Part 34

Like all parties out of power, the Raversi party was not very united. The cavaliere Riscara detested the fiscal Rassi, whom he accused of having lost him an important lawsuit in which, to be sure, Riscara himself had been in the wrong. Through Riscara, the prince received an anonymous warning informing him that a copy of the sentence against Fabrice had been officially sent to the governor of the citadel. The marchesa Raversi, that able party leader, was exceedingly annoyed by this false move, and at once had word of it sent to her friend, the attorney general; she found it quite natural that he should try to get something out of Minister Mosca, so long as Mosca was in power. Rassi presented himself at the palace with intrepidity, well aware that he would get off with a few kicks; the prince could not do without a skilled jurisconsult, and Rassi had had a judge and a lawyer exiled as liberals, the only men in the country who might have been able to take his place.

The prince, beside himself, loaded him with insults and advanced upon him to beat him.

--Well, it is a clerk's oversight, Rassi answered with the utmost coolness; the thing is prescribed by law, it ought to have been done the day after the sieur del Dongo was locked up in the citadel. The zealous clerk thought he had made an omission, and must have had me sign the letter of dispatch as a matter of form.

--And you expect me to believe lies so clumsily put together? cried the furious prince; say rather that you have sold yourself to that rogue Mosca, and that is why he gave you the cross. But, by heaven, you shall not get off with a beating: I will have you brought to trial, I will dismiss you in disgrace.

--I defy you to bring me to trial! Rassi answered confidently; he knew that this was a sure way to calm the prince: the law is on my side, and you have no second Rassi to know how to evade it. You will not dismiss me, because there are moments when your nature is severe, you are then thirsty for blood, but at the same time you care to keep the esteem of reasonable Italians; that esteem is a sine qua non for your ambition. Finally, you will recall me at the first act of severity your nature makes a need of you, and, as usual, I shall procure you a perfectly regular sentence rendered by timid judges and fairly honest men, and which will satisfy your passions. Find another man in your States as useful as I am!

So saying, Rassi took to flight; he had got off with one well-applied ruler's blow and five or six kicks. On leaving the palace, he set out for his estate at Riva; he had some fear of a stab in the first moment of anger, but he no less doubted that within a fortnight a courier would recall him to the capital. He employed the time he spent in the country in organizing a sure means of correspondence with Count Mosca; he was madly in love with the title of baron, and thought the prince set too much store by that once sublime thing, nobility, ever to confer it on him; whereas the count, very proud of his birth, esteemed only nobility proved by titles prior to the year 1400.

The attorney general had not been mistaken in his forecasts: he had scarcely been eight days at his estate when a friend of the prince, who happened to come there, advised him to return to Parma without delay; the prince received him with a laugh, then assumed a very serious air, and made him swear on the Gospel to keep secret what he was about to confide to him; Rassi swore with great seriousness, and the prince, his eye aflame with hatred, cried that he would not be master in his own house so long as Fabrice del Dongo was alive.

--I can neither, he added, drive out the duchess nor bear her presence; her looks defy me and stop me from living.

After letting the prince explain himself at full length, he, Rassi, playing extreme embarrassment, cried at last:

--Your Highness shall be obeyed, no doubt, but the thing is of horrible difficulty: there is no likelihood of condemning a del Dongo to death for the murder of a Giletti; it is already an astonishing feat of strength to have drawn twelve years in the citadel from that. Moreover, I suspect the duchess of having discovered three of the peasants who were working at the excavation of Sanguigna and who were outside the ditch at the moment that brigand Giletti attacked del Dongo.

--And where are these witnesses? said the irritated prince.

--Hidden in Piedmont, I suppose. There would need to be a conspiracy against the life of Your Highness...

--That means has its dangers, said the prince, it makes one think of the thing.

--But yet, said Rassi with feigned innocence, there is all my official arsenal.

--There remains poison...

--But who will give it? Will it be that imbecile Conti?

--But, so they say, it would not be his first attempt...

--He would need to be put in a passion, Rassi went on; besides, when he dispatched the captain, he was not yet thirty, and he was in love and infinitely less pusillanimous than nowadays. No doubt, all must yield to reason of State; but, thus taken unawares and at first sight, I see, to execute the sovereign's orders, only one named Barbone, clerk-register of the prison, and whom the sieur del Dongo knocked down with a slap on the day he entered there.

Once the prince was set at his ease, the conversation was endless; he ended it by granting his attorney general a delay of one month; Rassi wanted two. The next day, he received a secret gratification of a thousand sequins. For three days he reflected; on the fourth he returned to his reasoning, which seemed evident to him: "Only Count Mosca will have the heart to keep his word to me because, in making me a baron, he does not give me what he esteems; secondly, by warning him, I probably save myself a crime for which I am almost paid in advance; thirdly, I avenge the first humiliating blows received by the cavaliere Rassi." The following night, he communicated to Count Mosca his whole conversation with the prince.

The count was secretly paying court to the duchess; it is quite true that he still saw her at her house only once or twice a month, but almost every week and when he knew how to make occasions arise to speak of Fabrice, the duchess, accompanied by Chékina, came, late in the evening, to spend a few moments in the count's garden. She even knew how to deceive her coachman, who was devoted to her and believed her to be visiting in a neighboring house.

One may imagine whether the count, having received the terrible confidence of the attorney, at once gave the duchess the agreed signal. Though it was the middle of the night, she had Chékina beg him to come to her instantly. The count, delighted like a lover at this appearance of intimacy, nevertheless hesitated to tell the duchess everything; he feared to see her go mad with grief.

After having sought half-words to soften the fatal announcement, he nevertheless ended by telling her all; it was not in his power to keep a secret she asked of him. For nine months past extreme misfortune had had a great influence on that ardent soul, it had strengthened it, and the duchess did not break out in sobs or complaints.

The next evening she gave Fabrice the signal of great peril.

--Fire has caught in the castle.

He answered very well.

--Are my books burned?

That same night she had the happiness of getting a letter to him in a leaden bullet. It was eight days later that the marriage of the sister of the marchese Crescenzi took place, where the duchess committed an enormous imprudence of which we shall give an account in its place.

CHAPTER XXI

At the time of her misfortunes it was already nearly a year since the duchess had had a singular encounter: one day when she had the luna, as they say in the country, she had gone unexpectedly, toward evening, to her castle of Sacca, situated beyond Colorno, on the hill that dominates the Po. She delighted in embellishing that estate; she loved the vast forest that crowns the hill and touches the castle; she busied herself with having paths traced there in picturesque directions.

--You will be carried off by brigands, beautiful duchess, the prince said to her one day; it is impossible that a forest where it is known you walk should remain deserted.

The prince cast a glance at the count, whose jealousy he pretended to pique.

--I have no fears, Most Serene Highness, the duchess answered with an ingenuous air, when I walk in my woods; I reassure myself with this thought: I have done harm to no one, who could hate me?

This remark was found bold, it recalled the insults uttered by the liberals of the country, very insolent fellows.

On the day of the walk we speak of, the prince's remark came back to the duchess's mind, on noticing a very poorly dressed man who was following her from afar through the wood. At an unforeseen turn the duchess made as she continued her walk, this stranger found himself so near her that she was frightened. In her first movement she called her gamekeeper, whom she had left a thousand paces off, in the flower parterre close to the castle. The stranger had time to approach her and threw himself at her feet. He was young, very handsome, but horribly ill-clad; his clothes had rents a foot long, but his eyes breathed the fire of an ardent soul.

--I am condemned to death, I am the physician Ferrante Palla, I am dying of hunger as are my five children.

The duchess had noticed that he was horribly thin; but his eyes were so beautiful and filled with so tender an exaltation, that they removed from her the thought of crime. "Pallagi," she thought, "would have done well to give such eyes to the St. John in the desert that he has just placed in the cathedral." The idea of St. John was suggested to her by the incredible thinness of Ferrante. The duchess gave him three sequins she had in her purse, apologizing for offering him so little on the ground that she had just paid a bill to her gardener. Ferrante thanked her with effusion.

--Alas, he said to her, formerly I lived in the towns, I saw elegant women; since, in fulfilling my duties as a citizen, I had myself condemned to death, I live in the woods, and I followed you, not to ask alms of you or rob you, but as a savage fascinated by an angelic beauty. It is so long since I have seen two beautiful white hands!

--Rise, then, she said to the duchess, for he had remained on his knees.

--Permit me to remain thus, Ferrante said to her; this position proves to me that I am not at present occupied in stealing, and it reassures me; for you should know that I steal to live since they prevent me from practicing my profession. But in this moment I am only a simple mortal who adores sublime beauty.

The duchess understood that he was a little mad, but she was not at all afraid; she saw in the man's eyes that he had an ardent and good soul, and besides she did not hate extraordinary physiognomies.

--So I am a physician, and I was paying court to the wife of the apothecary Sarasine of Parma: he surprised us and drove her away, as well as three children whom he rightly suspected to be mine and not his. I have had two since. The mother and the five children live in the last misery, at the bottom of a sort of cabin built by my own hands a league from here, in the wood. For I must keep clear of the gendarmes, and the poor woman will not part from me. I was condemned to death, and most justly: I was conspiring. I execrate the prince, who is a tyrant. I did not flee for want of money. My misfortunes are far greater, and I ought a thousand times to have killed myself; I no longer love the unhappy woman who gave me these five children and ruined herself for me; I love another. But if I kill myself, the five children and the mother will literally die of hunger.

This man had the accent of sincerity.

--But how do you live? said the duchess, moved.

--The mother of the children spins; the eldest daughter is nursed on a farm of liberals, where she tends the sheep; I, I rob on the road from Piacenza to Genoa.

--How do you reconcile robbery with your liberal principles?

--I keep note of the people I rob, and if ever I have anything, I shall return the sums stolen. I hold that a tribune of the people such as I executes a labor which, by reason of its danger, is well worth a hundred francs a month; thus I take good care not to take more than twelve hundred francs a year.

"I am mistaken, I steal some small sum beyond that, for I meet by this means the printing costs of my works.

--What works?

--The... will she ever have a chamber and a budget?

--What! said the duchess astonished, is it you, sir, who are one of the greatest poets of the century, the famous Ferrante Palla!

--Famous perhaps, but very unfortunate, that is sure.

--And a man of your talent, sir, is obliged to steal to live!

--It is perhaps for that that I have some talent. Hitherto all our authors who made themselves known were men paid by the government or by the cult they wished to undermine. I, primo, expose my life; secundo, think, Madame, of the reflections that agitate me when I go to steal! Am I in the right, I say to myself? Does the office of tribune render services really worth a hundred francs a month? I have two shirts, the coat you see, some poor weapons, and I am sure to end by the rope: I dare believe that I am disinterested. I should be happy without that fatal love which no longer lets me find but misfortune near the mother of my children. Poverty weighs on me like ugliness: I love fine clothes, white hands...

He looked at those of the duchess in such a way that fear seized her.

--Farewell, sir, she said to him: can I be of some good to you at Parma?

--Think sometimes of this question: its employment is to awaken hearts and keep them from falling asleep in that false material well-being which monarchies give. The service it renders its fellow-citizens, is it worth a hundred francs a month?... My misfortune is to love, he said with a very gentle air, and for nearly two years my soul has been occupied only with you, but hitherto I had seen you without making you afraid.

And he took flight with a prodigious rapidity that astonished the duchess and reassured her. "The gendarmes would have trouble reaching him," she thought; "indeed, he is mad."

--He is mad, her people said to her; we have all known for a long time that the poor man is in love with Madame; when Madame is here we see him wander in the highest parts of the wood, and as soon as Madame has left, he never fails to come sit in the same spots where she stopped; he curiously gathers the flowers that may have fallen from her bouquet and keeps them long attached to his poor hat.

--And you never spoke to me of these follies, said the duchess almost in the tone of reproach.

--We feared that Madame might tell Minister Mosca. Poor Ferrante is such a good fellow! he has never done harm to anyone, and because he loves our Napoleon, they condemned him to death.

She said not a word to the minister of this encounter, and as for four years it was the first secret she had kept from him, ten times she was obliged to stop short in the middle of a phrase. She returned to Sacca with gold. Ferrante did not show himself. She returned fifteen days later: Ferrante, after having followed her for some time gamboling in the wood at a hundred paces' distance, swooped down on her with the rapidity of the sparrow-hawk, and threw himself on his knees as the first time.

--Where were you fifteen days ago?

--In the mountain beyond Novi, to rob muleteers returning from Milan where they had sold oil.

--Accept this purse.

Ferrante opened the purse, took from it a sequin which he kissed and put in his bosom, then returned it.

--You return this purse to me and you steal!

--Doubtless; my institution is such, never must I have more than a hundred francs; now, the mother of my children has eighty francs and I have twenty-five, I am in fault by five francs, and if they hanged me at this moment I should have remorse. I took that sequin because it comes from you and I love you.

The intonation of that very simple word was perfect. "He really loves," said the duchess to herself.

That day, he seemed quite beside himself. He said there were at Parma people who owed him six hundred francs, and that with that sum he would repair his cabin where now his poor little children were catching cold.

--But I will advance you those six hundred francs, said the duchess, quite moved.

--But then, I, a public man, will not the opposite party be able to calumniate me, and say that I am selling myself?

The duchess, moved, offered him a hiding-place at Parma if he would swear to her that for the moment he would not exercise his magistracy in that city, that above all he would execute none of the death sentences which, he said, he held in petto.

--And if they hang me as a result of my imprudence, said Ferrante gravely, all those rascals, so harmful to the people, will live long years, and who will be to blame? What will my father say to me on receiving me up there?

The duchess spoke much to him of his little children to whom the damp might cause mortal illnesses; he ended by accepting the offer of the hiding-place at Parma.

Duke Sanseverina, in the only half-day he had spent at Parma since his marriage, had shown the duchess a very singular hiding-place which exists at the southern angle of the palace of that name. The front wall, dating from the Middle Ages, is eight feet thick; it has been hollowed out within, and there is found a hiding-place twenty feet high, but only two wide. It is right beside this that one admires that water reservoir cited in all travel books, famous work of the twelfth century, made at the time of the siege of Parma by the Emperor Sigismond, and which later was comprised within the enclosure of the Sanseverina palace.

One enters the hiding-place by moving an enormous stone on an iron axle placed toward the center of the block. The duchess was so deeply touched by the madness of Ferrante and the lot of his children, for whom he obstinately refused all gift of value, that she permitted him to make use of this hiding-place for a fairly long time. She saw him again a month later, always in the woods of Sacca, and as that day he was a little calmer, he recited to her one of his sonnets which seemed to her equal or superior to all that has been done most beautiful in Italy for two centuries. Ferrante obtained several interviews; but his love grew excited, became importunate, and the duchess perceived that this passion followed the laws of all loves into which one puts the possibility of conceiving a glimmer of hope. She sent him back to his woods, forbade him to address a word to her: he obeyed instantly and with perfect gentleness. Matters were at this point when Fabrice was arrested. Three days after, at nightfall, a capuchin presented himself at the door of the Sanseverina palace; he had, he said, an important secret to communicate to the mistress of the house. She was so unhappy that she had him enter: it was Ferrante.

--There is passing here a new iniquity of which the tribune of the people must take cognizance, this man mad with love said to her. On the other hand, acting as a simple private person, he added, I can give Madame the duchess Sanseverina only my life, and I bring it to her.

This devotion so sincere on the part of a thief and a madman touched the duchess vividly. She spoke long with this man who passed for the greatest poet of northern Italy, and wept much. "Here is a man who understands my heart," she said to herself. The next day he reappeared always at the Ave Maria, disguised as a domestic and wearing livery.

--I have not left Parma; I have heard tell a horror that my mouth will not repeat; but here I am. Think, Madame, of what you refuse! The being you see is not a court doll, it is a man!

He was on his knees in pronouncing these words with an air giving them weight.

--Yesterday, I said to myself, he added: "She wept in my presence; therefore she is a little less unhappy!"

--But, sir, think of what dangers surround you, they will arrest you in this town!

--The tribune will tell you: Madame, what is life when duty speaks? The unhappy man, who has the sorrow of no longer feeling passion for virtue since he is burned by love, will add: Madame the duchess, Fabrice, a man of heart, is perhaps about to perish; do not repel another man of heart who offers himself to you! Here is a body of iron and a soul that fears in this world only to displease you.

--If you speak to me again of your sentiments, I shall close my door to you forever.

The duchess had indeed the idea, that evening, of announcing to Ferrante that she would make a small pension for his children, but she was afraid he might thereupon go kill himself.

Scarcely had he gone out than, filled with fatal presentiments, she said to herself: "I too can die, and would to God it were so, and soon! if I found a man worthy of the name to whom to commend my poor Fabrice."

An idea seized the duchess: she took a piece of paper and acknowledged, by a writing to which she mixed the little law-terms she knew, that she had received from the sieur Ferrante Palla the sum of 25,000 francs, under the express condition of paying each year a life-annuity of 1,500 francs to the lady Sarasine and her five children. The duchess added: "Moreover I bequeath a life-annuity of 300 francs to each of her five children, on condition that Ferrante Palla give care as physician to my nephew Fabrice del Dongo, and be a brother to him. I pray him." She signed, antedated by a year and sealed the paper.

Two days after, Ferrante reappeared. It was at the moment when all the town was agitated by the rumor of the approaching execution of Fabrice. Would this sad ceremony take place in the citadel or under the trees of the public promenade? Several men of the people went to walk that evening before the citadel gate, to try to see if the scaffold was being erected: this spectacle had moved Ferrante. He found the duchess drowned in tears, and unable to speak; she saluted him with her hand and showed him a seat.

Ferrante, disguised that day as a capuchin, was superb; instead of sitting he knelt and prayed to God devoutly half-aloud. At a moment when the duchess seemed a little calmer, without changing his position, he interrupted his prayer for an instant to say these words:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”