Part 9

--He is impossible to be a more gallant gentleman than that old rogue, she said to the marquise; this evening at La Scala, at a quarter to eleven by the theatre clock, we shall send everyone away from our box, we shall extinguish the candles, we shall close our door, and, at eleven o'clock, the canon himself will come to tell us what he has been able to do. That is what we found least compromising for him.

This canon had a great deal of wit; he took good care not to miss the appointment: he displayed there a complete kindness and an unreserved openness of heart such as is scarcely found except in countries where vanity does not dominate all feelings. His denunciation of the countess to her husband, General Pietranera, was one of the great remorses of his life, and he found a means of abolishing that remorse.

In the morning, when the countess had left his house: "There she is making love with her nephew," he had said to himself bitterly, for he was not cured. Proud as she is, to have come to my house!... Upon the death of that poor Pietranera, she repulsed with horror my offers of service, though very polite and well presented by Colonel Scotti, her former lover. The beautiful Pietranera living on 1,500 francs! added the canon, walking about his room with animated gestures! Then to go and inhabit the castle of Grianta with an abominable bore, that Marquis del Dongo!... Everything is explained now! After all, this young Fabrice is full of graces, tall, well made, a countenance always smiling... and, better than that, a certain glance charged with sweet voluptuousness... a physiognomy after Correggio, added the canon bitterly.

"The difference in age... not too great... Fabrice born after the entry of the French, around '98, it seems to me; the countess may be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, impossible to be prettier, more adorable; in this country fertile in beauties, she beats them all; the Marini, the Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua, she surpasses all those women... They lived happy, hidden on that beautiful Lake Como, when the young man wanted to rejoin Napoleon... There are still souls in Italy! and, whatever one may do! Dear homeland!... No, continued this heart inflamed by jealousy, impossible to explain otherwise this resignation to vegetating in the country, with the disgust of seeing every day, at every meal, that horrible face of the Marquis del Dongo, plus that infamous pallid physiognomy of the marchesino Ascanio, who will be worse than his father!... Well! I shall serve her frankly. At least I shall have the pleasure of seeing her otherwise than at the end of my opera glass."

Canon Borda explained the affair very clearly to those ladies. At bottom, Binder was as well disposed as could be; he was delighted that Fabrice had taken to his heels before the orders that might arrive from Vienna; for Binder had no power to decide anything, he awaited orders for this affair as for all others; he sent to Vienna each day the exact copy of all the informations: then he waited.

It was necessary that, in his exile at Romagnan, Fabrice should:

1º Not fail to go to mass every day, take for confessor a man of wit, devoted to the cause of monarchy, and confess to him, at the tribunal of penitence, nothing but quite irreproachable sentiments.

2º He was not to frequent any man reputed to have wit, and, when occasion arose, he must speak of revolt with horror, and as never being permitted.

3º He was not to show himself at the café, he was never to read any other newspapers than the official gazettes of Turin and Milan; in general, show disgust for reading, never read, above all no work printed after 1720, with the utmost exception for the novels of Walter Scott.

4º Finally, added the canon with a little malice, above all he must openly pay court to some one of the pretty women of the country, of the noble class, to be sure; that will show that he has not the gloomy and discontented genius of an incipient conspirator.

Before going to bed, the countess and the marquise wrote Fabrice two endless letters in which they explained to him with a charming anxiety all the advice given by Borda.

Fabrice had no wish to conspire: he loved Napoleon, and, in his quality of noble, believed himself made to be happier than another and found the bourgeois ridiculous. Never had he opened a book since college, where he had read nothing but books arranged by the Jesuits. He established himself at some distance from Romagnan, in a magnificent palace, one of the masterpieces of the famous architect San Micheli; but for thirty years it had not been inhabited, so that it rained in every room and not a window closed. He seized upon the horses of the man of business, which he rode without ceremony all day long; he spoke not, and reflected. The advice to take a mistress in an ultra family seemed amusing to him and he followed it to the letter. He chose for confessor a young intriguing priest who wanted to become bishop (like the confessor of the Spielberg); but he walked three leagues on foot and wrapped himself in a mystery he believed impenetrable, to read Le Constitutionnel, which he found sublime. "That is as beautiful as Alfieri and Dante!" he often cried. Fabrice had this resemblance to French youth that he occupied himself far more seriously with his horse and his newspaper than with his well-thinking mistress. But there was not yet room for the imitation of others in that naive and firm soul, and he made no friends in the society of the large village of Romagnan; his simplicity passed for pride; they knew not what to say of that character. "He is a younger son discontented at not being the eldest," said the curate.

CHAPTER VI

We shall avow with sincerity that the jealousy of Canon Borda was not absolutely wrong; upon his return from France, Fabrice appeared to the eyes of the Countess Pietranera as a handsome stranger whom she had known well long ago. Had he spoken of love, she would have loved him; had she not already for his conduct and his person a passionate admiration, and, so to speak, without bounds? But Fabrice embraced her with such an effusion of innocent gratitude and good friendship, that she would have felt horror of herself had she sought another sentiment in that almost filial friendship. "At bottom," said the countess to herself, "a few friends who knew me six years ago, at the court of Prince Eugene, may still find me pretty and even young, but to him I am a respectable woman... and, if all must be said without any consideration for my self-love, an aged woman." The countess deceived herself as to the period of life she had reached, but it was not in the fashion of vulgar women. "At his age, besides," she added, "one exaggerates a little the ravages of time; a man further advanced in life..."

The countess, who was walking in her salon, stopped before a mirror, then smiled. It must be known that for some months the heart of Mme Pietranera had been attacked in a serious way and by a singular personage. Shortly after Fabrice's departure for France, the countess who, without quite admitting it to herself, was already beginning to occupy herself much with him, had fallen into a profound melancholy. All her occupations seemed to her without pleasure, and, if one may so speak, without savor; she told herself that Napoleon, wishing to attach to himself his peoples of Italy, would take Fabrice for aide-de-camp.

--He is lost to me! she cried weeping, I shall see him no more; he will write to me, but what shall I be to him in ten years?

It was in these dispositions that she made a journey to Milan; she hoped to find there more direct news of Napoleon, and, who knows, perhaps by rebound news of Fabrice. Without admitting it to herself, this active soul was beginning to be quite weary of the monotonous life she led in the country. "That is to prevent oneself from dying," she said to herself, "it is not living. Every day to see those powdered faces, the brother, the nephew Ascanio, their valets de chambre! What would walks on the lake be without Fabrice?" Her sole consolation was drawn from the friendship uniting her to the marquise. But for some time, this intimacy with the mother of Fabrice, older than she, and in despair of life, was beginning to be less agreeable to her.

Such was the singular position of Mme Pietranera: Fabrice gone, she hoped little from the future; her heart had need of consolation and novelty. Arrived at Milan, she took a passion for the fashionable opera; she went to shut herself up alone, during long hours, at La Scala, in the box of General Scotti, her former friend. The men she sought to meet to have news of Napoleon and his army seemed to her vulgar and coarse. Returned home, she improvised on her piano until three in the morning. One evening, at La Scala, in the box of one of her friends, where she went to seek news of France, she was presented to Count Mosca, minister of Parma: it was an amiable man who spoke of France and of Napoleon in a way to give her heart new reasons to hope or to fear. She returned to that box the next day: this man of wit came back, and, all the time of the spectacle, she spoke with him with pleasure. Since Fabrice's departure, she had not found an evening so lively as that one. This man who amused her, Count Mosca della Rovere Sorezana, was then minister of war, of police, and of finances of that famous prince of Parma, Ernest IV, so celebrated for his severities that the liberals of Milan called them cruelties. Mosca might be forty or forty-five years old; he had large features, no trace of self-importance, and a simple and gay air which prepossessed in his favor; he would have been quite handsome still, if a whim of his prince had not obliged him to wear powder in his hair as a pledge of good political sentiments. As one fears little to shock vanity, one arrives very quickly in Italy at the tone of intimacy, and at saying personal things. The corrective of this custom is not to see each other again if one has given offense.

--Why then, count, do you wear powder? said Mme Pietranera the third time she saw him. Powder! a man like you, amiable, still young and who made war in Spain with us!

--It is that I stole nothing in that Spain, and that one must live. I was mad for glory; a flattering word from the French general, Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, who commanded us, was then all to me. At the fall of Napoleon, it turned out that, while I was eating up my patrimony in his service, my father, a man of imagination who already saw me a general, was building me a palace in Parma. In 1813, I found myself, for all wealth, a great palace to finish and a pension.

--A pension: 3,500 francs, like my husband?

--Count Pietranera was a divisional general. My pension, I, poor squadron chief, was never but 800 francs, and even I was paid that only since I have been minister of finances.

As there was in the box only the lady of very liberal opinions to whom she belonged, the conversation continued with the same frankness. Count Mosca, questioned, spoke of his life at Parma.

--In Spain, under General Saint-Cyr, I braved musket shots to arrive at the cross and afterwards at a little glory; now I dress like a comedy character to earn a great household establishment and a few thousand francs. Once entered into this sort of game of chess, shocked at the insolences of my superiors, I wanted to occupy one of the first places; I arrived there: but my happiest days are still those which from time to time I can come to spend at Milan; there lives still, it seems to me, the heart of your army of Italy.

The frankness, the disenvoltura with which this minister of so dreaded a prince spoke piqued the curiosity of the countess; from his title she had thought to find a pompous pedant, she saw a man who was ashamed of the gravity of his place. Mosca had promised her to procure for her all the news of France he could gather: it was a great indiscretion at Milan, in the month preceding Waterloo; it was then a question for Italy of being or not being; everyone had the fever, at Milan, of hope or of fear. In the midst of this universal trouble, the countess made inquiries about the account of a man who spoke so lightly of so envied a place and who was her sole resource.

Curious things and of an interesting oddity were reported to Mme Pietranera:

--Count Mosca della Rovere Sorezana, they told her, is on the point of becoming first minister and declared favorite of Ranuce-Ernest IV, absolute sovereign of Parma, and, moreover, one of the richest princes of Europe. The count would already have arrived at that supreme post if he had wished to take a graver mien; they say the prince often lectures him on that score.

--What matter my manners to Your Highness, he answers freely, if I do your business well?

--The happiness of this favorite, they added, is not without thorns. He must please a sovereign, a man of sense and of wit no doubt, but who, since he mounted an absolute throne, seems to have lost his head and shows, for example, suspicions worthy of a weak woman.

"Ernest IV is brave only at war. On the fields of battle, he was seen twenty times to lead a column to the attack as a brave general; but after the death of his father Ernest III, returned to his states, where, to his misfortune, he possesses unlimited power, he set himself to declaim madly against the liberals and liberty. Soon he imagined that he was hated; finally, in a moment of ill humor he had two liberals hanged, perhaps little guilty, advised thereto by a wretch named Rassi, a sort of minister of justice.

"Since that fatal moment, the life of the prince has been changed; he is seen tormented by the most bizarre suspicions. He is not fifty years old, and fear has shrunk him so, if one may so speak, that, as soon as he speaks of the Jacobins and the projects of the directing committee of Paris, one finds him the physiognomy of an old man of eighty; he falls back into the chimerical fears of earliest childhood. His favorite Rassi, fiscal general (or chief judge), has influence only through the fear of his master; and as soon as he fears for his credit, he hastens to discover some new conspiracy, the blackest and most chimerical. Do thirty imprudent men gather to read a number of the Constitutionnel, Rassi declares them conspirators and sends them prisoners to that famous citadel of Parma, the terror of all Lombardy. As it is very high, a hundred and eighty feet, they say, it is seen from very far in the midst of that immense plain; and the physical form of this prison, of which horrible things are recounted, makes it queen, by fear, of all that plain, which extends from Milan to Bologna.

--Would you believe it? said to the countess another traveler, at night, on the third floor of his palace, guarded by eighty sentinels who, every quarter hour, howl an entire phrase, Ernest IV trembles in his chamber. All the doors closed with ten bolts, and the neighboring rooms, above as below, filled with soldiers, he fears the Jacobins. If a board of the parquet floor comes to creak, he jumps for his pistols and believes in a liberal hidden under his bed. Immediately all the bells of the castle are in motion, and an aide-de-camp goes to wake Count Mosca. Arrived at the castle, this minister of police takes good care not to deny the conspiracy, on the contrary; alone with the prince, and armed to the teeth, he visits all the corners of the apartments, looks under the beds, and, in a word, abandons himself to a host of ridiculous actions worthy of an old woman. All these precautions would have seemed very degrading to the prince himself in the happy times when he made war and had killed no one but with musket shots. As he is a man of infinite wit, he is ashamed of these precautions; they seem ridiculous to him, even at the moment when he gives himself up to them, and the source of the immense credit of Count Mosca is that he employs all his address to make the prince never have to blush in his presence. It is he, Mosca, who, in his quality of minister of police, insists on looking under the furniture, and, they say at Parma, even into the cases of the double basses. It is the prince who opposes it, and jokes his minister on his excessive punctuality. 'This is a party,' Count Mosca answers him, 'think of the satirical sonnets with which the Jacobins would overwhelm us if we let you be killed. It is not only your life we defend, it is our honor.' But it appears that the prince is duped only by half, for if anyone in the city ventures to say that the night before a white night was passed at the castle, the grand fiscal Rassi sends the poor joker to the citadel; and once in that lofty and healthy-aired dwelling, as they say at Parma, a miracle is needed for the prisoner to be remembered. It is because he is military, and that in Spain he saved himself twenty times pistol in hand, amid surprises, that the prince prefers Count Mosca to Rassi, who is much more flexible and base. These unhappy prisoners of the citadel are under the most rigorous secrecy, and stories are made up about them. The liberals pretend that, by an invention of Rassi, the jailers and confessors have order to persuade them that about every month, one of them is led to death. That day the prisoners have permission to mount to the esplanade of the immense tower, at a hundred and eighty feet elevation, and from there they see defile a cortège with a spy who plays the role of a poor devil marching to death.

These tales, and twenty others of the same kind and of no less authenticity, interested Mme Pietranera vividly; the next day, she asked for details of Count Mosca, whom she bantered lively. She found him amusing and maintained to him that at bottom he was a monster without suspecting it. One day, on returning to his inn, the count said to himself: "Not only is this Countess Pietranera a charming woman; but when I pass the evening in her box, I manage to forget certain things of Parma whose memory pierces my heart."

"This minister, despite his light air and brilliant manners, had not a French soul; he knew not how to forget sorrows. When his pillow had a thorn, he was obliged to break it and wear it out by dint of pricking his palpitating limbs thereon." I beg pardon for this phrase, translated from the Italian.

The day after this discovery, the count found that despite the affairs calling him to Milan, the day was of an enormous length; he could not keep still; he tired the horses of his carriage. Toward six o'clock, he mounted on horseback to go to the Corso; he had some hope of meeting Mme Pietranera there; not having seen her, he recalled that at eight o'clock the theatre of La Scala opened; he entered and saw not ten persons in that immense hall. He felt some shame at finding himself there. "Is it possible," said he to himself, "that at five-and-forty loudly struck I commit follies of which a sub-lieutenant would blush! Fortunately no one suspects them." He fled and tried to wear out the time walking in those pretty streets which surround the theatre of La Scala. They are occupied by cafés which, at this hour, overflow with people; before each of these cafés, crowds of curious persons established on chairs, in the middle of the street, take ices and criticize the passers-by. The count was a remarkable passer-by; also he had the pleasure of being recognized and accosted. Three or four importunates, of those one cannot brush off, seized this occasion to have audience of so powerful a minister. Two of them gave him petitions; the third contented himself with addressing to him very long counsels on his political conduct.

"One does not sleep," said he, "when one has so much wit; one does not walk when one is so powerful." He re-entered the theatre and had the idea of hiring a box on the third tier; from there his gaze could plunge, without being noticed by anyone, upon the boxes of the second tier where he hoped to see the countess arrive. Two long hours of waiting seemed not too long to this lover; sure of not being seen, he abandoned himself with happiness to all his folly. "Old age, is it not, above all, to be no longer capable of these delicious childishnesses?"

At last the countess appeared. Armed with his opera glass, he examined her with transport. "Young, brilliant, light as a bird," said he to himself, "she is not twenty-five. Her beauty is her least charm: where to find elsewhere this soul always sincere, which never acts with prudence, which gives itself entirely to the impression of the moment, which asks only to be carried away by some new object? I conceive the follies of Count Nani."

The count gave himself excellent reasons to be mad, so long as he thought only of conquering the happiness he saw before his eyes. He found no longer such good ones when he came to consider his age and the cares sometimes very sad which filled his life. "A clever man from whom fear takes away his wits gives me a great existence and much money to be his minister; but let him send me away tomorrow, I remain old and poor, that is to say all that there is in the world most despised; there is an amiable personage to offer the countess!" These thoughts were too black, he returned to Mme Pietranera; he could not weary of looking at her, and to think of her better he did not descend into her box. "She took Nani, I am just told, only to spite that imbecile Limercati who would not hear of giving a sword thrust or having a poignard thrust given to the assassin of her husband. I would fight twenty times for her!" cried the count with transport. Every instant he consulted the theatre clock which by dazzling figures of light, standing out against a black ground, warns the spectators, every five minutes, of the hour at which it is permitted them to arrive in a friendly box. The count said to himself: "I could pass but a half-hour at most in her box, I, an acquaintance of so recent a date; if I stay longer, I advertise myself, and thanks to my age and still more to these accursed powdered hairs, I shall have the attractive air of a Cassandre." But a reflection decided him suddenly: "If she were to leave that box to make a visit, I should be but poorly recompensed for the stinginess with which I economize this pleasure." He rose to descend into the box where he saw the countess; all at once he felt almost no desire to present himself there. "Ah! here is something charming," he cried, laughing at himself, and stopping on the staircase; "it is a movement of true timidity! behold well five-and-twenty years since such an adventure befell me."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”