This serious conversation took place the day after Fabrizio’s return to
the Palazzo Sanseverina. The duchess still felt sore at the sight of
Fabrizio’s evident happiness. “So,” said she to herself, “that pious
little minx has deceived me! She has not been able to hold out against
her lover for even three months.”
The certain expectation of happiness had given that cowardly being, the
young prince, courage to love. He heard a rumour of the preparations for
departure at the Palazzo Sanseverina, and his French _valet de chambre_,
who had but scant faith in any fine lady’s virtue, inspired him with
courage as to the duchess. Ernest V ventured on a step that was severely
blamed by the princess, and by all sensible people about the court. In
the eyes of the populace, it set the seal on the astounding favour the
duchess enjoyed. The prince went to see her in her palace.
“You are going!” said he, and there was a gravity about his tone which
made it hateful to the duchess. “You are going! You mean to deceive me,
and break your oath. And yet, if I had delayed ten minutes about granting
you Fabrizio’s pardon, he would have died! And you would leave me behind
you in misery! But for your oaths I never should have dared to love you
as I do. Have you no honour?”
“Consider well, my prince. Have you ever been so happy, all your life
long, as during the four months which have just gone by? Your glory as a
sovereign, and, I venture to think, your happiness as a kind-hearted man,
have never reached such a point before. This is the arrangement I propose
to you. If you condescend to accept it, I will not be your mistress for a
passing moment, and in virtue of an oath extorted from me by fear, but
I will devote every instant of my life to making you happy. I will be to
you, always, what I have been for the last four months, and perhaps, some
day, love may crown friendship. I would not say that might never be.”
“Well,” said the prince, overjoyed, “be something else, and something
more! Rule me and my dominions, both at once. Be my Prime Minister. I
offer you such a marriage as the necessities of my rank permit me. We
have an instance of the kind quite near us—the King of Naples has just
married the Duchess of Partana. I offer you all I can—a marriage of the
same kind. I will add a piece of shabby policy, to convince you that I
am no longer a child, and that I have thought of everything. I will not
lay stress on the position I thus impose on myself, of being the last
sovereign of my race, nor on the grief of seeing the great powers dispose
of my succession during my lifetime. I hail these drawbacks—very real
ones—as a blessing, since they provide me with a further means of showing
you my regard and passionate devotion.”
The duchess did not feel a moment’s hesitation. The prince bored her, and
she thought the count perfectly charming. There was only one man in the
world whom she could have preferred to him. And besides that, she ruled
the count, and the prince, as the natural outcome of his rank, would
more or less have ruled her. Finally, he might grow inconstant and take
mistresses. Before many years were out, their difference of age would
almost appear to give him a right to do so.
From the very first, the prospect of being bored had settled the whole
question. Nevertheless the duchess, in her desire to be charming, asked
to be allowed to think it over.
Space will not permit me to repeat the almost tender expressions, and the
infinitely gracious terms, in which she wrapped her refusal. The prince
got into a rage; he saw all his happiness slipping through his fingers.
What was he to do with himself after the duchess had left his court? And
then there was the humiliation of being rebuffed; and besides, “What
will my French servant say when I tell him I have failed.”
The duchess was artful enough to calm the prince, and little by little,
to bring the negotiation back to its proper limits.
“If your Highness will only consent not to insist on the result of a
fatal promise, which fills me with horror, because it makes me despise
myself, I will spend my whole life at your court, and that court shall
always be what it has been this winter. Every instant of my life shall
be devoted to increasing your happiness as a man, and your glory as a
sovereign. But if your Highness insists on my keeping my oath, you will
have blighted the rest of my life, and you will see me depart from your
dominions that instant, never to return. The day on which I lose my
honour will be the last day on which I shall ever look upon you.”
But, like all pusillanimous men, the prince was obstinate; and besides,
her refusal of his hand had stung his pride as a man and as a sovereign.
He thought of all the difficulties he would have had to surmount to
insure the acceptance of this marriage, and which, nevertheless, he
had been resolved to overcome. For three hours the same arguments were
repeated on each side, and frequently interlarded with very bitter
expressions. The prince exclaimed: “Do you then want to make me believe,
madam, that you have no honour? If I had hesitated as long that day, when
General Fabio Conti was poisoning Fabrizio, you would be building his
tomb now in some church in Parma.”
“No, not in Parma indeed—a country of poisoners!”
“Very well, madam,” retorted the prince angrily. “You can depart and take
my scorn with you.”
As he was going out the duchess said in a low tone: “Well, sire, come
here at ten o’clock to-night, in the most absolute _incognito_, and you
will make a fool’s bargain. You will see me for the last time in your
life—and I would have devoted the whole of mine to making you as happy as
an absolute sovereign can be, in this Jacobin century. And pray consider
what your court will be like when I am no longer there to drag it out of
its natural dulness and spitefulness!”
“On your part, you refuse the crown of Parma, and something better than
a crown. For you would not have been an every-day princess, married out
of policy, and without love. My heart is wholly yours, and you would have
been absolute mistress of my actions, and of my government, forever.”
“Yes, but the princess, your mother, would have had the right to despise
me as a vile schemer.”
“Pooh! I would have given the princess an income, and banished her.”
Three quarters of an hour were spent in sharp rejoinders. The prince, who
was a fastidious-minded man, could neither make up his mind to insist on
his rights, nor to allow the duchess to depart. He had been told that
once the first victory was won, no matter how, women always came round.
Dismissed in anger by the offended duchess, he ventured to reappear,
trembling and very miserable, at three minutes before ten o’clock. At
half past ten the duchess got into her carriage and started for Bologna.
As soon as she was beyond the boundary of the prince’s dominions she
wrote to the count:
“The sacrifice is accomplished. Do not expect me to be cheerful for a
month. I shall never see Fabrizio again. I am waiting for you at Bologna,
and I will be the Countess Mosca whenever you choose. One thing, only, I
ask of you: never force me to reappear in the country I am now leaving;
and remember always that instead of a hundred and fifty thousand francs
a year, you are going to have thirty or forty thousand at the outside.
All the fools about you have stared at you open-mouthed, and now your
whole reputation will depend upon how far you choose to condescend to
understand their small ideas—‘_Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!_’”
A week later, the marriage took place at Perugia, in a church which
contains the tombs of the count’s ancestors. The prince was in despair.
He had sent the duchess three or four couriers, and she had carefully
sent him back envelopes which covered his letters, with the seals
unbroken. Ernest V had conferred a splendid income on the count, and had
given Fabrizio the ribbon of his Order.
“That was what pleased me most about our farewells,” said the count to
the new Countess Mosca della Rovere. “We parted the best friends in the
world. He gave me a Spanish Order, and diamonds which are worth quite
as much as the Order. He told me he would make me a duke, only that he
wanted to keep that method of drawing you back to his dominions in his
own hands; consequently I am commissioned to inform you (and it is a fine
mission for a husband!) that if you will condescend to return to Parma,
even for a month, I shall be made a duke, with any title you choose, and
you will be given a fine property.”
All this the duchess refused with a sort of horror.
After that scene at the court ball, tolerably decisive as it had
appeared, Clelia betrayed no recollection of the love she had momentarily
seemed to share. The most vehement remorse had surged over that virtuous
and pious nature. Fabrizio understood this very well, and in spite of all
the hope he tried to feel, a gloomy sadness overcame his soul. This time,
however, his misery did not force him into retirement, as at the period
of Clelia’s marriage.
The count had begged his nephew to keep him exactly informed of
everything that happened at court, and Fabrizio, who was beginning to
realize all he owed him, had resolved to fulfil this mission faithfully.
Like every one in the city and at court, Fabrizio had no doubt that his
friend nursed the project of returning to the ministry, and wielding
greater power than he had ever held before. The count’s forecasts were
soon verified. Within six weeks of his departure, Rassi was Prime
Minister. Fabio Conti was appointed Minister of War, and the prisons,
which the count had well-nigh emptied, began to fill again. When the
prince summoned these men to power he fancied he would thereby avenge
himself on the duchess. He was crazed by passion, and he hated Mosca as
his rival.
Fabrizio had a great deal on his hands. Archbishop Landriani, now
seventy-two years old, had fallen into a very weak condition, and
hardly ever went beyond his palace doors. His coadjutor was obliged to
represent him on almost every occasion.
The Marchesa Crescenzi, overwhelmed by remorse, and terrified by what
her religious director said to her, had hit upon an excellent plan for
keeping out of Fabrizio’s sight. On the plea that her first confinement
was approaching, she had shut herself up within her own palace; but to
this palace a huge garden was attached.
To this garden Fabrizio contrived to find access, and along Clelia’s
favourite walk he placed nosegays of flowers, arranged in an order which
constituted a language, like those she had sent him every evening during
the last days of his imprisonment in the Farnese Tower.
This attempt caused the marchesa great annoyance. Her heart throbbed,
sometimes with remorse, and then again with passion. For several months
she would not go into the palace garden at all; she even scrupled to cast
a glance in that direction.
Fabrizio began to believe he was parted from her forever, and despair was
taking possession of his soul. The society in which he spent his life was
hateful to him, and if he had not been convinced in his heart that the
count would never find peace of mind out of office, he would have retired
to his little rooms in the archiepiscopal palace. It would have been a
comfort to him to live alone with his thoughts, and never to hear a human
voice except when he was performing his ecclesiastical functions. “But,”
said he to himself, “no one but I can serve the interests of Count and
Countess Mosca.”
The prince still treated him with a respect which insured him the
foremost rank at court, and this favour was largely owing to his own
behaviour. Fabrizio’s extreme reserve, the result of an indifference to
all the affections and petty passions that fill the lives of ordinary
men, which amounted to positive disgust, had piqued the young prince’s
vanity. He would often remark that Fabrizio was as clever as his aunt.
The prince’s candid nature had realized half the truth, that no one else
about him possessed the same methods of feeling as Fabrizio. A fact which
could escape no one, not even the most ordinary courtier, was that
Fabrizio’s credit was by no means that of an ordinary coadjutor, but even
exceeded the consideration displayed by the sovereign for the archbishop.
Fabrizio wrote word to the count that if ever the prince should be clever
enough to perceive the muddle into which such ministers as Rassi, Fabio
Conti, Zurla, and others of the same calibre had brought his affairs, he,
Fabrizio, would be the natural channel whereby the sovereign might make
some friendly demonstration, without too great a risk to his own vanity.
“But for the recollection of the fatal words, ‘_that child_,’” he wrote
to Countess Mosca, “applied by a man of genius to an august personage,
that august personage would already have exclaimed ‘Come back at once,
and rid me of all these vagabonds.’ Even now, if the wife of the man of
genius would condescend to any step, even the slightest, the count would
be recalled with the greatest joy. But if he will wait till the fruit is
thoroughly ripe he will return in far more brilliant fashion. And indeed,
the princess’s receptions have grown deadly dull; the only amusement
they afford consists in the ridiculous behaviour of Rassi, who, now he
is a count, has developed a mania for noble birth. Strict orders have
just been issued that no person who can not prove eight quarterings of
noble descent is to dare to appear at the princess’s evening receptions.
These are the exact terms of the edict. The men who have hitherto had the
right to go into the great gallery in the morning, and be present when
the sovereign passes through to mass, are to continue in the enjoyment
of this privilege. But all new arrivals will have to prove their eight
quarterings. _À propos_ of which somebody said, ‘It’s very clear that
Rassi knows no quarter.’”
My readers will readily imagine that such letters as these were not
confided to the ordinary post. Countess Mosca wrote back from Naples:
“We have a concert every Thursday, and a party every Sunday. Our rooms
are absolutely crowded. The count is delighted with his excavations;
he sets apart a thousand francs a month for them, and has just brought
down labourers from the mountains of the Abruzzi, who only cost him
twenty-three sous a day. You really ought to come and see us. This is
more than the twentieth time that I have summoned you, ungrateful boy!”
Fabrizio had no intention of obeying the summons. Even his daily letter
to the count or countess was an almost unendurable weariness to him.
My readers will forgive him when they learn that a whole year had thus
passed away without his being able to address a single word to the
marchesa. All his attempts to enter into some kind of correspondence with
her were repulsed with horror. The habitual silence which, out of sheer
weariness of life, Fabrizio kept everywhere, except at court, and when
performing his religious functions, added to the perfect purity of his
morals, had won him such extraordinary veneration that he made up his
mind, at last, to follow his aunt’s advice.
“The prince,” she wrote, “venerates you so deeply that you must expect
to fall into disgrace shortly. Then he will shower marks of neglect
upon you, and the vile scorn of the courtiers will follow on his. All
these small despots, however honest-hearted they may be, change like the
fashions, and on the same account—out of boredom. The only way in which
you can insure yourself support against the sovereign’s whims is by
preaching. You improvise poetry so well! Try to talk, for half an hour,
about religion! You will talk heresy at first, but pay a learned and
discreet theologian to listen to your sermons, and point out their faults
to you, and the next time you preach you can correct them.”
The misery of mind engendered by a crossed love makes any effort
requiring attention and activity an odious burden. But Fabrizio reminded
himself that his influence over the populace, if he acquired any, might
some day be useful to his aunt and to the count, for whom his admiration
daily increased, in proportion to his own knowledge of life and the
wickedness of men. So he made up his mind to preach, and his success, the
way to which had been prepared by his emaciation and his threadbare coat,
was unexampled. His sermons breathed a deep sadness, which, combined with
his handsome face, and the stories of the high favour in which he stood
at court, conquered every woman’s heart. The ladies discovered that he
had been one of the bravest captains in Napoleon’s army, and before long,
this ridiculous story was absolutely believed. The seats in the churches
in which he was to preach were kept beforehand; the poorer folk would
take possession of them at five o’clock in the morning, and turn money by
the speculation.
So great was Fabrizio’s success, that at last an idea which changed his
every feeling flashed across his brain. Might not the Marchesa Crescenzi
come some day, were it out of mere curiosity, to hear him preach? And
of a sudden the delighted public perceived that his eloquence increased
twofold. In moments of excitement he ventured on word-pictures, the
boldness of which would have made the most practised orators tremble.
Occasionally, quite forgetting himself, he would be swept away by a
wave of passionate inspiration, and the whole of his audience would be
melted into tears, but in vain did his _aggrottato_[6] eye scan every
face turned toward the pulpit, in search of that one being whose presence
would have meant so much to him.
“But if ever that happiness does come to me,” he thought, “I shall
either faint away, or I shall stop dead short in my discourse.” To
protect himself from this last difficulty, he composed a sort of tender
and passionate prayer, which he always laid on a stool in his pulpit.
His intention was to begin to read this composition if the marchesa’s
presence should ever make it impossible for him to improvise a word.
One day he heard, through those of the marchesa’s servants who were in
his pay, that orders had been given to make the box belonging to the
Casa Crescenzi, at the principal theatre, ready for the next evening. It
was more than a year since the marchesa had appeared in any theatre, and
she was breaking her habit now, in order to hear a tenor who had created
a _furore_, and crammed the building every evening. Fabrizio’s first
feeling was one of the greatest joy. “At last I shall be able to look
at her for a whole evening. They say she has grown very pale.” And he
tried to fancy how that lovely head must look, with all its tints dulled
by the struggle that had passed within its owner’s soul. His faithful
Ludovico, quite alarmed by what he called his master’s madness, secured,
though with much difficulty, a box on the fourth tier, almost opposite
the marchesa’s. An idea occurred to Fabrizio. “I hope I may put it into
her head to come and listen to my sermon, and I will choose a very small
church, so that I may be able to see her well.” Fabrizio usually preached
at three o’clock. Early in the morning of the day on which the marchesa
was to go to the theatre he announced that as some duty connected with
his office would keep him at the archiepiscopal palace the whole day
long, he would preach, as an exception, at half past eight, that night,
in the little Church of Santa Maria della Visitazione, which stood just
opposite one of the wings of the Palazzo Crescenzi. He sent Ludovico
to the Nuns of the Visitation with an enormous quantity of tapers, and
begged them to light their church up brilliantly. He obtained a whole
company of grenadiers of the guard, and a sentry, with fixed bayonet,
was set on each chapel, to prevent any thieving. His sermon was not to
begin until half past eight, but at two o’clock in the day the church
was completely filled. My readers will conceive what a stir there was in
the usually quiet street overlooked by the noble outlines of the Palazzo
Crescenzi. Fabrizio had given out that, in honour of Our Lady of Pity,
his subject would be the pity which a generous heart should feel for a
person in misfortune, even if that person be a guilty one.
Disguised with every possible care, Fabrizio entered his box at the
theatre as soon as the doors were opened, and before it was lighted up.
Toward eight o’clock the performance began, and a few minutes afterward
he experienced a joy which no one who has not felt it can conceive.
He saw the door of the Crescenzi box open, and very soon the marchesa
entered it. He had not obtained such a good view of her since the day
when she had given him her fan. Fabrizio thought he would have choked
with joy. His sensations were so extraordinary that he said to himself:
“Perhaps I am going to die. What a blessed ending to my sad life!
Perhaps I shall fall down in this box. The good people waiting for me in
the Church of the Visitation will wait in vain, and to-morrow they will
hear their future archbishop has been found in an opera box, disguised as
a servant, and dressed in livery. Farewell, then, to all my reputation!
And what care I for my reputation?”
However, toward a quarter to nine Fabrizio made a great effort, and
leaving his box on the fourth tier, he proceeded on foot, and with the
greatest difficulty, to the place where he was to change his undress
livery for more appropriate habiliments. He did not reach the Church of
the Visitation till near nine o’clock, and then, so white and weak did
he appear, that a report spread through the church that the coadjutor
would not be able to preach that night. My readers will imagine all the
attentions that were lavished on him by the nuns, through the grating
of their inner parlour, in which he had taken refuge. The good ladies
talked a great deal. Fabrizio asked them to leave him alone for a few
minutes, and then he hurried off to his pulpit. One of his faithful
adherents had told him, about three o’clock, that the church was quite
full, but full of people of the lowest class, apparently attracted by
the sight of the lighted tapers. When Fabrizio entered the pulpit he was
agreeably surprised to find all the chairs occupied by young people of
fashion, and older ones holding the most important positions in the city.
He began his sermon with a few apologetic sentences, which were received
with suppressed exclamations of admiration. Then came a passionate
description of the unhappy being whom all men must pity if they would
worthily honour the Madonna of Pity, who herself suffered so sorely upon
earth. The orator was very much agitated; at times he could hardly speak
so as to make himself heard in the far corners of the little church. In
the eyes of all the women, and many of the men, his own excessive pallor
made him look like the unhappy being they were called upon to pity. A
very few minutes after the words of excuse with which his sermon opened,
his audience perceived that he was not in his ordinary condition. His
sadness, that evening, was deeper and more tender than it generally was;
at one moment tears were visible in his eyes, and the whole audience
broke into a sob, so loud that it quite interrupted his discourse.
This first interruption was followed by half a score. There were cries of
admiration, bursts of tears, and incessant exclamations, such as “O Holy
Madonna!” “O great God!” So general and so inexpressible was the emotion
of this select audience, that nobody was ashamed to cry out, and the
people who did so were not considered ridiculous by their neighbours.
During the rest which is usually taken in the middle of a sermon,
Fabrizio was told that not a soul remained in the theatre. Only one lady,
the Marchesa Crescenzi, was still in her box. During this interval of
rest, a great noise suddenly rose in the building; the faithful were
voting a statue to the coadjutor. The reception of the later half of his
discourse was so extraordinary, and unrestrained outbursts of Christian
repentance were so frequently replaced by exclamations of admiration
which were utterly profane, that before he left the pulpit he felt
himself obliged to address a sort of reprimand to his auditors. Whereupon
every one walked out of the church in a sedate and formal manner, and,
once the street was reached, indulged in an outburst of fervent applause,
and shouts of “Evviva del Dongo!”
Fabrizio hastily looked at his watch, and rushed to a little grated
window which lighted the narrow passage from the organ to the convent. As
a civility to the incredible and unusual crowd which filled the street,
the porter of the Palazzo Crescenzi had garnished the iron hands which we
often see projecting from the walls of palaces built in the middle ages,
with a dozen torches. After a few moments, and long before the shouting
had ceased, the event which Fabrizio was awaiting with so much anxiety
occurred—the marchesa’s carriage, bringing her back from the theatre,
appeared in the street. The coachman was obliged to pull up, and it was
only at a foot’s pace and by dint of much shouting that he was able to
bring the vehicle to the door.
The marchesa’s heart, like that of any person in sorrow, had been
touched by the noble music. But the utter solitude of the theatre, once
she had learned its cause, had affected her far more. In the middle
of the second act, and while the splendid tenor was on the stage, even
the people in the pit had suddenly left their seats to go and try their
chance of getting inside the Church of the Visitation. When the crowd
stopped the marchesa before she could get to her own door, she broke into
tears. “I had not chosen ill!” said she to herself.
But just on account of this moment of emotion, she steadily repulsed
the suggestions of the marchese, and all the _habitués_ of the house,
who could not conceive why she did not go to hear such an astonishing
preacher. “Why,” they cried, “he triumphs over the finest tenor in Italy!”
“If I once see him I am lost!” said the marchesa to herself.
In vain did Fabrizio, whose powers seemed to grow more brilliant every
day, preach again, several times over, in the little church near the
Palazzo Crescenzi. He never beheld Clelia, who, indeed, ended by being
seriously vexed, at last, by his affectation in coming to disturb her
quiet street, after having driven her out of her garden.
Fabrizio, as his eyes ran over the faces of the women listening to him,
had for some time noticed a very pretty dark-complexioned countenance,
and a pair of eyes that blazed. These splendid eyes were generally
swimming in tears by the time he had reached the eighth or tenth sentence
in his sermon. When Fabrizio was obliged to say things that were lengthy
and wearisome to himself, he was rather fond of looking at this pretty
head, the youth of which attracted him. He found out that the young lady
was called Annetta Marini, the only child and heiress of the richest
clothier in Parma, who had died some months previously.
Soon the name of Annetta Marini was on every one’s lips. She had fallen
desperately in love with Fabrizio. When these wonderful sermons had
begun, it had been already settled that she was to marry Giacomo Rassi,
the eldest son of the Minister of Justice, a young man who had appeared
by no means displeasing to her. But when she had heard Monsignore
Fabrizio preach twice, she vowed she would not marry at all, and when
she was asked the reason of this strange alteration, she replied that it
was not worthy of any honest girl to marry one man when she felt she was
desperately in love with another. At first her family vainly sought to
discover who that other might be.
But the scalding tears Annetta shed during Fabrizio’s sermons put them
on the track. When her mother and uncles asked her whether she loved
Monsignore Fabrizio, she answered boldly, that, as the truth had been
found out, she would not soil herself by telling a lie. She added that
as she had no hope of marrying the man she adored, she was at all events
resolved her eyes should no longer be offended by the sight of young
Count Rassi’s ridiculous figure. Within two days the scorn thus cast on
the son of a man who was the envy of the entire middle class was the talk
of the whole town. Annetta Marini’s answer was reckoned delightful, and
every soul repeated it. It was talked of at the Palazzo Crescenzi, as
everywhere else.
Clelia took good care never to open her lips on such a subject in her
drawing-room. But she questioned her waiting-woman, and on the following
Sunday, after she had heard mass in the chapel within her palace, she
took her waiting-woman with her in her carriage, and went to a second
mass in the Signorina Marini’s parish church. Here she found all the fine
gentlemen in the town, attracted by the same object. They were standing
round the door. Soon a great stir among them convinced the marchesa that
Signorina Marini was entering the church. From the place she occupied she
could see her very well, and, pious though she was, she did not pay very
much attention to the mass. Clelia thought this middle-class beauty wore
a resolute look, which to her mind would only have been appropriate in a
married woman of several years’ standing. Otherwise her figure and waist
were admirably neat; and her eyes, as they say in Lombardy, seemed to
hold conversations with everything they looked at.
Before mass was over the marchesa slipped out.
The very next day the _habitués_ of the Palazzo Crescenzi, who came
there every evening, were retailing another story of Annetta Marini’s
absurdities. As her mother, fearing she might do something foolish, kept
her very short of money, Annetta had gone to see the famous painter
Hayez, who was then at Parma, decorating the drawing-room of the Palazzo
Crescenzi, and had offered him a magnificent diamond ring given her by
her father if he would paint her Monsignore del Dongo’s picture. But she
desired the monsignore might be represented in ordinary black, and not in
priestly garb. Consequently, on the previous evening, the fair Annetta’s
mother had been greatly surprised and sorely scandalized at discovering a
splendid picture of Fabrizio del Dongo, in the finest gold frame that had
been gilded at Parma for the last twenty years, in her daughter’s chamber.
[6] Raised in a frown from intensity of search.