Part 22

It had been repeated a hundred times that, now that the Fausta was in agreement with her lover, he would not pass again beneath the windows of the little palace except when she could receive him there, and then there would be a signal. But Fabrice, in love with the Bettina, and believing himself close to the consummation with the Fausta, could not stay in his village two leagues from Parma. The next day, toward midnight, he came on horseback, and well accompanied, to sing beneath the Fausta's windows an air then in fashion, the words of which he changed. "Is it not thus that gentlemen lovers behave?" he said to himself.

Since the Fausta had shown a wish for a rendezvous, all this hunting seemed very long to Fabrice. "No, I do not love," he said to himself, singing rather badly beneath the windows of the little palace; "the Bettina seems to me a hundred times preferable to the Fausta, and it is by her that I should wish to be received at this moment." Fabrice, quite bored, was returning to his village, when at five hundred paces from the Fausta's palace fifteen or twenty men threw themselves upon him; four of them seized his horse's bridle, two others took hold of his arms. Ludovic and Fabrice's bravi were attacked but managed to escape; they fired a few pistol shots. All this was the work of an instant: fifty torches lit in the street appeared in the blink of an eye and as if by enchantment. All these men were well armed. Fabrice had jumped down from his horse, despite those who held him; he sought to force his way; he even wounded one of the men who was gripping his arms with hands like vices; but he was much astonished to hear this man say to him in the most respectful tone:

--Your Highness will grant me a good pension for this wound, which will be better for me than to fall into the crime of lèse-majesté, by drawing my sword against my prince.

"Here is precisely the punishment for my folly," said Fabrice to himself; "I shall have damned myself for a sin that did not seem at all amiable to me."

Scarcely was this little attempt at fighting over, than several lackeys in full livery appeared with a sedan chair gilded and painted in a bizarre fashion: it was one of those grotesque chairs which masks use during carnival. Six men, dagger in hand, begged His Highness to enter it, telling him that the cool night air might harm his voice; they affected the most respectful forms, the name of prince was repeated at every instant, and almost shouting. The procession began to file past. Fabrice counted in the street more than fifty men carrying lighted torches. It might have been one in the morning; everyone had gone to their windows; the thing took place with a certain gravity. "I feared dagger thrusts from Count M***," said Fabrice to himself; "he contents himself with mocking me; I did not think him capable of so much taste. But does he really believe he has to do with the prince? If he knows that I am only Fabrice, beware the dagger thrusts!"

These fifty men bearing torches and the twenty armed men, after lingering long beneath the Fausta's windows, went to parade before the finest palaces of the city. Majordomos placed on either side of the sedan chair asked His Highness from time to time if he had any orders to give them. Fabrice did not lose his head: by the light spread by the torches, he saw that Ludovic and his men were following the procession as best they could. Fabrice said to himself: Ludovic has but eight or ten men and dares not attack. From inside his sedan chair, Fabrice saw very well that those charged with the bad jest were armed to the teeth. He affected to laugh with the majordomos charged with attending to him. After more than two hours of triumphal marching, he saw that they were about to pass at the end of the street where the Sanseverina palace was situated.

As they turned the street leading to it, he rapidly opened the door of the chair placed at the front, leaped over one of the poles, overturned with a dagger thrust one of the footmen who was holding his torch to his face; he received a dagger blow in the shoulder, a second footman burned his beard with his lighted torch, and at last Fabrice reached Ludovic, to whom he cried:

--Kill! kill all who carry torches!

Ludovic gave sword thrusts and delivered him from two men who were bent on pursuing him. Fabrice arrived running to the door of the Sanseverina palace; out of curiosity, the porter had opened the small door three feet high set in the great one, and was looking in astonishment at this great number of flambeaux. Fabrice entered with a leap and closed this miniature door behind him; he ran to the garden and escaped by a door opening onto a solitary street. An hour later he was outside the city; by daybreak he crossed the frontier of the Modenese states and found himself in safety. That evening he entered Bologna. "Here is a fine expedition," he said to himself; "I could not even speak to my beauty." He hastened to write letters of excuse to the count and to the duchess, prudent letters, which, while depicting what was passing in his heart, could teach nothing to an enemy. "I was in love with love," he wrote to the duchess; "I did everything in the world to know it, but it appears that nature has refused me a heart to love and be melancholy; I cannot rise higher than vulgar pleasure, etc."

No idea can be given of the noise this adventure made in Parma. Mystery excited curiosity: an infinite number of people had seen the torches and the sedan chair. But who was this man carried off and toward whom all the forms of respect were affected? The next day no known personage was missing from the city.

The common people who lived in the street from which the prisoner had escaped said they had indeed seen a corpse, but in broad daylight, when the inhabitants dared come out of their houses, they found no other traces of the combat than much blood spilled on the pavement. More than twenty thousand curious people came to visit the street during the day. The cities of Italy are accustomed to singular spectacles, but always they know the why and the wherefore. What shocked Parma in this occurrence was that even a month later, when people ceased to speak only of the torchlight procession, no one, thanks to the prudence of Count Mosca, had been able to guess the name of the rival who had wished to carry off the Fausta from Count M***. That jealous and vindictive lover had taken flight from the beginning of the procession. By order of the count, the Fausta was put in the citadel. The duchess laughed much at a little injustice which the count had to permit himself to stop entirely the prince's curiosity, who otherwise might have arrived at Fabrice's name.

There was to be seen in Parma a learned man arrived from the north to write a history of the Middle Ages; he was searching for manuscripts in the libraries, and the count had given him all possible authorizations. But this scholar, still very young, showed himself irascible; he believed, for example, that everyone in Parma was trying to mock him. It is true that the street urchins sometimes followed him because of an immense light-red mane displayed with pride. This scholar believed that at the inn they asked him exaggerated prices for everything, and he did not pay the least trifle without looking up its price in the travel book of a Mrs. Starke which has reached a twentieth edition, because it indicates to the prudent Englishman the price of a turkey, an apple, a glass of milk, etc.

The red-maned scholar, on the very evening of the day Fabrice took this forced promenade, became furious at his inn, and pulled small pistols from his pocket to revenge himself on the cameriere who asked him two sous for a mediocre peach. He was arrested, for carrying small pistols is a great crime!

As this irascible scholar was tall and thin, the count had the idea, the next morning, of making him pass in the prince's eyes for the rash man who, having pretended to carry off the Fausta from Count M***, had been mystified. The carrying of pocket pistols is punished by three years' galley at Parma; but this penalty is never applied. After fifteen days of prison, during which the scholar had seen only a lawyer who had given him a horrible fright about the atrocious laws directed by the pusillanimity of those in power against carriers of concealed weapons, another lawyer visited the prison and told him of the promenade inflicted by Count M*** on a rival who had remained unknown.

--The police do not wish to admit to the prince that they could not discover who this rival is: Confess that you wished to please the Fausta, that fifty brigands carried you off as you sang beneath her window, that for an hour you were paraded in a sedan chair with nothing but courtesies addressed to you. This admission is in no way humiliating; only a word is asked of you. As soon as, by uttering it, you have drawn the police out of their embarrassment, they will put you in a post-chaise and conduct you to the frontier where they wish you good evening.

The scholar resisted for a month; two or three times the prince was on the point of having him brought to the Ministry of the Interior, and of being present at the interrogation. But at last he thought no more of it when the historian, bored, determined to confess all and was conducted to the frontier. The prince remained convinced that Count M***'s rival had a forest of red hair.

Three days after the promenade, as Fabrice, who was hiding in Bologna, was organizing with the faithful Ludovic the means of finding Count M***, he learned that he too was hiding in a mountain village on the road to Florence. The count had but three of his buli with him; the next day, at the moment he was returning from the promenade, he was carried off by eight masked men who presented themselves to him as sbirri of Parma. He was conducted, after being blindfolded, to an inn two leagues further in the mountain, where he found all possible consideration and a very abundant supper. He was served the best wines of Italy and Spain.

--Am I then a state prisoner? said the count.

--Not in the least! replied Ludovic, masked, very politely. You have offended a simple private individual, in having him paraded in a sedan chair; tomorrow morning he wishes to fight a duel with you. If you kill him, you will find two good horses, money, and relays prepared on the road to Genoa.

--What is the name of this braggart? said the irritated count.

--He is named Bombace. You shall have the choice of weapons and good witnesses, very loyal, but one of the two must die!

--It is then an assassination! said Count M***, frightened.

--God forbid! it is simply a duel to the death with the young man whom you paraded through the streets of Parma in the middle of the night, and who would remain dishonored if you stayed alive. One of you two is too many on earth, so try to kill him; you shall have swords, pistols, sabers, all the arms that could be procured in a few hours, for we had to hurry; the Bologna police is very diligent, as you may know, and it must not prevent this duel necessary to the honor of the young man you mocked.

--But if this young man is a prince...

--He is a simple private individual like you, and even much less rich than you, but he wishes to fight to the death, and he will force you to fight, I warn you.

--I fear nothing in the world! cried M***.

--That is what your adversary desires with the most passion, replied Ludovic. Tomorrow, at early morn, prepare to defend your life; it will be attacked by a man who has reason to be very angry and who will not spare you; I repeat that you shall have the choice of weapons; and make your will.

Toward six in the morning, the next day, Count M*** was served breakfast, then a door of the room where he was guarded was opened, and he was invited to pass into the courtyard of a country inn; this court was surrounded by hedges and rather high walls, and its gates were carefully closed.

In one corner, at a table which Count M*** was invited to approach, he found some bottles of wine and brandy, two pistols, two swords, two sabers, paper and ink; a score of peasants were at the windows of the inn overlooking the court. The count implored their pity.

--They wish to assassinate me! he cried; save my life!

--You are mistaken! or you wish to deceive, cried Fabrice to him, who was at the opposite corner of the court, beside a table loaded with arms.

He had thrown off his coat, and his face was hidden by one of those wire masks found in fencing rooms.

--I invite you, added Fabrice, to take the wire mask near you, then advance toward me with a sword or pistols; as you were told last evening, you have the choice of weapons.

Count M*** raised countless difficulties, and seemed much annoyed at fighting; Fabrice, for his part, dreaded the arrival of the police, though they were in the mountain five great leagues from Bologna; he ended by addressing to his rival the most atrocious insults; at last he had the good fortune to put Count M*** in a rage, who seized a sword and advanced on Fabrice; the combat engaged rather languidly.

After a few minutes, it was interrupted by a great noise. Our hero had well felt that he was throwing himself into an action which, all his life, might be for him a subject of reproach or at least of calumnious imputations. He had sent Ludovic into the country to recruit witnesses. Ludovic gave money to strangers working in a neighboring wood; they came running, crying out, thinking it was a matter of killing an enemy of the man who paid. Arrived at the inn, Ludovic begged them to look with all their eyes, and see if either of these two young men fighting was acting treacherously and taking illicit advantage of the other.

The combat, for an instant interrupted by the peasants' cries of death, was slow to recommence; Fabrice again insulted the fatuity of the count.

--Monsieur le Comte, he cried to him, when one is insolent, one must be brave. I feel that the condition is hard for you; you prefer to pay men who are brave.

The count, again stung, began to cry out to him that he had long frequented the fencing room of the famous Battistin at Naples, and that he was going to chastise his insolence; Count M***'s anger having at last returned, he fought with some firmness, which did not prevent Fabrice from giving him a very fine sword thrust in the chest, which kept him in bed several months. Ludovic, giving the first cares to the wounded man, said in his ear:

--If you denounce this duel to the police, I will have you stabbed in your bed.

Fabrice fled to Florence; as he had stayed hidden in Bologna, it was only at Florence that he received all the letters of reproach from the duchess; she could not forgive him for having come to her concert and not having sought to speak to her. Fabrice was delighted with Count Mosca's letters; they breathed a frank friendship and the noblest sentiments. He guessed that the count had written to Bologna in a way to remove the suspicions that might weigh on him relative to the duel; the police were of a perfect justice: they established that two strangers, of whom only one, the wounded man, was known (Count M***) had fought with swords, before more than thirty peasants, among whom was found toward the end of the combat the village curate who had made vain efforts to separate the duelists. As the name of Joseph Bossi had not been pronounced, less than two months after, Fabrice dared return to Bologna, more convinced than ever that his destiny condemned him never to know the noble and intellectual part of love. This was what he gave himself the pleasure of explaining at great length to the duchess; he was quite weary of his solitary life and passionately desired then to find again the charming evenings he passed between the count and his aunt. He had not since seen them the sweetness of good company.

I was so bored with the love I wanted to give myself and with the Fausta, he wrote to the duchess, that now, were her caprice still favorable, I would not travel twenty leagues to go summon her to her word; thus fear not, as you tell me, that I shall go as far as Paris where I see she is debuting with a wild success. I would travel all possible leagues to spend an evening with you and with that count so good to his friends.

BOOK TWO

By its continual outcries, this republic would prevent us from enjoying the best of monarchies. (Chap. xxiii.)

CHAPTER XIV

While Fabrice was hunting for love in a village near Parma, the fiscal general Rassi, who did not know him to be so near, continued to treat his affair as if he had been a liberal: he pretended not to be able to find, or rather intimidated, the witnesses for the defense; and at last, after a very learned labor of nearly a year, and about two months after Fabrice's last return to Bologna, on a certain Friday, the Marquise Raversi, drunk with joy, said publicly in her salon that, the next day, the sentence which had been rendered an hour before against little del Dongo would be presented for the prince's signature and approved by him. A few minutes later the duchess learned this saying of her enemy.

"The count must be very ill served by his agents!" she said to herself; "still this morning he believed the sentence could not be rendered before a week. Perhaps he would not be sorry to remove my young grand vicar from Parma; but," she added, singing, "we shall see him return, and one day he will be our archbishop." The duchess rang:

--Assemble all the domestics in the waiting room, she said to her valet de chambre, even the cooks; go get from the commandant of the place the permit necessary to have four post horses, and finally let those horses be harnessed to my landau within half an hour. All the women of the house were occupied in making trunks; the duchess hastily took a traveling dress, all without saying anything to the count; the idea of mocking him a little transported her with joy.

--My friends, she said to the assembled domestics, I learn that my poor nephew is about to be condemned in contumacy for having had the audacity to defend his life against a madman; it was Giletti who wished to kill him. Each of you could see how gentle and inoffensive Fabrice's character is. Justly indignant at this atrocious insult, I am leaving for Florence: I leave to each of you your wages for ten years; if you are unhappy, write to me, and as long as I have a sequin, there will be something for you.

The duchess thought exactly what she said, and, at her last words, the domestics melted into tears; she too had moist eyes; she added in an moved voice:

--Pray God for me and for Mgr Fabrice del Dongo, first grand vicar of the diocese, who tomorrow morning is to be condemned to the galleys, or, which would be less stupid, to death.

The domestics' tears redoubled and little by little changed into cries bordering on seditious; the duchess mounted her carriage and had herself driven to the prince's palace. Despite the untimely hour, she had an audience solicited by General Fontana, aide-de-camp on duty; she was not in full court dress, which threw this aide-de-camp into profound stupefaction. As for the prince, he was not surprised, and still less angry at this request for audience. "We are going to see tears shed by beautiful eyes," he said to himself, rubbing his hands. "She comes to ask for mercy; at last this proud beauty is going to humble herself! she was also too insupportable with her little airs of independence! Those so speaking eyes seemed always to tell me, at the least thing that offended her: Naples or Milan would be a far more agreeable residence than your little city of Parma. To be sure I do not reign over Naples or over Milan; but after all this great lady comes to ask me for something that depends solely on me and that she burns to obtain; I have always thought that the arrival of this nephew would make me get something out of her."

While the prince smiled at these thoughts and gave himself up to all these agreeable anticipations, he walked in his great cabinet, at the door of which General Fontana had remained standing and stiff as a soldier at arms. Seeing the prince's bright eyes, and recalling the duchess's traveling dress, he believed in the dissolution of the monarchy. His astonishment knew no bounds when he heard the prince say to him:

--Pray Mme the duchess to wait a small quarter of an hour.

The general aide-de-camp made his about-face like a soldier at parade; the prince smiled again: "Fontana is not accustomed," he said to himself, "to seeing this proud duchess wait: the astonished face with which he will speak to her of the small quarter of an hour's wait will prepare the way for the touching tears this cabinet is about to see shed." This small quarter of an hour was delicious for the prince; he walked with a firm and even step; he reigned. "Here it is a matter of saying nothing that is not perfectly in its place; whatever my sentiments toward the duchess, one must not forget that she is one of the greatest ladies of my court. How did Louis XIV speak to his daughters the princesses when he had cause to be displeased with them?" and his eyes rested on the portrait of the great king.

The amusing part of it is that the prince did not so much as think to ask himself whether he would grant Fabrice pardon and what that pardon would be. At last, after twenty minutes, the faithful Fontana presented himself again at the door, but without speaking.

--The Duchess Sanseverina may enter, cried the prince in a theatrical air.

"The tears are about to begin," he said to himself, and, as if to prepare for such a spectacle, he drew his handkerchief.

Never had the duchess been so brisk and so pretty; she was not twenty-five years old. Seeing her light and rapid little step scarce graze the carpets, the poor aide-de-camp was on the point of quite losing his reason.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”