Part 23

--I have many pardons to ask of Your Serene Highness, said the duchess in her light and gay little voice, I have taken the liberty of presenting myself before her in a dress that is not precisely proper, but Your Highness has so accustomed me to her kindnesses that I dared hope she would be willing to grant me this grace as well.

The duchess spoke rather slowly, so as to give herself time to enjoy the prince's face; she was delicious because of the deep astonishment and the rest of her grand manner that the position of her head and arms still betrayed. The prince remained as if struck by lightning; in his shrill and troubled little voice, he cried out from time to time, barely articulating:

--How! how!

The duchess, as if out of respect, after finishing her compliment, left him all the time to reply; then she added:

--I dare hope that Your Serene Highness deigns to pardon the incongruity of my costume.

But, as she spoke thus, her mocking eyes shone with so vivid a spark that the prince could not bear it; he looked at the ceiling, which in him was the ultimate sign of the most extreme embarrassment.

--How! how! he said again.

Then he had the good fortune to find a phrase:

--Madame the duchess, pray be seated.

He himself advanced an armchair, and with rather good grace. The duchess was not insensible to this politeness; she moderated the petulance of her glance.

--How! how! repeated the prince again, stirring in his armchair, on which one would have said he could not find a solid position. I am going to take advantage of the cool of the night to travel post, the duchess went on, and, as my absence may be of some duration, I did not wish to leave the States of His Serene Highness without thanking him for all the kindnesses which for five years he has deigned to show me. At these words the prince finally understood; he grew pale: he was the man in the world who suffered most from seeing his expectations deceived; then he assumed an air of grandeur quite worthy of the portrait of Louis XIV that was before his eyes. "So much the better," said the duchess to herself, "here is a man."

--And what is the motive for this sudden departure? said the prince in a fairly firm tone.

--I had this plan for a long time, replied the duchess, and a slight insult offered to Monsignore del Dongo, whom tomorrow they are going to condemn to death or the galleys, makes me hasten my departure.

--And to what city are you going?

--To Naples, I think.

She added, rising:

--Nothing remains for me but to take leave of Your Serene Highness and to thank her most humbly for her former kindnesses.

In her turn, she departed with so firm an air that the prince saw clearly that in two seconds all would be over; the flare of the departure having taken place, he knew that any arrangement was impossible; she was not a woman to go back on her steps. He ran after her.

--But you know well, Madame the duchess, he said to her, taking her hand, that always I have loved you, and with a friendship which it was for you alone to give another name. A murder has been committed, which cannot be denied; I have entrusted the conduct of the trial to my best judges...

At these words, the duchess drew herself up to her full height; all appearance of respect and even of civility vanished in the blink of an eye: the outraged woman appeared clearly, and the outraged woman addressing a being she knows to be in bad faith. It was with the expression of the liveliest anger and even of contempt that she said to the prince, dwelling on every word:

--I am leaving forever the States of Your Serene Highness, never to hear speak of the fiscal Rassi, and of the other infamous assassins who have condemned to death my nephew and so many others; if Your Serene Highness does not wish to mingle a feeling of bitterness with the last instants I spend near a polite and witty prince when he is not deceived, I beg her most humbly not to recall to me the idea of those infamous judges who sell themselves for a thousand crowns or a cross.

The admirable and above all true accent with which these words were pronounced made the prince start; he feared for an instant to see his dignity compromised by an even more direct accusation, but on the whole his sensation soon ended in pleasure: he admired the duchess; the whole of her person attained in that moment a sublime beauty. "Great God! how beautiful she is," said the prince to himself; "one must grant something to a unique woman such as perhaps there exists not a second in all Italy... Well! with a little good policy it would perhaps not be impossible one day to make her my mistress; there is far from such a being to that doll the marquise Balbi, who moreover each year steals at least three hundred thousand francs from my poor subjects... But did I hear her rightly?" he thought suddenly; "she said: condemned my nephew and so many others."

Then anger surfaced, and it was with a haughtiness worthy of supreme rank that the prince said, after a silence:

--And what would need to be done so that madame should not depart?

--Something of which you are not capable, replied the duchess with the accent of the bitterest irony and the least disguised contempt.

The prince was beside himself, but he owed to the habit of his trade as absolute sovereign the strength to resist a first impulse. "I must have this woman," he said to himself, "that is what I owe myself; then I must make her die by contempt... If she leaves this study, I never see her again." But, drunk with anger and hatred as he was at that moment, where to find a word that could satisfy at once what he owed to himself and lead the duchess not to desert his court instantly? "One cannot," he said to himself, "repeat nor turn into ridicule a gesture," and he went to place himself between the duchess and the door of his study. Shortly after he heard scratching at that door.

--What jean-sucre is it, he cried, swearing with all the force of his lungs, what jean-sucre comes here to offer me his foolish presence?

Poor General Fontana showed his face, pale and utterly undone, and it was with the air of a man in his death agony that he pronounced these ill-articulated words:

--His Excellency Count Mosca solicits the honor of being admitted.

--Let him enter! said the prince, crying out.

And as Mosca bowed:

--Well! he said to him, here is Mme the duchess Sanseverina who pretends to leave Parma this instant to go settle in Naples, and who besides tells me impertinences.

--How! said Mosca, turning pale.

--What! you did not know this plan of departure?

--Not a word; I left Madame at six o'clock, joyful and content.

This word produced an incredible effect on the prince. First he looked at Mosca; his increasing paleness showed him that he spoke the truth and was not an accomplice of the duchess's whim. "In that case," he said to himself, "I lose her forever; pleasure and vengeance, all fly away together. At Naples she will make epigrams with her nephew Fabrice on the great anger of the little prince of Parma." He looked at the duchess; the most violent contempt and anger contended for his heart; his eyes were fixed at that moment on Count Mosca, and the so fine contours of that beautiful mouth expressed the bitterest disdain. All that face said: vile courtier! "Thus," thought the prince, after examining her, "I lose this means of recalling her to this country. Even at this moment, if she leaves this study she is lost to me; God knows what she will say of my judges at Naples... And with that wit and that divine force of persuasion which heaven has given her, she will make herself believed by everyone. I shall owe her the reputation of a ridiculous tyrant who rises at night to look under his bed..." Then, by an adroit maneuver and as if seeking to walk about to diminish his agitation, the prince placed himself anew before the door of the study; the count was to his right at three paces' distance, pale, broken and so trembling that he was obliged to seek support on the back of the armchair which the duchess had occupied at the beginning of the audience, and which the prince in a movement of anger had pushed far away. The count was in love. "If the duchess leaves I follow her," he said to himself; "but will she have me in her train? that is the question."

To the prince's left, the duchess standing, arms crossed and pressed against her breast, looked at him with an admirable impertinence; a complete and deep paleness had succeeded the vivid colors which lately animated that sublime head.

The prince, contrary to the two other persons, had a red face and an uneasy air; his left hand played in a convulsive way with the cross attached to the grand cordon of his order which he wore under his clothes; with his right hand he caressed his chin.

--What is to be done? he said to the count, without quite knowing what he himself was doing and carried along by the habit of consulting him on everything.

--I know nothing of it in truth, Serene Highness, answered the count with the air of a man rendering his last sigh.

He could barely pronounce the words of his reply. The tone of that voice gave the prince the first consolation that his wounded pride had found in this audience, and this small happiness furnished him a happy phrase for his self-love.

--Well! he said, I am the most reasonable of the three; I am willing to make complete abstraction of my position in the world. I am going to speak as a friend.

And he added, with a fine smile of condescension well imitated from the happy times of Louis XIV:

--As a friend speaking to friends, Madame the duchess, he added, what is to be done to make you forget an untimely resolution?

--In truth, I know nothing of it, replied the duchess with a great sigh, in truth I know nothing of it, so much do I hold Parma in horror.

There was no intention of epigram in this word; one saw that sincerity itself spoke by her mouth.

The count turned sharply to his side; the soul of the courtier was scandalized: then he addressed a supplicating glance to the prince. With much dignity and coolness the prince let a moment pass; then addressing the count:

--I see, he said, that your charming friend is quite beside herself; it is quite natural, she adores her nephew.

And, turning toward the duchess, he added, with the most gallant glance and at the same time the air one takes to quote the line of a comedy:

--What is to be done to please those beautiful eyes?

The duchess had had time to reflect; in a firm and slow tone, and as if she were dictating her ultimatum, she replied:

--His Highness would write me a gracious letter, as he knows so well how to make them; he would tell me that, not being convinced of the guilt of Fabrice del Dongo, first grand vicar of the archbishop, he will not sign the sentence when it is brought to him, and that this unjust proceeding shall have no sequel in the future.

--How unjust! cried the prince, reddening to the whites of his eyes, and resuming his anger.

--That is not all! replied the duchess with a Roman pride; this very evening, and, she added, looking at the clock, it is already a quarter past eleven; this very evening His Serene Highness will send word to the marquise Raversi that he advises her to go to the country to recover from the fatigues which a certain trial must have caused her, of which she spoke in her salon at the beginning of the evening.

The duke walked in his study like a furious man.

--Was there ever such a woman?... he cried; she fails in respect to me.

The duchess answered with perfect grace:

--Never in my life have I had the idea of failing in respect to His Serene Highness: His Highness had the extreme condescension to say that she spoke as a friend to friends. I have, moreover, no desire to remain at Parma, she added, looking at the count with the utmost contempt.

This glance decided the prince, hitherto very uncertain, though those words might have seemed to announce an engagement; he cared very little for words.

There were still a few words exchanged, but finally Count Mosca received the order to write the gracious note solicited by the duchess. He omitted the phrase: This unjust proceeding shall have no sequel in the future. "It suffices," said the count to himself, "that the prince promise not to sign the sentence that shall be presented to him." The prince thanked him with a glance of the eye in signing.

The count was much at fault; the prince was tired and would have signed anything; he believed he was getting well out of the scene, and the whole affair was dominated in his eyes by these words: "If the duchess leaves, I shall find my court boring within a week." The count remarked that the master corrected the date and put that of the next day. He looked at the clock; it marked near midnight. The minister saw in this corrected date only the pedantic desire to show exactness and good government. As for the exile of the marquise Raversi, he did not blink an eye; the prince had a particular pleasure in exiling people.

--General Fontana, he cried, half-opening the door.

The general appeared with a face so astonished and so curious that there was an exchange of a gay glance between the duchess and the count, and that glance made peace.

--General Fontana, said the prince, you are going to get into my carriage which waits under the colonnade; you will go to the marquise Raversi's, you will have yourself announced; if she is in bed, you will add that you come from me, and, arrived in her chamber, you will say these precise words, and no others: "Madame the marquise Raversi, His Serene Highness engages you to depart tomorrow, before eight o'clock in the morning, for your castle of Velleja; His Highness will let you know when you may return to Parma."

The prince sought the eyes of the duchess, who, without thanking him as he expected, made him an extremely respectful reverence and withdrew rapidly.

--What a woman! said the prince, turning toward Count Mosca.

He, delighted at the exile of the marquise Raversi which facilitated all his actions as minister, spoke for a good half-hour as a consummate courtier; he wished to console the self-love of the sovereign, and took leave only when he saw him well convinced that the anecdotal history of Louis XIV had no finer page than that which he had just furnished to his future historians.

On returning home, the duchess closed her door, and said that no one should be admitted, not even the count. She wished to be alone with herself, and to see a little what idea she ought to form of the scene which had just taken place. She had acted at random and to please herself at the moment; but to whatever step she had let herself be carried she would have held to it with firmness. She would not have blamed herself on returning to coolness, still less repented: such was the character to which she owed being still at thirty-six the prettiest woman of the court.

She was dreaming at that moment of what Parma could offer that was agreeable, as she would have done on returning from a long voyage, so firmly from nine to eleven had she believed she was leaving this country forever.

"That poor count cut a funny figure when he learned of my departure in the prince's presence... After all, he is an amiable man and of a most rare heart! He would have left his ministries to follow me... But also during five whole years he has not had one distraction to reproach me with. What women married at the altar could say as much to their lord and master? It must be admitted he is not important, not pedantic, he gives no desire whatever to deceive him; before me he seems always ashamed of his power... He cut a queer figure in the presence of his lord and master; if he were here I would embrace him... But for nothing in the world would I take charge of amusing a minister who has lost his portfolio, it is a malady one recovers from only at death, and... which kills. What a misfortune to be a young minister! I must write him of it, it is one of those things he ought to know officially before quarreling with his prince... But I was forgetting my good servants."

The duchess rang. Her women were still busy making trunks; the carriage was drawn up under the portico and they were loading it; all the domestics who had no work to do surrounded that carriage, tears in their eyes. Chékina, who on great occasions entered alone to the duchess, told her all these details.

--Have them come up, said the duchess.

An instant after she passed into the waiting-room.

--I have been promised, she said to them, that the sentence against my nephew will not be signed by the sovereign (it is thus one speaks in Italy); I suspend my departure; we shall see if my enemies will have the credit to make this resolution changed.

After a little silence, the domestics began to cry: "Long live Madame the duchess!" and applauded with fury. The duchess, who was already in the next room, reappeared like an applauded actress, made a little gracefull reverence to her people and said to them:

--My friends, I thank you.

Had she said a word, all of them, at that moment, would have marched against the palace to attack it. She made a sign to a postilion, a former smuggler and devoted man, who followed her.

--You are going to dress as a well-to-do peasant, you will leave Parma as best you can, you will hire a sediola and go as fast as possible to Bologna. You will enter Bologna as a stroller by the Florence gate, and you will deliver to Fabrice, who is at the Pelegrino, a packet that Chékina will give you. Fabrice is in hiding and there goes by the name of M. Joseph Bossi; do not betray him by thoughtlessness, do not seem to know him; my enemies will perhaps put spies on your track. Fabrice will send you back here at the end of some hours or some days: it is above all on the return that you must redouble precautions not to betray him.

--Ah! the people of the marquise Raversi! cried the postilion; we are waiting for them, and if Madame wished it they would soon be exterminated.

--Perhaps one day! but beware, on your head, of doing anything without my order.

It was a copy of the prince's note that the duchess wished to send to Fabrice; she could not resist the pleasure of amusing him, and added a word on the scene which had brought about the note; that word became a letter of ten pages. She had the postilion called back.

--You can depart only at four o'clock, at the opening of the gate, she said to him.

--I counted on passing by the great sewer, I would have water up to my chin, but I would pass.

--No, said the duchess, I will not expose one of my most faithful servants to catching fever. Do you know anyone at my lord archbishop's?

--The second coachman is my friend.

--Here is a letter for that holy prelate: introduce yourself without noise into his palace, have yourself taken to the valet de chambre; I would not wish my lord to be woken. If he is already shut in his chamber, spend the night in the palace, and, as it is his custom to rise with the day, tomorrow morning, at four o'clock, have yourself announced from me, ask the holy archbishop's blessing, deliver him the packet here, and take the letters he may perhaps give you for Bologna.

The duchess addressed to the archbishop the very original of the prince's note; as this note concerned his first grand vicar, she begged him to deposit it in the archives of the archbishopric, where she hoped that the gentlemen grand vicars and canons, colleagues of her nephew, would deign to take cognizance of it; all under condition of the deepest secrecy.

The duchess wrote to monseigneur Landriani with a familiarity which must charm that good bourgeois; the signature alone had three lines; the letter, very friendly, was followed by these words: Angelina-Cornelia-Isola Valserra del Dongo, duchess Sanseverina.

"I have not written so much, I think," said the duchess, laughing, "since my marriage contract with the poor duke; but one leads such people only by these things, and in the eyes of the bourgeois caricature makes beauty." She could not finish the evening without yielding to the temptation to write a letter of banter to the poor count; she announced to him officially, for his guidance, she said, in his relations with crowned heads, that she did not feel capable of amusing a disgraced minister. "The prince frightens you; when you can no longer see him, would it then be for me to frighten you?" She had this letter delivered at once.

For his part, the next day from seven o'clock in the morning, the prince sent for Count Zurla, minister of the Interior.

--Again, he said to him, give the strictest orders to all podestas that they cause the sieur Fabrice del Dongo to be arrested. We are told that perhaps he will dare to reappear in our States. This fugitive being at Bologna, where he seems to brave the pursuit of our tribunals, place constables who know him personally, 1º in the villages on the road from Bologna to Parma; 2º in the environs of the duchess Sanseverina's castle, at Sacca, and of her house at Castelnovo; 3º around Count Mosca's castle. I dare hope from your high wisdom, monsieur le count, that you will know how to hide the knowledge of these orders of your sovereign from the penetration of Count Mosca. Know that I wish the sieur Fabrice del Dongo to be arrested.

As soon as this minister was out, a secret door introduced to the prince the fiscal general Rassi, who advanced bent double and bowing at every step. The look of that scoundrel was beyond painting; it did justice to all the infamy of his role, and, while the rapid and disordered movements of his eyes betrayed the knowledge he had of his merits, the arrogant and grimacing assurance of his mouth showed that he knew how to struggle against contempt.

As this personage is going to take a rather great influence on the destiny of Fabrice, one may say a word of him. He was tall, he had fine and very intelligent eyes, but a face ruined by smallpox; for wit, he had it, and much and of the finest; he was granted to possess perfectly the science of law, but it was above all by resourcefulness that he shone. However an affair might present itself, he easily found, and in few instants, the means well founded in law to arrive at a condemnation or an acquittal; he was especially the king of prosecutorial subtleties.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”