Part 41
“You are going to have Fabrice summoned and consult him on this step which may lead him to prison. To provide for every eventuality, if, while he is behind bars, Rassi, too impatient, has me poisoned, Fabrice may run certain dangers. But the thing is unlikely; you know that I have brought in a French cook, who is the merriest of men, and who makes puns; now, the pun is incompatible with murder. I have already told our friend Fabrice that I have found all the witnesses to his fine and courageous deed; it was evidently this Giletti who sought to assassinate him. I have not spoken to you of these witnesses, because I wished to surprise you, but the plan failed; the prince would not sign. I told our Fabrice that, certainly, I shall procure him a high ecclesiastical office; but I shall have great difficulty if his enemies can object before the court of Rome an accusation of assassination.
“Do you feel, madam, that, if he is not tried in the most solemn fashion, the name of Giletti will be disagreeable to him all his life? There would be great pusillanimity in not having oneself tried, when one is sure of being innocent. Besides, were he guilty, I would have him acquitted. When I spoke to him, the hot-headed young man would not let me finish; he took the official almanac, and together we chose the twelve most upright and learned judges; the list made, we struck out six names, which we replaced with six jurisconsults, my personal enemies, and, as we could find only two enemies, we supplied the rest with four knaves devoted to Rassi.
This proposal of the count alarmed the duchess mortally, and not without cause; at length, she yielded to reason, and, under the minister’s dictation, wrote the ordinance naming the judges.
The count did not leave her until six in the morning; she tried to sleep, but in vain. At nine, she breakfasted with Fabrice, whom she found burning with desire to be tried; at ten, she was at the princess’s, who was not receiving; at eleven, she saw the prince, who was holding his levee, and who signed the ordinance without the least objection. The duchess sent the ordinance to the count, and went to bed.
It might perhaps be amusing to relate the fury of Rassi, when the count obliged him to countersign, in the presence of the prince, the ordinance signed that morning by the latter; but events press upon us.
The count discussed the merit of each judge, and offered to change the names. But the reader is perhaps a little weary of all these details of procedure, no less than of all these court intrigues. From all this, one may draw this moral, that the man who approaches the court compromises his happiness, if he is happy, and, in all cases, makes his future depend on the intrigues of a lady’s maid.
On the other hand, in America, in the republic, one must be bored all day long paying serious court to the shopkeepers of the street, and become as stupid as they, and there, no Opera.
The duchess, on rising in the evening, had a moment of acute anxiety: Fabrice could not be found; at length, toward midnight, at the court spectacle, she received a letter from him. Instead of giving himself up as a prisoner at the city jail, where the count was master, he had gone to take up his old room in the citadel, only too happy to dwell a few steps from Clelia.
This was an event of immense consequence: in that place he was more exposed to poison than ever. This folly threw the duchess into despair; she pardoned its cause, a mad love for Clelia, because decidedly in a few days she was to marry the rich marquis Crescenzi. This folly restored to Fabrice all the influence he had once had over the duchess’s soul.
“It is that accursed paper which I went to have signed that will give him death! How mad these men are with their ideas of honor! As if one need think of honor under absolute governments, in countries where a Rassi is minister of justice! One should simply have accepted the pardon which the prince would have signed as easily as the convocation of this extraordinary tribunal. What does it matter, after all, whether a man of Fabrice’s birth is more or less accused of having killed with his own hand, and sword in hand, a mountebank such as Giletti!”
No sooner was Fabrice’s note received, than the duchess ran to the count, whom she found quite pale.
“Good heavens! dear friend, I have an unlucky hand with this child, and you will be angry with me again. I can prove to you that last evening I had the jailer of the city prison come; every day your nephew would have come to take tea with you. What is frightful is that it is impossible for you and me to tell the prince that poison is feared, and poison administered by Rassi; that suspicion would seem to him the height of immorality. However, if you insist, I am ready to go up to the palace; but I am sure of the answer. I will tell you more; I offer you a means which I would not use for myself. Since I have had power in this country, I have not caused a single man to perish, and you know that I am so foolish in that regard, that sometimes, at nightfall, I still think of those two spies whom I had shot rather lightly in Spain. Well! do you wish me to rid you of Rassi? The danger he exposes Fabrice to is boundless; he holds there a sure means of making me decamp.
This proposal pleased the duchess extremely; but she did not adopt it.
“I do not wish,” she said to the count, “that, in our retirement, under this beautiful Neapolitan sky, you should have dark thoughts in the evening.”
“But, dear friend, it seems to me we have no choice but dark thoughts. What becomes of you, what becomes of me, if Fabrice is carried off by an illness?”
The discussion resumed with fresh vigor on this idea, and the duchess ended it with these words:
“Rassi owes his life to the fact that I love you better than Fabrice; no, I will not poison all the evenings of the old age we are going to spend together.”
The duchess ran to the fortress; General Fabio Conti was delighted to be able to oppose to her the formal text of the military laws: no one may penetrate a state prison without an order signed by the prince.
“But the marquis Crescenzi and his musicians come to the citadel every day?”
“That is because I obtained an order from the prince for them.”
The poor duchess did not know all her misfortunes. General Fabio Conti had regarded himself as personally dishonored by Fabrice’s escape: when he saw him arrive at the citadel, he ought not to have received him, for he had no order to that effect. “But,” said he to himself, “it is heaven that sends him to me to repair my honor and save me from the ridicule that would blight my military career. The thing is not to miss the opportunity: no doubt they will acquit him, and I have but few days to avenge myself.”
CHAPTER XXV
The arrival of our hero threw Clelia into despair: the poor girl, pious and sincere with herself, could not disguise from herself that there would never be any happiness for her far from Fabrice; but she had made a vow to the Madonna, at the time of her father’s half-poisoning, to make him the sacrifice of marrying the marquis Crescenzi. She had vowed never to see Fabrice again, and already she was prey to the most frightful remorse, for the avowal to which she had been led in the letter she had written to Fabrice on the eve of his flight. How to paint what passed in that sad heart when, occupied melancholically in watching her birds flutter, and raising her eyes by habit and with tenderness toward the window from which Fabrice used to look at her, she saw him there again, saluting her with a tender respect.
She believed in a vision which heaven permitted to punish her; then the atrocious reality appeared to her reason. “They have taken him again,” said she to herself, “and he is lost!” She recalled the talk held in the fortress after the escape; the lowest of the jailers felt themselves mortally offended. Clelia looked at Fabrice, and in spite of herself, that look painted in full the passion that was driving her to despair.
“Do you believe,” she seemed to say to Fabrice, “that I shall find happiness in that sumptuous palace being prepared for me? My father repeats to satiety that you are as poor as we; but, good God! with what happiness I would share that poverty! But, alas! we are never to see each other again.”
Clelia had not the strength to use the alphabets: in looking at Fabrice she fell faint and dropped onto a chair by the window. Her face rested on the sill of that window; and, as she had wished to see him to the last moment, her face was turned toward Fabrice, who could see her entirely. When after a few instants she reopened her eyes, her first glance was for Fabrice: she saw tears in his eyes; but those tears were the effect of extreme happiness; he saw that absence had not made her forget. The two poor young people remained for some time as if enchanted, gazing at each other. Fabrice dared to sing, as if accompanying himself on the guitar, a few improvised words which said: It is to see you again that I have come back to prison: they are going to try me.
Those words seemed to awaken all Clelia’s virtue: she rose quickly, hid her eyes, and, with the liveliest gestures, sought to express to him that she must never see him again; she had promised it to the Madonna, and had just looked at him through forgetfulness. Fabrice daring still to express his love, Clelia fled, indignant, and swearing to herself that she would never see him again, for such were the precise terms of her vow to the Madonna: My eyes shall never see him again. She had inscribed them in a little paper which her uncle Cesare had permitted her to burn upon the altar at the moment of the offering, while he said mass.
But, despite all oaths, the presence of Fabrice in the Farnese tower had restored to Clelia all her former ways. She usually spent all her days alone, in her room. Scarcely recovered from the unlooked-for emotion into which the sight of Fabrice had thrown her, she began to walk about the palace, and, as it were, to renew acquaintance with all her subordinate friends. A very talkative old woman employed in the kitchen said to her with a mysterious air:
“This time, the lord Fabrice will not leave the citadel.”
“He will not commit the fault of going over the walls again,” said Clelia; “but he will leave by the door, if he is acquitted.”
“I say, and I may say to Your Excellency, that he will leave the citadel only feet first.”
Clelia turned extremely pale, which was noticed by the old woman, and cut short her eloquence. She told herself she had been imprudent in speaking thus before the governor’s daughter, whose duty it would be to tell everyone that Fabrice had died of illness. On going up to her room, Clelia met the prison doctor, a sort of timid honest man who said to her with a startled air that Fabrice was very ill. Clelia could scarcely support herself; she sought her uncle everywhere, the good abbé Don Cesare, and at last found him in the chapel, where he was praying fervently; his face was upturned. Dinner sounded. At table, not a word was exchanged between the two brothers; only, toward the end of the meal, the general addressed a few very sharp words to his brother. The latter looked at the servants, who withdrew.
“My general,” said Don Cesare to the governor, “I have the honor to inform you that I am leaving the citadel: I resign.”
“Bravo! bravissimo! to make me suspect!... And the reason, if you please?”
“My conscience.”
“Go, you are nothing but a mountebank! you know nothing of honor.”
“Fabrice is dead,” said Clelia to herself; “they have poisoned him at dinner, or it is for tomorrow.” She ran to the aviary, resolved to sing accompanying herself on the piano. I will confess, said she to herself, and I shall be forgiven for having violated my vow to save a man’s life. What was her consternation when, arriving at the aviary, she saw that the blinds had just been replaced by boards fastened to the iron bars! Distracted, she tried to give the prisoner a warning by a few words rather cried than sung. There was no answer of any kind; a deathlike silence already reigned in the Farnese tower. “All is consummated,” said she to herself. She went down beside herself, then went up again to arm herself with the little money she had and small diamond earrings; she also took, in passing, the bread left from dinner, which had been placed in a sideboard. “If he still lives, my duty is to save him.” She advanced with a haughty air toward the little door of the tower; this door was open, and they had just placed eight soldiers in the room with the columns on the ground floor. She looked boldly at these soldiers; Clelia counted on addressing the sergeant who was to command them: that man was absent. Clelia darted onto the little iron staircase which wound in a spiral around a column; the soldiers looked at her with a very astonished air, but, apparently because of her lace shawl and her hat, dared say nothing to her. On the first floor there was no one; but on arriving at the second, at the entrance of the corridor which, if the reader remembers, was closed by three iron-barred doors and led to Fabrice’s room, she found a turnkey unknown to her, who said to her with a startled air:
“He has not dined yet.”
“I know that well,” said Clelia with haughtiness.
This man dared not stop her. Twenty paces further, Clelia found seated on the first of the six wooden steps leading to Fabrice’s room another turnkey, very old and very red, who said to her resolutely:
“Miss, have you an order from the governor?”
“Do you not know me?”
Clelia, at this moment, was animated by a supernatural strength, she was beside herself. “I am going to save my husband,” said she to herself.
While the old turnkey cried: “But my duty does not permit me...” Clelia rapidly mounted the six steps; she threw herself against the door: an enormous key was in the lock; she needed all her strength to turn it. At this moment, the half-drunk old turnkey seized the hem of her gown; she entered quickly into the room, closed the door tearing her gown, and, as the turnkey pushed to enter after her, she fastened it with a bolt which was under her hand. She looked into the room and saw Fabrice seated before a very small table where his dinner was. She threw herself on the table, overturned it, and, seizing Fabrice’s arm, said to him:
“Have you eaten?”
This familiar address delighted Fabrice. In her agitation, Clelia forgot for the first time feminine reserve, and let her love be seen.
Fabrice was about to begin that fatal meal: he took her in his arms and covered her with kisses. “This dinner was poisoned,” thought he; “if I tell her I have not touched it, religion resumes its rights and Clelia flees. If, on the contrary, she looks on me as a dying man, I shall obtain from her that she not leave me. She wishes to find a means of breaking her execrable marriage, chance presents it to us: the jailers will assemble, they will break down the door, and here is a scandal such that perhaps the marquis Crescenzi will be frightened by it, and the marriage broken.”
During the instant of silence occupied by these reflections, Fabrice felt that already Clelia sought to disengage herself from his embraces.
“I do not yet feel any pains,” said he to her, “but soon they will cast me at your feet; help me to die.”
“O my only friend!” said she to him, “I shall die with you.”
She clasped him in her arms, as by a convulsive movement.
She was so beautiful, half-undressed and in this state of extreme passion, that Fabrice could not resist an almost involuntary movement. No resistance was offered.
In the enthusiasm of passion and generosity which follows an extreme happiness, he said to her heedlessly:
“An unworthy falsehood must not come to sully the first instants of our happiness: without your courage I should be but a corpse, or I should be struggling against atrocious pains; but I was about to begin dinner when you entered, and I have not touched these dishes.”
Fabrice dwelt on these atrocious images to conjure the indignation he read in Clelia’s eyes. She looked at him for some moments, torn by two violent and opposite sentiments, then she threw herself into his arms. A great noise was heard in the corridor, they were opening and shutting violently the three iron doors, they were speaking in shouts.
“Ah! if I had weapons!” cried Fabrice; “they had them returned to me to let me enter. No doubt they come to finish me! Farewell, my Clelia, I bless my death since it has been the occasion of my happiness.”
Clelia kissed him and gave him a little ivory-handled dagger, whose blade was scarcely longer than that of a penknife.
“Do not let yourself be killed,” said she to him, “and defend yourself to the last moment; if my uncle the abbé has heard the noise, he has courage and virtue, he will save you; I am going to speak to them.”
Saying these words she threw herself toward the door.
“If you are not killed,” said she with exaltation, holding the bolt of the door and turning her head his way, “let yourself die of hunger rather than touch anything. Carry this bread always about you.” The noise drew near; Fabrice seized her bodily, took her place by the door, and opening that door with fury, he threw himself on the wooden staircase of six steps. He had in his hand the little ivory-handled dagger, and was on the point of piercing the waistcoat of General Fontana, aide-de-camp to the prince, who drew back quickly, crying out in fright:
“But I come to save you, Mr. del Dongo.”
Fabrice remounted the six steps, said in the room:
“Fontana comes to save me.”
Then, returning to the general on the wooden steps, he explained himself coldly with him. He begged him very lengthily to pardon a first movement of anger.
“They wished to poison me; this dinner which is there before me is poisoned; I had the sense not to touch it, but I confess to you that this proceeding shocked me. On hearing you come up, I believed they came to finish me with daggers... Mr. General, I require of you to order that no one enter my room: they would remove the poison, and our good prince must know all.”
The general, very pale and quite disconcerted, transmitted the orders indicated by Fabrice to the elite jailers who followed him: these people, quite abashed to see the poison discovered, hastened to descend; they went ahead, apparently, so as not to block the prince’s aide-de-camp in the narrow staircase, and in fact to escape and disappear. To the great astonishment of General Fontana, Fabrice stopped a good quarter of an hour at the little iron staircase around the column on the ground floor; he wished to give Clelia time to hide on the first floor.
It was the duchess who, after several frantic steps, had managed to have General Fontana sent to the citadel; she succeeded by chance. On leaving Count Mosca as alarmed as herself, she had run to the palace. The princess, who had a marked repugnance for energy which seemed to her vulgar, believed her mad, and seemed not at all disposed to attempt for her sake some unusual step. The duchess, beside herself, wept hot tears, she knew only to repeat at every instant:
“But, madam, in a quarter of an hour Fabrice will be dead by poison!”
Seeing the princess’s perfect coolness, the duchess went wild with grief. She did not make that moral reflection, which would not have escaped a woman brought up in one of those Northern religions which admit personal examination: “I used poison first, and I perish by poison.” In Italy such reflections, in passionate moments, seem exceedingly flat, as would a pun in Paris in like circumstance.
The duchess, in despair, ventured to go into the salon where the marquis Crescenzi was, on duty that day. On the duchess’s return to Parma, he had thanked her with effusion for the place of honorary knight to which, without her, he could never have aspired. Protestations of boundless devotion had not been lacking on his part. The duchess addressed him in these words:
“Rassi is going to have Fabrice poisoned, who is at the citadel. Take in your pocket some chocolate and a bottle of water which I shall give you. Go up to the citadel, and give me life by telling General Fabio Conti that you break with his daughter if he does not permit you to hand this water and chocolate yourself to Fabrice.”
The marquis turned pale, and his physiognomy, far from being animated by these words, depicted the flattest embarrassment; he could not believe in so frightful a crime in a city as moral as Parma, and where reigned so great a prince, etc.; and moreover, these platitudes he said slowly. In a word, the duchess found an honest man, but as weak as possible and unable to resolve to act. After twenty similar phrases interrupted by the impatient cries of Mme Sanseverina, he fell upon an excellent idea: the oath he had taken as honorary knight forbade him to meddle in maneuvers against the government.
Who could imagine the anxiety and despair of the duchess, who felt that time was flying!
“But, at least, see the governor, tell him that I shall pursue to the very hells the assassins of Fabrice!...”
Despair increased the duchess’s natural eloquence, but all this fire only frightened the marquis the more and redoubled his irresolution; at the end of an hour, he was less disposed to act than at the first moment.
This unhappy woman, arrived at the last limits of despair, and feeling well that the governor would refuse nothing to a son-in-law so rich, went so far as to throw herself at his knees: then the pusillanimity of the marquis Crescenzi seemed to increase still; he himself, at the sight of this strange spectacle, feared being compromised without knowing it; but a singular thing happened: the marquis, good-hearted at bottom, was touched by the tears and the position, at his feet, of a woman as beautiful and above all as powerful.
“Myself, so noble and so rich,” said he to himself, “perhaps one day I too shall be at the knees of some republican!” The marquis began to weep, and at length it was agreed that the duchess, in her capacity as mistress of the robes, should present him to the princess, who would give him permission to hand to Fabrice a little basket whose contents he would declare he ignored.”}
“Stories of the world, in your language.”