Part 21
One evening, toward nightfall, Fabrice, seeking to make himself noticed by Fausta, was greeted by loud, unmistakable bursts of laughter from Count M***'s buli, who were standing at the gate of the Tanari palace. He ran home, took up good weapons, and passed again before that palace. Fausta, hidden behind her shutters, was expecting this return, and rewarded him for it. M***, jealous of all the world, became specially jealous of Mr. Joseph Bossi, and flew into ridiculous rages; whereupon every morning our hero had a letter delivered to him containing only these words:
Mr. Joseph Bossi destroys troublesome insects, and lodges at the Pelegrino, via Larga, No. 79.
Count M***, accustomed to the respect assured him everywhere by his enormous fortune, his blue blood, and the bravery of his thirty domestics, would not hear the language of this little note.
Fabrice wrote others to Fausta; M*** set spies around this rival, who perhaps was not displeasing; first he learned his true name, and next that for the moment he could not show himself at Parma. A few days later, Count M***, his buli, his magnificent horses, and Fausta set out for Parma.
Fabrice, piqued at the game, followed them the next day. It was in vain that good Ludovic made pathetic remonstrances; Fabrice sent him about his business, and Ludovic, himself quite brave, admired him; besides, this journey brought him nearer to the pretty mistress he had at Casal-Maggiore. Through Ludovic's care, eight or ten former soldiers of Napoleon's regiments entered Mr. Joseph Bossi's service under the name of domestics. "Provided," said Fabrice to himself, in the folly of following Fausta, "that I have no communication either with the minister of police, Count Mosca, or with the duchess, I expose only myself. I shall tell my aunt later that I went in search of love, that beautiful thing I have never met. The fact is that I think of Fausta, even when I do not see her... But is it the memory of her voice that I love, or her person?" Thinking no more of an ecclesiastical career, Fabrice had put on mustaches and side-whiskers almost as terrible as those of Count M***, which disguised him a little. He established his headquarters not at Parma—that would have been too imprudent—but in a village nearby, amid the woods, on the road to Sacca, where his aunt's castle was. On Ludovic's advice, he presented himself in this village as the valet de chambre of a highly original English nobleman who spent a hundred thousand francs a year for the pleasure of hunting, and who would arrive shortly from Lake Como, where he was detained by trout fishing. Fortunately, the pretty little palace that Count M*** had rented for the beautiful Fausta was situated at the southern extremity of the city of Parma, precisely on the road to Sacca, and Fausta's windows looked out upon the fine avenues of great trees that extend beneath the high tower of the citadel. Fabrice was unknown in this deserted quarter; he did not fail to have Count M*** followed, and one day, when the latter had just left the admirable cantatrice's house, he had the audacity to appear in the street in broad daylight; true, he was mounted on an excellent horse, and well armed. Musicians, of the kind that roam the streets in Italy, and who are sometimes excellent, came to plant their double-basses beneath Fausta's windows: after preluding, they sang fairly well a cantata in her honor. Fausta came to the window, and easily noticed a very polite young man who, halted on horseback in the middle of the street, first saluted her, then began to cast at her glances far from equivocal. Despite the exaggerated English costume adopted by Fabrice, she soon recognized the author of the passionate letters that had brought about her departure from Bologna. "There is a singular being," said she to herself, "it seems to me that I am going to love him. I have a hundred louis before me, I can very well leave this terrible Count M***. After all, he lacks wit and unpredictability, and is only amusing at all by the atrocious look of his people."
The next day, Fabrice having learned that every day, toward eleven o'clock, Fausta went to hear mass in the center of the city, in that same church of Saint-Jean where was the tomb of his great-uncle, the archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, he dared to follow her there. True, Ludovic had procured him a fine English wig with hair of the brightest red. On the subject of the color of this hair, which was that of the flames burning his heart, he made a sonnet that Fausta found charming; an unknown hand had taken care to place it on her piano. This little war lasted a good eight days, but Fabrice found that, despite his maneuvers of every kind, he was making no real progress; Fausta refused to receive him. He overdid the shade of singularity; she has said since that she was afraid of him. Fabrice was held back only by a remnant of hope of arriving at feeling what is called love, but often he was bored.
"Sir, let us be off," Ludovic kept repeating to him, "you are not in love; I see in you a composure and good sense that are despairing. Besides, you are getting nowhere; out of pure shame, let us decamp."
Fabrice was about to leave at the first fit of ill humor, when he learned that Fausta was to sing at the Duchess Sanseverina's. "Perhaps that sublime voice will finish inflaming my heart," said he to himself; and he dared to slip in disguised into that palace where all eyes knew him. Judge of the duchess's emotion, when quite toward the end of the concert she noticed a man in a huntsman's livery, standing near the door of the great salon; this bearing recalled someone. She sought Count Mosca, who only then told her of Fabrice's signal and truly incredible folly. He took it very well. This love for someone other than the duchess pleased him greatly; the count, a perfect gentleman outside of politics, acted on the maxim that he could not find happiness except insofar as the duchess should be happy.
"I shall save him from himself," said he to his friend; "judge of our enemies' joy if he were arrested in this palace! Thus have I here more than a hundred men of my own, and that is why I had you asked for the keys to the great water-castle. He passes for a mad lover of Fausta, and thus far cannot tear her from Count M***, who gives this madwoman a queen's existence."
The duchess's countenance betrayed the liveliest pain: Fabrice was then but a libertine quite incapable of a tender and serious sentiment.
"And not to see us! that is what I shall never be able to forgive him!" said she at last; "and I who write to him every day at Bologna!"
"I esteem his restraint highly," replied the count; "he will not compromise us by his escapade, and it will be amusing to hear him tell of it."
Fausta was too mad to know how to conceal what occupied her: the day after the concert, whose airs her eyes had addressed to that tall young man dressed as a huntsman, she spoke to Count M*** of an attentive stranger.
"Where do you see him?" said the furious count.
"In the streets, at church," answered Fausta, disconcerted. At once she wished to repair her imprudence or at least remove all that might recall Fabrice: she launched into an endless description of a tall young man with red hair, he had blue eyes; doubtless it was some very rich and very awkward Englishman, or some prince. At this word, Count M***, who did not shine by the accuracy of his perceptions, went to imagine, a thing delicious to his vanity, that this rival was none other than the hereditary prince of Parma. This poor melancholy young man, guarded by five or six governors, sub-governors, tutors, etc., who let him out only after holding council, cast strange glances upon all the passable women it was permitted him to approach. At the duchess's concert, his rank had placed him ahead of all the listeners, on an isolated armchair, three paces from the beautiful Fausta, and his glances had sovereignly offended Count M***. This folly of exquisite vanity—having a prince for a rival—greatly amused Fausta, who made it a pleasure to confirm it by a hundred naively given details.
"Your race," she said to the count, "is as ancient as that of the Farnese to which this young man belongs?"
"What do you mean? as ancient! I have no bastardy in my family."
Chance willed that Count M*** should never see at his ease this pretended rival; which confirmed him in the flattering idea of having a prince for antagonist. In effect, when the interests of his enterprise did not call Fabrice to Parma, he kept himself in the woods toward Sacca and the banks of the Po. Count M*** was prouder, but also more prudent since he believed himself on the way to disputing Fausta's heart with a prince; he very seriously begged her to use the greatest reserve in all her movements. After throwing himself at her knees as a jealous and passionate lover, he declared very plainly that his honor was concerned in her not being the dupe of the young prince.
"Permit me, I should not be his dupe if I loved him; I, I have never seen a prince at my feet."
"If you yield," he resumed with a haughty look, "perhaps I shall not be able to avenge myself on the prince; but certainly, I shall avenge myself"; and he went out slamming the doors with all his might. Had Fabrice presented himself at that moment, he would have won his suit.
"If you care for your life," said he to her in the evening, taking leave of her after the spectacle, "see to it that I never learn that the young prince entered your house. I can do nothing against him, zounds! but do not remind me that I can do all against you!"
"Ah! my little Fabrice," cried Fausta; "if I knew where to catch you!"
Piqued vanity can carry far a young man who is rich and from the cradle always surrounded by flatterers. The very real passion Count M*** had had for Fausta awoke with fury: he was not stopped by the dangerous prospect of struggling with the only son of the sovereign in whose states he found himself; just as he had not the wit to seek to see this prince, or at least to have him followed. Unable otherwise to attack him, M*** dared to think of giving him a ridiculous air. "I shall be banished forever from the States of Parma," said he to himself, "eh! what does it matter to me?" Had he sought to recognize the enemy's position, Count M*** would have learned that the poor young prince never went out without being followed by three or four old men, tedious guardians of etiquette, and that the only pleasure of his own choosing permitted him in the world was mineralogy. By day as by night, the little palace occupied by Fausta, and where the good company of Parma thronged, was surrounded by observers; M*** knew hour by hour what she did and above all what was done around her. One may praise this in the precautions of this jealous man, this so capricious woman at first had no idea of this redoubled surveillance. The reports of all his agents said to Count M*** that a very young man, wearing a wig of red hair, appeared very often beneath Fausta's windows, but always with a new disguise. "Evidently, it is the young prince," said M*** to himself, "otherwise why disguise himself? and, zounds! a man like me is not made to yield to him. Without the usurpations of the republic of Venice, I should be a sovereign prince, I too."
On the day of San Stefano, the spies' reports took a darker color; they seemed to indicate that Fausta was beginning to answer the attentions of the unknown. "I can leave this instant with this woman," said M*** to himself! "But what! at Bologna, I fled before del Dongo; here I should flee before a prince! But what would this young man say? He might think he had succeeded in frightening me! And, by heaven! I am of as good a house as he." M*** was furious, but, to crown his misery, cared above all not to give himself, in the eyes of the mocking Fausta, the ridicule of being jealous. On the day of San Stefano, then, after spending an hour with her, and having been received with an eagerness that seemed to him the height of falseness, he left her about eleven o'clock, dressing to go hear mass at the church of Saint-Jean. Count M*** returned home, took the threadbare black habit of a young theology student, and ran to Saint-Jean; he chose his place behind one of the tombs that adorn the third chapel on the right; he saw all that passed in the church under the arm of a cardinal who is represented kneeling on his tomb; this statue took the light from the back of the chapel and hid him sufficiently. Soon he saw Fausta arrive, more beautiful than ever; she was in full dress, and twenty adorers belonging to the highest society made her cortège. Smile and joy shone in her eyes and on her lips. "It is evident," said the unhappy jealous man to himself, "that she counts on meeting here the man she loves, and that perhaps for long, thanks to me, she has not been able to see him." Suddenly, the liveliest happiness seemed to redouble in Fausta's eyes. "My rival is present," said M***, and his fury of vanity knew no bounds. "What a figure do I cut here, serving as a pendant to a young prince who disguises himself?" But whatever efforts he could make, never did he succeed in discovering this rival whom his famished glances sought on all sides.
Every moment Fausta, after roving her eyes through all parts of the church, ended by fixing looks charged with love and happiness upon the obscure corner where M*** had hidden. In a passionate heart, love is subject to exaggerate the lightest shades, it draws the most ridiculous conclusions from them; did not poor M*** end by persuading himself that Fausta had seen him, that, despite his efforts, having perceived my mortal jealousy, she wished to reproach him for it and at the same time console him for it by those tender glances?
The tomb of the cardinal, behind which M*** had placed himself in observation, was raised four or five feet above the marble pavement of Saint-Jean. The fashionable mass being finished toward one o'clock, most of the faithful went away, and Fausta dismissed the fine gentlemen of the city under a pretext of devotion; remaining kneeling on her chair, her eyes, grown tenderer and brighter, were fixed on M***; since there were no longer but few persons in the church, her glances no longer took the trouble to roam over it entire, before stopping happily on the statue of the cardinal. What delicacy, said Count M*** to himself, believing himself looked at! At last Fausta rose and went out abruptly, after making with her hands some singular motions.
M***, drunk with love and almost wholly disabused of his mad jealousy, was leaving his place to fly to his mistress's palace and thank her a thousand and a thousand times, when, in passing before the cardinal's tomb, he caught sight of a young man all in black; this fatal being had till then remained kneeling close against the epitaph of the tomb, and in such a way that the glances of the jealous lover who sought him must pass over his head and not see him.
This young man rose, walked quickly, and was instantly surrounded by seven or eight rather awkward personages, of singular aspect and who seemed to belong to him. M*** precipitated himself on his steps, but, without anything too marked, he was stopped in the passage formed by the wooden drum of the entrance door, by these awkward men who protected his rival; finally, when after them he reached the street, he could only see the door of a carriage of mean appearance close, which, by a bizarre contrast, was harnessed to two excellent horses, and in a moment was out of his sight.
He returned home panting with fury; soon his observers arrived, who reported to him coldly that that day, the mysterious lover, disguised as a priest, had knelt very devoutly, close against a tomb placed at the entrance of a dark chapel of the church of Saint-Jean. Fausta had remained in the church until it was almost deserted, and then she had rapidly exchanged certain signs with this unknown; with her hands, she made like crosses. M*** ran to the unfaithful one; for the first time she could not hide her confusion; she recounted with the lying naivety of a passionate woman, that as usual she had gone to Saint-Jean, but that she had not perceived there this man who persecuted her. At these words, M***, beside himself, treated her like the last of creatures, told her all that he himself had seen, and the boldness of her lies increasing with the liveliness of his accusations, he took his dagger and threw himself upon her. With great composure Fausta said to him:
"Well! all that you complain of is pure truth, but I tried to hide it from you so as not to throw your audacity into projects of senseless vengeance that may ruin us both; for, know it once and for all, according to my conjectures, the man who persecutes me with his attentions is made to find no obstacles to his will, at least in this country."
After very adroitly recalling that after all M*** had no right over her, Fausta ended by saying that probably she would go no more to the church of Saint-Jean. M*** was desperately in love, a little coquetry might have joined prudence in the heart of this young woman, he felt himself disarmed. He had the idea of leaving Parma; the young prince, powerful as he might be, could not follow him, or if he followed him would be no more than his equal. But pride represented anew that this departure would always have the air of a flight, and Count M*** defended himself from thinking of it.
"He does not suspect the presence of my little Fabrice," said the delighted cantatrice to herself, "and now we shall be able to mock him in a precious fashion!"
Fabrice did not guess his good fortune, finding the next day the cantatrice's windows carefully shut, and seeing her nowhere, the jest began to seem long to him. He had remorse. "In what a situation do I place this poor Count Mosca, he minister of police! he will be thought my accomplice, I shall have come into this country to break his fortune's neck! But if I abandon a project so long pursued, what will the duchess say when I tell her of my essays in love?"
One evening, ready to quit the party and thus moralizing to himself while roaming beneath the great trees that separate Fausta's palace from the citadel, he noticed that he was followed by a very small-sized spy; in vain, to rid himself of him, he went through several streets, always this microscopic being seemed attached to his steps. Impatient, he ran into a solitary street situated along the Parma, and where his men lay in ambush; at a sign he made they sprang upon the poor little spy, who threw himself at their knees: it was Bettina, Fausta's chambermaid; after three days of boredom and seclusion, disguised as a man to escape the dagger of Count M***, of whom her mistress and she stood in great fear, she had undertaken to come tell Fabrice that he was loved to distraction and that they burned to see him; but they could no longer appear at the church of Saint-Jean. "It was time," said Fabrice to himself, "long live persistence!"
The little chambermaid was very pretty, which drew Fabrice from his moral reveries. She told him that the walk and all the streets where he had passed that evening were carefully guarded, without it appearing, by spies of M***. They had rented rooms on the ground floor or first floor, hidden behind the shutters and keeping a deep silence, they observed all that passed in the street, apparently the most solitary, and heard what was said there.
"If these spies had recognized my voice," said little Bettina, "I was stabbed without remission on my return home, and perhaps my poor mistress with me."
This terror rendered her charming in Fabrice's eyes.
"Count M***," she continued, "is furious, and Madame knows he is capable of anything... She charged me to tell you that she would like to be a hundred leagues from here with you!"
Then she recounted the scene of Saint Stephen's day, and the fury of M***, who had lost none of the glances and signs of love that Fausta, that day mad with Fabrice, had addressed to him. The count had drawn his dagger, seized Fausta by the hair, and, without her presence of mind, she was lost.
Fabrice had the pretty Bettina brought up into a little apartment he had nearby. He told her he was from Turin, son of a great personage who at the moment was at Parma, which obliged him to use much circumspection. Bettina answered him laughing that he was a much greater lord than he wished to appear. Our hero needed a little time before understanding that the charming girl took him for no less a personage than the hereditary prince himself. Fausta was beginning to be afraid and to love Fabrice; she had taken it upon herself not to tell that name to her chambermaid, and to speak to her of the prince. Fabrice ended by confessing to the pretty girl that she had guessed right:
"But if my name is noised about," added he, "despite the great passion of which I have given so many proofs to your mistress, I shall be obliged to cease seeing her, and at once my father's ministers, those wicked knaves whom I shall one day dismiss, will not fail to send her the order to quit the country, which until now she has embellished by her presence."
Toward morning, Fabrice combined with the little lady's-maid several plans of rendezvous for reaching Fausta; he had Ludovic and another of his very clever men called, who came to an understanding with Bettina, while he wrote to Fausta the most extravagant letter; the situation admitted all the exaggerations of tragedy and Fabrice did not spare himself. It was only at daybreak that he parted from the little chambermaid, quite content with the young prince's ways.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”