The only moments when Fabrizio’s deep sadness knew a little respite1 were those he spent lurking2 behind a glass pane3 which he had substituted for one of the oiled-paper squares in the window of his lodging4, opposite the Palazzo Cantarini, to which mansion5, as my readers know, Clelia had retired6. On the few occasions, since he had left the fortress7, on which he had caught sight of her, he had been profoundly distressed8 by a striking change in her appearance, from which he augured9 very ill. Since Clelia’s one moment of weakness her face had assumed a most striking appearance of nobility and gravity. It might have been that of a woman of thirty. In this extraordinary change of expression Fabrizio recognised the reflection of some deep-seated resolution. “Every moment of the day,” said he to himself, “she is swearing to herself that she will keep her vow10 to the Madonna, and never look at me again.”
Fabrizio only guessed at part of Clelia’s misery12. She knew that her father, who had fallen into the direst disgrace, would never be able to return to Parma and reappear at the court (without which life was impossible to him) until she married the Marchese Crescenzi. She wrote her father word that she desired to be married. The general was then lying ill from worry at Turin. This fateful decision had aged13 her by ten years.
She was quite aware that Fabrizio had a window facing the Palazzo Cantarini, but only once had she been so unfortunate as to look at him. The moment she caught sight of the turn of a head or the outline of a figure the least resembling his, she instantly closed her eyes. Her deep piety14, and her trust in the Madonna’s help, were to be her only support for the future. She had to endure the sorrow of feeling no esteem15 for her father; her future husband’s character she took to be perfectly16 commonplace, and suited to the dominant17 feelings of the upper ranks of society. To crown it all, she adored a man whom she must never see again, and who, nevertheless, had certain claims upon her. Taking it altogether, her fate seemed to her the most miserable18 that could be conceived, and it must be acknowledged that she was right. The moment she was married she ought to have gone to live two hundred leagues from Parma.
Fabrizio was acquainted with the extreme modesty19 of Clelia’s character; he knew how much any unusual step, the discovery of which might cause comment, was certain to displease20 her. Nevertheless, driven to distraction21 by his own sadness, and by seeing Clelia’s eyes so constantly turned away from him, he ventured to try to buy over two of the servants of her aunt, the Countess Cantarini. One day, as dusk was falling, Fabrizio, dressed like a respectable countryman, presented himself at the door of the palace, at which one of the servants he had bribed22 was awaiting him. He announced that he had just arrived from Turin with letters for Clelia from her father. The servant took up his message, and then conducted him into a huge antechamber on the first floor. In this apartment Fabrizio spent what was perhaps the most anxious quarter of an hour in his whole life. If Clelia repulsed23 him he could never hope to know peace again. “To cut short the wearisome duties with which my new position overwhelms me,” he mused24, “I will rid the Church of an indifferent priest, and will take refuge, under a feigned25 name, in some Carthusian monastery26.” At last the servant appeared, and told him the Signorina Clelia was willing to receive him.
Our hero’s courage quite failed him as he climbed the staircase to the second floor, and he very nearly fell down from sheer fright.
Clelia was sitting at a little table, on which a solitary27 taper28 was burning. No sooner did she recognise Fabrizio, under his disguise, than she rushed away, and hid herself at the far end of the drawing-room. “This is how you care for my[488] salvation,” she cried, hiding her face in her hands. “Yet you know that when my father was at the point of death from poison, I made a vow to the Madonna that I would never see you. That vow I have never broken except on that one day—the most wretched of my life—when my conscience commanded me to save you from death. I do a great deal when, by putting a forced and, no doubt, a wicked interpretation29 on my vow, I consent even to listen to you.”
Fabrizio was so astounded30 by this last sentence that, for a few seconds, he was incapable31 even of rejoicing over it. He had expected to see Clelia rush away in the most lively anger. But at last he recovered his presence of mind, and blew out the candle. Although he believed he had understood Clelia’s wishes, he was trembling with alarm as he moved toward the far end of the drawing-room, where she had taken refuge behind a sofa. He did not know whether she might not take it ill if he kissed her hand. Throbbing32 with passion, she cast herself into his arms.
“Dearest Fabrizio,” she said, “how slow you have been in coming! I can only speak to you for a few moments, for even that is certainly a great sin, and when I promised that I would never see you again, there is no doubt I understood myself to promise that I would never speak to you either. But how can you punish my poor father’s vengeful thought so barbarously? For, after all, he was nearly poisoned, first, to facilitate your flight. Should you not have done something for me, who risked my fair fame to save you? Besides, now you are altogether bound to the priestly life, you could not marry me, even if I found means of getting rid of this detestable marchese. And then, how could you dare to attempt to see me in full daylight, on the day of that procession, and thus violate my holy vow to the Madonna, in the most shocking manner?”
Beside himself with surprise and happiness, Fabrizio clasped her closely in his arms.
A conversation which had to begin by explaining so many things was necessarily a long one. Fabrizio told Clelia the exact truth as to her father’s banishment33. The duchess had had nothing whatever to do with it, for the very good reason that she had never thought, for a single instant, that the idea of poison had emanated34 from General Conti. She had always believed that to be a witticism35 on the part of the Raversi faction36, which was bent37 on driving out Count Mosca. His long dissertation38 on this historical fact made Clelia very happy; she had been wretched at the thought that it was her duty to hate any one belonging to Fabrizio, and she no longer looked on the duchess with a jealous eye.
The happiness consequent on that evening’s meeting only lasted a few days.
The worthy40 Don Cesare arrived from Turin, and found courage, in his perfect single-heartedness, to seek the presence of the duchess. After having obtained her word that she would not betray the confidence he was about to repose41 in her, he confessed that his brother, misled by a false idea of honour, and believing himself defied and ruined in public opinion by Fabrizio’s escape, had believed himself bound to seek for vengeance42.
Before Don Cesare had talked for two minutes his cause was won; his absolute honesty had touched the duchess, who was not accustomed to such exhibitions; its novelty delighted her.
“Hurry on the marriage of the general’s daughter with the Marchese Crescenzi, and I give you my word of honour that I will do everything I can to have the general received as if he were coming back from an ordinary journey. I will ask him to dinner myself. Will that satisfy you? No doubt there will be a stiffness at first, and the general must not be too hasty about asking to be reappointed governor of the citadel44. But you know my regard for the marchese; I shall bear no grudge45 against his father-in-law.”
Armed with these assurances, Don Cesare sought his niece, and told her that her father’s life lay in her hands; he had fallen ill from sheer despair, not having appeared at any court for several months.
Clelia insisted on going to see her father, who was hiding under a false name in a village near Turin; for he had taken it into his head that the court of Parma would request his extradition46, with the object of bringing him to trial. She found him in bed, ill, and almost out of his mind. That very night she wrote a letter to Fabrizio, breaking with him forever. On receiving the letter, Fabrizio, whose character was growing very like that of his mistress, went into retreat at the Convent of Velleia, in the mountains, some thirty leagues from Parma. Clelia had written him a letter that covered ten pages. She had solemnly sworn she would never marry the marchese without his consent. That consent she now besought47, and Fabrizio granted it in a letter written from his retreat at Velleia, and breathing the purest friendship.
When Clelia received this letter—the friendly tone of which nettled48 her, we must acknowledge—she herself fixed49 her wedding-day, and the festivities connected with it added to the splendour which rendered the court of Parma specially50 noticeable that winter.
Ranuzio-Ernest V was a miser11 at heart, but he was desperately51 in love, and he hoped to keep the duchess permanently52 at his court. He begged his mother’s acceptance of a considerable sum of money, to be spent in entertaining. The mistress of the robes made admirable use of this addition to the royal income; the festivities at Parma that winter recalled the best days of the Milanese court, and of Prince Eugène, that lovable viceroy of Italy, the memory of whose goodness has endured so long.
The archbishop’s coadjutor had been recalled to Parma by his duties. But he gave out that, from religious motives54, he should continue to live in retirement55 in the small apartment in the archiepiscopal palace which his protector, Monsignore Landriani, had insisted on his accepting, and thither56 he retired, with one servant only. He was not present, therefore, at any of the brilliant court entertainments, and this fact earned him a most saintly reputation in Parma, and all over his future diocese. An unexpected result of this retirement, which had been inspired solely57 by Fabrizio’s profound and hopeless sadness, was that the worthy archbishop, who had always loved him, and who, in fact, had been the person who had first thought of having him appointed coadjutor, began to feel a little jealous. The archbishop, and very rightly, conceived it his duty to attend all the court functions, according to the usual Italian custom. On these occasions he wore his gala costume, very nearly the same as that in which he appeared in his cathedral choir58. The hundreds of servants gathered in the pillared anteroom of the palace never failed to rise and crave59 the archbishop’s blessing60 as he passed, and he, as invariably, condescended61 to stop and bestow62 it. It was during one of these moments of solemn silence that Monsignore Landriani heard a voice saying: “Our archbishop goes to balls, and Monsignore del Dongo never goes out of his room.”
From that moment the immense favour in which Fabrizio had stood at the archiepiscopal palace came to an end. But he was able, now, to stand on his own feet. The behaviour which had only been actuated by the despair into which Clelia’s marriage had cast him, was taken to be the result of his simple and lofty piety, and devout63 folk read the translation of his family genealogy64, which exemplified the most ridiculous vanity, as though it were an edifying65 work. The booksellers published a lithographed edition of his picture, which was bought up in a few days, and more especially by the lower classes. The engraver66, out of ignorance, surrounded Fabrizio’s portrait with several adornments, which should only have appeared on the portrait of a bishop53, and to which a coadjutor could lay no claim. The archbishop saw one of these pictures, and his fury exceeded all bounds. He sent for Fabrizio, and spoke67 to him in the harshest manner, and in terms which his rage occasionally rendered very coarse. Fabrizio had no difficulty, as my readers will readily believe, in behaving as Fénelon would have done in such a case. He listened to the archbishop with all possible humility68 and respect, and when the prelate ceased speaking, he told him the whole story of the translation of the genealogy by Count Mosca’s orders, at the time of his first imprisonment69. It had been published for worldly ends—such, indeed, as had seemed to him (Fabrizio), by no means suited for a man in his position. As to the portrait, he had had as little to do with the second edition as with the first. During his retreat the bookseller had sent him twenty-four copies of this second edition addressed to the archiepiscopal palace. He had sent his servant to buy a twenty-fifth copy, and having thus discovered that the price of each to be thirty sous, he had sent a hundred francs in payment for the first twenty-four portraits.
All these arguments, though put forward in the most reasonable manner, by a man whose heart was full of sorrow of a very different kind, increased the archbishop’s fury to madness. He even went so far as to accuse Fabrizio of hypocrisy70.
“This is what comes of being a common man,” said Fabrizio to himself, “even when he is clever.”
He had a more serious trouble at that moment, in the shape of his aunt’s letters, which absolutely insisted on his returning to his rooms at the Palazzo Sanseverina, or, at all events, on his coming occasionally to see her. In that house Fabrizio felt he was certain to hear talk of the Marchese Crescenzi’s splendid entertainments in honour of his marriage, and he was not sure he would be able to endure this without making an exhibition of himself.
When the marriage ceremony took place, Fabrizio had already kept utter silence for a week, after having commanded his servant, and those persons in the archbishop’s palace with whom he had to do, never to open their lips to him.
When Archbishop Landriani became aware of this fresh piece of affectation he sent for Fabrizio much oftener than was his wont71, and insisted on holding lengthy72 conversations with him. He even made him confer with certain of his country canons, who complained that the archbishop had contravened73 their privileges. Fabrizio took all this with the perfect indifference74 of a man whose head is full of other things. “I should do much better,” thought he, “to turn Carthusian. I should be less wretched among the rocks at Velleia.”
He paid a visit to his aunt, and could not restrain his tears when he kissed her. He was so altered, his eyes, which his excessive thinness made look larger than ever, seeming ready to start out of his head, and his whole appearance, in[493] his threadbare black cassock, was so miserable and wretched, that at her first sight of him the duchess could hardly help crying too. But a moment later, when she had told herself it was Clelia’s marriage that had so sorely changed this handsome young fellow, her feelings were as fierce as those of the archbishop, though more skilfully75 concealed77. She was cruel enough to dilate78 at length on various picturesque79 details which had marked the Marchese Crescenzi’s delightful80 entertainments. Fabrizio made no reply, but his eyes closed with a little convulsive flutter, and he turned even paler than before, which at first sight would have been taken to be impossible. At such moments of excessive misery his pallor took a greenish tint81.
Count Mosca came into the room, and the sight he beheld82 (and which appeared to him incredible) cured him, once for all, of that jealousy83 of Fabrizio which he had never ceased to feel. This gifted man made the most delicate and ingenious endeavours to rouse Fabrizio to some interest in mundane84 affairs. The count had always felt an esteem, and a certain regard for him. This regard, being no longer counterbalanced by jealousy, deepened into something approaching devotion. “He really has paid honestly for his fine position,” said Mosca to himself, as he summed up Fabrizio’s misfortunes. On pretext85 of showing him the Parmegiano, which the prince had sent the duchess, the count drew Fabrizio apart.
“Hark ye, my friend, let us speak as man to man. Can I serve you in any way? You nee............