Part 44

--In my capacity as knight of honor, the marquis added, I must remain in the salon at the princess's orders, until everyone has left: there may be, and no doubt there will be, orders to give to the servants, they are so negligent! And would you have a mere equerry of the princess usurp that honor?

Clelia resigned herself; she had not seen Fabrice, and still hoped he would not have come to this festivity. But at the moment the concert was about to begin, the princess having permitted the ladies to be seated, Clelia, little adept at such matters, let the best places near the princess be taken from her, and was obliged to come fetch an armchair at the back of the hall, even into the remote corner where Fabrice had taken refuge. On arriving at her armchair, the singular costume in such a place of the general of the Minor Friars caught her eye, and at first she did not notice the slim man clad in a simple black suit who was speaking to her; yet a certain secret stirring fixed her eyes upon this man. "Everyone here has uniforms or richly embroidered clothes: who can this young man in such plain black be?" She was looking at him with deep attention, when a lady, coming to take her place, caused her armchair to move. Fabrice turned his head: she did not recognize him, so changed was he. First she said to herself: "Here is someone who resembles him; it must be his elder brother; but I thought him only a few years older than Fabrice, and this one is a man of forty." Suddenly she recognized him by a movement of the mouth. "The poor man, how he has suffered!" she said to herself; and she lowered her head, overwhelmed by grief, and not in fulfillment of her vow. Her heart was torn by pity. "How far he was from that look after nine months in prison!" She looked at him no more; but, without precisely turning her eyes his way, she saw all his movements.

After the concert, she saw him approach the prince's card table, placed a few steps from the throne; she breathed freely when Fabrice was thus far from her.

But the Marquis Crescenzi had been much piqued to see his wife relegated so far from the throne; all evening he had been occupied in persuading a lady seated three armchairs from the princess, and whose husband was in his debt, that she would do well to exchange places with the marchioness. The poor woman resisting, as was natural, he went to find the debtor husband, who made his better half hear the sad voice of reason, and at last the marquis had the pleasure of consummating the exchange; he went to fetch his wife.

--You will always be too modest, he said to her; why walk thus with your eyes lowered? people will take you for one of those bourgeois women quite astonished to find themselves here, and whom everyone is astonished to see here. That madame grande maîtresse never does anything else! And they talk of retarding the progress of Jacobinism! Reflect that your husband holds the first male place at the princess's court; and even if the republicans should succeed in suppressing the court and even the nobility, your husband would still be the richest man in this state. That is an idea you do not sufficiently lodge in your head.

The armchair in which the marquis had the pleasure of installing his wife was but six paces from the prince's card table; she saw Fabrice only in profile, but she found him so wasted, he had above all the air of being so far above all that could happen in this world—he who formerly let no incident pass without saying his word—that she ended by arriving at this dreadful conclusion: Fabrice was quite changed; he had forgotten her; if he was so wasted, it was the effect of the severe fasts to which his piety submitted him. Clelia was confirmed in this sad idea by the conversation of all her neighbors: the name of the coadjutor was on every lip; they sought the cause of the signal favor of which they saw him the object: he, so young, admitted to the prince's game! They admired the polite indifference and the airs of superiority with which he threw his cards, even when he cut His Highness.

--But this is incredible, cried old courtiers; his aunt's favor has quite turned his head... but, thank heaven, it will not last; our sovereign does not like these little airs of superiority. The duchess approached the prince; the courtiers who kept themselves at a respectful distance from the card table, so as to catch from the prince's conversation only a chance word or two, remarked that Fabrice was blushing deeply. "His aunt will have lectured him," they said to themselves, "on his great airs of indifference." Fabrice had just heard Clelia's voice; she was answering the princess, who, in making her round of the ball, had addressed the wife of her knight of honor. Came the moment when Fabrice had to change places at the whist; then he found himself precisely opposite Clelia, and gave himself several times to the happiness of contemplating her. The poor marchioness, feeling herself looked at by him, quite lost her composure. Several times she forgot what she owed to her vow: in her desire to divine what was passing in Fabrice's heart, she fixed her eyes upon him.

The prince's game ended, the ladies rose to pass into the supper room. There was a little disorder. Fabrice found himself close to Clelia; he was still very resolute, but he came to recognize a very faint perfume she put in her gowns; this sensation overthrew all he had promised himself. He approached her and pronounced in a half-voice, as if speaking to himself, two verses of that sonnet of Petrarch which he had sent her from Lake Maggiore, printed on a silk handkerchief:

--How great was not my happiness when the vulgar thought me unhappy, and now that my lot is changed!

"No, he has not forgotten me," said Clelia to herself, with a transport of joy. "This beautiful soul is not inconstant!"

No, you shall never see me changed, Fair eyes that taught me how to love.

Clelia dared repeat to herself these two verses of Petrarch.

The princess withdrew immediately after supper; the prince had followed her to her apartments, and did not reappear in the reception rooms. As soon as this news was known, everyone wished to leave at once; there was complete disorder in the antechambers; Clelia found herself close to Fabrice; the deep unhappiness painted in his features moved her to pity.

--Let us forget the past, she said to him, and keep that memory of friendship.

In saying these words, she placed her fan so that he might take it.

All changed in Fabrice's eyes: in an instant he was another man; the very next day he declared his retreat at an end, and came back to take his magnificent apartments in the Sanseverina palace. The archbishop said, and believed, that the favor the prince had done him in admitting him to his game had quite turned the head of this new saint: the duchess saw that he was in accord with Clelia. This thought, coming to redouble the unhappiness given by the memory of a fatal promise, finished determining her to make an absence. They admired her folly. What! to withdraw from court at the moment when the favor of which she was the object seemed boundless! The count, perfectly happy since he saw there was no love between Fabrice and the duchess, said to his friend:

--This new prince is virtue incarnate, but I called him that child: will he ever forgive me? I see but one means of putting myself excellently right with him, which is absence. I shall show myself perfect in graces and respects, after which I am ill and ask for leave. You will permit it, since Fabrice's fortune is assured. But will you make me the immense sacrifice, he added laughing, of changing the sublime title of duchess for another far inferior? To amuse myself, I leave all affairs here in inextricable disorder; I had four or five workers in my several ministries, I had them put on pension these two months past, because they read the French newspapers; and I replaced them with incredible nincompoops.

"After our departure, the prince will find himself in such embarrassment, that, despite the horror he has for Rassi's character, I do not doubt he will be obliged to recall him, and I await but an order from the tyrant who disposes of my fate, to write a letter of tender friendship to my friend Rassi, and tell him I have every reason to hope that soon justice will be done his merit 8.

CHAPTER XXVII

This serious conversation took place the day after Fabrice's return to the Sanseverina palace; the duchess was still under the blow of the joy that burst forth in all Fabrice's actions. "So," she said to herself, "this little devotee has deceived me! She could not hold out against her lover even for three months."

The certainty of a happy ending had given to that so pusillanimous being, the young prince, the courage to love; he had some knowledge of the preparations for departure being made at the Sanseverina palace; and his French valet de chambre, who believed little in the virtue of great ladies, gave him courage regarding the duchess. Ernest V permitted himself a step which was severely blamed by the princess and by all sensible people at court; the people saw in it the seal of the astonishing favor enjoyed by the duchess. The prince came to visit her in her palace.

--You are leaving, he said to her in a serious tone which seemed odious to the duchess, you are leaving; you are going to betray me and break your oaths! And yet, had I delayed ten minutes in granting Fabrice's pardon, he was dead. And you leave me unhappy! and without your oaths I should never have had the courage to love you as I do! You have then no honor!

--Reflect maturely, my prince. In all your life was there ever a span equal in happiness to the four months just elapsed? Your glory as sovereign, and, I dare believe, your happiness as an amiable man, never rose to that point. Here is the treaty I propose to you: if you deign to consent to it, I shall not be your mistress for a fleeting instant, and by virtue of an oath extorted by fear, but I shall consecrate every instant of my life to making your felicity, I shall always be what I have been these four months, and perhaps love will come to crown friendship. I would not swear the contrary.

--Well! said the prince, delighted, take another role, be more still, reign at once over me and my states, be my first minister; I offer you a marriage such as is permitted by the sad conventions of my rank; we have an example near us: the King of Naples has just married the Duchess of Partana. I offer you all that I can do, a marriage of the same kind. I shall add an idea of sad policy to show you I am no longer a child, and that I have reflected on all. I shall not urge upon you the condition I impose on myself of being the last sovereign of my race, the sorrow of seeing in my lifetime the great powers dispose of my succession; I bless these very real discomforts, since they offer me one more means of proving to you my esteem and my passion.

The duchess did not hesitate an instant; the prince bored her, and the count seemed to her perfectly amiable; there was but one man in the world who could be preferred to him. Besides, she reigned over the count, and the prince, dominated by the exigencies of his rank, would more or less have reigned over her. And then, he might become inconstant and take mistresses; the difference in age would seem, in a few years, to give him the right.

From the first instant, the prospect of being bored had decided everything; nevertheless the duchess, who wished to be charming, asked permission to reflect.

It would be too long to report here the almost tender turns of phrase and the infinitely gracious terms in which she knew how to wrap her refusal. The prince grew angry; he saw all his happiness escaping him. What was to become of him after the duchess had left his court? Besides, what humiliation to be refused! "Finally, what will my French valet de chambre say when I tell him of my defeat?"

The duchess had the art to calm the prince, and little by little to bring the negotiation back to its true terms.

--If Your Highness deigns to consent not to press the effect of a fatal promise, and horrible in my eyes, as making me incur my own contempt, I shall pass my life at his court, and this court shall always be what it has been this winter; all my instants shall be consecrated to contributing to his happiness as a man, and to his glory as sovereign. If he demands that I obey my oath, he shall have blighted the rest of my life, and instantly he shall see me quit his states never to return. The day I have lost honor shall also be the last day I see you.

But the prince was obstinate like pusillanimous beings; besides, his pride as man and sovereign was irritated by the refusal of his hand; he thought of all the difficulties he would have had to overcome to have this marriage accepted, and yet he had resolved to conquer them.

For three hours the same arguments were repeated on either side, often mixed with very sharp words. The prince cried:

--You would then have me believe, madam, that you lack honor? Had I hesitated as long the day General Fabio Conti gave poison to Fabrice, you would be occupied today in raising him a tomb in one of the churches of Parma.

--Not in Parma, certainly, in this land of poisoners.

--Well! leave, Madame la Duchesse, resumed the prince in anger, and you shall carry my contempt with you.

As he was going, the duchess said to him in a low voice:

--Well! present yourself here at ten in the evening, in strictest incognito, and you shall make a fool's bargain. You shall have seen me for the last time, and I would have consecrated my life to rendering you as happy as an absolute prince can be in this century of Jacobins. And reflect on what your court will be when I am no longer there to drag it by force from its natural platitude and malice.

--On your side, you refuse the crown of Parma, and better than the crown, for you would not have been a vulgar princess, married for policy, and unloved; my heart is all yours, and you would have seen yourself forever the absolute mistress of my actions as of my government.

--Yes, but the princess your mother would have had the right to despise me as a vile intriguer.

--Well! I would have exiled the princess with a pension.

There were yet three quarters of an hour of incisive replies. The prince, who had a delicate soul, could resolve neither to use his right, nor to let the duchess depart. He had been told that after the first moment obtained, no matter how, women come back.

Driven out by the indignant duchess, he dared reappear all trembling and most unhappy at ten less three minutes. At half past ten, the duchess got into her carriage and set off for Bologna. She wrote to the count as soon as she was outside the prince's states:

The sacrifice is made. Do not ask me to be gay for a month. I shall see Fabrice no more; I await you at Bologna, and when you will I shall be the Countess Mosca. I ask but one thing of you, never force me to reappear in the country I am leaving, and always bear in mind that instead of 150,000 livres of income, you will have at most 30 or 40 thousand. All the fools looked at you open-mouthed, and you will be regarded only insofar as you deign to lower yourself to understand all their little ideas. You wished it, George Dandin!

A week later, the marriage was celebrated at Perugia in a church where the count's ancestors have their tombs. The prince was in despair. The duchess had received three or four couriers from him, and had not failed to return his letters unopened under cover. Ernest V had made a magnificent settlement on the count, and given the grand cordon of his order to Fabrice.

--It is above all that which pleased me in his farewells. We parted, said the count to the new Countess Mosca della Rovere, the best friends in the world; he gave me a grand Spanish cordon, and diamonds which are well worth the grand cordon. He told me he would make me a duke, if he did not wish to reserve that means to recall you into his states. I am thus charged with declaring to you, a fine mission for a husband, that if you deign to return to Parma, were it but for a month, I shall be made a duke, under the name you choose, and you shall have a fine estate.

This the duchess refused with a sort of horror.

After the scene which had taken place at the court ball, and which seemed decisive enough, Clelia appeared to remember no more the love she had seemed to share for an instant; the most violent remorse had seized that virtuous and believing soul. This Fabrice understood perfectly well, and despite all the hopes he sought to give himself, a gloomy unhappiness had nonetheless taken possession of his soul. This time, however, unhappiness did not lead him into retreat, as at the epoch of Clelia's marriage.

The count had begged his nephew to report to him exactly what passed at court, and Fabrice, who was beginning to understand all he owed him, had promised himself to fulfill this mission like an honest man.

Like the city and the court, Fabrice did not doubt that his friend had the project of returning to the ministry, and with more power than he had ever had. The count's forecasts were soon verified: less than six weeks after his departure, Rassi was prime minister; Fabio Conti, minister of war, and the prisons, which the count had almost emptied, filled again. The prince, in calling these men to power, believed he was avenging himself on the duchess; he was mad with love and above all hated Count Mosca as a rival.

Fabrice had much business; monseigneur Landriani, aged seventy-two, having fallen into a great state of languor and scarce leaving his palace, it fell to the coadjutor to discharge almost all his functions.

The Marquise Crescenzi, overwhelmed with remorse, and frightened by her director of conscience, had found an excellent means to withdraw from Fabrice's gaze. Taking pretext from the end of a first pregnancy, she had given herself her own palace for prison; but this palace had an immense garden. Fabrice managed to penetrate it and placed in the alley Clelia most loved flowers arranged in bouquets, and disposed in an order that gave them a language, as formerly she had had some reach him every evening in the last days of his prison at the Farnese tower.

The marchioness was much irritated by this attempt; the movements of her soul were directed now by remorse, now by passion. For several months she did not permit herself to descend once into her palace garden; she even made a scruple of casting a glance there.

Fabrice was beginning to believe he was separated from her forever, and despair was beginning to take possession of his soul. The world in which he passed his life displeased him mortally, and had he not been intimately persuaded that the count could find peace of soul only in the ministry, he would have retired to his little apartment in the archbishop's palace. It would have been sweet to live wholly to his thoughts, and to hear the human voice no more save in the official exercise of his functions.

"But," he said to himself, "in the interest of the count and the Countess Mosca, no one can replace me."

The prince continued to treat him with a distinction that placed him in the first rank at this court, and this favor he owed in great part to himself. The extreme reserve which, in Fabrice, proceeded from an indifference going to disgust for all the affectations or little passions that fill men's lives, had piqued the young prince's vanity; he often said that Fabrice had as much wit as his aunt. The candid soul of the prince half-perceived a truth: that no one approached him with the same dispositions of heart as Fabrice. What could not escape, even the vulgar of courtiers, was that the consideration obtained by Fabrice was not that of a simple coadjutor, but outdid even the respect the sovereign showed the archbishop. Fabrice wrote to the count that if ever the prince had wit enough to perceive the mess into which the ministers Rassi, Fabio Conti, Zurla and others of like stripe had thrown his affairs, he, Fabrice, would be the natural channel by which he would make a move, without too much compromising his self-love.

Without the memory of the fatal word, this child, he said to the Countess Mosca, applied by a man of genius to an august person, the august person would already have cried: Come back quickly and chase all these barefoot fellows away. From this day, if the wife of the man of genius deigns to make a move, however little significant, they would recall the count with transport; but he will re-enter by a far finer door, if he will wait for the fruit to ripen. For the rest, one is charmingly bored in the princess's salons, one has for diversion only the folly of Rassi, who, since he is a count, has become maniacal about nobility. Strict orders have just been given that any person who cannot prove eight quarters of nobility shall not dare present himself at the princess's soirées (these are the terms of the rescript). All men in possession of entering the great gallery in the morning, and of finding themselves on the sovereign's path when he goes to mass, shall continue to enjoy this privilege; but new arrivals must show proof of the eight quarters. Whereupon it was said one sees plainly that Rassi is without a quarter.

It is thought such letters were not entrusted to the post. The Countess Mosca answered from Naples:

We have a concert every Thursday, and conversation every Sunday; one cannot stir in our salons. The count is delighted with his excavations, he devotes a thousand francs a month to them, and has just brought workers from the mountains of the Abruzzo, who cost him but twenty-three sous a day. You ought really to come see us. This is more than twenty times, Monsieur the ingrate, that I have made you this summons.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”