Part 46

--I am indeed ignorant of many things, my dear captain, and I am a poor fool who makes blunders all day long.

This reply, quite in the Italian taste, made them laugh at the expense of the brilliant officer. The marchioness soon returned; she had armed herself with courage, and was not without some vague hope of being able to admire this portrait of Fabrice herself, which was said to be excellent. She spoke of the praises of the talent of Hayez, who had painted it. Without knowing it, she addressed charming smiles to Gonzo, who was looking at the officer with a mischievous air. As all the other courtiers of the house were indulging in the same pleasure, the officer took flight, not without vowing a deadly hatred to Gonzo; the latter triumphed, and, in the evening, upon taking leave, was invited to dinner for the next day.

--Here is a pretty another! cried Gonzo, the next day, after dinner, when the servants had gone out, does it not happen that our coadjutor has fallen in love with little Marini!...

One may judge of the turmoil that arose in Clelia's heart upon hearing so extraordinary a word. The marquis himself was moved.

--But Gonzo, my friend, you are rambling as usual! and you ought to speak with a little more reserve of a personage who has had the honor of playing whist eleven times with His Highness!

--Well! my lord marquis, replied Gonzo with the coarseness of people of that sort, I can swear to you that he would also like to play the part of little Marini. But it is enough that these details displease you; they no longer exist for me, who above all wishes not to offend my adorable marquis.

Always, after dinner, the marquis withdrew to take his siesta. He did not fail to do so that day; but Gonzo would sooner have cut out his tongue than add a word about little Marini; and, every instant, he began a discourse, calculated so that the marquis might hope he was going to return to the loves of the little bourgeoise. Gonzo supremely possessed that Italian wit which consists in delightfully deferring the launching of the desired word. The poor marquis, dying of curiosity, was obliged to make advances: he told Gonzo that, when he had the pleasure of dining with him, he ate twice as much. Gonzo did not understand, and set about describing a magnificent picture gallery formed by the Marquise Balbi, the mistress of the late prince; three or four times he spoke of Hayez, with the accent full of the slowness of the most profound admiration. The marquis said to himself: "Good! he will finally come to the portrait commissioned by little Marini!" But this Gonzo took care not to do. Five o'clock struck, which put the marquis in a great humor, who was accustomed to get into his carriage at half past five, after his siesta, to go to the Corso.

--That is how you are, with your stupidities! he said coarsely to Gonzo; you will make me arrive at the Corso after the princess, whose honorary knight I am, and who may have orders to give me. Come! make haste! tell me in few words, if you can, what these supposed loves of Monseigneur the coadjutor are?

But Gonzo wished to reserve this account for the ear of the marchioness, who had invited him to dinner; he therefore dispatched, in very few words, the requested story, and the marquis, half asleep, ran to take his siesta. Gonzo took a quite different manner with the poor marchioness. She had remained so young and naive amid her high fortune, that she believed she ought to repair the coarseness with which the marquis had just spoken to Gonzo. Charmed with this success, the latter recovered all his eloquence, and made it a pleasure, no less than a duty, to enter with her into infinite details.

Little Anetta Marini gave as much as a sequin per seat that was reserved for her at the sermon; she always arrived with two of her aunts and her father's former cashier. These seats, which she had kept from the day before, were generally chosen almost opposite the pulpit, but a little to the side of the high altar, for she had noticed that the coadjutor often turned toward the altar. Now, what the public had also noticed, is that not rarely the so speaking eyes of the young preacher rested with complaisance upon the young heiress, that so piquant beauty; and apparently with some attention, for, as soon as he had his eyes fixed upon her, his sermon became learned; citations abounded in it, one no longer found those movements which come from the heart; and the ladies, for whom the interest ceased almost immediately, began to look at Marini and speak ill of her.

Clelia had these singular details repeated up to three times. At the third, she became very dreamy; she calculated that it was exactly fourteen months since she had seen Fabrice. "Would there be a very great harm," she said to herself, "in spending an hour in a church, not to see Fabrice, but to hear a celebrated preacher? Besides, I shall place myself far from the pulpit, and I shall look at Fabrice only once upon entering and another time at the end of the sermon... No, said Clelia to herself, it is not Fabrice that I am going to see, I am going to hear the astonishing preacher!" Amid all these reasonings, the marchioness had remorse; her conduct had been so beautiful for fourteen months! Finally, she said to herself, to find some peace with herself, if the first woman who comes this evening has been to hear Monsignore del Dongo preach, I shall go too; if she has not gone, I shall abstain.

Once this resolution taken, the marchioness made Gonzo happy by saying to him:

--Try to find out on what day the coadjutor will preach, and in what church? This evening, before you go out, I may perhaps have a commission to give you.

Scarcely had Gonzo left for the Corso, than Clelia went to take the air in the garden of her palace. She did not object to herself that for ten months she had not set foot there. She was lively, animated; she had color. In the evening, at every boring visitor who entered the salon, her heart palpitated with emotion. Finally the Gonzo was announced, who, at a first glance, saw that he was going to be the necessary man for eight days. "The marchioness is jealous of little Marini, and it would be, faith, a well-mounted comedy, said he to himself, that in which the marchioness would play the first role, little Anetta the soubrette, and Monsignore del Dongo the lover! Faith, the entry ticket would not be too dear at two francs." He was beside himself with joy, and, during the whole evening, he cut everyone short and related the most absurd anecdotes (for example, the famous actress and the Marquis de Pequigny, which he had learned the day before from a French traveler). The marchioness, for her part, could not keep still; she walked about in the salon, she passed into a gallery adjoining the salon, where the marquis had admitted only pictures each costing more than twenty thousand francs. These pictures had so clear a language that evening that they fatigued the marchioness's heart with emotion. Finally, she heard the two leaves open, she ran to the salon; it was the Marquise Raversi! But in addressing the customary compliments to her, Clelia felt that her voice failed her. The marchioness made her repeat twice the question:

--What do you say of the fashionable preacher? which she had not at first heard.

--I regarded him as a little intriguer, very worthy nephew of the illustrious Countess Mosca; but the last time he preached, look, at the church of the Visitation, opposite your house, he was so sublime, that, all hatred ceasing, I regard him as the most eloquent man I have ever heard.

--So you have attended one of his sermons? said Clelia all trembling with happiness.

--But, how, said the marchioness laughing, you were not listening to me then? I would not miss it for the world. They say he is attacked in the chest, and that soon he will preach no more!

Scarcely had the marchioness gone out, than Clelia called Gonzo into the gallery.

--I am almost resolved, she said to him, to hear this so-praised preacher. When will he preach?

--Next Monday, that is to say in three days; and one would say he has divined Your Excellency's plan; for he comes to preach at the church of the Visitation.

All was not explained; but Clelia found no more voice to speak; she made five or six turns in the gallery, without adding a word. Gonzo said to himself: "Here is vengeance that is working on her. How can one be insolent enough to escape from a prison, especially when one has the honor of being guarded by a hero such as General Fabio Conti!"

--Besides, we must hurry, he added with a fine irony; he is touched in the chest. I heard Doctor Rambo say he has not a year of life; God punishes him for having broken his ban by treacherously escaping from the citadel.

The marchioness sat down on the divan of the gallery, and made a sign to Gonzo to imitate her. After a few moments, she handed him a small purse in which she had prepared some sequins.

--Have four seats reserved for me.

--Will it be permitted to poor Gonzo to slip in in the train of Your Excellency?

--Certainly; have five seats reserved... I do not at all care, she added, to be near the pulpit but I should like to see Mlle Marini, who is said to be so pretty.

The marchioness did not live during the three days that separated her from the famous Monday, the day of the sermon. Gonzo, for whom it was a signal honor to be seen in public in the train of so great a lady, had put on his French coat with the sword; that is not all, profiting by the neighborhood of the palace, he had a magnificent gilded armchair carried into the church destined for the marchioness, which was found to be the last insolence by the bourgeois. One may think what became of the poor marchioness, when she perceived this armchair, and that it had been placed precisely opposite the pulpit. Clelia was so confused, lowering her eyes, and sheltered in a corner of this immense armchair, that she had not even the courage to look at little Marini, whom Gonzo was pointing out to her with his hand, with an effrontery from which she could not recover. All non-noble beings were absolutely nothing in the eyes of the courtier.

Fabrice appeared in the pulpit; he was so thin, so pale, so consumed, that Clelia's eyes filled with tears instantly. Fabrice said a few words, then stopped, as if his voice suddenly failed him; he tried in vain to begin some phrases; he turned, and took a written paper.

--My brothers, said he, an unhappy soul and most worthy of all your pity entreats you, by my voice, to pray for the end of its torments, which shall cease only with its life.

Fabrice read the rest of his paper very slowly; but the expression of his voice was such, that before the middle of the prayer everyone was weeping, even Gonzo. "At least I shall not be noticed," said the marchioness to herself, melting into tears.

While reading the written paper, Fabrice found two or three ideas on the state of the unhappy man for whom he came to solicit the prayers of the faithful. Soon thoughts came to him in crowds. While seeming to address the public, he spoke only to the marchioness. He ended his discourse a little earlier than usual, because, whatever he could do, tears overcame him to such a point that he could no longer pronounce in an intelligible manner. The good judges found this sermon singular, but equal at least, for the pathetic, to the famous sermon preached by candlelight. As for Clelia, scarcely had she heard the first ten lines of the prayer read by Fabrice, than she regarded it as an atrocious crime to have been able to pass fourteen months without seeing him. On returning home, she went to bed so as to be able to think of Fabrice in full liberty; and the next day rather early, Fabrice received a note conceived thus:

Your honor is relied upon; seek four brave men whose discretion you are sure of, and tomorrow at the moment when midnight strikes at the Steccata, be near a small door bearing the number 19, in Saint-Paul Street. Consider that you may be attacked, do not come alone.

On recognizing these divine characters, Fabrice fell to his knees and melted into tears: "At last," he cried, "after fourteen months and eight days! Farewell to preachings."

It would be too long to describe all the kinds of follies that, that day, possessed the hearts of Fabrice and Clelia. The small door indicated in the note was none other than that of the orangery of the Crescenzi palace, and, ten times in the day, Fabrice found the means to see it. He took arms, and alone, a little before midnight, with a rapid step, he passed near this door, when to his unexpressible joy, he heard a well-known voice, say in a very low tone:

--Enter here, friend of my heart.

Fabrice entered with caution, and found himself in truth in the orangery, but opposite a window strongly grated and raised, above the ground, three or four feet. The darkness was profound, Fabrice had heard some noise in this window, and he was recognizing the grating with his hand, when he felt a hand, passed through the bars, take his and carry it to lips which gave him a kiss.

--It is I, said a beloved voice, who have come here to tell you that I love you, and to ask you if you will obey me.

One may judge of the reply, of the joy, of the astonishment of Fabrice; after the first transports, Clelia said to him:

--I made a vow to the Madonna, as you know, never to see you; that is why I receive you in this profound darkness. I am willing that you should know that, if ever you forced me to look at you in broad daylight, all would be finished between us. But first, I do not want you to preach before Anetta Marini, and do not go believing that it was I who had the folly to have an armchair carried into the house of God.

--My dear angel, I shall preach no more before anyone; I preached only in the hope that one day I should see you.

--Do not speak thus, think that it is not permitted to me, to me, to see you.

Here, we ask permission to pass, without saying a single word of it, over a space of three years.

At the epoch where our narrative resumes, the Count Mosca had already long been back at Parma, as first minister, more powerful than ever.

After these three years of divine happiness, the soul of Fabrice had a caprice of tenderness which came to change all. The marchioness had a charming little boy of two years, Sandrino, who was the joy of his mother; he was always with her or on the knees of the Marquis Crescenzi; Fabrice on the contrary, almost never saw him; he would not have him accustom himself to cherishing another father. He conceived the design of carrying off the child before his memories were well distinct.

In the long hours of each day when the marchioness could not see her friend, the presence of Sandrino consoled her; for we have to confess a thing which will seem bizarre north of the Alps: despite her errors she had remained faithful to her vow; she had promised the Madonna, one may perhaps remember it, never to see Fabrice; such had been her precise words: in consequence she received him only at night, and never was there light in the apartment.

But every evening he was received by his friend; and, what is admirable, amid a court devoured by curiosity and by boredom, Fabrice's precautions had been so skillfully calculated, that never this amicizia, as one says in Lombardy, was even suspected. This love was too lively for there not to be some quarrels; Clelia was very subject to jealousy, but almost always the disputes came from another cause. Fabrice had abused some public ceremony to find himself in the same place as the marchioness and look at her, she then seized a pretext to go out quickly, and for a long time exiled her friend.

One was astonished at the court of Parma to know no intrigue of a woman so remarkable by her beauty and the elevation of her mind; she gave rise to passions which inspired many follies, and often Fabrice also was jealous.

The good Archbishop Landriani had been dead a long time; the piety, the exemplary morals, the eloquence of Fabrice had made him forgotten; his elder brother was dead and all the goods of the family had come to him. From that epoch he distributed each year to the vicars and curates of his diocese the hundred and some thousand francs which the archbishopric of Parma brought in.

It would have been difficult to dream of a life more honored, more honorable and more useful than that which Fabrice had made for himself, when all was troubled by this unhappy caprice of tenderness.

--According to this vow which I respect and which yet makes the unhappiness of my life since you will not see me by day, said he one day to Clelia, I am obliged to live constantly alone, having no other distraction than work; and yet work fails me. In the midst of this severe and sad way of passing the long hours of each day, an idea has presented itself, which is my torment and which I combat in vain for six months: my son will not love me, he never hears me named. Brought up amid the amiable luxury of the Crescenzi palace, he scarcely knows me. The small number of times that I see him, I think of his mother, whom he recalls to me by her celestial beauty and whom I cannot look at, and he must find me a serious face, which, for children, means sad.

--Well! said the marchioness, where does all this discourse tend that frightens me?

--To have my son back! I want him to live with me; I want to see him every day, I want him to accustom himself to loving me; I want to love him myself at leisure. Since a fatality unique in the world wills that I be deprived of this happiness enjoyed by so many tender souls, and that I not spend my life with all that I adore, I want at least to have near me a being who recalls you to my heart, who replaces you in some sort. Business and men are a burden to me in my forced solitude; you know that ambition has always been an empty word for me, since the instant when I had the happiness of being locked up by Barbone, and all that is not sensation of the soul seems ridiculous to me in the melancholy which, far from you, overwhelms me.

One may comprehend the lively pain with which the sorrow of her friend filled the soul of poor Clelia; her sadness was the deeper in that she felt Fabrice had a sort of reason. She went so far as to doubt whether she ought not to attempt to break her vow. Then she would have received Fabrice by day like any other personage of society, and her reputation for wisdom was too well established for anyone to speak ill of it. She told herself that with much money she might get herself released from her vow; but she also felt that this wholly worldly arrangement would not quiet her conscience, and perhaps an irritated heaven would punish her for this new crime.

On the other hand, if she consented to yield to the so natural desire of Fabrice, if she sought not to make the unhappiness of this tender soul which she knew so well, and whose singular vow so strangely compromised the tranquillity, what appearance of carrying off the only son of one of the greatest lords of Italy without the fraud being discovered? The Marquis Crescenzi would lavish enormous sums, would put himself at the head of the searches, and sooner or later the abduction would be known. There was but one means of parrying this danger, it was necessary to send the child far away, to Edinburgh, for example, or to Paris; but this was what the tenderness of a mother could not resolve upon. The other means proposed by Fabrice, and indeed the most reasonable, had something of sinister augury and of almost yet more frightful in the eyes of this distraught mother; it was necessary, said Fabrice, to feign an illness; the child would be more and more ill, finally he would come to die during an absence of the Marquis Crescenzi.

A repugnance which, in Clelia, went to terror, caused a rupture which could not last.

Clelia maintained that one must not tempt God; that this so cherished son was the fruit of a crime, and that, if yet one irritated the celestial anger, God would not fail to take him back to Himself. Fabrice spoke again of his singular destiny:

--The state that chance has given me, said he to Clelia, and my love oblige me to an eternal solitude, I cannot, like most of my brethren, have the sweetness of an intimate society, since you will receive me only in darkness, which reduces to instants, so to speak, the part of my life that I can pass with you.

There were many tears shed. Clelia fell ill; but she loved Fabrice too much to constantly refuse him the terrible sacrifice he asked of her. In appearance, Sandrino fell ill; the marquis hastened to have the most celebrated doctors called, and Clelia met from that instant a terrible embarrassment she had not foreseen; it was necessary to prevent this adored child from taking any of the remedies ordered by the doctors; that was no small matter.

The child, kept in bed more than was needful for his health, became really ill. How to tell the doctor the cause of this illness? Torn by two contrary and so dear interests, Clelia was on the point of losing her reason. Must she consent to an apparent cure, and thus sacrifice all the fruit of a feint so long and so painful? Fabrice, for his part, could neither forgive himself the violence he exercised upon the heart of his friend, nor renounce his project. He had found the means to be introduced every night near the sick child, which had brought on another complication. The marchioness came to care for her son, and sometimes Fabrice was obliged to see her by the light of the candles, which seemed to poor sick-hearted Clelia a horrible sin and which foretold the death of Sandrino. It was in vain that the most celebrated casuists, consulted on obedience to a vow, in the case where the accomplishment of it would be evidently harmful, had answered that the vow could not be considered as broken in a criminal fashion, so long as the person engaged by a promise to the Divinity abstained not for a vain pleasure of the senses but so as not to cause an evident evil. The marchioness was none the less in despair, and Fabrice saw the moment when his bizarre idea was going to bring about the death of Clelia and that of his son.

He had recourse to his intimate friend, the Count Mosca, who, old minister though he was, was moved by this love story which he was ignorant of in great part.

--I shall procure you the absence of the marquis for five or six days at least: when do you want it?

Some time after, Fabrice came to tell the count that all was prepared so that one might profit by the absence.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”