Part 42

The evening before, before the duchess knew of Fabrice’s mad act in going to the citadel, a comedy dell’arte had been played at court; and the prince, who always reserved for himself the roles of lover to perform with the duchess, had been so passionately earnest in speaking to her of his tenderness, that it would have been ridiculous—if in Italy a passionate man, or a prince, could ever be so!

The prince, very timid but always taking matters of love quite seriously, met the duchess in one of the castle corridors, leading the marquis Crescenzi, much troubled, to the princess. He was so surprised and dazzled by the emotion-filled beauty which despair lent to the great lady, that for the first time in his life he showed some character. With a more than imperious gesture he dismissed the marquis and began to make a declaration of love in due form to the duchess. The prince had no doubt arranged it long in advance, for there were some fairly reasonable things in it.

--Since the proprieties of my rank forbid me the supreme happiness of marrying you, I shall swear upon the consecrated host to never marry without your written permission. I am well aware, he added, that I am causing you to lose the hand of a prime minister, a witty and most agreeable man; but after all he is fifty-six, and I am not yet twenty-two. I should think myself insulting you and deserving your refusal, were I to speak to you of advantages foreign to love; but all that concerns money in my court speaks with admiration of the proof of love the count gives you, in leaving you depositary of all that belongs to him. I shall be only too happy to imitate him in this. You will make better use of my fortune than I myself, and you shall have entire disposal of the annual sum which my ministers hand to the intendant general of my crown; so that it will be you, madame the duchess, who decide the sums I may spend each month.

The duchess found all these details exceedingly long; the dangers of Fabrice pierced her heart.

--But do you not know, my prince, she cried, that at this very moment they are poisoning Fabrice in your citadel! Save him! I believe all.

The phrasing of this sentence was wholly clumsy. At the mere word poison, all the abandon, all the good faith which this poor moral prince brought to the conversation vanished in the blink of an eye; the duchess only noticed this clumsiness when it was too late to remedy it, and her despair was increased—a thing she had thought impossible. “Had I not spoken of poison,” she said to herself, “he would have granted me Fabrice’s liberty. O dear Fabrice! she added, it is then written that it is I who must pierce your heart through my follies!”

The duchess needed much time and many coquetries to bring the prince back to his talk of passionate love; but he remained profoundly alarmed. It was his mind alone that spoke; his soul had been frozen by the idea of poison first, and then by that other idea, as offensive as the first was terrible: “They are administering poison in my states, and that without telling me! Rassi then means to dishonor me in the eyes of Europe! And God knows what I shall read next month in the Paris newspapers!”

Suddenly the soul of this very timid young man falling silent, his mind arrived at an idea.

--Dear duchess! you know how attached I am to you. Your atrocious ideas about poison are unfounded, I like to believe; but after all they give me something to think on, they make me almost forget for an instant the passion I have for you, and which is the only one I have ever felt in my life. I feel that I am not amiable; I am but a very loving child; but come, put me to the test.

The prince grew quite animated as he spoke thus.

--Save Fabrice, and I believe all! No doubt I am carried away by the foolish fears of a mother’s soul; but send this instant to fetch Fabrice from the citadel, that I may see him. If he still lives, send him from the palace to the city prison, where he shall remain for whole months, if Your Highness requires it, and until his trial.

The duchess saw with despair that the prince, instead of granting with a word a thing so simple, had become gloomy; he was very red, he looked at the duchess, then lowered his eyes and his cheeks paled. The idea of poison, ill-advisedly brought forward, had suggested to him an idea worthy of his father or of Philip II: but he dared not express it.

--See here, madame, he said to her at last, as if doing himself violence, and in a far from gracious tone, you despise me as a child, and moreover as a being without graces: well! I shall tell you a horrible thing, but one suggested to me this instant by the deep and true passion I have for you. If I believed in the least in the poison, I should already have acted, my duty made it a law; but I see in your request only a passionate whim, and of which, I ask your leave to say so, I do not see the full bearing. You wish me to act without consulting my ministers, I who have reigned scarce three months! you ask of me a great exception to my usual way of acting, and which I think most reasonable, I confess. It is you, madame, who are here at this moment the absolute sovereign, you give me hopes for the interest which is all to me; but, in an hour, when this imagination of poison, when this nightmare shall have vanished, my presence will become importunate to you, you will disgrace me, madame. Well! I must have an oath: swear, madame, that if Fabrice is returned to you safe and sound, I shall obtain from you, within three months, all that my love can desire of happiest; you shall secure the happiness of my whole life by placing at my disposal one hour of yours, and you shall be wholly mine.

At this instant, the castle clock struck two. “Ah! perhaps it is too late,” said the duchess to herself.

--I swear it, she cried with distracted eyes.

Immediately the prince became another man; he ran to the end of the gallery where the aides-de-camp’s salon was.

--General Fontana, run to the citadel at full speed, mount as quickly as possible to the room where M. del Dongo is kept and bring him to me, I must speak with him in twenty minutes, and in fifteen if possible.

--Ah! general, cried the duchess who had followed the prince, a minute may decide my life. A false report no doubt makes me fear poison for Fabrice: shout to him as soon as you are within hearing, not to eat. If he has touched his meal, make him vomit, tell him it is I who will it, use force if need be; tell him I follow you closely, and believe me your obliged servant for life.

--Madame the duchess, my horse is saddled, I am known for handling a horse, and I run at full speed, I shall be at the citadel eight minutes before you.

--And I, madame the duchess, cried the prince, I ask of you four of those eight minutes.

The aide-de-camp had disappeared; he was a man who had no other merit than that of riding a horse. Scarcely had he closed the door, than the young prince, who seemed to have character, seized the duchess’s hand.

--Deign, madame, he said to her with passion, to come with me to the chapel.

The duchess, disconcerted for the first time in her life, followed him without a word. The prince and she ran the whole length of the great gallery of the palace, the chapel being at the other end. Entering the chapel, the prince knelt, almost as much before the duchess as before the altar.

--Repeat the oath, he said with passion; if you had been just, if this unhappy quality of prince had not harmed me, you would have granted me out of pity for my love what you now owe me because you have sworn it.

--If I see Fabrice not poisoned, if he still lives in eight days, if His Highness names him coadjutor with future succession to the archbishop Landriani, my honor, my dignity as a woman, all shall be trampled by me, and I shall be at His Highness’s.

--But, dear friend, said the prince with a timid anxiety and a tenderness mixed and most pleasing, I fear some snare I do not understand, and which might destroy my happiness; I should die of it. If the archbishop opposes me with one of those ecclesiastical reasons which keep affairs going for whole years, what becomes of me? You see I act with entire good faith; will you be with me a little Jesuit?

--No: in good faith, if Fabrice is saved, if, with all your power, you make him coadjutor and future archbishop, I dishonor myself and am yours.

“Your Highness undertakes to write *approved* in the margin of a request which my lord the archbishop shall present you within eight days.”

--I sign you a blank paper, reign over me and my states, cried the prince reddening with happiness and truly beside himself. He demanded a second oath. He was so moved, that he forgot the timidity so natural to him, and, in this palace chapel where they were alone, he said in a low voice to the duchess things which, said three days before, would have changed the opinion she had of him. But in her the despair caused by Fabrice’s danger had given place to horror at the promise wrung from her.

The duchess was overwhelmed by what she had just done. If she did not yet feel all the awful bitterness of the word pronounced, it is that her attention was occupied with whether general Fontana could arrive in time at the citadel.

To free herself from the madly tender speeches of this child and change the subject a little, she praised a famous painting by the Parmesan, which was at the high altar of this chapel.

--Be good enough to allow me to send it to you, said the prince.

--I accept, replied the duchess; but suffer me to run to meet Fabrice.

With a distracted air, she told her coachman to put his horses to a gallop. She found on the bridge of the citadel moat general Fontana and Fabrice, who were coming out on foot.

--Have you eaten?

--No, by a miracle.

The duchess threw herself on Fabrice’s neck, and fell into a swoon which lasted an hour and gave at first fears for her life, and then for her reason.

The governor Fabio Conti had paled with anger at the sight of general Fontana: he had brought such slowness to obeying the prince’s order, that the aide-de-camp, who supposed the duchess was to occupy the place of reigning mistress, had ended by growing angry. The governor counted on making Fabrice’s illness last two or three days, and see, he said to himself, the general, a man of the court, is going to find this insolent writhing in the pains that avenge me for his flight.

Fabio Conti, deep in thought, stopped in the guardroom on the ground floor of the Farnèse tower, whence he hastened to dismiss the soldiers; he wanted no witnesses to the scene preparing. Five minutes later he was petrified with astonishment on hearing Fabrice speak, and seeing him, lively and alert, giving general Fontana the description of the prison. He disappeared.

Fabrice showed himself a perfect gentleman in his interview with the prince. First he would not appear a child frightened at nothing. The prince asking him kindly how he found himself:

--Like a man, Most Serene Highness, dying of hunger, having by good fortune neither breakfasted nor dined.

After having had the honor of thanking the prince, he solicited permission to see the archbishop before going to the city prison. The prince had become prodigiously pale, when there came into his childish head the idea that the poison was not quite a chimera of the duchess’s imagination. Absorbed in this cruel thought, he did not at first answer the request to see the archbishop, which Fabrice addressed to him; then he thought himself obliged to repair his distraction by much graciousness.

--Go out alone, sir, walk the streets of my capital without any guard. Toward ten or eleven o’clock you shall go to prison, where I hope you will not remain long.

The day after this great day, the most remarkable of his life, the prince believed himself a little Napoleon; he had read that this great man had been well treated by several of the pretty women of his court. Once Napoleon in good fortunes, he recalled that he had been so before the bullets. His heart was still all transported by the firmness of his conduct with the duchess. The consciousness of having done something difficult made of him a wholly different man for fifteen days; he became sensible to generous reasoning; he had some character.

He began that day by burning the patent of count drawn up in favor of Rassi, which had been on his desk for a month. He dismissed general Fabio Conti, and asked colonel Lange, his successor, the truth about the poison. Lange, a brave Polish soldier, frightened the jailers, and told the prince that they had wished to poison M. del Dongo’s breakfast; but it would have required taking too great a number of persons into confidence. The measures were better taken for the dinner; and, but for general Fontana’s arrival, M. del Dongo was lost. The prince was consternated; but, as he was really quite in love, it was a consolation for him to be able to say to himself: “It turns out that I really saved M. del Dongo’s life, and the duchess will not dare fail the word she gave me.” He arrived at another idea: “My trade is much more difficult than I thought; everyone agrees the duchess has infinite wit, policy here agrees with my heart. It would be divine for me if she wished to be my prime minister.”

In the evening, the prince was so irritated by the horrors he had discovered, that he would not meddle with the comedy.

--I should be too happy, he said to the duchess, if you would reign over my states as you reign over my heart. To begin, I shall tell you the employment of my day.

Then he recounted it all very exactly: the burning of Rassi’s count patent, the nomination of Lange, his report on the poisoning, etc.

--I find myself with too little experience to reign. The count humiliates me by his jests, he even jests in council, and, in the world, he holds discourses whose truth you will contest; he says I am a child he leads where he will. To be a prince, madame, one is none the less a man, and these things anger. In order to give improbability to the tales M. Mosca may tell, they had me call to the ministry that dangerous rogue Rassi, and see this general Conti who still believes him so powerful, that he dares not avow it is he or the Raversi who engaged him to cause your nephew to perish; I have a good mind to simply send general Fabio Conti before the courts; the judges will see if he is guilty of attempted poisoning.

--But, my prince, have you judges?

--How so? said the prince, astonished.

--You have learned jurisconsults who walk the street with a grave air; otherwise, they will always judge as it pleases the dominant party in your court.

While the young prince, scandalized, uttered phrases showing his candor far more than his sagacity, the duchess said to herself: “Does it befit me to let Conti be dishonored? No, certainly, for then the marriage of his daughter with that plain honest man the marquis Crescenzi becomes impossible.”

On this subject there was an infinite dialogue between the duchess and the prince. The prince was dazzled with admiration. In favor of the marriage of Clélia Conti with the marquis Crescenzi, but with the express condition angrily declared by him to the ex-governor, he granted him pardon for his attempted poisoning; but, on the duchess’s advice, he exiled him until his daughter’s marriage. The duchess believed she no longer loved Fabrice with passion, but she still desired passionately the marriage of Clélia Conti with the marquis; there was the vague hope that little by little she would see the preoccupation with Fabrice disappear.

The prince, transported with happiness, wished that evening to dismiss with scandal the minister Rassi. The duchess said to him laughing:

--Do you know a saying of Napoleon? A man placed in a high place, and whom all regard, ought not permit himself violent movements. But this evening it is too late, let us put affairs off till tomorrow.

She wished to give herself time to consult the count, to whom she recounted very exactly all the evening’s dialogue, suppressing, however, the frequent allusions made by the prince to a promise which poisoned her life. The duchess flattered herself she could make herself so necessary that she might obtain an indefinite postponement by saying to the prince: “If you have the barbarity to wish to subject me to this humiliation, which I should not pardon you, the next day I leave your states.”

Consulted by the duchess on Rassi’s fate, the count showed himself very philosophical. General Fabio Conti and he went traveling in Piedmont.

A singular difficulty arose for Fabrice’s trial: the judges wished to acquit him by acclamation, and at the first session. The count needed to employ threat so that the trial lasted at least eight days, and that the judges gave themselves the trouble of hearing all the witnesses. “These people are always the same,” said he to himself.

The day after his acquittal, Fabrice del Dongo at last took possession of the place of grand vicar to the good archbishop Landriani. The same day, the prince signed the dispatches necessary to obtain that Fabrice be named coadjutor with future succession, and, less than two months after, he was installed in this place.

Everyone complimented the duchess on her nephew’s grave air; the fact is he was in despair. From the day after his deliverance, followed by the dismissal and exile of general Fabio Conti, and by the high favor of the duchess, Clélia had taken refuge with the countess Cantarini, her aunt, a very rich, very aged woman, occupied solely with the care of her health. Clélia might have seen Fabrice: but one who had known her prior engagements, and who saw her act now, might have thought that with her lover’s dangers her love for him had ceased. Not only did Fabrice pass as often as he could decently before the Cantarini palace, but also he had succeeded, after infinite pains, in renting a small apartment opposite the windows of the first floor. Once, Clélia having put herself to the window heedlessly, to see a procession pass, withdrew at once, as if struck with terror; she had glimpsed Fabrice, dressed in black, but like a very poor workman, who looked at her from one of the windows of that hovel which had oiled-paper panes, like her chamber in the Farnèse tower. Fabrice would gladly have persuaded himself that Clélia fled him by reason of her father’s disgrace, which public voice attributed to the duchess; but he too well knew another cause of this avoidance, and nothing could distract him from his melancholy.

He had been sensible neither to his acquittal, nor to his installation in fine offices, the first he had ever filled in his life, nor to his fine position in the world, nor finally to the assiduous court paid him by all the ecclesiastics and all the devout of the diocese. The charming apartment he had in the Sanseverina palace no longer seemed sufficient. To her extreme pleasure, the duchess was obliged to yield him the whole second floor of her palace and two fine salons on the first, which were always full of personages awaiting the instant to pay court to the young coadjutor. The clause of future succession had produced a surprising effect in the country; they now made virtues of all those firm qualities of his character which formerly so scandalized the poor foolish courtiers.

It was a great lesson in philosophy for Fabrice, to find himself perfectly insensible to all these honors, and much more unhappy in this magnificent apartment, with ten lackeys wearing his livery, than he had been in his wooden chamber in the Farnèse tower, surrounded by hideous jailers, and always fearing for his life. His mother and his sister, the duchess V***, who came to Parma to see him in his glory, were struck by his deep sadness. The marquise del Dongo, now the least romantic of women, was so profoundly alarmed that she believed that in the Farnèse tower they had made him take some slow poison. Despite her extreme discretion, she thought she ought to speak to him of this so extraordinary sadness, and Fabrice answered only with tears.

A host of advantages, consequence of his brilliant position, produced in him no other effect than to give him ill humor. His brother, that vain soul gangrened by the basest egoism, wrote him a letter of congratulation almost official, and to this letter was joined a draft of 50,000 francs, so that he might, said the new marquis, buy horses and a carriage worthy of his name. Fabrice sent this sum to his younger sister, ill married.

Count Mosca had had a fine translation made, into Italian, of the genealogy of the family Valserra del Dongo, formerly published in Latin by the archbishop of Parma, Fabrice. He had it printed magnificently with the Latin text opposite; the engravings had been rendered by superb lithographs made in Paris. The duchess had wished a fine portrait of Fabrice placed opposite that of the old archbishop. This translation was published as being the work of Fabrice during his first detention. But all was annihilated in our hero, even the vanity so natural to man; he deigned not to read a single page of this work attributed to him. His position in the world made it his duty to present a magnificently bound copy to the prince, who thought he owed him some compensation for the cruel death he had been so near, and granted him the grand entries to his chamber, a favor which gives excellence.

CHAPTER XXVI

The only instants during which Fabrice had some chance of emerging from his deep sadness, were those he passed hidden behind a pane of glass, for which he had had an oiled-paper pane replaced at the window of his apartment opposite the Contarini palace, where, as we know, Clélia had taken refuge; the few times he had seen her since he left the citadel, he had been profoundly afflicted by a striking change, and which seemed to him of the worst omen. Since her fault, Clélia’s physiognomy had taken on a character of nobility and seriousness truly remarkable; one would have said she was thirty years old. In this so extraordinary change, Fabrice glimpsed the reflection of some firm resolution. “At every instant of the day,” said he to himself, “she swears to herself to be faithful to the vow she made to the Madonna, and never to see me again.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”