The Charterhouse of Parma (20 page)

After the first gracious words on the Prince’s part: “Well, Monsignore! Are the Neapolitans happy? Is the King popular?”

“Serene Highness,” Fabrizio replied without a moment’s hesitation, “I used to admire, passing them in the street, the fine bearing of His Majesty’s various regiments; the better classes are properly respectful of their masters; but I must confess that never in my life have I permitted the members of the lower orders to speak to me of anything but the work I pay them to do.”

“Plague!” said the Prince. “The falcon’s well trained! I know the Sanseverina’s touch when I see it.” Becoming interested, the Prince employed a good deal of skill in making Fabrizio enter into this scabrous subject. The young man, excited by the danger, was fortunate enough to make some admirable remarks: “Would it not be something like insolence to parade one’s love for one’s King?” he asked. “Blind obedience is what is owed.”

Observing such prudence, the Prince was almost vexed: “Apparently Naples has sent us a young man of wit, not a breed I would
choose; even though a man of wit flashes the highest principles, and quite sincerely too, there is always, somewhere, a certain blood brotherhood to Voltaire and Rousseau.”

The Prince found himself virtually defied by the proper manners and the impregnable replies of the young man just out of his seminary; what he had anticipated was not happening; in the twinkling of an eye he assumed the tone of good fellowship, and returning, in a few words, to the broad principles of government and society, he uttered, adapting them to the occasion, a few phrases out of Fénelon he had been made to learn by heart since childhood for public audiences. “These principles surprise you, young man,” he said to Fabrizio, whom he had called Monsignore at the start of the audience, and he intended to use Monsignore at its close, but in the course of conversation, he found it more adroit, more suited to affecting phrases, to address the fellow in a more familiar fashion; “these principles surprise you, young man, I admit that they hardly match the ready-made slogans of absolutism [his very expression] you might read any day of the week in my court paper.… But Good Lord! What good is it quoting such things to you? Our journalists are quite unknown to you …”

“If His Serene Highness will excuse me, not only do I read the Parma newspaper, which strikes me as quite well written, but I agree with its editor that everything done since the death of Louis XIV, in 1715, is at once a crime and a folly. Humanity’s greatest concern is its salvation, there cannot be two ways of regarding such a subject, and that is a felicity which lasts for all eternity. Such phrases as
liberty, justice, the happiness of the greatest number
are infamous and criminal: they give men’s minds the habit of argument and resistance. A Chamber of Deputies
challenges
what such people call
the Ministry
. And once this fatal habit of resistance sets in, human weakness applies it to everything, humanity reaches the point of suspecting the Bible, Holy Orders, tradition, etc.; at which point it is lost. Even if, as it is horribly false and criminal to say, such resistance to the authority of princes
established by Divine Right
might afford a degree of happiness for the twenty or thirty years of life that might fall to each of us, what is a half-century, or a whole one, compared to an eternity of torment? and so on.”

It was evident, from the fervor with which Fabrizio spoke, that he was seeking to present his ideas so as to make them as accessible as possible to his listener; clearly he was not just reciting a lesson.

Soon the Prince lost interest in matching wits with this young man whose simple and serious manners were beginning to annoy him. “Farewell, Monsignore,” he said abruptly, “I see that the Ecclesiastical Academy at Naples affords an excellent education, and it is evident that when these good precepts fall upon a mind so well prepared, brilliant results may be obtained. Farewell.” And he turned his back.

“I have not pleased this creature,” Fabrizio said to himself.

“Now it remains to be seen,” mused the Prince once he was alone, “if this handsome young fellow is capable of passion for something; in that case, he would be complete.… Who could repeat more cleverly his aunt’s lessons? It’s as if I were hearing her talk; if we had a revolution here, she’s the one who’d be writing for the
Monitore
, the way the
Marchesa San Felice
used to do in Naples! But the Marchesa, for all her twenty-five years and her beauty, managed to get herself hanged for her trouble! A good example for ladies of a little too much wit.” In supposing Fabrizio his aunt’s pupil, the Prince was mistaken: men of wit born to the throne or beside it soon lose all finesse of touch: they proscribe, around them, that freedom of conversation which to them seems crudity; they wish to see only masks and claim to judge beauty by its complexion; amusingly enough, they believe themselves to possess a great deal of tact. In this instance, for example, Fabrizio happened to believe virtually everything we have heard him say; it is true that he never thought more than twice a month about such broad principles. He had lively tastes, he had a certain amount of wit, but he also had faith.

The love of liberty, the fashion and the cult of
the happiness of the greatest number
, by which the nineteenth century was so taken, was in the Prince’s eyes merely another
heresy
which would pass like the rest, but after having slain many souls, just as the plague while it reigns in any one region slays many bodies. And despite all this Fabrizio used to delight in reading the French newspapers, and even committed certain indiscretions in order to obtain them.

When Fabrizio returned quite flustered from his audience and the
palace, he reported to his aunt the Prince’s various modes of attack. “The first thing you you must do,” she explained, “is to pay a visit to Father Landriani, our excellent Archbishop; go there on foot, climb the stairs quite deliberately, make no noise in the antechambers; if you are kept waiting, all the better, in fact, all the best! In a word, be
apostolical
!”

“I understand,” Fabrizio said, “our man is a Tartuffe.”

“Not a bit of it, he is virtue itself.”

“Even after the way he behaved when Count Palanza was executed?” Fabrizio asked in amazement.

“Yes, my friend, after the way he behaved: our Archbishop’s father was a clerk in the Ministry of Finance, a petit-bourgeois, which explains everything. Monsignore Landriani is a man of lively intelligence, wide learning, deep thoughts; he is sincere, he loves virtue: I am certain that if the Emperor Decius were to return to the world, the Archbishop would undergo martyrdom like
Polyeuctes
in the opera they performed last week. That is the good side of the medal. This is what’s on the reverse: once he’s in the Sovereign’s presence, or even the Prime Minister’s, he is dazzled by so much greatness, he becomes disturbed, he blushes; it is physically impossible for him to say
no
. Hence the things he has done, and which have afforded him that cruel reputation throughout Italy; but what people do not know is that, when public opinion managed to enlighten him concerning Count Palanza’s trial, he gave himself the penance of living on bread and water for thirteen weeks, as many weeks as there are letters in the name
Davide Palanza
. We have in this very court a very shrewd rascal named Rassi, a Chief Justice or Fiscal Magistrate, who, when Count Palanza died, cast a spell over Father Landriani. During his thirteen-week penitence, Count Mosca, out of pity and a certain malice, invited him to dinner once, even twice a week; the good Archbishop, to show his good manners, dined like everyone else. He might have believed that it was a matter of revolution and Jacobinism to parade penitence for an action approved by the Sovereign. But it was known that for each dinner, when his duty as a loyal subject had obliged him to eat like the other guests, he imposed upon himself a penance of two more days of bread and water.

“Monsignore Landriani, a superior soul, a scholar of the first rank, has only one weakness:
he wants to be loved
. Hence, show your feelings when you look at him, and on your third visit, love him indeed. That, combined with your birth, will win you immediate adoration. Show no surprise if he accompanies you out onto the stairs as you leave, appear to be quite accustomed to such manners; he is a man born kneeling to the nobility. For the rest, be simple—be apostolic, no wit, no brilliance, no quick replies; if you don’t frighten him, he will be pleased with you; remember that it must be of his own accord that he makes you his Vicar-General. The Count and I will be surprised and even vexed by this excessively rapid promotion, which is essential in dealing with the Sovereign.”

Fabrizio hurried to the Archbishop’s Palace: by a singular stroke of luck, the good prelate’s footman, being a trifle deaf, did not hear the name
del Dongo;
he announced a young priest by the name of Fabrizio; the Archbishop happened to be seeing a parish priest of questionable behavior whom he had summoned for disciplinary action. He was in the course of delivering a reprimand, a painful affair for himself, and hoped to be soon rid of such a distressing business; hence he kept waiting for some three-quarters of an hour the young descendant of Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo.

How to describe his excuses and his despair when, after having shown out the parish priest to the second antechamber, and having asked as he again passed by the young man who was waiting
how he might serve him
, he noticed the violet stockings and heard the name Fabrizio del Dongo. This business struck our hero as so amusing that upon this very first visit he ventured to kiss the venerable prelate’s hand, in a transport of affection. One had to have heard the Archbishop’s voice as he repeated in despair, “A del Dongo waiting in my antechamber!” And he felt obliged, in apology, to tell him the parish priest’s whole story, his transgressions, his own replies, and so on.

“Can it be possible,” Fabrizio wondered as he returned to the Palazzo Sanseverina, “that this is the man who accelerated the execution of poor Count Palanza?”

“What does Your Excellency think?” he gaily inquired of Count Mosca, seeing him enter the Duchess’s salon (the Count did not want Fabrizio to call him Excellency). “Myself, I am amazed; I know nothing
of human character: I would have wagered, had I not known his name, that this man cannot see a chicken bleed.”

“And you would have won your wager,” replied the Count; “but when he is in the Prince’s presence, or even mine, he cannot say
no
. In truth, for me to produce my entire effect, I must be wearing my yellow ribbon of the Grand Cordon over my coat; in ordinary evening dress, he would contradict me; hence I always wear my full uniform when I receive him. It is not up to us to destroy the prestige of power, the French newspapers are demolishing it quite rapidly enough; there is some question whether the
mania of respect
will last our time, and you, nephew, you will outlive such manners. You will be no more than a fellow-man!”

Fabrizio greatly enjoyed the Count’s company: this was the first superior man who had deigned to speak to him frankly; moreover, they shared an enthusiasm for antiquities and excavations. The Count, for his part, was flattered by the extreme attention with which the young man listened to him; but there was one capital objection: Fabrizio occupied an apartment in the Palazzo Sanseverina, spent his life with the Duchess, and revealed in all innocence that he was enchanted by such intimacy; and Fabrizio’s eyes and his complexion were of a mortifying brilliance.

For a long time, Ranuccio-Ernesto IV, who rarely met with resistance from the Fair Sex, had been stung by the fact that the Duchess’s virtue, so widely known at court, had not made an exception in his favor. As we have seen, Fabrizio’s wit and presence of mind had startled him at their first encounter. He took amiss the extreme intimacy the young man and his aunt so rashly displayed; he listened carefully to his courtiers’ gossip, which was endless. The young man’s arrival and the unprecedented audience he had obtained constituted the principal topic of conversation and amazement for a month at court, whereupon the Prince had an idea.

Among his palace guard, he had a simple soldier who held his wine admirably; this man spent his life in taverns, and reported on the morale of the troops directly to his Sovereign. Carlone lacked education, or he would have obtained advancement long since. Now, his orders were to be at the Palace every day on the stroke of noon by the
tower clock. The Prince himself proceeded a little before noon to arrange the blinds of a vestibule adjoining His Highness’s dressing-room. He returned to this vestibule shortly after noon had struck, and found the soldier there; in his pocket the Prince had a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and dictated the following letter to the soldier:

The Prince took the letter and gave the soldier two scudi. “This is a supplement to your pay,” he told him solemnly. “Not one word to anyone, or else the dankest dungeon in the Citadel.”