Part 3

--You have given me back the bright days of youth, the marquise said to him, kissing him; on the eve of your arrival, I was a hundred years old. The countess began again to visit, with Fabrice, all those enchanting spots near Grianta, so celebrated by travellers: the villa Melzi on the other side of the lake, opposite the castle, which serves it as a viewpoint; above, the sacred wood of the Sfondrata, and the bold promontory that separates the two branches of the lake, that of Como, so voluptuous, and that which runs toward Lecco, full of severity: sublime and graceful aspects, which the most renowned site in the world, the bay of Naples, equals, but does not surpass. It was with rapture that the countess rediscovered the memories of her earliest youth and compared them to her present sensations. "The lake of Como," she said to herself, "is not surrounded, like the lake of Geneva, by great enclosed fields cultivated according to the best methods, things that recall money and speculation. Here on all sides I see hills of unequal heights covered with clumps of trees planted by chance, and which the hand of man has not yet spoiled or forced to yield revenue. Amid these hills of admirable form, plunging toward the lake by such singular slopes, I can keep all the illusions of the descriptions of Tasso and Ariosto. All is noble and tender, all speaks of love, nothing recalls the ugliness of civilization. The villages situated halfway up the slope are hidden by great trees, and above the tops of the trees rises the charming architecture of their pretty bell-towers. If some little field fifty paces wide now and then interrupts the clumps of chestnuts and wild cherry-trees, the satisfied eye sees there plants more vigorous and happier than elsewhere. Beyond these hills, whose summit offers hermitages one would wish to inhabit all, the astonished eye perceives the peaks of the Alps, always covered with snow, and their severe austerity recalls to it, of the misfortunes of life, only what is needed to heighten the present voluptuousness. The imagination is touched by the distant sound of the bell of some little village hidden beneath the trees: these sounds, borne upon the waters that soften them, take a tone of gentle melancholy and resignation, and seem to say to man: Life flies, therefore do not be so difficult toward the happiness that presents itself, hasten to enjoy." The language of these ravishing places, which have no equal in the world, restored to the countess her heart of sixteen. She could not conceive how she had been able to pass so many years without seeing the lake again. "Is it then at the beginning of old age," she said to herself, "that happiness has taken refuge?" She bought a boat which Fabrice, the marquise, and she ornamented with their own hands, for money was lacking for everything, amid the most splendid household state; since his disgrace the Marquis del Dongo had redoubled his aristocratic pomp. For example, to gain ten paces of ground on the lake, near the famous avenue of plane-trees, beside Cadenabia, he was having a dyke built whose estimate ran to eighty thousand francs. At the end of the dyke there rose, from designs by the famous Marquis Cagnola, a chapel built entirely of enormous blocks of granite, and, in the chapel, Marchesi, the fashionable sculptor of Milan, was building him a tomb on which numerous bas-reliefs were to represent the noble deeds of his ancestors.

Fabrice's elder brother, the marchesino Ascagne, wished to join the ladies' walks; but his aunt threw water on his powdered hair, and had every day some new piece of mischief to launch at his gravity. At last he delivered the joyful troop, which dared not laugh in his presence, from the sight of his pale, bloated face. He was thought to be the spy of the marquis his father, and that severe despot, always furious since his forced resignation, had to be humored.

Ascagne swore to be revenged on Fabrice.

There was a storm in which they ran dangers; though they had infinitely little money, they paid the two boatmen generously so that they would say nothing to the marquis, who already showed much ill-humor at their taking his two daughters out. They met a second storm; they are terrible and unforeseen on this beautiful lake: gusts of wind issue suddenly from two mountain gorges placed in opposite directions and struggle upon the waters. The countess wished to land in the midst of the hurricane and the thunderclaps; she maintained that, placed on an isolated rock in the middle of the lake, and as large as a small room, she would have a singular spectacle; she would see herself besieged on all sides by furious waves, but, in leaping from the boat, she fell into the water. Fabrice threw himself in after her to save her, and both were carried quite far away. Doubtless it is not fine to be drowned, but boredom, quite astonished, was banished from the feudal castle. The countess had grown passionate for the primitive character and the astrology of the Abbé Blanès. The little money left her after the purchase of the boat had been spent on buying a chance small telescope, and almost every evening, with her nieces and Fabrice, she would go and install herself on the platform of one of the Gothic towers of the castle. Fabrice was the scholar of the troop, and they passed several hours there very gaily, far from the spies.

It must be owned there were days when the countess spoke to no one; she was seen walking beneath the tall chestnut-trees, plunged in gloomy reveries; she had too much wit not to feel at times the boredom of not exchanging one's ideas. But the next day she laughed as on the eve: it was the complaints of the marquise, her sister-in-law, that produced these dark impressions on a soul naturally so active.

--Shall we then pass what remains to us of youth in this dismal castle! cried the marquise.

Before the countess's arrival, she had not even the courage to have such regrets.

Thus they lived through the winter of 1814 to 1815. Twice, despite her poverty, the countess came to spend a few days at Milan; it was a matter of seeing a sublime ballet by Vigano, given at the Scala theatre, and the marquis did not forbid his wife to accompany her sister-in-law. They went to draw the quarters of the small pension, and it was the poor widow of the Cisalpine general who lent a few sequins to the exceedingly rich Marquise del Dongo. These parties were charming; they invited old friends to dinner, and consoled themselves laughing at everything, like true children. This Italian gaiety, full of brio and the unexpected, made one forget the gloomy sadness that the looks of the marquis and his eldest son spread around them at Grianta. Fabrice, scarcely sixteen years old, represented the head of the house very well.

On the 7th of March, 1815, the ladies had been back, since the day before yesterday, from a charming little journey to Milan; they were walking in the beautiful avenue of plane-trees recently extended to the extreme edge of the lake. A boat appeared, coming from the side of Como, and made singular signs. An agent of the marquis jumped onto the dyke: Napoleon had just landed in the gulf of Juan. Europe had the simplicity to be surprised at this event, which did not surprise the Marquis del Dongo; he wrote to his sovereign a letter full of outpourings of the heart; he offered him his talents and several millions, and repeated to him that his ministers were Jacobins in league with the leaders in Paris.

On the 8th of March, at six in the morning, the marquis, clad in his insignia, was having the draft of a third political dispatch dictated by his eldest son; he was gravely occupied in transcribing it in his fine careful handwriting, on paper bearing in watermark the effigy of the sovereign. At the same instant, Fabrice had himself announced at the Countess Pietranera's.

--I am leaving, he said to her, I am going to rejoin the Emperor, who is also King of Italy; he had such friendship for your husband! I am passing through Switzerland. This night, at Menaggio, my friend Vasi, the barometer merchant, gave me his passport; now give me a few napoleons, for I have only two of my own; but if need be, I shall go on foot.

The countess wept with joy and anguish.

--Great God! why must this idea have come to you! she cried, seizing Fabrice's hands.

She rose and went to take from the linen press, where it was carefully hidden, a small purse ornamented with pearls; it was all she possessed in the world.

--Take it, she said to Fabrice; but for the love of God! do not get yourself killed. What will remain to your unhappy mother and to me, if we lose you? As for Napoleon's success, it is impossible, my poor friend; our gentlemen will know well how to destroy him. Did you not hear, a week ago in Milan, the story of the twenty-three assassination plots all so well contrived and from which he escaped only by a miracle? and then he was all-powerful. And you have seen that it is not the will to ruin him that our enemies lack; France was nothing more since his departure.

It was with the accent of the liveliest emotion that the countess spoke to Fabrice of Napoleon's future destiny.

--In allowing you to go rejoin him, I sacrifice to him what is dearest in the world to me, she said. Fabrice's eyes grew moist, he shed tears embracing the countess, but his resolution to depart was not shaken for an instant. He explained with effusion to this so dear friend all the reasons that determined him, and which we take the liberty of finding quite pleasing.

--Yesterday evening, it was seven minutes to six, we were walking, as you know, on the bank of the lake in the avenue of plane-trees, below the Casa Sommariva, and we were walking toward the south. There, for the first time, I noticed in the distance the boat coming from Como, bearer of so great a piece of news. As I looked at this boat without thinking of the Emperor, and only envying the lot of those who can travel, suddenly I was seized with a profound emotion. The boat landed, the agent spoke low to my father, who changed color, and took us aside to announce the terrible news. I turned toward the lake with no other aim than to hide the tears of joy with which my eyes were flooded. Suddenly, at an immense height and to my right, I saw an eagle, Napoleon's bird; it flew majestically, directing itself toward Switzerland, and consequently toward Paris. And I too, I said to myself at once, I shall cross Switzerland with the swiftness of the eagle, and go offer this great man very little, but after all all that I can offer, the help of my weak arm. He wished to give us a country and he loved my uncle. At once, while I still saw the eagle, by a singular effect my tears dried; and the proof that this idea comes from above is that at the same moment, without discussion, I took my resolution and saw the means of executing this journey. In the twinkling of an eye all the sadnesses which, as you know, poison my life, especially on Sundays, were as if carried off by a divine breath. I saw that great image of Italy raise itself from the mire where the Germans keep it plunged; it stretched its bruised arms, still half laden with chains, toward its king and liberator. And I, said I to myself, still unknown son of this unhappy mother, I shall depart, I shall go die or conquer with that man marked by destiny, and who wished to wash us clean of the contempt even the most enslaved and vile among the inhabitants of Europe cast upon us.

"You know," he added in a low voice, drawing near the countess, and fixing on her eyes from which flames darted, "you know that young chestnut-tree which my mother, the winter of my birth, planted herself on the edge of the great fountain in our forest, two leagues from here: before doing anything, I wished to go visit it. Spring is not too far advanced, said I to myself: well! if my tree has leaves, that shall be a sign for me. I too must emerge from the state of torpor in which I languish in this dismal and cold castle. Do you not find that these old blackened walls, now symbols and formerly means of despotism, are a true image of sad winter? they are for me what winter is for my tree.

"Would you believe it, Gina? yesterday evening at half past seven I arrived at my chestnut-tree; it had leaves, pretty little leaves already quite large! I kissed them without doing them harm. I dug the earth respectfully around the beloved tree. At once, filled with a new transport, I crossed the mountain; I arrived at Menaggio: I needed a passport to enter Switzerland. Time had flown, it was already one in the morning when I found myself at Vasi's door. I thought I should have to knock long to wake him; but he was up with three of his friends. At my first word: 'You are going to rejoin Napoleon!' he cried, and he threw his arms around my neck. The others also embraced me with transport. 'Why am I married!' said one of them.

Mme Pietranera had become thoughtful; she thought she ought to present some objections. Had Fabrice the least experience, he would have seen well that the countess herself did not believe the good reasons she hastened to give him. But, lacking experience, he had resolution; he did not even deign to listen to those reasons. The countess soon reduced herself to obtaining from him that at least he should make his project known to his mother.

--She will tell my sisters, and those women will betray me unknowingly! cried Fabrice with a sort of heroic haughtiness.

--Speak then with more respect, said the countess smiling amid her tears, of the sex that will make your fortune; for you will always displease men, you have too much fire for prosaic souls.

The marquise melted into tears on learning her son's strange project; she did not feel its heroism, and did all she could to detain him. When she was convinced that nothing in the world, except the walls of a prison, could prevent his departure, she gave him the little money she possessed; then she remembered that since the day before she had eight or ten small diamonds worth perhaps ten thousand francs, which the marquis had entrusted to her to have set at Milan. Fabrice's sisters came into their mother's room while the countess was sewing these diamonds into our hero's travelling clothes; he was returning to these poor women their paltry napoleons. His sisters were so enthusiastic over his project, they embraced him with such noisy joy, that he took in his hand some diamonds that still remained to be hidden, and wished to depart at once.

--You would betray me unknowingly, he said to his sisters. Since I have so much money, it is useless to carry clothes; one finds them everywhere. He embraced these persons so dear to him, and departed that very instant without wishing to re-enter his room. He walked so fast, always fearing to be pursued by men on horseback, that that same evening he entered Lugano. Thanks be to God, he was in a Swiss town, and no longer feared being violently stopped on the lonely road by gendarmes paid by his father. From this place, he wrote her a fine letter, a childish weakness which gave consistency to the marquis's anger. Fabrice took the post, crossed the Saint-Gothard; his journey was rapid, and he entered France by Pontarlier. The Emperor was at Paris. There began Fabrice's misfortunes; he had set out in the firm intention of speaking to the Emperor: never had it entered his head that this was a difficult thing. At Milan, ten times a day he saw the Prince Eugene and could have addressed him. At Paris, every morning he went into the courtyard of the Tuileries castle to attend the reviews passed by Napoleon; but never could he approach the Emperor. Our hero believed all Frenchmen profoundly moved like him by the extreme danger the country was running. At the table of the hotel where he was staying, he made no mystery of his plans and his devotion; he found young men of an amiable gentleness, even more enthusiastic than he, and who, in a few days, failed not to steal from him all the money he possessed. Happily, from pure modesty, he had not spoken of the diamonds given by his mother. The morning when, following a debauch, he found himself decidedly robbed, he bought two fine horses, took as servant an old soldier, a horse-dealer's groom, and, in his contempt for the fine-speaking young Parisians, set out for the army. He knew nothing, save that it was assembling toward Maubeuge. Scarcely had he arrived on the frontier, than he found it ridiculous to keep to a house, occupied in warming himself before a good fireplace, while soldiers bivouacked. Whatever his servant, who lacked not good sense, could say to him, he ran imprudently to mingle with the bivouacs of the extreme frontier, on the road to Belgium. Scarcely had he arrived at the first battalion placed beside the road, than the soldiers began to look at this young bourgeois, whose dress recalled no uniform. Night was falling, a cold wind blew. Fabrice approached a fire, and asked for hospitality paying. The soldiers looked at one another astonished, above all at the idea of paying, and granted him kindly a place at the fire; his servant made him a shelter. But, an hour after, the regiment's adjutant passing near the bivouac, the soldiers went to tell him of the arrival of this stranger speaking poor French. The adjutant questioned Fabrice, who spoke to him of his enthusiasm for the Emperor with a highly suspect accent; whereupon this non-commissioned officer begged him to follow him to the colonel, established in a neighboring farm. Fabrice's servant approached with the two horses. Their sight seemed to strike the adjutant non-commissioned officer so vividly, that at once he changed his mind, and began to question the servant also. The latter, an old soldier, first divining his interlocutor's plan of campaign, spoke of the protections his master had, adding that certainly one would not filch his fine horses from him. At once a soldier called by the adjutant laid hands on the servant's collar; another soldier took charge of the horses, and, with a severe air, the adjutant ordered Fabrice to follow him without reply.

After making him go a good league on foot, in the darkness made deeper in appearance by the fires of the bivouacs which on all sides lit the horizon, the adjutant handed Fabrice over to a gendarmerie officer who, with a grave air, asked him for his papers. Fabrice showed his passport which described him as a barometer merchant carrying his merchandise.

--Are they fools, cried the officer, this is too much!

He put questions to our hero who spoke of the Emperor and liberty in terms of the liveliest enthusiasm; whereupon the gendarmerie officer was seized with mad laughter.

--Upon my word! you are not too clever! he cried. It is a little too thick that they dare send us greenhorns of your sort!

And whatever Fabrice could say, who killed himself explaining that indeed he was not a barometer merchant, the officer sent him to the prison of B..., a small neighboring town where our hero arrived about three in the morning, beside himself with rage and dead with fatigue.

Fabrice, at first astonished, then furious, understanding absolutely nothing of what was happening to him, passed thirty-three long days in that miserable prison; he wrote letter upon letter to the commandant of the place, and it was the jailer's wife, a fine Flemish woman of thirty-six, who undertook to have them delivered. But as she had no wish to get so fine a young fellow shot, and moreover he paid well, she never failed to throw all these letters into the fire. In the evening, very late, she deigned to come listen to the prisoner's complaints; she had told her husband that the greenhorn had money, whereupon the prudent jailer gave her carte blanche. She used the permission and received some gold napoleons, for the adjutant had taken only the horses, and the gendarmerie officer had confiscated nothing at all. One afternoon in the month of June, Fabrice heard a heavy cannonade rather far off. They were fighting at last! his heart bounded with impatience. He also heard much noise in the town; indeed a great movement was taking place, three divisions were crossing B... When, toward eleven at night, the jailer's wife came to share his troubles, Fabrice was more amiable even than usual; then taking her hands:

--Get me out of here, I swear upon my honor to return to the prison as soon as they have ceased fighting.

--Nonsense all that! Have you any quibus? He appeared uneasy, he did not understand the word quibus. The jailer, seeing this reaction, judged that the waters were low, and, instead of speaking of gold napoleons as she had resolved, she spoke only of francs.

--Listen, she said to him, if you can give a hundred francs or so, I shall put a double napoleon on each of the eyes of the corporal who is to come relieve the guard during the night. He cannot see you leave the prison, and if his regiment is to march off in the day, he will accept.

The bargain was soon struck. The jailer even consented to hide Fabrice in her room whence he could more easily escape the next morning.

The next day, before dawn, this woman, quite softened, said to Fabrice:

--My dear little one, you are still very young to do this ugly trade: believe me, do not come back to it.

--But what! repeated Fabrice, is it then criminal to wish to defend one's country?

--Enough. Always remember that I saved your life; your case was clear, you would have been shot, but tell no one, for you would get my husband and me dismissed; above all never repeat your silly tale of a Milanese gentleman disguised as a barometer merchant, it is too stupid. Listen well, I am going to give you the clothes of a hussar dead here in the prison the day before yesterday: open your mouth as little as possible, but after all, if a quartermaster-sergeant or an officer questions you in a way that forces you to answer, say that you stayed sick at a peasant's who took you in charitably as you were shaking with fever in a roadside ditch. If they are not satisfied with this answer, add that you are going to rejoin your regiment. They may stop you because of your accent: then say you were born in Piedmont, that you are a conscript left in France last year, etc.

For the first time, after thirty-three days of fury, Fabrice understood the real upshot of all that was happening to him. He was taken for a spy. He reasoned with the jailer, who, that morning, was very tender, and at last while, armed with a needle, she narrowed the hussar's clothes, he told his story quite clearly to this astonished woman. She believed it for an instant; he looked so naive, and he was so pretty dressed as a hussar!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”