With a haughty air she moved toward the little door
in the tower. The door was open, and eight soldiers had only just been
stationed in the pillared hall on the ground floor. She looked boldly at
the soldiers. Clelia had intended to speak to the sergeant who should
have been in charge, but the man was not there. Clelia hurried up the
little iron staircase which wound round one of the pillars; the soldiers
stared at her, very much astonished, but presumably on account of her
lace shawl, and her bonnet, they dared not say anything to her. There
was nobody at all on the first floor, but on the second, at the entrance
to the passage, which, as my readers may recollect, was closed by three
iron-barred doors, and led to Fabrizio’s room, she found a turnkey, a
stranger to her, who said, with a startled look:
“He hasn’t dined yet.”
“I know that quite well,” said Clelia loftily. The man did not venture
to stop her. Twenty paces farther on, Clelia found, sitting on the first
of the six wooden steps leading up to Fabrizio’s room, another turnkey,
very elderly, and exceedingly red in the face, who said to her firmly,
“Signorina, have you an order from the governor?”
“Do you not know who I am?”
At that moment Clelia was possessed by a sort of supernatural strength.
She was quite beside herself. “I am going to save my husband,” she said
to herself.
While the old turnkey was calling out, “But my duty will not permit me,”
Clelia ran swiftly up the six steps. She threw herself against the door.
A huge key was in the lock; it took all her strength to turn it. At that
moment the old turnkey, who was half drunk, snatched at the bottom of her
skirt. She dashed into the room, slammed the door, tearing her gown, and,
as the turnkey pushed at it, to get in after her, she shot a bolt which
she found just under her hand. She looked into the room and saw Fabrizio
sitting at a very small table, on which his dinner was laid. She rushed
at the table, overturned it, and, clutching Fabrizio’s arm, she cried,
“Hast thou eaten?”
This use of the second person singular filled Fabrizio with joy. For the
first time in her agitation, Clelia had forgotten her womanly reserve and
betrayed her love.
Fabrizio had been on the point of beginning his fatal meal. He clasped
her in his arms, and covered her with kisses. “This food has been
poisoned,” thought he to himself. “If I tell her I have not touched it,
religion will reassert its rights, and Clelia will take to flight. But
if she looks upon me as a dying man I shall persuade her not to leave
me. She is longing to find a means of escape from her hateful marriage;
chance has brought us this one. The jailers will soon collect; they
will break in the door, and then there will be such a scandal that the
Marchese Crescenzi will take fright, and break off his marriage.”
During the momentary silence consequent on these reflections, Fabrizio
felt that Clelia was already endeavouring to free herself from his
embrace.
“I feel no pain as yet,” he said to her, “but soon I shall lie at thy
feet in agony. Help me to die!”
“Oh, my only friend,” she answered, “I will die with thee!” and she
clasped her arms about him with a convulsive pressure.
Half dressed as she was, and half wild with passion, she was so beautiful
that Fabrizio could not restrain an almost involuntary gesture. He met
with no resistance.
In the gush of passion and generous feeling which follows on excessive
happiness, he said to her boldly: “The first instants of our happiness
shall not be soiled by a vile lie. But for thy courage I should now be
nothing but a corpse, or struggling in the most hideous tortures. But
at thy entrance I was only about to dine; I had not touched any of the
dishes.”
Fabrizio dilated on the frightful picture, so as to soften the
indignation he already perceived in Clelia’s eyes. Torn by violent and
conflicting feelings, she looked at him for an instant, and then threw
herself into his arms. A great noise arose in the passage, the iron doors
were roughly opened and violently banged, and there was talking and
shouting.
“Oh, if only I was armed!” exclaimed Fabrizio. “They took my arms away
before they would let me come in. No doubt they are coming to make an
end of me. Farewell, my Clelia! I bless my death, since it has brought
me my happiness!” Clelia kissed him, and gave him a little ivory-handled
dagger, with a blade not much longer than that of a penknife.
“Do not let them kill thee,” she said. “Defend thyself to the last
moment. If my uncle hears the noise—he is brave and virtuous—he will save
thee. I am going to speak to them!” and as she said the words, she rushed
toward the door.
“If thou art not killed,” she said feverishly, with her hand on the bolt
and her head turned toward him, “starve rather than touch any food that
is brought thee. Keep this bread about thy person always.” The noise
was drawing nearer. Fabrizio caught hold of her, took her place by the
door, and throwing it open violently, rushed down the six wooden steps.
The ivory-handled dagger was in his hand, and he was just about to drive
it into the waistcoat of General Fontana, the prince’s aide-de-camp,
who started back in alarm, and exclaimed, “But I have come to save you,
Signor del Dongo!”
Fabrizio turned back, up the six steps, said, within the room, “Fontana
has come to save me,” then, returning to the general, on the wooden
steps, he conversed calmly with him, begging him, in many words, to
forgive him his angry impulse. “There has been an attempt to poison me;
that dinner you see laid out there is poisoned. I had the sense not to
touch it, but I will confess to you that the incident annoyed me. When I
heard you coming up the stairs, I thought they were coming to finish me
with daggers.… General, I request you will give orders that nobody shall
enter my room. Somebody would take away the poison, and our good prince
must be informed of everything.”
The general, very pale, and very much horrified, transmitted the order
suggested by Fabrizio to the specially selected jailers, who had
followed him. These gentry, very much crestfallen at seeing the poison
discovered, lost no time in getting downstairs. They made as though they
were going in front, to get out of the way of the prince’s aide-de-camp
on the narrow staircase; as a matter of fact, they were panting to escape
and disappear. To General Fontana’s great astonishment, Fabrizio halted
for more than a quarter of an hour at the little iron staircase that ran
round the pillar on the ground floor. He wanted to give Clelia time to
conceal herself on the first floor.
It was the duchess who, after doing several wild things, had succeeded
in getting General Fontana sent to the citadel. This success had been
the result of chance. Leaving Count Mosca, who was as much alarmed as
herself, she hurried to the palace. The princess, who had a strong
dislike to energy, which always struck her as being vulgar, thought she
was mad, and did not show the least disposition to attempt any unusual
step to help her. The duchess, distracted, was weeping bitterly. All
she could do was to repeat, over and over again, “But, madam, within a
quarter of an hour Fabrizio will be dead of poison!”
When the duchess perceived the princess’s perfect indifference, her grief
drove her mad. That moral reflection, which would certainly have occurred
to any woman educated in one of those northern religions which permit of
self-examination—“I was the first to use poison, and now it is by poison
that I am destroyed”—never occurred to her. In Italy such considerations,
in moments of deep passion, would seem as commonplace as a pun would
appear to a Parisian, under parallel circumstances.
In her despair, the duchess chanced to go into the drawing-room, where
she found the Marchese Crescenzi, who was in waiting that day. When the
duchess had returned to Parma he had thanked her fervently for his post
as lord in waiting, to which, but for her, he could never have aspired.
There had been no lack of asseverations of devotion on his part. The
duchess addressed him in the following words:
“Rassi is going to have Fabrizio, who is in the citadel, poisoned. Put
some chocolate and a bottle of water, which I will give you, into your
pocket. Go up to the citadel, and save my life by telling General Fabio
Conti that if he does not allow you to give Fabrizio the chocolate and
the water yourself, you will break off your marriage with his daughter.”
The marchese turned pale, and his features, instead of kindling into
animation, expressed the most miserable perplexity. He “could not believe
that so hideous a crime could be committed in so well-ordered a city as
Parma, ruled over by so great a prince,” and so forth. And to make it
worse, he enunciated all these platitudes exceedingly slowly. In a word,
the duchess found she had to deal with a man who was upright enough, but
weak beyond words, and quite unable to make up his mind to act. After a
score of remarks of this kind, all of them interrupted by her impatient
exclamations, he hit on an excellent excuse. His oath as lord in waiting
forbade him to take part in any machinations against the government.
My readers will imagine the anxiety and despair of the duchess, who felt
the time was slipping by.
“But see the governor, at all events, and tell him I will hunt Fabrizio’s
murderers into hell!”
Despair had quickened the duchess’s eloquence. But all her fervour only
added to the marchese’s alarm, and doubled his natural irresolution. At
the end of an hour he was even less inclined to do anything than he had
been at first.
The unhappy woman, who had reached the utmost limit of distraction,
and was thoroughly convinced the governor would never refuse anything
to so rich a son-in-law, went so far as to throw herself at his feet.
This seemed only to increase the Marchese Crescenzi’s cowardice—the
strange sight filled him with an unconscious fear that he himself might
be compromised. But then a strange thing happened. The marchese, a
kind-hearted man at bottom, was touched when he saw so beautiful and,
above all, so powerful a woman, kneeling at his feet.
“I myself, rich and noble as I am,” thought he, “may one day be forced to
kneel at the feet of some republican.”
The marchese began to cry, and at last it was agreed that the duchess,
as mistress of the robes, should introduce him to the princess, who would
give him leave to convey a small basket, of the contents of which he
would declare himself ignorant, to Fabrizio.
The previous night, before the duchess had become aware of Fabrizio’s
folly in giving himself up to the citadel, a _commedia dell’arte_ had
been acted at court, and the prince, who always kept the lovers’ parts
for himself, and played them with the duchess, had spoken to her so
passionately of his love that had such a thing been possible, in Italy,
to any passionate man, or any prince, he would have looked ridiculous.
The prince, who, shy as he was, took his love-affairs very seriously,
was walking along one of the corridors of the palace, when he met the
duchess, hurrying the Marchese Crescenzi, who looked very much flustered,
into the princess’s presence. He was so surprised and dazzled by the
beauty and the emotion with which despair had endued the mistress of
the robes, that for the first time in his life he showed some decision
of character. With a gesture that was more than imperious, he dismissed
the marchese, and forthwith made a formal declaration of his love to the
duchess. No doubt the prince had thought it all over beforehand, for it
contained some very sensible remarks.
“Since my rank forbids me the supreme happiness of marrying you, I will
swear to you on the Holy Wafer that I will never marry without your
written consent. I know very well,” he added, “that I shall cause you to
lose the hand of the Prime Minister—a clever and very charming man—but,
after all, he is fifty-six years old, and I am not yet twenty-two. I
should feel I was insulting you, and should deserve your refusal, if I
spoke to you of advantages apart from my love. But every soul about my
court who cares about money speaks with admiration of the proof of love
the count gives you, by leaving everything he possesses in your hands. I
shall be only too happy to imitate him in this respect. You will use my
fortune much better than I, and you will have the entire disposal of the
annual sum which my ministers pay over to the lord steward of the crown.
Thus it will be you, duchess, who will decide what sums I may expend
each month.”
The duchess thought all these details very long-winded. The sense of
Fabrizio’s peril was tearing at her heart.
“But don’t you know, sir,” she exclaimed, “that Fabrizio is at this
moment being poisoned in your citadel. Save him! I believe everything!”
The arrangement of her sentence was thoroughly awkward. At the word
_poison_ all the confidence, all the good faith which had been evident in
the poor, well-meaning prince’s conversation, disappeared like a flash.
The duchess only noticed her blunder when it was too late to remedy it,
and this increased her despair—a thing she had thought impossible. “If I
had not mentioned poison,” said she to herself, “he would have granted me
Fabrizio’s liberty. Oh, dear Fabrizio,” she added, “I am fated to ruin
you by my folly!”
It took the duchess a long time, and she was forced to employ many wiles,
before she could win the prince back to his passionate declarations of
affection. But he was still thoroughly scared. It was only his mind that
spoke; his heart had been frozen—first of all by the idea of poison, and
then by another, as displeasing to him as the first had been terrible.
“Poison is being administered in my dominions without my being told
anything about it. Rassi, then, is bent on dishonouring me in the eyes of
Europe. God alone knows what I shall read in the French newspapers next
month.”
Suddenly, timid as the young man was, his heart was silent, and an idea
started up in his mind.
“Dear duchess,” he cried, “you know how deeply I am attached to you. I
would fain believe your terrible notion about poison is quite unfounded.
But, indeed, it set me thinking, too, and for a moment it almost made
me forget my passionate love for you, the only one I have ever felt in
my life. I feel I am not very lovable; I am nothing but a boy, very
desperately in love. But put me to the test, at all events!”
As the prince spoke he grew very eager.
“Save Fabrizio, and I will believe everything! No doubt I am carried
away by a foolish mother’s fears. But send instantly to fetch Fabrizio
from the citadel, and let me see him. If he is still alive, send him from
the palace to the city jail, and keep him there for months and months,
until he has been tried, if that be your Highness’s will!”
The duchess noticed with despair that the prince, instead of granting
so simple a petition with a word, had grown gloomy. He was very much
flushed; he looked at the duchess, then dropped his eyes, and his cheeks
grew pale. The idea of poison she had so unluckily put forward had
inspired him with a thought worthy of his own father, or of Philip II.
But he did not dare to express it.
“Listen, madam,” he said at last, as though with an effort, and in a tone
that was not particularly gracious. “You look down upon me as a boy, and
further, as a creature possessing no attraction. Well, I am going to say
something horrible to you, which has been suggested to me, this instant,
by the real and deep passion I feel for you. If I had the smallest belief
in the world in this poison story, I should have taken steps at once; my
duty would have made that a law. But I take your request to be nothing
but a wild fancy, the meaning of which, you will allow me to say, I may
not fully grasp. You expect me, who have hardly reigned three months,
to act without consulting my ministers. You ask me to make an exception
to a general rule, which, I confess, seems to me a very reasonable one.
At this moment it is you, madam, who are absolute sovereign here; you
inspire me with hope in a matter which is all in all to me. But within an
hour, when this nightmare of yours, this fancy about poison, has faded
away, my presence will become a weariness to you, and you will drive
me away, madam. Therefore I want an oath. Swear to me, madam, that if
Fabrizio is restored to you, safe and sound, you will grant me, within
three months, all the happiness that my love can crave; that you will
ensure the bliss of my whole life by placing one hour of yours at my
disposal, and that you will be mine!”
At that moment the castle clock struck two. “Ah, perhaps it is too late
now!” thought the duchess.
“I swear it,” she cried, and her eyes were wild.
Instantly the prince became a different man. Running to the
aide-de-camp’s room at the end of the gallery—
“General Fontana,” he cried, “gallop at full speed to the citadel; hurry
as fast as you can to the room where Signor del Dongo is confined,
and bring him to me. I must speak to him within twenty minutes—within
fifteen, if that be possible.”
“Ah, general!” exclaimed the duchess, who had followed on the prince’s
heels. “My whole life may depend on one moment. A report—a false one,
no doubt—has made me fear Fabrizio may be poisoned. The moment you are
within earshot, call out to him not to eat. If he has touched food, you
must make him sick; say I insist upon it—use violence if necessary. Tell
him I am following close after you, and believe I shall be indebted to
you all my life!”
“My lady duchess, my horse is saddled; I am thought a good rider; I will
gallop as hard as I can go, and I shall be at the citadel eight minutes
before you.”
The aide-de-camp vanished. He was a man whose one merit was that he knew
how to ride.
Before he had well closed the door the young prince, who apparently knew
his own mind now, seized the duchess’s hand. “Madam,” he said, and there
was passion in his tone, “deign to come with me to the chapel.” Taken
aback for the first time in her life, the duchess followed him without a
word. She and the prince ran down the whole length of the great gallery
of the palace, at the far end of which the chapel was situated. When they
were inside the chapel the prince cast himself on his knees, as much
before the duchess as before the altar.
“Repeat your oath!” he exclaimed passionately. “If you had been just, if
the misfortune of my being a prince had not injured my cause, you would
have granted me, out of pity for my love, that which you owe me now,
because you have sworn it.”
“If I see Fabrizio again, and he has not been poisoned—if he is alive
within a week from now—if your Highness appoints him coadjutor to
Archbishop Landriani, and his ultimate successor—I will trample
everything, my honour, my womanly dignity, beneath my feet, and I will
give myself to your Highness.”
“But, _dearest friend_,” said the prince, with a comical mixture of
nervous anxiety and tenderness, “I am afraid of some pitfall I do not
understand, and which may destroy all my happiness; that would kill me.
If the archbishop makes some ecclesiastical difficulty which will drag
the business out for years, what is to become of me? I am acting, you
see, in perfect good faith; are you going to treat me like a Jesuit?”
“No, in all good faith. If Fabrizio is saved, and if you do all in your
power to make him coadjutor and future archbishop, I will dishonour
myself, and give myself to you. Your Highness will undertake to write
‘_approved_’ on the margin of a request which the archbishop will present
within the week?”
“I will sign you a blank sheet of paper! You shall rule me and my
dominions!” Reddening with happiness, and thoroughly beside himself, he
insisted on a second oath. So great was his emotion that it made him
forget his natural timidity, and in that palace chapel where they were
alone together, he whispered things which, if he had said them three
days previously, would have altered the duchess’s opinion of him. But in
her heart, despair concerning Fabrizio’s danger had now been replaced by
horror at the promise which had been torn from her.
The duchess was overwhelmed by the thought of what she had done. If she
was not yet conscious of the frightful bitterness of what she had said,
it was because her attention was still strained by anxiety as to whether
General Fontana would reach the citadel in time.
To stem the boy’s wild love talk, and turn the conversation, she praised
a famous picture by Parmegiano, which adorned the high altar in the
chapel.
“Do me the kindness of allowing me to send it to you,” said the prince.
“I accept it,” replied the duchess. “But give me leave to hurry to meet
Fabrizio.”
With a bewildered look she told her coachman to make his horses into a
gallop. On the bridge that spanned the fortress moat she met General
Fontana and Fabrizio coming out on foot.
“Have you eaten?”
“No, by some miracle.”
The duchess threw herself on Fabrizio’s breast, and fell into a swoon,
which lasted for an hour, and engendered fears, first for her life, and
afterward for her reason.
At the sight of General Fontana, General Fabio Conti had grown white
with rage. He dallied so much about obeying the prince’s order, that the
aide-de-camp, who concluded the duchess was about to occupy the position
of reigning mistress, had ended by losing his temper. The governor had
intended to make Fabrizio’s illness last two or three days, and “now,”
said he to himself, “this general, a man about the court, will find the
impudent fellow struggling in the agonies which are to avenge me for his
flight.”
Greatly worried, Fabio Conti stopped in the guard-room of the Farnese
Tower, and hastily dismissed the soldiers in it. He did not care to have
any witnesses of the approaching scene.
Five minutes afterwards, he was petrified with astonishment by hearing
Fabrizio’s voice, and seeing him well and hearty, describing the prison
to General Fontana. He swiftly disappeared.
At his interview with the prince, Fabrizio behaved like a perfect
gentleman. In the first place, he had no intention of looking like a
child who is frightened by a mere nothing. The prince inquired kindly how
he felt.
“Like a man, your Serene Highness, who is starving with hunger, because,
by good luck, he has neither breakfasted nor dined.”
After having had the honour of thanking the prince, he requested
permission to see the archbishop, before proceeding to the city jail.
The prince had turned exceedingly pale when the conviction that the
poison had not been altogether a phantom of the duchess’s imagination
had forced itself upon his childish brain. Absorbed by the cruel
thought, he did not at first reply to Fabrizio’s request that he might
see the archbishop. Then he felt obliged to atone for his inattention by
excessive graciousness.
“You can go out alone, sir, and move through the streets of my capital
without any guard. Toward ten or eleven o’clock you will repair to the
prison, and I trust you will not have to stay there long.”
On the morrow of that great day, the most remarkable in his whole life,
the prince thought himself a young Napoleon. That great man, he had
read, had received favours from several of the most beautiful women
of his court. Now that he too was a Napoleon by his success in love,
he recollected that he had also been a Napoleon under fire. His soul
was still glowing with delight over the firmness of his treatment of
the duchess. The sense that he had achieved something difficult made
quite another man of him. For a whole fortnight he became accessible to
generous-minded argument; he showed some resolution of character.
He began, that very day, by burning the patent creating Rassi a
count, which had been lying on his writing-table for the last month.
He dismissed General Fabio Conti, and commanded Colonel Lange, his
successor, to tell him the truth about the poison. Lange, a brave
Polish soldier, terrified the jailers, and found out that Signor del
Dongo was to have been poisoned at his breakfast, but that too many
persons would have had to have been let into the secret. At his dinner,
measures had been more carefully taken, and but for General Fontana’s
arrival, Monsignore del Dongo would have died. The prince was thrown into
consternation. But, desperately in love as he was, it was a consolation
to him to be able to think, “It turns out that I really have saved
Monsignore del Dongo’s life, and the duchess will not dare to break the
word she has given me.” From this thought another proceeded: “My way of
life is much more difficult than I supposed. Every one agrees that the
duchess is an exceedingly clever woman. In this case my interest and
my heart agree. What divine happiness it would be for me, if she would
become my Prime Minister!”
So worried was the prince by the horrors he had discovered, that he would
have nothing to do with the acting that evening.
“It would be too great a happiness for me,” said he to the duchess,
“if you would rule my dominions, even as you rule my heart. To begin
with, I am going to tell you how I have spent my day.” And he began to
relate everything very exactly. How he had burned Rassi’s patent, his
appointment of Lange, Lange’s report on the attempted poisoning, and so
forth.
“I feel I am a very inexperienced ruler. The count’s jokes humiliate me.
Even at the council-table he jokes, and in general society he says things
which you will say are not true. He declares I am a child, and that he
leads me wherever he chooses. Though I am a prince, madam, I am a man as
well, and such remarks are very vexatious. To cast doubt on the stories
Mosca put about, I was induced to appoint that dangerous scoundrel Rassi
to the ministry. And now here I have General Fabio Conti, who still
believes him to be so powerful that he dares not confess whether it was
he or the Raversi who suggested his making away with your nephew. I have
a good mind to have General Fabio Conti tried. The judges would soon find
out whether he is guilty of the attempted poisoning.”
“But have you any judges, sir?”
“What!” said the prince, astounded.
“You have learned lawyers, sir, who look very solemn as they walk through
the streets. But their verdicts will always follow the will of the
dominant party at your court.”
While the young prince, thoroughly scandalized, was saying a number of
things which proved his candour to be far greater than his wisdom, the
duchess was thinking to herself.
“Will it answer my purpose to have Conti dishonoured? Certainly not, for
then his daughter’s marriage with that worthy commonplace individual
Crescenzi becomes impossible.”
An endless conversation followed on this subject between the duchess
and the prince. The prince’s admiration quite blinded him. Out of
consideration for Clelia’s marriage with the Marchese Crescenzi, but
on this account solely, as he angrily informed the ex-governor, the
prince overlooked his attempt to poison a prisoner. But, advised by the
duchess, he sent him into banishment until the date of his daughter’s
marriage. The duchess believed she no longer loved Fabrizio, but she was
passionately anxious to see Clelia married to the marchese. This came of
her vague hope that she might thus see Fabrizio grow less absent-minded.
In his delight, the prince would have disgraced Rassi openly that very
night. The duchess said to him laughingly:
“Do not you know a saying of Napoleon’s, that a man in a high position,
on whom all men’s eyes are fixed, must never allow himself to act in
anger? But it is too late to do anything to-night. Let us put off all
business until to-morrow.”
She wanted to get time to consult the count, to whom she faithfully
repeated the whole of the evening’s conversation, only suppressing the
prince’s frequent references to a promise the thought of which poisoned
her existence. The duchess hoped to make herself so indispensable that
she would be able to get the matter indefinitely adjourned by saying
to the prince, “If you are so barbarous as to make me endure such a
humiliation, which I should never forgive, I will leave your state the
next morning.”
The count, when the duchess consulted with him as to Rassi’s fate,
behaved like a true philosopher. Rassi and General Fabio Conti travelled
to Piedmont together.
A very peculiar difficulty arose in connection with Fabrizio’s trial. The
judges wanted to acquit him by acclamation at their very first sitting.
The count was obliged to use threats to make the trial last a week, and
insure the hearing of all the witnesses. “These people are all alike,”
said he to himself.
The day after his acquittal, Fabrizio del Dongo took possession, at last,
of his post as grand vicar to the good Archbishop Landriani. On that
same day the prince signed the despatches necessary to insure Fabrizio’s
appointment as the archbishop’s coadjutor and ultimate successor, and
within less than two months, he was installed in this position.
Everybody complimented the duchess on her nephew’s serious bearing. As a
matter of fact, he was in utter despair.
Immediately after his deliverance, which had been followed by General
Fabio Conti’s disgrace and banishment, and the duchess’s accession to the
highest favour, Clelia had taken refuge in the house of her aunt, the
Countess Cantarini, a very rich and very aged woman, who never thought
of anything but her health. Clelia might have seen Fabrizio, but any
one acquainted with her former engagements, and seeing her present mode
of behaviour, would have concluded that her regard for her lover had
departed when the danger in which he stood had disappeared. Fabrizio
not only walked past the Palazzo Cantarini as often as he decently
could; he had also succeeded, after endless trouble, in hiring a small
lodging opposite the first floor of the mansion. Once, when Clelia had
thoughtlessly stationed herself at the window, to watch a procession pass
by, she had started back, as though terror-struck. She had caught sight
of Fabrizio, dressed in black, but as a very poor workman, looking at her
out of one of his garret windows, filled with oiled paper, like those of
his room in the Farnese Tower. Fabrizio would have been very thankful to
persuade himself that Clelia was avoiding him on account of her father’s
disgrace, which public rumour ascribed to the duchess. But he was only
too well acquainted with another cause for her retirement, and nothing
could cheer his sadness.
Neither his acquittal, nor his important functions, the first he had
been called on to perform, nor his fine social position, nor even the
assiduous court paid him by all the clergy and devout persons in the
diocese, touched him in the least. His charming rooms in the Palazzo
Sanseverina were no longer large enough. The duchess, to her great
delight, was obliged to give him the whole of the second floor of her
palace, and two fine rooms on the first floor, which were always full of
people waiting to pay their duty to the youthful coadjutor. The clause
insuring his succession to the archbishopric had created an extraordinary
effect in the country. Those resolute qualities in Fabrizio’s character,
which had once so scandalized the needy and foolish courtiers, were now
ascribed to him as virtues.
It was a great lesson in philosophy to Fabrizio to find himself so
utterly indifferent to all these honours, and far more unhappy in his
splendid rooms, with half a score of lackeys dressed in his liveries,
than he had been in his wooden chamber in the Farnese Tower, with hideous
jailers all about him, and in perpetual terror for his life. His mother
and his sister, the Duchess V⸺, who had travelled to Parma to see him in
his glory, were struck by his deep melancholy. So greatly did it alarm
the Marchesa del Dongo, who had become the most unromantic of women,
that she thought he must have been given some slow poison in the Farnese
Tower. Discreet as she was, she felt it her duty to speak to him about
his extraordinary depression, and Fabrizio’s tears were his only answer.
The innumerable advantages arising out of his brilliant position produced
no impression on him, save one of vexation. His brother, that vainest of
mortals, eaten up with the vilest selfishness, wrote him an almost formal
letter of congratulation, and with this letter he received a bank bill
for fifty thousand francs, to enable him, so the new marchese wrote, to
purchase horses and carriages worthy of his name. Fabrizio sent the money
to his younger sister, who had made a poor marriage.
Count Mosca had caused a fine Italian translation to be made of the Latin
genealogy of the Valserra del Dongo family, originally published by
Fabrizio, Archbishop of Parma. This he had splendidly printed, with the
Latin text on the opposite page; the engravings had been reproduced by
magnificent lithographs, done in Paris. By the duchess’s desire a fine
portrait of Fabrizio was inserted, opposite that of the late archbishop.
This translation was published as Fabrizio’s work, executed during his
first imprisonment. But in our hero’s heart every feeling was dead,
even the vanity inherent in every human creature. He did not condescend
to read one page of the volume attributed to him. His social position
made it incumbent on him to present a magnificently bound copy of it
to the prince, who, thinking he owed him some amends for having brought
him so near an agonizing death, granted him his “_grandes entrées_”
to the sovereign’s apartment—an honour which confers the title of
“_Eccellenza_.”