Part 31

Our prisoner climbed back up the six steps leading to his wooden hut; the noise was growing so loud at the foot of the Farnèse tower, and precisely before the door, that he thought Grillo might well wake up. Fabrice, loaded with all his weapons, ready for action, believed himself reserved for great adventures that night, when suddenly he heard the most beautiful symphony in the world begin: it was a serenade being given for the general or his daughter. He fell into a fit of mad laughter: "And I who was already dreaming of giving dagger thrusts! as if a serenade were not something infinitely more ordinary than a kidnapping requiring the presence of eighty people in a prison, or than a revolt!" The music was excellent and seemed delicious to Fabrice, whose soul had had no distraction for so many weeks; it made him shed most gentle tears; in his rapture, he addressed the most irresistible speeches to the beautiful Clélia. But the next day at noon, he found her in so dark a melancholy, she was so pale, she directed at him glances in which he sometimes read so much anger, that he did not feel authorized enough to address a question to her about the serenade; he feared being impolite.

Clélia had great reason to be sad; it was a serenade given her by the Marquis Crescenzi; a step so public was in some sort the official announcement of the marriage. Up to the very day of the serenade, and until nine o'clock in the evening, Clélia had made the finest resistance, but she had had the weakness to yield to the threat of being sent immediately to the convent, which had been made to her by her father.

"What! I should see him no more!" she had said to herself weeping. In vain did her reason add: "I should see him no more, that being who will make my unhappiness in every way, I should see that lover of the duchess no more, I should see that frivolous man no more who had ten known mistresses in Naples, and betrayed them all; I should see that young ambitious man no more who, if he survives the sentence weighing upon him, is to enter the sacred orders! It would be a crime for me to look at him still when he is out of this citadel, and his natural inconstancy will spare me the temptation; for, what am I to him? a pretext for passing less wearily some hours of each of his prison days." In the midst of all these insults, Clélia came to remember the smile with which he looked at the gendarmes surrounding him when he came out of the booking office to go up to the Farnèse tower. Tears flooded her eyes: "Dear friend, what would I not do for you! You will ruin me, I know it, such is my destiny; I ruin myself in an atrocious manner by attending this dreadful serenade this evening, but tomorrow at noon, I shall see your eyes again!"

It was precisely the day after that day on which Clélia had made such great sacrifices to the young prisoner whom she loved with so lively a passion; it was the day after that day on which, seeing all his faults, she had sacrificed her life to him, that Fabrice was in despair at her coldness. Even had he employed only the so imperfect language of signs, had he done the least violence to Clélia's soul, probably she could not have held back her tears, and Fabrice would have obtained the avowal of all she felt for him, but he lacked boldness, he had too deadly a fear of offending Clélia, she might punish him too severely. In other words, Fabrice had no experience of the kind of emotion given by a woman one loves; it was a sensation he had never felt, even in its faintest shade. It took him eight days, after the day of the serenade, to get back with Clélia onto the accustomed footing of good friendship. The poor girl armed herself with severity, dying of fear of betraying herself, and it seemed to Fabrice that each day he was less well with her.

One day, and there were then nearly three months that Fabrice had been in prison without having had any communication whatsoever with the outside, and yet without finding himself unhappy; Grillo had stayed very late in the morning in his room; Fabrice did not know how to send him away, he was in despair; at last half past noon had already struck when he could open the two small traps a foot high that he had made in the fatal skylight.

Clélia was standing at the window of the aviary, eyes fixed on that of Fabrice; her contracted features expressed the most violent despair. Scarcely did she see Fabrice than she signaled to him that all was lost: she threw herself at her piano and, feigning to sing a recitative from the opera then in fashion, she said to him, in phrases interrupted by despair and by the fear of being understood by the sentinels walking beneath the window:

--Great God! are you still alive? How great is my gratitude toward Heaven! Barbone, that jailer whose insolence you punished on the day of your entry here, had disappeared, he was no longer in the citadel; the night before last he returned, and since yesterday I have reason to believe he seeks to poison you. He comes prowling in the private kitchen of the palace which supplies your meals. I know nothing for certain, but my chambermaid believes that this atrocious face comes into the palace kitchens only with the design of taking your life. I was dying of anxiety not seeing you appear, I thought you dead. Abstain from all food until further notice, I shall do the impossible to get you a little chocolate. In any case, this evening at nine o'clock, if the goodness of Heaven wills that you have a thread, or that you can form a ribbon with your linen, let it down from your window onto the orange trees, I shall attach a rope to it which you will pull back to you, and by means of this rope I shall pass you bread and chocolate."

Fabrice had kept as a treasure the piece of charcoal he had found in the stove of his room: he hastened to profit from Clélia's emotion, and to write on his hand a sequence of letters whose successive appearance formed these words:

--I love you, and life is precious to me only because I see you; above all send me paper and a pencil.

As Fabrice had hoped, the extreme terror he read in Clélia's features prevented the young girl from breaking off the interview after that bold word, I love you; she contented herself with showing much displeasure. Fabrice had the wit to add:

--With the great wind blowing today, I hear only very imperfectly the advice you deign to give me in song, the sound of the piano covers the voice. What is, for example, this poison of which you speak to me?

At this word, the young girl's terror reappeared entire; she hastily began to trace large letters in ink on the pages of a book which she tore, and Fabrice was transported with joy at seeing finally established, after three months of care, this means of correspondence which he had so vainly solicited. He was far from abandoning the little ruse which had succeeded so well with him, he aspired to write letters, and feigned at every instant not to grasp well the words of which Clélia successively exposed all the letters to his eyes.

She was obliged to leave the aviary to run to her father; she feared above all that he might come looking for her there; his suspicious genius would not have been content with the great neighborhood of the window of that aviary and the skylight which masked that of the prisoner. Clélia herself had had the idea a few moments before, when the non-appearance of Fabrice plunged her into such deadly uneasiness, that one might throw a little stone wrapped in a piece of paper toward the upper part of that skylight; if chance willed that at this instant the jailer charged with Fabrice's guard should not be in his room, it was a certain means of correspondence.

Our prisoner hastened to construct a sort of ribbon with linen; and in the evening, a little after nine o'clock, he heard quite well little knocks struck on the boxes of the orange trees which were beneath his window; he let his ribbon slide which brought him back a little very long rope, by means of which he first drew up a supply of chocolate, and then, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a roll of paper and a pencil. It was in vain that he then held out the rope, he received nothing more; apparently the sentinels had drawn near the orange trees. But he was drunk with joy. He hastened to write an endless letter to Clélia: scarcely was it finished than he attached it to his rope and let it down. For more than three hours he vainly awaited someone to take it, and several times drew it back to make changes in it. "If Clélia does not see my letter this evening," he said to himself, "while she is still moved by her ideas of poison, perhaps tomorrow morning she will cast far from her the idea of receiving a letter."

The fact is that Clélia had been unable to dispense with going down to the town with her father: Fabrice almost had the idea of it on hearing, toward half past midnight, the general's carriage return; he knew the step of the horses. What was not his joy when, a few minutes after having heard the general cross the esplanade and the sentinels present arms to him, he felt the rope he had not ceased holding around his arm stir! A great weight was being attached to this rope, two little jerks gave him the signal to draw it back. He had quite a trouble making the weight he drew back pass a very protruding cornice which was beneath his window.

This object he had had so much trouble making rise, was a carafe filled with water and wrapped in a shawl. It was with delight that this poor young man, who had lived so long in so complete a solitude, covered this shawl with kisses. But one must renounce depicting his emotion when at last, after so many days of vain hope, he discovered a little piece of paper which was attached to the shawl by a pin.

Drink only of this water, live on chocolate; tomorrow I shall do all in the world to get you bread, I shall mark it on all sides with little crosses traced in ink. It is dreadful to say, but you must know it, perhaps Barbone is charged with poisoning you. How did you not feel that the subject you treat in your letter in pencil is made to displease me? Also I would not write to you without the extreme danger which threatens you. I have just seen the duchess, she is well as is the count, but she is much thinned; write me no more on this subject: would you anger me?

It was a great effort of virtue in Clélia to write the next-to-last line of this note. Everyone asserted, in court society, that Mme Sanseverina was taking much friendship for Count Baldi, that such fine man, the former friend of the Marquise Raversi. What was certain, is that he had quarreled in the most scandalous fashion with that marquise who, for six years, had served him as a mother and established him in the world.

Clélia had been obliged to begin again this little word written in haste, because in the first draft there pierced something of the new loves which public malignity supposed in the duchess.

--What baseness in me! she had cried: to speak ill to Fabrice of the woman he loves!...

The next morning, long before day, Grillo entered Fabrice's room, deposited there a rather heavy packet, and disappeared without a word. This packet contained a rather large loaf, garnished on all sides with little crosses traced with a pen: Fabrice covered them with kisses: he was in love. Beside the bread was found a roll covered with a great number of doubles of paper; it enclosed six thousand francs in sequins; finally, Fabrice found a fine brand-new breviary: a hand he was beginning to know had traced these words in the margin:

The poison! Beware of the water, the wine, everything; live on chocolate, try to make the dog eat the dinner one will not touch; one must not seem suspicious, the enemy would seek another means. No thoughtlessness, in the name of God! no levity!

Fabrice hastened to remove these cherished characters which could compromise Clélia, and to tear a great number of leaves from the breviary, by means of which he made several alphabets; each letter was properly traced with crushed charcoal diluted in wine. These alphabets were dry when at a quarter to twelve Clélia appeared two paces behind the window of the aviary. "The great affair now," said Fabrice to himself, "is that she consent to make use of them." But, luckily, it turned out that she had many things to say to the young prisoner on the attempt at poisoning: a dog of the servant girls had died from having eaten a dish intended for him. Clélia, far from making objections against the use of the alphabets, had prepared a magnificent one with ink. The conversation carried on by this means, rather awkward in the first moments, lasted not less than an hour and a half, that is to say all the time Clélia could remain at the aviary. Two or three times, Fabrice permitting himself forbidden things, she did not answer, and went for an instant to give her birds the necessary care.

Fabrice had obtained that, in the evening, in sending him water, she would get to him one of the alphabets traced by her with ink, and which showed much better. He did not fail to write a very long letter in which he took care to place nothing tender, at least in a way that could offend. This means succeeded with him; his letter was accepted.

The next day, in the conversation by the alphabets, Clélia made him no reproaches; she told him that the danger of poison diminished; Barbone had been attacked and almost beaten to death by the men who paid court to the kitchen girls of the governor's palace, probably he would not dare reappear in the kitchens. Clélia avowed to him that, for him, she had dared steal antidote from her father; she sent it to him: the essential was to reject instantly any food in which one found an extraordinary savor.

Clélia had made many questions to don Cesare, without being able to discover whence came the six hundred sequins received by Fabrice; in any case, it was an excellent sign; severity was diminishing.

This episode of the poison advanced infinitely the affairs of our prisoner; nevertheless never could he obtain the least avowal resembling love, but he had the happiness of living in the most intimate manner with Clélia. Every morning, and often evenings, there was a long conversation with the alphabets; every evening at nine o'clock, Clélia accepted a long letter, and sometimes answered by a few words; she sent him the newspaper and some books; finally, Grillo had been sweetened to the point of bringing Fabrice bread and wine, which were delivered to him daily by Clélia's chambermaid. The jailer Grillo had concluded therefrom that the governor was not in agreement with the people who had charged Barbone with poisoning the young Monsignore, and he was very glad of it, as were all his comrades, for a proverb had been established in the prison: it suffices to look the Monsignore del Dongo in the face for him to give you money.

Fabrice had become very pale; the absolute lack of exercise harmed his health; apart from that, never had he been so happy. The tone of the conversation was intimate, and sometimes very gay, between Clélia and him. The only moments of Clélia's life which were not besieged by fatal forebodings and remorse were those she spent conversing with him. One day she had the imprudence to say to him:

--I admire your delicacy; as I am the governor's daughter, you never speak to me of the desire to recover liberty!

--It is that I take good care not to have a desire so absurd, answered Fabrice; once back in Parma, how should I see you again? and life would henceforth be insupportable to me if I could not tell you all I think... no, not precisely all I think, you put good order into that; but finally, despite your wickedness, to live without seeing you every day would be for me a far other torment than this prison! of life I was never so happy!... Is it not droll to see that happiness awaited me in prison?

--There is much to say on that article, replied Clélia with an air which became all at once excessively serious and almost sinister.

--How! cried Fabrice much alarmed, should I be exposed to losing this little place I have been able to win in your heart, and which makes my only joy in this world?

--Yes, she said to him, I have every reason to believe you lack probity toward me, though passing otherwise in the world for a very gallant man; but I will not treat this subject today.

This singular opening cast much embarrassment into their conversation, and often one and the other had tears in their eyes.

The attorney general Rassi still aspired to change his name; he was quite weary of the one he had made himself, and wanted to become Baron Riva. Count Mosca, for his part, worked, with all the skill he was capable of, to fortify in this bought judge the passion for the barony, as he sought to redouble in the prince the mad hope of making himself constitutional king of Lombardy. These were the only means he had been able to invent to delay the death of Fabrice.

The prince said to Rassi:

--Fifteen days of despair and fifteen days of hope, it is by this regimen patiently followed that we shall come to vanquish the character of that proud woman; it is by these alternatives of gentleness and hardness that one arrives at taming the most ferocious horses. Apply the caustic firmly.

Indeed, every fifteen days one saw reborn in Parma a new rumor announcing the approaching death of Fabrice. These talks plunged the unhappy duchess into the last despair. Faithful to the resolution not to drag the count into her ruin, she saw him only twice a month; but she was punished for her cruelty toward that poor man by the continual alternatives of gloomy despair in which she passed her life. In vain did Count Mosca, surmounting the cruel jealousy inspired in him by the assiduities of Count Baldi, that such fine man, write to the duchess when he could not see her, and make known to her all the information he owed to the zeal of the future Baron Riva, the duchess would have needed, to be able to resist the atrocious rumors which constantly ran on Fabrice, to pass her life with a man of spirit and heart such as Mosca; the nullity of Baldi, leaving her to her thoughts, gave her an awful way of existing, and the count could not succeed in communicating to her his reasons for hope.

By means of several rather ingenious pretexts, this minister had succeeded in obtaining the prince's consent that there be deposited in a friendly castle, in the very center of Lombardy, in the environs of Sarono, the archives of all the very complicated intrigues by means of which Ranuce-Ernest IV nourished the arch-foolish hope of making himself constitutional king of that fine country.

More than twenty of these very compromising pieces were in the prince's hand or signed by him, and in the case where Fabrice's life should be seriously threatened, the count had the project of announcing to His Highness that he was going to deliver these pieces to a great power which with a word could annihilate him.

Count Mosca believed himself sure of the future Baron Riva, he feared only poison; the attempt of Barbone had profoundly alarmed him, and to such a point that he had determined to hazard a step mad in appearance. One morning he passed to the gate of the citadel, and had the general Fabio Conti called, who came down as far as the bastion above the gate; there, walking amicably with him, he did not hesitate to say to him, after a little fitting bittersweet preface:

--If Fabrice perishes in a suspicious manner, this death may be attributed to me, I shall pass for a jealous man, it would be for me an abominable ridicule and one I am resolved not to accept. Therefore, and to clear myself of it, if he perishes of illness, I shall kill you with my own hand; count on that.

General Fabio Conti made a magnificent reply and spoke of his bravery, but the count's look remained present to his thought.

Few days after, and as if he had concerted with the count, the attorney Rassi permitted himself an imprudence very singular in such a man. The public contempt attached to his name which served as a proverb to the rabble, made him sick since he had the founded hope of being able to escape it. He addressed to General Fabio Conti an official copy of the sentence condemning Fabrice to twelve years in the citadel. According to the law, this is what should have been done from the very day after Fabrice's entry into prison; but what was unheard of at Parma, in this country of secret measures, is that justice should permit itself such a step without the express order of the sovereign. Indeed, how to nourish the hope of redoubling every fifteen days the fright of the duchess, and of taming that proud character, according to the prince's word, once an official copy of the sentence had left the chancellery of justice? The eve of the day on which General Fabio Conti received the official packet from attorney Rassi, he learned that the clerk Barbone had been beaten to a pulp on re-entering the citadel a little late; he concluded therefrom that it was no longer a question in a certain place of getting rid of Fabrice; and, by a trait of prudence which saved Rassi from the immediate consequences of his folly, he said nothing to the prince, at the first audience he obtained, of the official copy of the prisoner's sentence transmitted to him. The count had discovered, fortunately for the tranquillity of the poor duchess, that the awkward attempt of Barbone had been only a velleity of private vengeance, and he had had given to this clerk the warning of which we have spoken.

Fabrice was very agreeably surprised when, after a hundred thirty-five days of prison in a rather narrow cage, the good chaplain don Cesare came to fetch him one Thursday to make him walk on the donjon of the Farnèse tower: Fabrice had not been there ten minutes than, surprised by the open air, he felt unwell.

Don Cesare took pretext from this accident to grant him a half-hour walk every day. It was a folly; these frequent walks soon restored to our hero strengths of which he abused.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”