The instructions given by the Minister to the neophyte who is to return
to Parma only as a _Monsignore_, in violet stockings, and whom he sends
to Naples to complete his studies with letters of recommendation to the
Archbishop there, one of his clever friends; these instructions, given
in the Duchessa's drawing-room, during a game of cards, are admirable. A
single quotation will show you the fineness of the perceptions, the
science of life which the author gives to this great character.
"Believe or not, as you choose, what they teach you, _but never raise
any objection_. Imagine that they are teaching you the rules of the game
of whist; would you raise any objection to the rules of whist? And once
you knew and had adopted those rules, would you not wish to win? Do not
fall into the vulgar habit of speaking with horror of Voltaire, Diderot,
Raynal and all those harebrained Frenchmen who have brought us that
foolish government by Two Chambers. Speak of them with a calm irony,
they are people who have long since been refuted. You will be forgiven a
little amorous intrigue, if it is done in the proper way, but they would
take note of your objections: age stifles intrigue but encourages doubt.
Believe everything, do not yield to the temptation to shine; be morose:
discerning eyes will see your cleverness in yours and it will be time
enough to be witty when you are an Archbishop!"
The astonishing and fine superiority of Mosca is never lacking, either
in action or in speech; it makes this book one as profound, from page to
page, as the _Maxims_ of La Rochefoucauld. And observe that their
passion leads the Conte and Duchessa to make mistakes, they are obliged
to bring their talent into play to atone for them. To another man who
had consulted him, the Conte would have explained the misfortunes that
would await him at Parma after the death of Ernesto IV. But his passion
has made him completely blind to his own interests. Talent alone can
make you discover this poignant touch of comedy for yourself. Great
politicians are nothing more, after all, than equilibrists who, if they
do not take care, see their finest edifice come crashing to the ground.
Richelieu was only saved from his peril, on the Day of the Dupes, by the
broth of the Queen Mother, who refused to go to Saint-Germain without
having taken the _lait de poule_ which preserved her complexion. The
Duchessa and Mosca live by a perpetual expenditure of all their
faculties; and so the reader who follows the spectacle of their life is
kept in a trance, through chapter after chapter, so well are the
difficulties of this existence set before him, so cleverly are they
explained. Finally, let us note well, these crises, these terrible
scenes are woven into the substance of the book: the flowers are not
stitched on, they are of the same substance as the rest.
"We must keep our love secret," the Duchessa says sadly to her lover, on
the day on which she has guessed that his struggle with the Prince has
begun.
When, to outact his acting, she lets Ernesto IV gather that she is only
moderately in love with the Conte, she gives him a day of happiness; but
the Prince is shrewd, he sees sooner or later that he has been tricked.
And his disappointment adds violence to the storm brought about by her
ill-wishers.
This great work could not have been conceived or executed save by a man
of fifty, in the full vigour of his age and in the maturity of all his
talents. One sees perfection in every detail. The character of the
Prince is drawn by the hand of a master, and is, as I have told you,
_The Prince_. One conceives him admirably, as a man and as sovereign.
This man might be at the head of the Russian Empire, he would be capable
of ruling it, he would be great; but the man would remain what he is,
liable to vanity, to jealousy, to passion. In the seventeenth-century,
at Versailles, he would be Louis XIV and would avenge himself on the
Duchessa, as did Louis XIV on Fouquet. Criticism can find no fault in
the greatest or in the smallest character; they are all what they ought
to be. There is life and especially the life of courts, not drawn in
caricature, as Hoffmann has tried to draw it, but seriously and
ironically. Finally, this book explains to you admirably all that Louis
XIII's _camarilla_ made Richelieu suffer. This work applied to vast
interests like those of the cabinet of Louis XIV, of Pitt's cabinet, of
Napoleon's cabinet or of the Russian cabinet, would have been impossible
owing to the prolixities and explanations which so many veiled interests
would have required; whereas you get a comprehensive view of the State
of Parma; and Parma enables you to understand, _mutato nomine_, the
intrigues of the most exalted court. Things were like this tinder the
Borgia Pope, at the court of Tiberius, at the court of Philip II: they
must be like this also at the court of Peking!
Let us enter into the terrible Italian drama which has been slowly and
logically preparing itself in a charming manner. I spare you the details
of the court and its original figures; the Princess who thinks it her
duty to be unhappy, because the Prince has his Pompadour; the Heir
Apparent who is kept caged; the Princess Isotta, the Chamberlain, the
Minister of the Interior, the Governor of the Citadel, Fabio Conti. One
cannot afford to take the least thing lightly. If, like the Duchessa,
Fabrizio and Mosca, you accept the court of Parma, you play your game of
whist and your interests are at stake. When the Prime Minister thinks
that he has fallen from power, he says quite seriously:
"When our guests have gone, we can decide on a way of barricading
ourselves for the night; the best plan would be to set off while they're
dancing for your place at Sacca, by the Po, from where in twenty minutes
one can get into Austria."
Indeed the Duchessa, the Minister, every Parmesan subject is liable to
end his days in the citadel.
When the Prince confesses his desires to the Duchessa and she in reply
asks him:
"How should we ever lode Mosca in the face again, that man of genius and
heart?"
"I have thought of that," says the Prince: "we should never look him in
the face again! The citadel waits."
The Sanseverina does not fail to repeat this saying to Mosca, who puts
his affairs in order.
Four years elapse.
The Minister, who has not allowed Fabrizio to come to Parma during these
four years, permits him to reappear there when the Pope has created him
Monsignore, a kind of dignity which entitles him to wear violet
stockings. Fabrizio has nobly answered the expectations of his political
master. At Naples he has had mistresses, he has had the passion for
archeology, he has sold his horses to make excavations, he has behaved
well, he has aroused no jealousy, he may become Pope. What delights him
most about his return to Parma is the thought of being delivered from
the attentions of the charming Duchessa d'A----. His governor, who has
made him an educated man, receives a Cross and a pension. Fabrizio's
first appearance at Parma, his arrival, his various presentations at
court, form the highest comedy of manners, character and intrigue that
one can read anywhere. At more than one point, the better class of
reader will lay down this book on his table to say to himself:
"Heavens! How good this is, how exquisitely arranged, how deep!"
He will meditate upon words like the following, for instance, upon which
Princes ought to meditate well for their own good: _People with brains
who are born on the throne or at the foot of it soon lose all fineness
of touch; they proscribe, in their immediate circle, freedom of
conversation which seems to them coarseness, they refuse to look at
anything but masks and pretend to judge the beauty of complexions; the
amusing part of it is that they imagine their touch to be of the
finest_.
Here begin the Duchessa's ingenuous passion for Fabrizio, and Mosca's
torments. Fabrizio is a diamond that has lost nothing by being polished.
Gina, who had sent him to Naples a devil-may-care young rough-rider,
whose horsewhip seemed to be an inherent part of his person, sees him
now with a noble and confident bearing before strangers, and in private
the same fire of youth.
"This nephew," Mosca tells his mistress, "is made to adorn all the
exalted posts." But the great diplomat, attentive at first to Fabrizio,
turns to look at the Duchessa and notices _a curious look in her eyes_.
"I am in my fifties," he reflects.
The Duchessa is so happy that she does not give the Conte a thought.
This profound effect, made on Mosca by a single glance, is irremediable.
When Ranuccio-Ernesto IV guesses that the aunt loves the nephew a little
more warmly than the laws of consanguinity permit, which at Parma is
incest, he is at the pinnacle of happiness. He writes his Minister an
anonymous letter on the subject. When he is sure that Mosca has read it,
he sends for him, without giving him time to call first on the Duchessa,
and keeps him on the rack throughout a conversation full of princely
friendliness and hypocrisy. Certainly the pangs of love causing a fine
heart to bleed always make an effective scene; but this heart is
Italian, this is the heart of a man of genius, and I know nothing that
grips me so as the chapter on Mosca's jealousy.
Fabrizio does not love his aunt; he adores her as an aunt, she inspires
no longing in him as a woman; nevertheless, in their Conversations, a
gesture, a word may make youth break out, the least thing may then make
his aunt leave Parma, because riches, honours are nothing to her who,
once already, before the eyes of all Milan, has managed to live on a
third floor, with an income of fifteen hundred francs. The future
Archbishop sees an abyss open before him. The Prince is as happy as a
king, while waiting for a catastrophe to destroy the private happiness
of his dear Minister. Mosca, the great Mosca, weeps like a child. The
prudence of this dear Fabrizio, who understands Mosca and understands
his aunt, prevents any disaster. The Monsignore makes himself fall in
love with a little Marietta, an actress of the lowest grade, a columbine
who has her harlequin, a certain Giletti, formerly one of Napoleon's
dragoons, and a fencing master, a man horrible in mind and body, who
devours Marietta, beats her, steals her blue shawls and all her
earnings.
Mosca breathes again. The Prince is uneasy, his prey is escaping, he
could hold the Sanseverina by her nephew, and now the nephew turns out a
profound politician! In spite of Marietta, the Duchessa's passion is so
artless, her familiarities are so dangerous, that Fabrizio, to restore
tranquillity, proposes to the Conte, who also is an antiquarian and is
engaged on excavations, to go down to the country and superintend the
work. The Minister adores Fabrizio. The company which includes Marietta,
her _mammaccia_--a figure drawn in four pages with an astounding truth
and depth of character--and Giletti, the whole motley crew, leave Parma.
This trio, Giletti, the _mammaccia_ and Marietta come along the road
while Fabrizio is shooting. There follows an encounter between the
dragoon, who seeks, in an access of Italian vanity, to kill the
_black-frock_, and Fabrizio, who is amazed at seeing Marietta on the
road. This accidental duel becomes serious when Fabrizio sees that
Giletti, who has only one eye, is trying to disfigure him: he kills him.
Giletti was plainly the aggressor, the workmen engaged on the
excavations saw everything, Fabrizio realises all the capital that the
Raversi faction and the Liberals will make out of this ridiculous
adventure against himself, the Ministers, his aunt; he takes flight, he
crosses the Po. Thanks to the clever assistance of Lodovico, an old
servant of the Sanseverina household, a fellow who writes sonnets, he
finds shelter and reaches Bologna, where he sees Marietta again.
Lodovico becomes fanatically attached to Fabrizio. This retired coachman
is one of the most complete of the figures of the second magnitude.
Fabrizio's flight, the scenery by the Po, the descriptions of famous
places through which the young prelate passes, his adventures during his
exile from Parma, his correspondence with the Archbishop, another
character admirably drawn, the smallest details are of a literary
execution that bears the hall-mark of genius. And all is so Italian as
to make one take the coach and fly to Italy, there to seek this drama
and this poetry. The reader becomes Fabrizio.
During this absence, Fabrizio goes to revisit his native scenes, the
Lake of Como and the paternal castle, despite the dangers of his
position with regard to Austria, at that time very strict. We are in
1821, a time when a passport was not to be treated lightly. The prelate
recognised as Fabrizio del Dongo may be sent to the Spielberg. In this
part of the book the author completes the portrait of a fine head, that
of a Priore Blanès, a simple village curate, who adores Fabrizio and
cultivates the study of judicial astrology. This portrait is done so
seriously, there shines from it so great a faith in the occult sciences,
that the satire of which those sciences--to which we shall return and
which do not rest, as has been supposed, upon false foundations--might
naturally be the object dies away on the lips of the incredulous. I do
not know what the author's opinion may be, but he justifies that of the
Priore Blanès. Priore Blanès is a character who is true in Italy. The
truth of him can be felt, just as one can tell whether one of Titian's
heads is the portrait of a Venetian gentleman or a fancy.
The Prince orders the preparation of the case against Fabrizio, and in
this task the genius of Rassi is revealed. The Fiscal General sends the
witnesses for the defence out of the country, purchases evidence for the
prosecution, and, as he impudently informs the Prince, produces out of
this foolish affair--the death inflicted on a Giletti by a del Dongo, in
self-defence, by a del Dongo who had received the first blow!--a
sentence of detention for twenty years in the fortress. The Prince would
have liked a death sentence, in order to exercise clemency and so
humiliate the Sanseverina.
"But," says Rassi, "I have done better than that, I have broken his
neck, his career is barred to him for ever. The Vatican can do nothing
more for a murderer."
So the Prince holds the Sanseverina in his clutches at last! Ah! It is
then that the Duchessa becomes superb, that the court of Parma is
agitated, that the lights go up on the drama, which assumes gigantic
proportions. One of the finest scenes in modern fiction is, certainly,
that in which the Sanseverina comes to pay her farewell to the Sovereign
and presents him with an ultimatum. The scene of Elizabeth, Amy and
Leicester in _Kenilworth_ is no greater, more dramatic nor more
terrible. The tiger is braved in his den: the serpent is caught, in vain
does he writhe his coils and beg for pity, the woman crushes him. Gina
desires, dictates, obtains from the Prince a rescript annulling the
proceedings. She does not seek a pardon, the Prince will state that the
proceedings are unjust and shall have no consequences in the future,
which is an absurd thing to expect of an absolute Sovereign. This
absurdity she demands, she obtains it. Mosca is magnificent in this
scene where the lovers are alternately saved, lost, in peril for a
gesture, a word, a glance!
In every walk of life, artists have an invincible self-respect, a sense
of their art, a professional conscience which is ineradicable from the
man. One does not corrupt, one never succeeds in buying this conscience.
The actor who wishes most harm to his theatre or to an author will never
play a part badly. The chemist, called in to look for arsenic in a body,
will find it if there is any there. The writer, the painter, are always
faithful to their genius, even at the foot of the scaffold. This does
not exist in woman. The universe is the stepping-stone of her passion.
And so woman is greater and finer than man in this respect. Woman is
passion; man is action. If this were not so, man would not adore woman.
And so it is in the social circle of the court, which gives the greatest
flight to her passion, that woman sheds her most brilliant radiance. Her
finest stage is the world of Absolute Power. That is why there are no
longer any women in France. Now Conte Mosca suppresses, from a trace of
ministerial self-respect, in the Prince's rescript, the words on which
the Duchessa depends. The Prince imagines that his Minister considers
him before the Sanseverina, and casts a glance at him which the reader
intercepts. Mosca, like a true statesman, will not countersign a stupid
thing, that is all: the Prince is mistaken. In the intoxication of her
triumph, rejoicing that she has saved Fabrizio, the Duchessa, who trusts
in Mosca, does not peruse the rescript. She was thought to be ruined,
she had made all preparations for her departure in the face of Parma,
she returns from the court having effected a revolution. Mosca was
thought to be in disgrace. Fabrizio's sentence was taken as an insult by
the Prince to the Duchessa and Minister. Not at all, the Raversi is
banished. The Prince laughs, he is holding his vengeance in reserve:
this woman who has humiliated him, he is going to make die of grief.
The Marchesa Raversi, instead of composing Ovidian _Tristia_, like
everyone who is banished from a court where he or she handled the reins
of power, sets to work. She guesses what has happened in the Prince's
cabinet, she extracts his secrets from Rassi, who allows her to do so;
he is aware of the Prince's intentions. The Marchesa has some letters
written by the Duchessa, she sends her lover to the galleys at Genoa to
get a letter forged from the Duchessa to Fabrizio, telling him of her
triumph, and appointing a meeting at her country house. Sacca, close to
the Po, a delicious spot where the Duchessa always spends the summer.
Poor Fabrizio hastens there, he is caught, they put handcuffs on him, he
is shut up in the citadel, and while they are shutting him up, he
recognises the daughter of the governor, Fabio Conti, the lovely and
sublime Clelia, for whom he is to feel that eternal love that gives no
respite.
Fabrizio del Dongo, her nephew, he whom she adores, in the most
honourable fashion, in the citadel! . . . Imagine the Duchessa's
feelings! She learns of Mosca's mistake. She will not see Mosca again.
There is only Fabrizio now in the world! Once inside that terrible
fortress, he may die there, die there by poison!
This is the Prince's system: a fortnight of terror, a fortnight of hope.
And he will handle this fiery steed, this proud soul, this Sanseverina
whose triumphs and happiness, though necessary to the brilliance of his
court, were insulting to his inner man. Played on in this way, the
Sanseverina will become thin, old and ugly: he will knead her like
dough.
This terrible duel in which the Duchessa has inflicted the first wound,
piercing her adversary to the heart but without killing him, in which
she will receive for the next year a fresh wound daily, is the most
powerful thing that the genius of the modern novel has invented.
Let us turn now to Fabrizio in prison, and so come to my analysis of
that chapter, which is one of the diamonds on this crown.
The episode of the robbers in Lewis's _Monk_, his _Anaconda_, which is
his best book, the interest of the last volumes by Mrs. Radcliffe, the
thrilling vicissitudes in the Red Indian romances of Cooper, all the
extraordinary things I know in the narratives of travels and prisoners,
none of these can compare with the confinement of Fabrizio in the
fortress of Parma, three hundred and something feet above the ground.
This terrifying abode is a Vaucluse: he makes love there to Clelia, he
is happy there, he displays the ingenuity of prisoners, and he prefers
his prison to the most enchanting spot that the world has to offer. The
Bay of Naples is beautiful only through the eyes of Lamartine's Elvire;
but, in the eyes of a Clelia, in the trills of her voice, there are
whole universes. The author depicts, as he knows how to depict, by
little incidents which have the eloquence of Shakespearean action, the
progress of the love between these two fair creatures, amid the dangers
of an imminent death by poison. This part of the book will be read with
halting breath, straining throat, avid eyes by all those readers who
have imagination, or simply hearts. Everything in it is perfect, rapid,
real, without any improbability or strain. There you find passion in all
its glory, its rendings, its hopes, its melancholies, its returns, its
abatements, its inspirations, the only ones that equal those of genius.
Nothing has been forgotten. You will read there an encyclopædia of all
the resources of the prisoner; his marvellous languages for which he
makes use of nature, the means by which he gives life to a song and
meaning to a sound. Read in prison, this book is capable of killing a
prisoner, or of making him tunnel through his walls.
While Fabrizio is inspiring love and feeling it, during the most
engrossing scenes of the drama inside the prison, there is, you must
understand, a fight to the death going on outside the fortress. The
Prince, the governor, Rassi, attempt to poison him. Fabrizio's death is
determined upon at a moment when the Prince's vanity is mortally
wounded. The charming Clelia, the most delicious figure you could see in
a dream, then reveals the extent of her love by helping Fabrizio to
escape, although his rescuers have nearly killed her father, the
General.
At this crisis in the book, we understand all the incidents that have
gone before. Without those adventures in which we have seen the people,
in which we have watched them acting, nothing would be intelligible,
everything would seem false and impossible.
Let us return to the Duchessa. The courtiers, the Raversi party triumph
in the griefs of this noble woman. Her calm is killing the Prince, and
no one can explain it to him. Mosca himself does not understand it.
Here, we see that Mosca, great as he is, is inferior to this woman who,
at this moment, seems to you to be the genius of Italy. Profound is her
dissimulation, bold are her plans. As for her revenge, it will be
complete. The Prince has been too greatly offended, she sees him
implacable: between them, the duel is to the death; but the Duchessa's
vengeance would be impotent, imperfect, if she allowed Ranuccio-Ernesto
IV to take Fabrizio from her by poison. Fabrizio must be set at liberty.
This attempt seems literally impossible to every reader, so carefully
has tyranny taken its precautions, so deeply has it involved the
governor, Fabio Conti, whose honour is at stake if he does not guard his
prisoners.
There is in this man something of Hudson Lowe, but of a Hudson Lowe
magnified to the tenth degree; he is Italian, and wishes to avenge the
Raversi for the disgrace that the Duchessa has brought on her. Gina
fears nothing. This is why:
"The lover thinks more often of penetrating to his mistress's chamber
than the husband of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of
escaping than the gaoler of shutting his door; therefore, in spite of
the obstacles in their way, the lover and the prisoner must succeed in
the end."
She will help him! Oh, what a fine painting of this Italian in despair,
who cannot flee from this abhorrent court! "Come," she says to herself,
"_forward, unhappy woman_" (we weep as we read this great feminine
utterance), "do your duty, pretend to forget Fabrizio!" "_Forget him_!"
the word saves her: she has not been able to shed a tear until this
word. Then the Duchessa conspires, she conspires with the Prime
Minister, whom she has ostensibly banished in disgrace, but who would
set Parma on fire and deluge it with blood for her, who would kill
everyone, the Prince even. This true lover realises that he is in the
wrong, he is the most wretched of men. Alas! What a feeble excuse! He
did not believe his master to be so false, so cowardly, so cruel. And so
he admits that his mistress is entitled to be implacable. He finds it
natural that Fabrizio should be, at this moment, everything in the world
to her, he has that weakness of great men for their mistresses which
leads them to understand even the infidelity which may mean their death.
The enamoured veteran is sublime! He says but one word to himself, in
the scene when Gina has made him come to her for their rupture. A single
night has ravaged the Duchessa.
"Great God!" exclaims Mosca to himself, "she looks all her forty years
to-day!"
What a book is this in which one finds these cries of passion, these
profound diplomatic sayings, and on every page. Note this as well: you
will not meet in this book those extra flourishes, so aptly named
_tartines_. No, the characters act, reflect, feel, and always the drama
sweeps on. Never does the poet, a dramatist in his ideas, stoop in his
path to pick the smallest flower, everything has the rapidity of a
dithyramb.
Let us proceed! The Duchessa is ravishing in her admissions to Mosca,
and sublime in her despair. Finding her so changed, he supposes her to
be ill, and wishes to send for Razori, the leading doctor in Parma and
in Italy.
"Is that the counsel of a traitor or of a friend?" she asks. "You wish
to convey to a stranger the measure of my despair!"
"I am lost," thinks the Conte, "she no longer includes me even among the
common men of honour."
"Bear in mind," the Duchessa tells him with the most imperious air,
"that I am not distressed by the capture of Fabrizio, that I have not
the least shadow of a desire to go away, that I am full of respect for
the Prince. As for yourself: I intend to have the entire control of my
own behaviour, I wish to part from you as an old and good friend.
Consider that I have reached sixty, the young woman is dead. With
Fabrizio in prison, I am incapable of love. Finally, I should be the
unhappiest woman in the world were I to compromise your future. If you
see me making a show of having a young lover, do not let yourself be
distressed by that. I can swear to you, by Fabrizio's future happiness,
that I have never been guilty of the slightest infidelity towards you,
and that in five whole years . . . that is a long time!" she says,
trying to smile. "I swear to you that I have never either planned or
wished such a thing. Now you understand that, leave me."
The Conte goes, he spends two days and two nights in thought.
"Great heavens!" he at length exclaims, "the Duchessa never said a word
to me about an escape; can she have been wanting in sincerity for once
in her life, and is the motive of her quarrel only a desire that I
should betray the Prince? No sooner said than done."
Did I not tell you that this book was a masterpiece, and can you not see
it for yourself, merely from this rough analysis?
The Minister, after this discovery, treads the ground as if he were a
boy of fifteen, takes a new lease of life. He is going to seduce Rassi
from the Prince, and make him his own creature.
"Rassi," he says to himself, "is paid by his master to carry out the
sentences that disgrace us throughout Europe, but he will not refuse to
let himself be paid by me to betray his master's secrets. He has a
mistress and a confessor. The mistress is of so low an order that the
market woman would know the whole story by to-morrow morning."
He goes to say his prayers at the cathedral and to find the Archbishop.
"What sort of man is Dugnani, the Vicar of San Paolo?" he asks him.
"A small mind with great ambition, few scruples and extreme poverty; for
we too have our vices!" says the Archbishop, raising his eyes to heaven.
The Minister cannot help laughing at the analytical depth reached by
true piety combined with honesty. He sends for the priest and says to
him only:
"You direct the conscience of my friend the Fiscal General; are you sure
he has nothing to tell me?"
The Conte is prepared to stake everything: there is only one thing that
he wishes to know, the moment at which Fabrizio will be in danger of
death, and he does not propose to interfere with the Duchessa's plans.
His interview with Rassi is a capital scene. This is how the Conte
begins, adopting the tone of the most lofty impertinence:
"What, sir, you carry off from Bologna a conspirator who is under my
protection; more than that, you propose to cut off his head, and you say
nothing to me about it. Do you know the name of my successor? Is it
General Conti or yourself?"
The Minister and Fiscal agree upon a plan which allows them to retain
their respective positions. I must leave to you the pleasure of reading
the admirable details of this continuous web in which the author drives
a hundred characters abreast without being more embarrassed than a
skilful coachman is by the reins of a ten-horse coach. Everything is in
its place, there is not the slightest confusion. You see everything, the
town and the court. The drama is amazing in its skill, its execution,
its clearness. The air plays over the picture, not a character is
superfluous. Lodovico, who on many occasions has proved that he is an
honest Figaro, is the Duchessa's right arm. He plays a fine part, he
will be well rewarded.
The time has now come to speak to you of one of the subordinate
characters who is shown in colossal proportions, and to whom frequent
reference is made in the book, namely Ferrante Palla, a Liberal doctor
under sentence of death who is wandering through Italy, where he
performs his task of propaganda.
Ferrante Palla is a great poet, like Silvio Pellico, but he is what
Pellico is not, a Radical Republican. Let us not concern ourselves with
the faith of this man. He has faith, he is the Saint Paul of the
Republic, a martyr of Young Italy, he is a sublime work of art like the
_Saint Bartholomew_ at Milan, like Foyatier's _Spartacus_, like Marius
pondering over the ruins of Carthage. Everything that he does,
everything that he says is sublime. He has the conviction, the grandeur,
the passion of the believer. However high you may place, in execution,
in conception, in reality, the Prince, the Minister, the Duchessa,
Ferrante Palla, this superb statue, set in a corner of the picture,
commands your gaze, compels your admiration. In spite of your opinions,
constitutional, monarchical or religious, he subjugates you. Greater
than his own misfortunes, preaching Italy from the hollow shelter of his
caves, without bread for his mistress and their five children;
committing highway robbery to maintain them, and keeping a note of the
sums stolen and the persons robbed so as to restore to them this forced
loan to the Republic when he shall have the power to do so; stealing
moreover in order to print his pamphlets entitled: _The necessity for a
budget in Italy_! Ferrante Palla is the type of a family of minds to be
found in Italy, sincere but misguided, full of talent but ignorant of
the fatal results of their doctrine. Send them with plenty of gold to
France and to the United States, as Ministers of Absolute Princes!
Instead of persecuting them, let them acquire enlightenment, these true
men, full of great and exquisite qualities. They will say like Alfieri
in 1793: "Little men, at work, reconcile me to the great."
I praise with all the more enthusiasm this creation of Ferrante Palla,
having caressed the same figure myself. If I have the trifling advantage
over M. Beyle of priority, I am inferior to him in execution. I have
perceived this inward drama, so great, so powerful, of the stern and
conscientious Republican in love with a Duchess who holds to Absolute
Power. My Michel Chrestien, in love with the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
could not stand out with the relief of Ferrante Palla, a lover after the
style of Petrarch of the Duchessa Sanseverina. Italy and its customs,
Italy and its scenery, the perils, the starvation of Ferrante Palla are
far more attractive than the meagre details of Parisian civilisation.
Although Michel Chrestien dies at Saint-Merry and Ferrante Palla escapes
to the United States after his crimes, Italian passion is far superior
to French passion, and the events of this episode add to their Apennine
savour an interest with which it is useless to compete. In a period when
everything is levelled more easily under the uniform of the National
Guard and the _Bourgeois_ law than under the steel triangle of the
Republic, literature is essentially lacking, in France, in those great
obstacles between lovers which used to be the source of fresh beauties,
of new situations, and which made subjects dramatic. And so it was
difficult for the serious paradox of the passion of a Radical for a
great lady to escape trained pens.
In no book, unless it be _Old Mortality_, is there to be found a figure
of an energy comparable to that which M. Beyle has given to Ferrante
Palla, whose name exercises a sort of compulsion over the imagination.
Between Balfour of Burley and Ferrante Palla, I have no hesitation, I
choose Ferrante Palla; the design is the same; but Walter Scott, great
colourist as he may be, has not the thrilling, warm colour, as of
Titian, which M. Beyle has spread over his character. Ferrante Palla is
a whole poem in himself, a poem superior to Lord Byron's _Corsair_. "Ah!
That is how people love!" is what all M. Beyle's feminine readers will
say to themselves on reading this sublime and most reprehensible
episode.
Ferrante Palla has the most impenetrable of retreats in the
neighbourhood of Sacca. He has often seen the Duchessa, he has fallen
passionately in love with her. The Duchessa has met him, has been moved.
Ferrante Palla has told her everything, as though in the presence of
God. He knows that the Duchessa loves Mosca, his own love therefore is
hopeless. There is something touching in the Italian grace with which
the Duchessa lets him give himself the pleasure of kissing the white
hands of a woman with blue blood. He has not clasped a white hand for
seven years, and this poet adores beautiful white hands. His mistress,
whom he no longer loves, does the heavy work, makes clothes for the
children, and he cannot desert a woman who will not leave him,
notwithstanding the most appalling poverty. These obligations of an
honest man become apparent. The Duchessa has compassion for everything,
like a true Madonna. She has offered him his pardon! Ah, but Ferrante
Palla has, like Carl Sand, his own little sentences to enforce; he has
his preaching, his journeyings to rekindle the zeal of Young Italy.
"All those scoundrels, who do so much harm to the people, would live for
long years," he says, "and whose fault would that be? What would my
father say when I meet him in heaven!"
She then proposes to provide for the needs of the woman and her
children, and give him an undiscoverable hiding-place in the _palazzo_
Sanseverina.
The _palazzo_ Sanseverina includes an immense reservoir, built in the
middle ages with a view to prolonged sieges, and capable of supplying
the town with water for a year. Part of the _palazzo_ is built over this
immense structure. The dapple-grey Duca spent the night after their
marriage in telling his wife the secret of the reservoir and of its
hiding-place. An enormous stone which moves on a pivot will let all the
water escape and flood the streets of Parma. In one of the thick walls
of the reservoir there is a chamber without light and without much air,
which no one would ever suspect; you would have to pull down the
reservoir to find it.
Ferrante Palla accepts the hiding-place for evil days, and refuses the
Duchessa's money; he has made a vow never to have more than a hundred
francs on him. At the moment when she offers him her sequins, he has
money; but he lets himself go so far as to accept one sequin.
"I take this sequin, because I love you," he says; "but I am on the
wrong side of my hundred by five francs, and, if they were to hang me
this minute, I should feel remorse."
"He does really love," the Duchessa says to herself.
Is not that the simplicity of Italy, taken from life? Molière, writing
a novel to describe this people, the only one except the Arabs that has
preserved its reverence for vows, could do nothing finer.
Ferrante Palla becomes the Duchessa's other arm in her conspiracy, and
is a terrible weapon, his energy makes one shudder! Here is the scene
that occurs one evening in the _palazzo_ Sanseverina. The lion of the
people has emerged from his retreat. He enters for the first time rooms
ablaze with regal splendour. He finds there his mistress, his idol, the
idol whom he has set above Young Italy, above the Republic and the
welfare of humanity; he sees her distressed, tears in her eyes! The
Prince has snatched from her him whom she loves best in the world, he
has basely deceived her, and this _tyrant_ holds the sword of Damocles
over the beloved head.
"What is happening here," says this sublime Republican Don Quixote, "is
an injustice of which the Tribune of the People ought to take note. On
the other hand, as a private citizen, I can give the Signora Duchessa
Sanseverina nothing but my life, and I lay it at her feet. The creature
you see at your feet is not a puppet of the court, he is a man.--She has
wept in my presence," he says to himself, "she is less unhappy."
"Think of the risk you are running," says the Duchessa.
"The Tribune will answer you: 'What is life when the voice of duty
speaks?' The man will say to you: 'Here is a body of iron and a heart
that fears nothing in the world but your displeasure.'"
"If you speak to me of your feelings," says the Duchessa, "I shall not
see you again."
Ferrante Palla departs sadly.
Am I mistaken? Are they not as fine as Corneille, these dialogues? And,
remember, such passages abound, they are all, after their kind, at the
same high level. Struck by the beauty of this character, the Duchessa
prepares a written document providing for the future of Ferrante's
mistress and his five children, without saying anything to him, for she
is afraid that he may let himself be killed on learning that his
dependents have had this provision made for them.
Finally, on the day when the whole of Parma is discussing the probable
death of Fabrizio, the Tribune braves every danger. He enters the
_palazzo_ at night, he arrives disguised as a Capuchin in the Duchessa's
presence; he finds her drowned in tears and voiceless: she greets him
with her hand and points to a chair. Palla prostrates himself, prays to
God, so divine does her beauty seem to him, and breaks off his prayer to
say:
"Once again _he_ offers his life."
"Think of what you are saying!" cries the Duchessa with that haggard eye
which shews more clearly than sobs that anger is mastering affection.
"He offers his life to place all obstacle in the way of Fabrizio's fate
or to avenge it."
"If I were to accept!" she says, gazing at him.
She sees the joy of martyrdom flash in Palla's eye. She rises, goes to
look for the deed of gift prepared a month back, for Ferrante's mistress
and children.
"Read this!"
He reads it and falls on his knees, he sobs, he almost dies of joy.
"Give me back the paper," says the Duchessa.
She burns it over a candle.
"My name," she tells him, "must not appear. If you are taken and
executed, if you are weak, I may be also, and Fabrizio would be in
danger. I wish you to sacrifice yourself."
"I will perform the task faithfully, punctually and prudently."
"If I am discovered and convicted," the Duchessa goes on proudly, "I
do not wish to be accused of having corrupted you. Do not put him to
death until I give the signal. That signal will be the flooding of the
streets of Parma, of which you are bound to hear."
Ferrante, delighted by the Duchessa's tone of authority, takes his
leave. When he has gone, the Duchessa calls him back.
"Ferrante, sublime man!"
He returns.
"And your children?"
"Bah! You will provide for them."
"Look, here are my diamonds."
And she gives him a little olive-wood box.
"They are worth fifty thousand francs."
"Oh! Signora!" says Ferrante with a start of horror, "I may perhaps not
see you again. Take them, it is my wish."
Ferrante leaves her. The door closes behind him, the Duchessa again
calls him back. He sees her standing there, he comes back uneasily. The
great Sanseverina throws herself into his arms. Ferrante is on the point
of fainting. She allows him to kiss her, frees herself from his embrace
when he threatens to become disrespectful, and shews him the door.
She remains standing for some time and says to herself.
"That is the one man who has understood me; Fabrizio would be like that
if he could only know me."
I cannot lay too much stress on the merit of this scene. M. Beyle is not
in the least a preacher. He does not urge you on to regicide, he gives
you a fact, states it as it occurred. No one, not even a Republican,
feels the desire to kill a tyrant on reading it. It is the play of
private passions, that is all. It is a question of a duel which requires
extraordinary, but equally matched arms. The Duchessa makes use of Palla
to poison the Prince as the Prince makes use of one of Fabrizio's
enemies to poison Fabrizio. One can avenge oneself on a king, Coriolanus
avenged himself well on his country, Beaumarchais and Mirabeau avenged
themselves well on their period which despised them. This is not moral,
but the author has told you of it, and washes his hands of it as Tacitus
washes his of the crimes of Tiberius. "I am inclined to believe," he
says, "that the immoral delight in taking revenge which one finds in
Italy springs from the strength of imagination of that race; other races
do not forgive, they forget." Thus the moralist explains this energetic
people among whom we find so many inventors, who have the richest, the
finest imagination, with its accompanying drawbacks. This reflexion is
more profound than it appears at a first reading, it explains the
rhetorical stupidities which weigh down the Italians, the only race that
is comparable to the French, a race superior to the Russians or the
English, whose genius has the feminine fibre, that delicacy, that
majesty which make it in many respects superior to all other races. From
this point the Duchessa regains her advantage over the Prince. Hitherto,
she was weak and tricked in this great duel; Mosca, prompted by his
courtier's spirit, had been acting as second to the Prince. Now that her
revenge is assured, Gina feels her strength. Each step that her thoughts
take gives her happiness, she can play her part. The Tribune's courage
heightens hers. Lodovico is electrified by her. These three
conspirators, on whom Mosca shuts his eyes, while leaving his police
free to act against them if they notice anything, arrive at the most
extraordinary result.
The Minister has been the dupe of his mistress, he fully believed
himself to be in disgrace, as he deserved. If he had not been thoroughly
taken in, he could never have played the part of a forlorn lover, for
happiness admits of no concealment. That fire of the heart has its
smoke. But, after the fascination of Ferrante by the Duchessa, her joy
enlightens the Minister, he at last guesses her purpose, without knowing
how far she has gone.
Fabrizio's escape borders on the miraculous. It has required so much
physical strength and such an exercise of intelligence, that the dear
boy is on the point of death: the scent of his aunt's clothing and
handkerchief revives him. This slight detail, which is not forgotten
among a thousand other incidents, will delight those who are in love: it
is placed, as might be placed in a finale a melody which recalls the
sweetest elements of the life of love. All precautions have been
carefully taken, there is no indiscretion: Conte Mosca, who is present
in person at the expedition with more than two dozen spies, does not
receive a single report of it as Minister.
"Now I'm committing high treason," he says to himself, blind with joy.
Everyone has understood his orders without a word said, and escapes in
his own way. The business finished, each head has to think of and for
itself. Lodovico is the courier, he crosses the Po. Ah! When Fabrizio is
out of the reach of his crowned assassin, the Duchessa, who until then
had been crouching like a jaguar, coiled like a serpent hidden in the
undergrowth, flat as one of Cooper's Indians in the mud, supple as a
slave and feline as a deceitful woman, rises to her full height: the
panther shews her claws, the serpent is going to sting, the Indian to
utter his yell of triumph, she leaps for joy, she is mad. Lodovico, who
knows nothing of Ferrante Palla, who says of him in the common phrase:
"He is a poor man persecuted because of Napoleon!" Lodovico is afraid
that his mistress is going out of her mind. She gives him the small
property of Ricciarda. He trembles on receiving this regal gift. What
has he done to deserve it? "Conspire, and for Monsignore, why that is a
pleasure."
It is then, the author tells us, that the Duchessa allows herself to
commit an act not only horrible in the eyes of morality, but fatal to
the tranquillity of her life. We suppose, of course, that in this hour
of bliss, she will forgive the Prince. No.
"If you wish to acquire the property, you must do two things," she tells
Lodovico, "and without exposing yourself. You must go back at once
across the Po, illuminate my house at Sacca in such a way as to make
people think it is on fire. I have prepared everything for this
festivity, in case we succeeded. There are lamps and oil in the cellars.
Here is a line to my agent. Let the whole population of Sacca drink
themselves drunk, empty all my barrels and all my bottles. By the
Madonna! If I find one full bottle, one barrel with two fingers of wine
left in it, you lose Ricciarda! When that is done, return to Parma and
let the water out of the reservoir. Wine for my dear people at Sacca,
water for the town of Parma!"
This makes one shudder. It is the Italian spirit, which M. Hugo has
perfectly reproduced when he makes Lucrezia Borgia say: "You have given
me a ball at Venice, I offer you in return a supper at Ferrara." The two
speeches are equivalent. Lodovico sees in this nothing more than a
magnificent insolence and an exquisite joke. He repeats: "Wine for the
people of Sacca, water for the people of Parma!" Lodovico returns after
having carried out the Duchessa's orders, establishes her at Belgirate,
and takes Fabrizio, who has still the Austrian police to fear, to
Locarno, in Switzerland.
Fabrizio's escape, the illumination of Sacca throw the State of Parma
into utter confusion. Little attention is paid to the flooding of the
town. A similar event occurred at the time of the French invasion. A
horrible punishment awaits the Duchessa. She sees Fabrizio dying of love
for Clelia, resentful of being First Grand Vicar to the Archbishop and
so unable to marry his beloved.
In the arms of his aunt and on Lake Maggiore, he dreams of his dear
prison. What then are the sufferings of this woman who has ordered a
crime, who has so to speak brought down the moon from the sky by taking
this beloved boy out of prison, and who sees him so artless and simple,
thinking of other things, refusing to perceive anything, and not
allowing himself to succumb to what he had so wisely fled from in the
company of his Gina, his mother, his sister, his aunt, his friend who
longed to be something more than a friend to him, all this torture is
unspeakable; but, in the book, it is felt, it is seen. We are pained by
Fabrizio's desertion of the Sanseverina, although we are conscious that
the gratification of her love would be criminal. Fabrizio is not even
grateful. The ex-prisoner, like a Minister in retirement who dreams of
coalitions which will restore him to power, thinks only of his prison;
he sends for pictures of Parma, that city abhorrent to his aunt; he puts
one of the fortress in his bedroom. Finally, he writes a letter of
apology to General Conti for having escaped, so as to be able to say to
Clelia that he finds no happiness in liberty without her, and you can
imagine what effect this letter (it is taken as a masterpiece of
ecclesiastical irony) produces on the General: he swears that he will be
avenged. The Duchessa, terrified and brought back to a sense of
self-preservation by the futility of her revenge, takes a boatman from
each of the villages on Lake Maggiore; she makes them row her out to the
middle of the lake; then she tells them that a search may be made for
Fabrizio, who served under Napoleon at Waterloo, and bids them keep a
sharp watch; she makes herself loved, and obeyed; she pays well, and so
has a spy in every village; she gives each of them permission to enter
her room at any hour, even at night when she is asleep. One evening, at
Locarno, during a party, she hears of the death of the Prince of Parma.
She looks at Fabrizio.
"I have done this for him; I would have done things a thousand times
worse," she says to herself, "and look at him there, silent,
indifferent, dreaming about another!"
At this thought she faints. This fainting-fit may be her ruin. The
company gathers round her, Fabrizio thinks of Clelia: she sees him, she
shudders, she finds herself surrounded by all these curious people, an
archpriest, the local authorities, and so forth. She recovers the calm
of a great lady, and says:
"He was a great Prince, who was vilely slandered; it is an immense loss
for us.--Ah!" she says to herself, when she is alone, "it is now that I
have to pay for the transports of happiness and childish joy that I felt
in my _palazzo_ at Parma when I welcomed Fabrizio there on his return
from Naples. If I had said a word, all would have been over, I should
have left Mosca. Once he was with me, Clelia would never have meant
anything to Fabrizio. Clelia wins, she is twenty. I am almost twice her
age. I must die! _A woman of forty is no longer anything save for the
men who have loved her in her youth_!"
It is for this reflexion, profound in its shrewdness, suggested by grief
and almost entirely true, that I quote this passage. The Duchessa's
soliloquy is interrupted by a noise outside, at midnight.
"Good," she says, "they are coming to arrest me; so much the better, it
will occupy my mind, fighting them for my head."
It is nothing of the sort. Conte Mosca has sent her their most faithful
courier to inform her, before the rest of Europe, of recent events at
Parma, and of the details of the death of Ranuccio-Ernesto IV: there has
been a revolution, the Tribune Ferrante Palla has been on the verge of
triumph, he has spent the fifty thousand francs, the price of the
diamonds, on the cause of his dear Republic instead of giving them to
his children; the rising has been suppressed by Mosca, who served under
Napoleon in Spain, and who has displayed the courage of a soldier and
the coolness of a statesman; he has saved Rassi, which he will bitterly
repent; finally, he gives details of the accession to the throne of
Ranuccio-Ernesto V, a young prince who is enamoured of Signora
Sanseverina. The Duchessa is free to return. The Princess Dowager, who
adores her for reasons which the reader knows and has gathered from the
intrigues of the court at the time when the Duchessa reigned there,
writes her a charming letter, creates her Duchessa in her own right, and
Grand Mistress. It would not, however, be prudent for Fabrizio to return
at present, the sentence must be quashed by a retrial of the case.
The Duchessa conceals Fabrizio at Sacca, and returns to Parma
triumphant. Thus the subject revives of its own accord without effort,
without monotony. There is not the slightest resemblance between the
early favour enjoyed by the innocent Sanseverina, under Ranuccio-Ernesto
IV, and the favour enjoyed by the Duchessa who has had him poisoned,
under Ranuccio-Ernesto V. The young twenty-year-old Prince is madly in
love with her, the peril incurred by the criminal is balanced by the
boundless power enjoyed by the Dowager's Grand Mistress. This Louis XIII
on a small scale finds his Richelieu in Mosca. The great Minister,
during the riots, carried away by a lingering trace of zeal, of
enthusiasm, has called him a boy. The word has remained in the Prince's
heart, it has hurt him. Mosca is useful to him; but the Prince, who is
only twenty years old in politics, is fifty in self-esteem. Rassi is
working in secret, he searches among the people and through all Italy,
and learns that Ferrante Palla, who is as poor as Job, has sold nine or
ten diamonds at Genoa. During the underground burrowings of the Fiscal
General joy reigns at court. The Prince, a shy young man like all shy
young men, attacks the woman of forty, grows frenzied in his pursuit of
her; it is true that Gina, more beautiful than ever, does not look more
than thirty, she is happy, she is making Mosca thoroughly happy,
Fabrizio is saved, he is to be tried again, acquitted, and will be, when
his sentence is quashed. Coadjutor to the Archbishop, who is
seventy-eight years old, with the right of eventual succession.
Clelia alone causes the Duchessa any misgivings. As for the Prince, she
is amused by him. They act plays at court (those _commedie dell' arte_
in which each character invents the dialogue as he goes on, the outline
of the plot being posted up in the wings--a sort of glorified charade).
The Prince takes the lovers' parts, and Gina is always the leading lady.
Literally, the Grand Mistress is dancing upon a volcano. This part of
the work is charming. In the very middle of one of these plays, this is
what happens. Rassi has said to the Prince: "Does Your Highness choose
to pay a hundred thousand francs to find out the exact manner of His
august father's death?" He has had the hundred thousand francs, because
the Prince is a boy. Rassi has tried to corrupt the Duchessa's head
maid, this maid has told Mosca everything. Mosca has told her to let
herself be corrupted. Rassi requires one thing only, to have the
Duchessa's diamonds examined by two jewellers. Mosca posts counter-spies
and learns that one of these inquisitive jewellers is Rassi's brother.
Mosca appears, between the acts of the play, to warn the Duchessa, whom
he finds in the highest spirits.
"I have very little time," she says to Mosca, "but let us go into the
guard-room."
There she says with a laugh to her friend the Minister:
"You always scold me when I tell you unnecessary secrets; very well, it
was I who called Ernesto V to the throne; it was a case of avenging
Fabrizio, whom I loved far more than I love him to-day, though always
quite innocently. You will scarcely believe in my innocence, but that
does not matter, since you love me in spite of my crimes! Very well,
there is one crime in my life: Ferrante Palla had my diamonds. I did
worse, I let myself be kissed by him so that he should poison the man
who wished to poison our Fabrizio. Where is the harm?"
"And you tell me this in the guard-room?" says the Conte, _slightly
taken aback_!
This last expression is charming.
"It is because I am in a hurry," she says, "Rassi is on the track: but I
have never spoken of insurrection, I abhor Jacobins. Think it over, and
give me your advice after the play."
"I will give it you now," replies Mosca without hesitation. "You will
buttonhole the Prince behind the scenes, make him lose his head, but
without doing anything dishonourable, you understand."
The Duchessa is called to go on the stage, and returns behind the
scenes.
Ferrante Palla's farewell to his idol is one of the finest things in
this book, where there are so many fine things; but we come now to the
capital scene, to the scene which crowns the work, to the burning of the
papers in the case drawn up by Rassi, which the Grand Mistress obtains
from Ranuccio-Ernesto V and the Princess Dowager, a terrible scene, in
which she is now lost, now saved, at the whim of the mother and son who
feel themselves overpowered by the force of character of this sort of
Princesse des Ursins. This scene occupies only eight pages, but it is
without parallel in the art of literature. There is nothing analogous to
which it can be compared, it is unique. I say nothing of it, it is
sufficient to draw attention to it. The Duchessa triumphs, she destroys
the proofs and even carries away one of the documents for Mosca, who
takes note of the names of some of the witnesses and cries: "It was high
time, they were getting warm!" Rassi is in despair: the Prince has given
orders for a retrial of Fabrizio's case. Fabrizio, instead of making
himself a prisoner, as Mosca wishes, in the town prison, which is under
the Prime Minister's orders, returns at once to his beloved citadel,
where the General, who thought that his honour had been tarnished by the
escape, rigorously confines him with the intention of getting rid of
him. Mosca would have answered for him, with his life, in the town
prison; but in the citadel Fabrizio is helpless.
This news comes as a bolt from the blue to the Duchessa: she remains
speechless and unhearing. Fabrizio's love for Clelia bringing him back
to the place where death lies in wait for him and where the girl will
give him a moment's happiness for which he must pay with his life--the
thought of this crushes her, and Fabrizio's imminent danger is the last
straw.
This danger exists already, it is not created to fit the scene, it is
the result of the passions aroused by Fabrizio during his former
imprisonment, by his escape, by the fury of Rassi who has been forced to
sign the order for a fresh trial. And so, even in the most minute
details, the author loyally obeys the laws of the poetry of the novel.
This exact observation of the rules, whether it come from the
calculation, meditation, and natural deduction of a well chosen, well
developed and fruitful subject, or from the instinct peculiar to talent,
produces this powerful and permanent interest which we find in great, in
fine works of art.
Mosca, in despair, makes the Duchessa understand the impossibility of
getting a young Prince to believe that a prisoner can be poisoned in his
State, and offers to get rid of Rassi.
"But," he tells her, "you know how squeamish I am about that sort of
thing. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I still think of those two
spies whom I had shot in Spain."
"Rassi owes his life, then," replies the Duchessa, "to the fact that I
care more for you than for Fabrizio; I do not wish to poison the
evenings of the old age which we shall have to spend together."
The Duchessa hastens to the fortress, and is there convinced of
Fabrizio's peril; she goes to the Prince. The Prince is a boy who, as
the Minister has foreseen, does not understand the danger that can
threaten an innocent person in his State Prison. He declines to
dishonour himself, to pass judgment on his own justice. Finally, in view
of the imminence of the peril (the poison has been given), the Duchessa
wrests from him the order to set Fabrizio at liberty in exchange for a
promise to yield to this young Prince's desires. This scene has an
originality of its own after that of the burning of the papers. At that
time, Gina's only thought was for herself, now it is for Fabrizio.
Fabrizio once acquitted and appointed Coadjutor to the Archbishop with
the right of eventual succession, which is tantamount to being made
Archbishop, the Duchessa finds a way to elude the consequences of her
promise by one of those dilemmas which women who are not in love can
always find with a maddening coolness. She is to the end the woman of
great character whose career started as you have read. There follows a
change in the Ministry. Mosca leaves Parma with his wife, for the
Duchessa and he, both widowed, have now married. But nothing goes well,
and at the end of a year the Prince recalls Conte and Contessa Mosca.
Fabrizio is Archbishop and in high favour.
There follows the love of Clelia and Archbishop Fabrizio, which ends in
the death of Clelia, in that of a beloved child, and in the resignation
and withdrawal of the Archbishop, who dies, doubtless after a long
expiation, in the Charterhouse of Parma.
I explain this ending to you in a few words, since, in spite of
beautiful details, it is sketched rather than finished. If the author
had had to develop the romance of the end like that of the beginning, it
would have been difficult to know where to stop. Is there not a whole
drama in the love of a celibate priest? So there is a whole drama in the
love of the Coadjutor and Clelia. Book upon book!
Had M. Beyle some woman in his mind when he drew his Sanseverina? I
fancy so. For this statue, as for the Prince and the Prime Minister,
there must necessarily have been some model. Is she at Milan? Is she at
Rome, at Naples, at Florence? I cannot say. Although I am quite
convinced that there do exist women like the Sanseverina, though in very
small numbers, and that I know some myself, I believe also that the
author has perhaps enlarged the model and has completely idealised her.
In spite of this labour, which removes all similarity, one may find in
the Princesse B---- certain traits of the Sanseverina. Is she not
Milanese? Has she not passed through good and adverse fortune? Is she
not shrewd and witty?
You know now the framework of this immense edifice, and I have taken you
round it. My hasty analysis, bold, believe me, for it requires boldness
to undertake to give you an idea of a novel constructed out of incidents
as closely compressed as are those of _La Chartreuse de Parme_; my
analysis, dry as it may be, has outlined the masses for you, and you can
judge whether my praise is exaggerated. But it is difficult to enumerate
to you in detail the fine and delicate sculptures that enrich this solid
structure, to stop before the statuettes, the paintings, the landscapes,
the bas-reliefs which decorate it. This is what happened to me. At the
first reading, which took me quite by surprise, I found faults in the
book. On my reading it again, the _longueurs_ vanished, I saw the
necessity for the detail which, at first, had seemed ta me too long or
too diffuse. To give you a good account of it, I ran through the book
once more. Captivated then by the execution, I spent more time than I
had intended in the contemplation of this fine book, and everything
struck me as most harmonious, connected naturally or by artifice but
concordantly.
Here, however, are the errors which I pick out, not so much from the
point of view of art as in view of the sacrifices which every author
must learn to make to the majority.
If I found confusion on first reading the bode, my impression will be
that of the public, and therefore evidently this book is lacking in
method. M. Beyle has indeed disposed the events as they happened, or as
they ought to have happened; but he has committed, in his arrangement of
the facts, a mistake which many authors commit, by taking a subject true
in nature which is not true in art. When he sees a landscape, a great
painter takes care not to copy it slavishly, he has to give us not so
much its letter as its spirit. So, in his simple, artless and unstudied
manner of telling his story, M. Beyle has run the risk of appearing
confused. Merit which requires to be studied is in danger of remaining
unperceived. And so I could wish, in the interest of the book, that the
author had begun with his magnificent sketch of the battle of Waterloo,
that he had reduced everything which precedes it to some account given
by Fabrizio or about Fabrizio while he is lying in the village in
Flanders where he arrives wounded. Certainly, the work would gain in
lightness. The del Dongo father and son, the details about Milan, all
these things are not part of the book: the drama is at Parma, the
principal characters are the Prince and his son. Mosca, Rassi, the
Duchessa, Ferrante Palla, Lodovico, Clelia, her father, the Raversi,
Giletti, Marietta. Skilled advisers or friends endowed with simple
common sense might have procured the development of certain portions
which the author has not supposed to be as interesting as they are, and
would have called for the excision of several details, superfluous in
spite of their fineness. For instance, the work would lose nothing if
the Priore Blanès were to disappear entirely.
I will go farther, and will make no compromise, in favour of this fine
work, over the true principles of art. The law which governs everything
is that of unity in composition; whether you place this unity in the
central idea or in the plan of the book, without it there can be only
confusion. So, in spite of its title, the work is ended when Conte and
Contessa Mosca return to Parma and Fabrizio is Archbishop. The great
comedy of the court is finished. It is so well finished, and the author
has so clearly felt this, that it is in this place that he sets his
Moral, as our forerunners used to do at the end of their fables.
"One can conclude with this moral," he says: "the man who comes to a
court risks his happiness, if he is happy; and in any case makes his
future depend upon the intrigues of a chambermaid.
"On the other hand, in America, in the Republic, one has to waste one's
whole time paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street and
becoming as stupid as themselves; and there, there is no Opera."
If, beneath the Roman purple and with a mitre on his head, Fabrizio
loves Clelia, become Marchesa Crescenzi, and if you were telling us
about it, you would then wish to make the life of this young man the
subject of your book. But if you wished to describe the whole of
Fabrizio's life, you ought, being a man of such sagacity, to call your
book Fabrizio, or the Italian in the Nineteenth Century. In launching
himself upon such a career, Fabrizio ought not to have found himself
outshone by figures so typical, so poetical as are those of the two
Princes, the Sanseverina, Mosca, Ferrante Palla. Fabrizio ought to have
represented the young Italian of to-day. In making this young man the
principal figure of the drama, the author was under an obligation to
give him a large mind, to endow him with a feeling which would make him
superior to the men of genius who surround him, and which he lacks.
Feeling, in short, is equivalent to talent. _To feel_ is the rival of
_to understand as to act_ is the opposite of _to think_. The friend of a
man of genius can raise himself to his level by affection, by
understanding. In matters of the heart, an inferior man may prevail over
the greatest artist. There lies the justification of those women who
fall in love with imbeciles. So, in a drama, one of the most ingenious
resources of the artist is (in the case in which we suppose M. Beyle to
be) to make a hero superior by his feeling when he cannot by genius
compete with the people among whom he is placed. In this respect,
Fabrizio's part requires recasting. The genius of Catholicism ought to
urge him with its divine hand towards the _Charterhouse of Parma_, and
that genius ought from time to time to overwhelm him with the tidings of
heavenly grace. But then the Priore Blanès could not perform this part,
for it is impossible to cultivate judicial astrology and to be a saint
according to the Church. The book ought therefore to be either shorter
or longer.
Possibly the slowness of the beginning, possibly that ending which
begins a new book and in which the subject is abruptly strangled, will
damage its success, possibly they have already damaged it. M. Beyle has
moreover allowed himself certain repetitions, perceptible only to those
who know his earlier books; but such readers themselves are necessarily
connoisseurs, and so fastidious. M. Beyle, keeping in mind that great
principle: "Unlucky in love, as in the arts, who says too much!" ought
not to repeat himself, he, always concise and leaving much to be
guessed. In spite of his sphinx-like habit, he is less enigmatic here
than in his other works, and his true friends will congratulate him on
this.
The portraits are brief. A few words are enough for M. Beyle, who paints
his characters both by action and by dialogue; he does not weary one
with descriptions, he hastens to the drama and arrives at it by a word,
by a thought. His landscapes, traced with a somewhat dry touch which,
however, is suited to the country, are lightly done. He takes his stand
by a tree, on the spot where he happens to be; he shews you the lines of
the Alps which on all sides enclose the scene of action, and the
landscape is complete. The book is particularly valuable to travellers
who have strolled by the Lake of Como, over the Brianza, who have passed
under the outermost bastions of the Alps and crossed the plains of
Lombardy. The spirit of those scenes is finely revealed, their beauty is
well felt. One can see them.
The weak part of this book is the style, in so far as the arrangement of
the words goes, for the thought, which is eminently French, sustains the
sentences. The mistakes that M. Beyle makes are purely grammatical; he
is careless, incorrect, after the manner of seventeenth-century writers.
The quotations I have made shew what sort of faults he lets himself
commit. In one place, a discord of tenses between verbs, sometimes the
absence of a verb; here, again, sequences of _c'est_, of _ce que_, of
_que_, which weary the reader, and have the effect on his mind of a
journey in a badly hung carriage over a French road. These quite glaring
faults indicate a scamping of work. But, if the French language is a
varnish spread over thought, we ought to be as indulgent towards those
in whom it covers fine paintings as we are severe to those who shew
nothing but the varnish. If, in M. Beyle, this varnish is a little
yellow in places and inclined to scale off in others, he does at least
let us see a sequence of thoughts which are derived from one another
according to the laws of logic. His long sentence is ill constructed,
his short sentence lacks polish. He writes more or less in the style of
Diderot, who was not a writer; but the conception is great and strong;
the thought is original, and often well rendered. This system is not one
to be imitated. It would be too dangerous to allow authors to imagine
themselves to be profound thinkers.
M. Beyle is saved by the deep feeling that animates his thought. All
those to whom Italy is dear, who have studied or understood her, will
read _La Chartreuse de Parme_ with delight. The spirit, the genius, the
customs, the soul of that beautiful country live in this long drama that
is always engaging, in this vast fresco so well painted, so strongly
coloured, which moves the heart profoundly and satisfies the most
difficult, the most exacting mind. The Sanseverina is the Italian woman,
a figure as happily portrayed as Carlo Dolci's famous head of _Poetry_,
Allori's _Judith_, or Guercino's _Sibyl_ in the Manfredini gallery. In
Mosca he paints the man of genius in politics at grips with love. It is
indeed love without speech (the speeches are the weak point in
_Clarisse_), active love, always true to its own type, love stronger
than the call of duty, love, such as women dream of, such as gives an
additional interest to the least things in life. Fabrizio is quite the
young Italian of to-day at grips with the distinctly clumsy despotism
which suppresses the imagination of that fine country; but, as I have
said above, the dominant thought or the feeling which urges him to lay
aside his dignities and to end his life in a Charterhouse needs
development. This book is admirably expressive of love as it is felt in
the South. Obviously, the North does not love in this way. All these
characters have a heat, a fever of the blood, a vivacity of hand, a
rapidity of mind which is not to be found in the English nor in the
Germans nor in the Russians, who arrive at the same results only by
processes of revery, by the reasonings of a smitten heart, by the slow
rising of their sap. M. Beyle has in this respect given this book the
profound meaning, the feeling which guarantees the survival of a
literary conception. But unfortunately it is almost a secret doctrine,
which requires laborious study. _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is placed at
such a height, it requires in the reader so perfect a knowledge of the
court, the place, the people that I am by no means astonished at the
absolute silence with which such a book has been greeted. That is the
lot that awaits all books in which there is nothing vulgar. The secret
ballot in which vote one by one and slowly the superior minds who make
the name of such works, is not counted until long afterwards. Besides,
M. Beyle is not a courtier, he has the most profound horror of the
press. From largeness of character or from the sensitiveness of his
self-esteem, as soon as his book appears, he takes flight, leaves Paris,
travels two hundred and fifty leagues in order not to hear it spoken of.
He demands no articles, he does not haunt the footsteps of the
reviewers. He has behaved thus after the publication of each of his
books. I admire this pride of character or this sensitiveness of
self-esteem. Excuses there may be for mendicity, there can be none for
that quest for praise and articles on which modern authors go begging.
It is the mendicity, the pauperism of the mind. There are no great works
of art that have fallen into oblivion. The lies, the complacencies of
the pen cannot give life to a worthless book.
After the courage to criticise comes the courage to praise. Certainly it
is time someone did justice to M. Beyle's merit. Our age owes him much:
was it not he who first revealed to us Rossini, the finest genius in
music? He has pleaded constantly for that glory which France had not the
intelligence to make her own. Let us in turn plead for the writer who
knows Italy best, who avenges her for the calumnies of her conquerors,
who has so well explained her spirit and her genius.
I had met M. Beyle twice in society, in twelve years, before the day
when I took the liberty of congratulating him on _La Chartreuse de
Parme_ on meeting him in the Boulevard des Italiens. On each occasion,
his conversation has fully maintained the opinion I had formed of him
from his works. He tells stories with the spirit and grace which M.
Charles Nodier and M. de Latouche possess in a high degree. Indeed he
recalls the latter gentleman by the irresistible charm of his speech,
although his physique--for he is extremely stout--seems at first sight
to preclude refinement, elegance of manners; but he instantly disproves
this suspicion, like Dr. Koreff, the friend of Hoffmann. He has a fine
forehead, a keen and piercing eye, a sardonic mouth; in short, he has
altogether the physiognomy of his talent. He retains in conversation
that enigmatic turn, that eccentricity which leads him never to sign the
already illustrious name of Beyle, to call himself one day Cotonnet,
another Frédéric. He is, I am told, the nephew of the famous and
industrious Daru, one of the strong arms of Napoleon. M. Beyle was
naturally in the Emperor's service; 1815 tore him, necessarily, from his
career, he passed from Berlin to Milan, and it is to the contrast
between the life of the North and that of the South, which impressed
him, that we are indebted for this writer. M. Beyle is one of the
superior men of our time. It is difficult to explain how this observer
of the first order, this profound diplomat who, whether in his writings
or in his speech, has furnished so many proofs of the loftiness of his
ideas and the extent of his practical knowledge should find himself
nothing more than Consul at Civita-vecchia. No one could be better
qualified to represent France at Rome. M. Mérimée knew M. Beyle
early and takes after him; but the master is more elegant and has more
ease. M. Beyle's works are many in number and are remarkable for
fineness of observation and for the abundance of their ideas. Almost all
of them deal with Italy. He was the first to give us exact information
about the terrible case of the Cenci; but he has not sufficiently
explained the causes of the execution, which was independent of the
trial, and due to factional clamour, to the demands of avarice. His book
_De l'amour_ is superior to M. de Sénancour's, he shews affinity to the
great doctrines of Cabanis and the School of Paris; but he fails by the
lack of method which, as I have already said, spoils _La Chartreuse de
Parme_. He has ventured, in this treatise, upon the word
_crystallisation_ to explain the phenomenon of the birth of this
sentiment, a word which has been taken as a joke, but will survive on
account of its profound accuracy. M. Beyle has been writing since 1817.
He began with a certain show of Liberalism; but I doubt whether this
great calculator can have let himself be taken in by the stupidities of
Dual Chamber government. _La Chartreuse de Parme_ has an underlying bias
which is certainly not against Monarchy. He finds fault with what he
admires, he is a Frenchman.
M. de Chateaubriand said, in a preface to the eleventh edition of
_Atala_, that his book in no way resembled the previous editions, so
thoroughly had he revised it. M. le Comte de Maistre admits having
rewritten _Le Lépreux de la vallée d'Aoste_ seventeen times. I hope
that M. Beyle also will set to work going over, polishing _La Chartreuse
de Parme_, and will stamp it with the imprint of perfection, the emblem
of irreproachable beauty which MM. de Chateaubriand and de Maistre have
given to their precious books.
[Footnote 1: So Balzac, reading _les petites mains les plus gracieuses_.
Stendhal's words are _les petites mines_, and he makes the lady a
Marchesa. Balzac's quotations are not, as a rule, textually accurate,
but his analysis of the story is admirable.