Part 17

--You talk like a member of the Academy, cried the count, laughing; that is a fine piece of rashness you are telling us there, but it is only once every ten years that one has the amusing opportunity to do such piquant things. A being who is half stupid, but attentive, but prudent every day, very often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of imagination. It was through a flight of imagination that Napoleon surrendered himself to the prudent John Bull, instead of seeking to win over America. John Bull, in his counting-house, laughed heartily at his letter where he cites Themistocles. At all times the base Sancho Panzas will in the long run get the better of the sublime Don Quixotes. If you will consent to do nothing out of the ordinary, I do not doubt that you will be a very respected bishop, if not a most respectable one. However, my remark stands; Your Excellency behaved with levity in the matter of the horse, you came within two fingers of an eternal prison.

These words made Fabrice start; he remained plunged in profound astonishment. "Was this," he said to himself, "the prison with which I was threatened? Is this the crime I was not to commit?" The predictions of Blanès, which he mocked at soundly as prophecies, took on in his eyes all the importance of true omens.

--Well! what is the matter with you? said the duchess, surprised; the count has plunged you into gloomy fancies.

--I am illuminated by a new truth, and instead of rebelling against it, my mind adopts it. It is true, I passed very close to an endless prison! But that valet de chambre was so pretty in his English coat! what a pity to kill him!

The minister was delighted with his little air of wisdom.

--He is quite good in every way, he said, looking at the duchess. I will tell you, my friend, that you have made a conquest, and perhaps the most desirable of all.

"Ah!" thought Fabrice, "here is a jest about little Marietta." He was mistaken; the count added:

--Your evangelical simplicity has won the heart of our venerable archbishop, Father Landriani. One of these days we are going to make you a grand vicar, and what gives the charm to this jest is that the three present grand vicars, men of merit, hard workers, and two of whom, I think, were grand vicars before your birth, will ask, by a fine letter addressed to their archbishop, that you be first in rank among them. These gentlemen base themselves first on your virtues, and next on the fact that you are the grand-nephew of the famous archbishop Ascanio del Dongo. When I learned the respect that was had for your virtues, I at once named captain the nephew of the most senior of the vicars general; he had been a lieutenant since the siege of Tarragona by Marshal Suchet.

--Go at once, in undress, just as you are, and pay a tender visit to your archbishop, cried the duchess. Tell him of your sister's marriage; when he knows she is to be a duchess, he will find you far more apostolic. Besides, you are ignorant of all that the count has just confided to you regarding your future appointment.

Fabrice ran to the archiepiscopal palace; there he was simple and modest, a tone he assumed too easily; on the contrary, he needed effort to play the great lord. While listening to the rather long accounts of Monsignor Landriani, he said to himself: "Ought I to have fired a pistol shot at the valet de chambre who was holding the lean horse by the bridle?" His reason said yes, but his heart could not grow accustomed to the bloody image of the handsome young man falling from his horse disfigured.

"Was this prison into which I was about to plunge myself, had the horse stumbled, the prison with which I am threatened by so many omens?"

This question was of the utmost importance to him, and the archbishop was pleased with his air of deep attention.

CHAPTER XI

On leaving the archbishop's palace, Fabrice ran to little Marietta's; he heard from afar the loud voice of Giletti, who had had wine brought in and was feasting with the prompter and the candle-snuffers, his friends. The mammacia, who acted as mother, alone answered his signal.

--There is news since you were here, she cried; two or three of our actors are accused of having celebrated the feast of the great Napoleon with an orgy, and our poor troupe, which is called Jacobin, has received orders to clear out of the States of Parma, and long live Napoleon! But the minister, it is said, spat in the basin. What is certain is that Giletti has money, I don't know how much, but I saw a handful of crowns on him. Marietta received five crowns from our manager for traveling expenses as far as Mantua and Venice, and I one. She is still very much in love with you, but Giletti frightens her; three days ago, at the last performance we gave, he was absolutely determined to kill her; he gave her two famous slaps, and, what is abominable, he tore her blue shawl. If you would give her a blue shawl, you would be a good lad, and we would say we had won it in a lottery. The drum-major of the carabineers is giving an assault tomorrow, you will find the time posted at every street corner. Come and see us; if he has gone off to the assault, so that we may hope he will stay out rather long, I shall be at the window and will signal you to come up. Try to bring us something very pretty, and Marietta loves you to distraction.

As he descended the winding stair of that infamous hovel, Fabrice was full of compunction: "I am not changed," he said to himself; "all my fine resolutions made on the shore of our lake, when I saw life with so philosophical an eye, have flown away. My soul was out of its usual setting, all that was a dream and disappears before austere reality. This would be the moment to act," said Fabrice, re-entering the Sanseverina palace about eleven o'clock at night. But it was in vain that he sought in his heart the courage to speak with that sublime sincerity which had seemed so easy to him on the night he spent on the shores of Lake Como. "I am going to anger the person I love best in the world; if I speak, I shall look like a bad comedian; I am really worth something only in certain moments of exaltation."

--The count is admirable toward me, he said to the duchess, after reporting to her his visit to the archbishopric; I appreciate his conduct all the more since I believe I perceive that I please him only very moderately; my manner of acting must therefore be correct toward him. He has his excavations at Sanguigna of which he is always mad, to judge at least by his journey of the day before yesterday; he rode twelve leagues at a gallop to spend two hours with his workmen. If fragments of statues are found in the ancient temple whose foundations he has just discovered, he fears they may be stolen from him; I have a mind to propose to him to go and spend thirty-six hours at Sanguigna. Tomorrow, about five o'clock, I am to see the archbishop again, I can leave in the evening and profit by the cool of the night to make the journey.

The duchess did not answer at first.

--One would say you are seeking pretexts to get away from me, she said to him afterward with extreme tenderness; scarcely back from Belgirate, you find a reason to leave.

"Here is a fine occasion to speak," said Fabrice to himself. "But on the lake I was a little mad, I did not notice in my enthusiasm of sincerity that my compliment ends in an impertinence; it would be a matter of saying: I love you with the most devoted friendship, etc. etc., but my soul is not capable of love. Is not that saying: I see that you have love for me; but take care, I cannot pay you back in the same coin? If she has love, the duchess may be angry at being divined, and she will be revolted at my impudence if she has for me only a perfectly simple friendship... and these are offenses that are never forgiven."

While he was weighing these important ideas, Fabrice, without noticing it, was walking up and down the salon, with a grave and lofty air, like a man who sees misfortune ten paces from him.

The duchess looked at him with admiration; this was no longer the child she had seen born, no longer the nephew always ready to obey her: he was a grave man, and it would be delicious to make oneself loved by him. She rose from the ottoman where she was seated, and, throwing herself into his arms with transport:

--So you wish to flee from me? said she.

--No, he answered with the air of a Roman emperor, but I should like to be wise.

This word was susceptible of various interpretations; Fabrice did not feel the courage to go further and run the chance of wounding that adorable woman. He was too young, too susceptible to emotion; his mind supplied him with no amiable turn to make understood what he wished to say. By a natural impulse and despite all reasoning, he took the charming woman in his arms and covered her with kisses. At the same instant, the noise of the count's carriage entering the court was heard, and almost at the same time he himself appeared in the salon; he looked quite moved.

--You inspire singular passions, said he to Fabrice, who remained almost confounded at the word.

"The archbishop had this evening the audience that His Most Serene Highness grants him every Thursday; the prince has just told me that the archbishop, with a thoroughly troubled air, began with a speech learned by heart and very learned, to which at first the prince understood nothing. Landriani ended by declaring that it was important for the church of Parma that Monsignore Fabrice del Dongo be named his first vicar general, and, subsequently, as soon as he had completed his twenty-fourth year, his coadjutor with future succession.

"That word frightened me, I confess," said the count; "that is going a little too fast, and I feared a fit of humor in the prince." But he looked at me laughing and said to me in French: "These are your doings, sir!"--"I can swear before God and before Your Highness," I cried with all possible unction, "that I was perfectly ignorant of the word future succession." Then I told the truth, what we were saying here ourselves a few hours ago; I added, with warmth, that, subsequently, I should regard myself as overwhelmed with the favors of His Highness, if he deigned to grant me a small bishopric to begin with. The prince must have believed me, for he judged it proper to be gracious; he said to me, with all possible simplicity: "This is an official matter between the archbishop and myself, you have no part in it; the good man addresses me a sort of report very long and passably tiresome, at the end of which he arrives at an official proposition; I answered him very coldly that the subject was very young, and above all very new at my court; that I should almost have the air of paying a bill of exchange drawn on me by the Emperor, in giving the perspective of so high a dignity to the son of one of the great officers of his Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. The archbishop protested that no recommendation of that kind had taken place. It was a good piece of folly to say to me; I was surprised at it from so experienced a man; but he is always disconcerted when he speaks to me, and this evening he was more troubled than ever, which gave me the idea that he desired the thing with passion. I told him that I knew better than he that there had been no high recommendation in favor of del Dongo, that no one at my court denied him capacity, that not too ill was spoken of his morals, but that I feared he might be susceptible of enthusiasm, and that I had promised myself never to raise to considerable places the fools of that sort with whom a prince is sure of nothing. Then," continued His Highness, "I had to undergo a pathos almost as long as the first: the archbishop was singing the praises of the enthusiasm of the house of God. Awkward fellow, said I to myself, you are wandering, you are compromising the nomination which was almost granted; you should cut short and thank me with effusion. Not at all: he continued his homily with a ridiculous intrepidity, I was seeking a reply that should not be too unfavorable to little del Dongo; I found it, and rather happy, as you are about to judge: Monseigneur, said I to him, Pius VII was a great pope and a great saint; among all sovereigns, he alone dared say no to the tyrant who saw Europe at his feet! well! he was susceptible of enthusiasm, which led him, when he was bishop of Imola, to write his famous pastoral of the citizen cardinal Chiaramonti in favor of the Cisalpine republic.

"My poor archbishop remained stupefied, and, to complete his stupefaction, I said to him with a very serious air: Adieu, monseigneur, I shall take four-and-twenty hours to reflect upon your proposition. The poor man added some supplications rather ill-turned and rather inopportune after the word adieu pronounced by me. Now, Count Mosca della Rovere, I charge you to tell the duchess that I will not delay by four-and-twenty hours a thing that may be agreeable to her; sit down there and write to the archbishop the note of approval which ends all this affair. I wrote the note, he signed it, he said to me: 'Carry it at once to the duchess.' Here is the note, madam, and that is what gave me a pretext to have the happiness of seeing you again this evening."

The duchess read the note with rapture. During the count's long recital, Fabrice had had time to recover himself: he showed no surprise at this incident, he took it as a true great lord who naturally had always believed he had a right to these extraordinary advancements, to these strokes of fortune which would put a bourgeois beside himself; he spoke of his gratitude, but in good terms, and ended by saying to the count:

--A good courtier should flatter the dominant passion; yesterday you testified the fear that your workmen at Sanguigna might steal the fragments of antique statues they might discover; I am very fond of excavations, myself; if you will permit it, I shall go and see the workmen. Tomorrow evening, after the proper acknowledgments at the palace and at the archbishop's, I shall set out for Sanguigna.

--But can you guess, said the duchess to the count, whence comes this sudden passion of the good archbishop for Fabrice?

--I need not guess; the grand vicar whose brother is a captain was telling me yesterday: "Father Landriani starts from this certain principle, that the titular is superior to the coadjutor," and he is beside himself with joy at having a del Dongo under his orders and at having obliged him. All that throws light on Fabrice's high birth adds to his inward happiness: to have such a man for aide-de-camp! In the second place Mgr Fabrice pleased him, he feels no timidity before him; finally he has nourished for ten years a well-conditioned hatred for the bishop of Piacenza, who openly affirms the pretension of succeeding him on the see of Parma, and who moreover is the son of a miller. It is with this view of future succession that the bishop of Piacenza has formed very close relations with the Marquise Raversi, and now these connections make the archbishop tremble for the success of his favorite design, to have a del Dongo on his staff, and to give him orders.

The day after next, early in the morning, Fabrice was directing the works of the excavation at Sanguigna, opposite Colorno (it is the Versailles of the princes of Parma); these excavations extended across the plain close to the high road leading from Parma to the bridge of Casal-Maggiore, the first town of Austria. The workmen were cutting the plain by a long trench eight feet deep and as narrow as possible; they were occupied in seeking, along the ancient Roman way, the ruins of a second temple which, it was said in the country, still existed in the Middle Ages. Despite the prince's orders, several peasants saw not without jealousy these long ditches crossing their properties. Whatever might be said to them, they imagined that a treasure was being sought, and the presence of Fabrice was especially fitting to prevent some little riot. He was not bored, he followed these works with passion; from time to time some medal was found, and he would not give the workmen time to agree among themselves to palm it off.

The day was fine, it might have been six o'clock in the morning: he had borrowed a single-shot old gun, he fired at some larks; one of them, wounded, went to fall on the high road; Fabrice, in pursuing it, perceived from afar a carriage which came from Parma and was directing itself toward the frontier of Casal-Maggiore. He had just reloaded his gun when the very dilapidated carriage approaching at a very slow pace, he recognized little Marietta; she had at her side the great lout Giletti, and that elderly woman whom she passed off as her mother.

Giletti imagined that Fabrice had placed himself thus in the middle of the road, gun in hand, to insult him and perhaps even to carry off little Marietta. Like a man of courage he jumped down from the carriage; he had in his left hand a large very rusty pistol, and held in his right a sword still in its scabbard, which he used when the needs of the troupe forced them to entrust him with some marquis role.

--Ah! brigand! he cried, I am glad to find you here a league from the frontier; I am going to settle your business; you are no longer protected here by your violet stockings.

Fabrice was making signs to little Marietta and paid little heed to the jealous cries of Giletti, when suddenly he saw at three feet from his chest the muzzle of the rusty pistol; he had only time to strike the pistol, using his gun like a stick: the pistol went off, but wounded no one.

--Stop, you f..., cried Giletti to the veturino: at the same time he had the dexterity to jump on the muzzle of his adversary's gun and hold it away from the direction of his body; Fabrice and he were each pulling the gun with all their strength. Giletti, much the stronger, placing one hand before the other, kept advancing toward the piece, and was on the point of seizing the gun, when Fabrice, to prevent him from making use of it, fired the shot. He had observed beforehand that the extremity of the gun was more than three inches above Giletti's shoulder: the detonation took place close to the latter's ear. He remained a little astonished, but recovered in the twinkling of an eye.

--Ah! you want to blow my brains out, scoundrel! I am going to settle your account. Giletti threw away the scabbard of his marquis sword, and fell upon Fabrice with admirable rapidity. The latter had no weapon and saw himself lost.

He fled toward the carriage, which was stopped some ten paces behind Giletti; he passed to the left, and seizing with his hand the spring of the carriage, he turned rapidly all around and passed again close to the right door which was open. Giletti, launched with his long legs and who had not had the idea of holding on to the carriage spring, made several paces in his first direction before he could stop. At the moment when Fabrice passed near the open door, he heard Marietta say to him half under her breath:

--Take care of yourself; he will kill you. Here!

At the same instant, Fabrice saw fall from the door a sort of large hunting-knife; he bent down to pick it up, but, at the same instant he was touched in the shoulder by a sword-thrust which Giletti launched at him. Fabrice, as he rose, found himself six inches from Giletti who gave him in the face a furious blow with the pommel of his sword; this blow was launched with such force that it quite shattered Fabrice's reason; at that moment he was on the point of being killed. Happily for him, Giletti was still too close to be able to give him a thrust. Fabrice, when he came to himself, took to flight running with all his might; as he ran, he threw away the scabbard of the hunting-knife and then, turning quickly, found himself three paces from Giletti who was pursuing him. Giletti was launched, Fabrice gave him a thrust; Giletti with his sword had time to raise the hunting-knife a little, but he received the thrust full in the left cheek. He passed very close to Fabrice who felt his thigh pierced, it was Giletti's knife which the latter had had time to open. Fabrice made a jump to the right; he turned, and at last the two adversaries found themselves at a just distance for combat.

Giletti was swearing like a damned soul.

--Ah! I am going to cut your throat, priestly knave, he repeated at every instant.

Fabrice was quite out of breath and could not speak; the blow of the sword-pommel in the face made him suffer greatly, and his nose bled abundantly; he parried several blows with his hunting-knife and made several lunges without quite knowing what he was doing; it vaguely seemed to him that he was at a public assault. This idea had been suggested to him by the presence of his workmen who, to the number of twenty-five or thirty, formed a circle around the combatants, but at a very respectful distance; for one saw the two men continually running and throwing themselves one upon the other.

The combat seemed to slacken a little; the blows no longer followed one another with the same rapidity, when Fabrice said to himself: "From the pain I feel in my face, he must have disfigured me." Seized with rage at this idea, he sprang upon his enemy with the point of the hunting-knife forward. This point entered the right side of Giletti's chest and came out toward the left shoulder; at the same instant Giletti's sword penetrated the full length into the upper part of Fabrice's arm, but the sword slipped under the skin, and it was an insignificant wound.

Giletti had fallen; at the moment when Fabrice advanced toward him, looking at his left hand which held a knife, this hand opened mechanically and let the weapon escape.

"The knave is dead," said Fabrice to himself; he looked at his face, Giletti was throwing up much blood from the mouth. Fabrice ran to the carriage.

--Have you a mirror? he cried to Marietta. Marietta looked at him very pale and did not answer. The old woman opened with great coolness a green work-bag, and presented to Fabrice a small handle-mirror the size of the hand. Fabrice, as he looked at himself, felt his face: "The eyes are sound," said he to himself, "that is already a great deal." He looked at his teeth, they were not broken.

--Whence comes it then that I suffer so? said he half aloud.

The old woman answered him:

--It is that the upper part of your cheek was crushed between the pommel of Giletti's sword and the bone we have there. Your cheek is horribly swollen and blue: put leeches on it instantly, and it will be nothing.

--Ah! leeches instantly, said Fabrice, laughing, and he recovered all his presence of mind. He saw that the workmen were surrounding Giletti and looking at him without daring to touch him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”