Part 15

Little by little his reverie took another turn. "Might there be something real in this science? Why should it be different from the others? A certain number of fools and clever fellows agree among themselves that they know Mexican, for instance; they impose themselves in that capacity upon society, which respects them, and upon governments, which pay them. They are overwhelmed with favors precisely because they have no spirit, and because those in power need not fear that they will stir up the people and make pathos with generous sentiments! For example, Father Bari, to whom Ernest IV has just granted a pension of four thousand francs and the cross of his order for having restored nineteen verses of a Greek dithyramb!

"But, good God! have I the right to find these things ridiculous? Is it for me to complain?" he said to himself suddenly, stopping short. "Is it not this very cross that has just been given to my governor at Naples?" Fabrice felt a profound uneasiness; the fine enthusiasm of virtue which had lately made his heart beat was turning into the vile pleasure of having a good share in a theft. "Well!" he said to himself at last, with the dim eyes of a man dissatisfied with himself, "since my birth gives me the right to profit by these abuses, it would be a notable duping of myself not to take my part; but I must not think to curse them in public." These reasonings were not lacking in justness; but Fabrice had fallen indeed from that height of sublime happiness where he had found himself transported an hour before. The thought of privilege had dried up that ever so delicate plant called happiness.

"If one must not believe in astrology," he resumed, seeking to stun himself, "if this science is, like three quarters of the non-mathematical sciences, a gathering of enthusiastic simpletons and of clever hypocrites paid by those they serve, whence comes it that I think so often and with emotion of that fatal circumstance? Formerly I got out of the prison of B..., but in the clothes and with the pass of a soldier thrown into prison for just causes."

Fabrice's reasoning could never penetrate further; he turned in a hundred ways around the difficulty without managing to overcome it. He was still too young; in his leisure moments, his soul occupied itself with rapture in tasting the sensations produced by romantic circumstances which his imagination was always ready to supply him. He was far from employing his time in looking with patience at the real particulars of things so as then to guess their causes. The real seemed to him still flat and muddy; I can understand one not liking to look at it, but then one must not reason about it. Above all, one must not make objections with the various pieces of one's ignorance.

Thus it was that, without lacking intelligence, Fabrice could not manage to see that his half-belief in omens was for him a religion, a profound impression received on his entrance into life. To think of this belief was to feel, was a happiness. And he persisted in seeking how it could be a proved, real science, in the manner of geometry, for example. He searched with ardor, in his memory, for all the circumstances where omens observed by him had not been followed by the happy or unhappy event they seemed to announce. But even while believing himself to be following a chain of reasoning and marching toward truth, his attention rested with happiness upon the memory of cases where the omen had been amply followed by the happy or unhappy accident it seemed to him to predict, and his soul was struck with respect and tenderness; and he would have felt an invincible repugnance for the being who should have denied omens, and above all if he had employed irony.

Fabrice walked without noticing distances, and he was at this point of his impotent reasonings, when, lifting his head, he saw the wall of his father's garden. This wall, which supported a fine terrace, rose to more than forty feet above the path, on the right. A string-course of dressed stone at the very top, near the balustrade, gave it a monumental air. "It is not bad," said Fabrice coldly to himself, "that is good architecture, almost in the Roman taste." He was applying his new knowledge of antiquities. Then he turned his head away with disgust; the severities of his father, and above all the denunciation by his brother Ascanio on his return from his journey in France, came back to his mind.

"That falsified denunciation was the origin of my present life; I may hate it, I may despise it, but after all it has changed my destiny. What should I have become, once relegated to Novara and scarce tolerated in the house of my father's man of business, if my aunt had not made love to a powerful minister? if that aunt had happened to have only a dry and common soul instead of that tender and passionate soul which loves me with a sort of enthusiasm that astonishes me? where should I be now if the duchess had had the soul of her brother the Marchese del Dongo?"

Overwhelmed by these cruel memories, Fabrice walked now only with an uncertain step; he came to the edge of the ditch precisely opposite the magnificent facade of the castle. He scarce cast a glance at that great edifice blackened by time. The noble language of architecture found him insensible; the memory of his brother and his father closed his soul to every sensation of beauty; he was attentive only to keeping on his guard in the presence of hypocritical and dangerous enemies. He looked for an instant, but with marked disgust, at the little window of the room he had occupied before 1815 on the third floor. His father's character had stripped all charm from the memories of early childhood. "I have not re-entered it," he thought, "since the 7th of March at eight in the evening. I went out of it to go and get Vasi's passport, and the next day, fear of spies made me hasten my departure. When I passed through again after the journey in France, I had not time to go up, even to see my engravings again, and that thanks to my brother's denunciation."

Fabrice turned his head away with horror. "Abbé Blanès is more than eighty-three years old," he said to himself sadly, "he scarce comes to the castle any more, as my sister told me; the infirmities of old age have had their effect. That heart so firm and so noble is chilled by age. God knows how long it is since he no longer goes to his bell-tower! I shall hide in the cellar, under the vats or under the wine-press until the moment of his waking; I shall not go disturb the sleep of the good old man; probably he will have forgotten even my features; six years count for much at that age! I shall find only the tomb of a friend! And it is a true childishness," he added, "to have come here to face the disgust the castle of my father gives me."

Fabrice was then entering the little square of the church; it was with an astonishment bordering on delirium that he saw, on the second floor of the ancient bell-tower, the narrow and long window lighted by the little lantern of Abbé Blanès. The abbé was wont to set it there, on mounting to the wooden cage which formed his observatory, so that the light should not hinder him from reading on his planisphere. This map of the heavens was stretched over a great earthenware vessel which had formerly belonged to an orange-tree of the castle. In the opening, at the bottom of the vessel, burned the smallest of lamps, whose smoke a little tin pipe conducted outside the vessel, and the shadow of the pipe marked the north on the map. All these memories of things so simple flooded Fabrice's soul with emotion and filled it with happiness.

Almost without thinking of it, he made with the help of his two hands the little low and brief whistle which formerly was the signal of his admission. At once he heard the cord pulled several times which, from the top of the observatory, opened the latch of the bell-tower door. He rushed into the stairway, moved to transport; he found the abbé in his wooden armchair at his accustomed place; his eye was fixed on the little lens of a mural quadrant. With his left hand, the abbé made him a sign not to interrupt him in his observation; an instant after he wrote a figure on a playing card, then, turning on his armchair, he opened his arms to our hero, who threw himself into them, bursting into tears. Abbé Blanès was his true father.

"I was expecting you," said Blanès, after the first words of outpouring and tenderness.

Was the abbé doing his trade of scholar; or else, as he often thought of Fabrice, had some astrological sign by pure chance announced his return?

"Here comes my death," said Abbé Blanès.

"How!" cried Fabrice, all moved.

"Yes," resumed the abbé in a serious tone, but not sad: "five months and a half or six months and a half after I shall have seen you again, my life having found its complement of happiness, shall be extinguished.

CENTER Come face al mancar dell alimento

(like the little lamp when the oil comes to fail). Before the supreme moment, I shall probably pass one or two months without speaking, after which I shall be received into the bosom of our Father; if, that is, He finds that I have fulfilled my duty in the post where He had placed me as sentinel.

"You are worn out with fatigue, your emotion disposes you to sleep. Since I have been expecting you, I have hidden a loaf and a bottle of brandy in the great case of my instruments. Give these supports to your life and try to take enough strength to listen to me yet a few moments. It is in my power to tell you several things before night is wholly replaced by day; now I see them much more distinctly than perhaps I shall see them tomorrow. For, my child, we are always weak, and one must always take that weakness into account. Tomorrow perhaps the old man, the earthly man, will be occupied within me with the preparations for my death, and tomorrow evening at 9 o'clock, you must leave me.

Fabrice having obeyed him in silence as was his custom:

"So, it is true," resumed the old man, "that when you tried to see Waterloo, you found at first only a prison?"

"Yes, my father," replied Fabrice, astonished.

"Well, that was a rare happiness, for, warned by my voice, your soul can prepare itself for another prison far harder, far more terrible! Probably you shall not leave it but by a crime, but, thank heaven, that crime shall not be committed by you. Never fall into crime however violently you may be tempted; I think I see that it will be a question of killing an innocent man, who, without knowing it, usurps your rights; if you resist the violent temptation which shall seem justified by the laws of honor, your life shall be very happy in the eyes of men..., and reasonably happy in the eyes of the sage," he added, after a moment of reflection; "you shall die like me, my son, seated on a wooden seat, far from all luxury, and disabused of luxury, and like me having no grave reproach to make to yourself.

"Now, the things of the future state are settled between us, I could add nothing of much importance. It is in vain that I have sought to see of what duration this prison shall be; is it a matter of six months, a year, ten years? I could discover nothing; apparently I have committed some fault, and heaven willed to punish me by the grief of this uncertainty. I have seen only that after the prison, but I know not if it is at the very moment of leaving it, there shall be what I call a crime, but happily I believe myself sure that it shall not be committed by you. If you have the weakness to have a hand in this crime, all the rest of my calculations is but a long error. Then you shall not die with peace of soul, on a wooden seat and clothed in white."

In saying these words, Abbé Blanès would have risen; it was then that Fabrice perceived the ravages of time; he took near a minute to rise and turn toward Fabrice. The latter let him do it, motionless and silent. The abbé threw himself into his arms repeatedly; he clasped him with extreme tenderness. After which he resumed with all his former gaiety:

"Try to arrange yourself among my instruments to sleep somewhat comfortably, take my pelisses; you will find several of great price that the Duchess Sanseverina had brought to me four years ago. She asked me for a prediction concerning you, which I took good care not to send her, while keeping her pelisses and her fine quadrant. All announcement of the future is an infraction of the rule, and has this danger, that it may change the event, in which case the whole science falls to the ground like a true child's play; and besides there were hard things to say to that duchess, always so pretty. By the way, be not frightened in your sleep by the bells which shall make a frightful racket next to your ear, when they go to ring the seven o'clock mass; later, on the lower floor, they shall set going the great bourdon which shakes all my instruments. Today is Saint Giovita, martyr and soldier. You know, the little village of Grianta has the same patron as the great city of Brescia, which, by the way, fooled in a most amusing fashion my illustrious master Jacques Marini of Ravenna. Several times he announced to me that I should make a rather fine ecclesiastical fortune; he believed I should be curate of the magnificent church of Saint-Giovita, at Brescia; I have been curate of a little village of seven hundred fifty hearths! But all has been for the best. I have seen, not ten years ago, that if I had been curate at Brescia, my destiny was to be put in prison on a hill of Moravia, at the Spielberg. Tomorrow I shall bring you all sorts of delicate meats stolen from the great dinner which I give to all the curates of the neighborhood who come to sing at my high mass. I shall bring them below, but seek not to see me, descend to take possession of these good things only when you shall have heard me go out again. You must not see me by day, and the sun setting tomorrow at seven hours and twenty-seven minutes, I shall come to embrace you only toward eight o'clock, and you must depart while the hours are still counted by nines, that is to say before the clock has struck ten. Take care that you are not seen at the windows of the bell-tower: the gendarmes have your description and they are in some sort under the orders of your brother who is a famous tyrant. The Marchese del Dongo is weakening," added Blanès with a sad air, "and if he saw you again, perhaps he would give you something hand to hand. But such advantages tainted with fraud befit not a man such as you, whose strength shall one day be in his conscience. The marchese abhors his son Ascanio, and it is to this son that the five or six millions he possesses shall fall. It is justice. You, at his death, shall have a pension of four thousand francs, and fifty ells of black cloth for the mourning of your people.

CHAPTER IX

Fabrice's soul was exalted by the old man's discourses, by the deep attention and by the extreme fatigue. He had great difficulty in falling asleep, and his sleep was agitated by dreams, perhaps omens of the future; in the morning, at ten o'clock, he was awakened by the general trembling of the bell-tower, a frightful noise seemed to come from without. He rose in dismay, and thought himself at the end of the world, then he thought he was in prison; he needed time to recognize the sound of the great bell which forty peasants were setting in motion in honor of the great Saint Giovita, ten would have sufficed.

Fabrice sought a suitable place from which to see without being seen; he perceived that from this great height his gaze plunged upon the gardens, and even upon the inner court of his father's castle. He had forgotten it. The idea of this father arriving at the bounds of life changed all his feelings. He could distinguish even the sparrows which sought some crumbs of bread on the great balcony of the dining-room. They are the descendants of those I formerly tamed, he said to himself. This balcony, like all the other balconies of the palace, was loaded with a great number of orange-trees in earthenware vessels more or less large: this sight moved him; the aspect of this inner court, thus adorned with its sharply cut shadows marked by a blazing sun, was truly grandiose.

The weakening of his father came back to his mind. "But it is truly singular," he said to himself, "my father is only thirty-five years older than I; thirty-five and twenty-three make only fifty-eight!" His eyes, fixed on the windows of the chamber of that severe man who had never loved him, filled with tears. He shuddered, and a sudden cold ran in his veins when he thought he recognized his father crossing a terrace furnished with orange-trees, which lay level with his room; but it was only a valet. Quite under the bell-tower, a number of young girls dressed in white and divided into different troops were occupied in tracing designs with red, blue and yellow flowers upon the ground of the streets where the procession was to pass. But there was a spectacle which spoke more vividly to Fabrice's soul: from the bell-tower his looks plunged upon the two branches of the lake at a distance of several leagues, and this sublime view soon made him forget all the others; it awakened in him the most elevated sentiments. All the memories of his childhood came in throngs to besiege his thought; and this day passed in prison in a bell-tower was perhaps one of the happiest of his life.

Happiness carried him to a height of thought rather strange to his character; he considered the events of life, he, so young, as if he had already arrived at his last limit. "One must admit, since my arrival at Parma," he said to himself at last, after several hours of delicious reverie, "I have had no tranquil and perfect joy, such as I found at Naples in galloping along the roads of Vomero or in running the shores of Miseno. All the so complicated interests of this little wicked court have made me wicked... I have no pleasure at all in hating, I believe even that it would be a sorry happiness for me to humiliate my enemies if I had any; but I have no enemy... Hold!" he said to himself suddenly, "I have for enemy Giletti... That is singular," said he; "the pleasure I should feel at seeing that so ugly man go to the devil survives the very slight taste I had for little Marietta... She is not worth, far from it, the Duchess d'A..., whom I was obliged to love at Naples since I had told her I was in love with her. Good God! how many times I was bored during the long assignations that beautiful duchess granted me; never anything like that in the dilapidated room serving as kitchen where little Marietta received me twice, and for two minutes each time.

"Eh, good God! what do those people eat? It is enough to pity them! I ought to have settled on her and the mammacia a pension of three beefsteaks payable every day... Little Marietta," he added, "distracted me from the wicked thoughts the neighborhood of this court gave me.

"I should perhaps have done well to take the café life, as the duchess says; she seemed to lean that way, and she has far more genius than I. Thanks to her benefits, or merely with this pension of four thousand francs and this fund of forty thousand placed at Lyon which my mother destines for me, I should always have a horse and a few crowns to make excavations and form a cabinet. Since it seems I am not to know love, those shall always be for me the great sources of felicity; I should like, before dying, to go see again the battlefield of Waterloo, and try to recognize the meadow where I was so gaily lifted from my horse and seated on the ground. That pilgrimage accomplished, I should come often again to this sublime lake; nothing so beautiful can be seen in the world, at least for my heart. What use to go so far seeking happiness, it is there before my eyes!

"Ah!" said Fabrice, by way of objection, "the police drive me from the lake of Como, but I am younger than the men who direct the blows of this police. Here," he added, laughing, "I should find no Duchess d'A..., but I should find one of those little girls yonder who are arranging flowers on the pavement and, in truth, I should love her just as much: hypocrisy freezes me even in love, and our great ladies aim at too sublime effects. Napoleon has given them ideas of morals and constancy.

"The devil!" said he suddenly, drawing his head back from the window as if he had feared being recognized despite the shadow of the enormous wooden blind which shielded the bells from rain, "here comes an entrance of gendarmes in full dress." In fact, ten gendarmes, of whom four non-commissioned officers, appeared at the top of the great street of the village. The sergeant distributed them a hundred paces apart, along the route the procession was to follow. "Everybody knows me here; if I am seen, I make but one leap from the shores of the lake of Como to the Spielberg, where they shall attach to each leg a chain weighing a hundred and ten pounds: and what grief for the duchess!"

Fabrice needed two or three minutes to recall that first he was placed at more than eighty feet of elevation, that the place where he was was comparatively obscure, that the eyes of people who might look at him were struck by a blazing sun, and that finally they walked about with eyes wide open in streets all of whose houses had just been whitewashed with lime-milk, in honor of the feast of Saint Giovita. Despite such clear reasonings, the Italian soul of Fabrice would have been henceforth incapable of tasting any pleasure, had he not interposed between him and the gendarmes a scrap of old canvas which he nailed against the window and in which he made two holes for the eyes.

The bells had been shaking the air for ten minutes, the procession was issuing from the church, the mortaretti made themselves heard. Fabrice turned his head and recognized that little esplanade furnished with a parapet and dominating the lake, where so often, in his youth, he had exposed himself to see the mortaretti go off between his legs, which made that on the mornings of feast days his mother wished to see him near her.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”