The Charterhouse of Parma (69 page)

It may be imagined that such letters were not to be entrusted to the post. Countess Mosca replied from Naples:

Fabrizio had no intention of obeying: the simple letter he wrote daily to the Count or to the Countess seemed an almost unendurable burden to him. The reader will forgive him when it is realized that a whole year passed in this fashion, without Fabrizio’s being able to address a single word to the Marchesa. All his attempts to establish some sort of correspondence had been repulsed with horror. The habitual silence which, in his boredom, Fabrizio maintained everywhere except in the exercise of his clerical functions and at court, joined to the unblemished purity of his conduct, had gained him such extraordinary veneration that he finally determined to obey his aunt’s advice:

The kind of misery which a frustrated love creates in the soul makes a cruel burden of whatever requires action or attention. But Fabrizio told himself that his credit with the people, should he acquire any, might eventually be of use to his aunt and to the Count, for whom his respect increased every day, as affairs at Court afforded him some familiarity with human wickedness. He determined to preach some sermons, and his success, ensured by his extreme slenderness and his frayed cassock, was unparallelled. People found in his speech a fragrance of profound melancholy which, combined with his attractive countenance and the report of the high favor he enjoyed at Court, won every woman’s heart. It was decided that he must have been one of the bravest captains in Napoléon’s army. Soon this absurd fact was beyond all possible doubt. People reserved seats in the churches where he was to preach; the poor would take possession of them as a speculation from five o’clock in the morning.

So great was his success that Fabrizio finally conceived the idea, which altered everything in his soul, that the Marchesa Crescenzi, if only out of simple curiosity, might some day come to hear one of his sermons. Suddenly the delighted public discovered that his talent had increased twofold; he indulged himself, when he was moved, in images whose boldness would have made the most experienced orators hesitate; sometimes, forgetting himself, he yielded to moments of impassioned inspiration, and his entire audience dissolved in tears. But it was in vain that his
aggrottato
eye sought among so many faces upturned toward the pulpit the one whose presence would have constituted so great an event for him.

“But if ever I know such happiness,” he told himself, “I shall either fall ill or lose my powers of speech entirely.” To prevent the latter
eventuality, he had composed a sort of tender and impassioned prayer, which he always kept beside him in the pulpit, on a stool; it was his intention to begin reading this text should the Marchesa’s presence ever put him at a loss for words.

One day he happened to learn, through those of the Marchese’s servants he had bribed, that orders had been given that the box of the
Casa Crescenzi
was to be prepared for the next night’s performance at the principal theater of the town. It had been a year since the Marchesa had appeared at any public occasion, and it was a tenor who was creating a furor and filling the house every evening who was causing this departure from her habits. Fabrizio’s first impulse was of extreme delight. “At last I’ll be able to see her for a whole evening! They say she’s very pale.” And he tried to imagine what that charming countenance might look like, its colors half erased by the soul’s conflicts.

His friend Ludovic, quite upset by what he called his master’s madness, managed with great difficulty to find a box in the fourth ring, almost opposite the Marchesa’s. An idea occurred to Fabrizio: “I hope to put it into her head to come to my sermon, and I shall choose a very small church, in order to be able to get a good look at her.” Fabrizio usually preached at three in the afternoon. On the morning of the day the Marchesa was to go to the opera, he let it be known that since his duties would keep him at the Archbishop’s Palace all day, he would preach as a special exception at half-past eight in the evening, in the little church of Santa Maria della Visitazione, located just opposite one of the wings of the Palazzo Crescenzi. Ludovic, on his behalf, offered a huge quantity of candles to the nuns of the Visitation, with a request to illuminate their church as bright as day. He had a whole company of Grenadier Guards, and one sentry was placed, bayonet at the ready, in front of each chapel, in order to prevent thieving.

The sermon was announced for half-past eight only, and by two o’clock the church being entirely filled, one can imagine the uproar produced in the quiet street over which towered the noble architecture of the Palazzo Crescenzi. Fabrizio had given notice that in honor of Our Lady of Pity he would preach on the pity a generous soul ought to have for someone in misfortune, even when he is guilty.

Disguised with infinite care, Fabrizio reached his box at the theater
precisely when the door were opened and when there were still no lights. The performance began around eight, and a few moments after the hour he had that delight which no one can conceive if he has not experienced it, of seeing the door of the Crescenzi box opening; the Marchesa came in, whom he had not seen so well since the day she had given him her fan. Fabrizio feared he would faint with delight, feeling impulses so extraordinary that he said to himself, “Perhaps I’m about to die! What a delightful way of ending this melancholy existence! Perhaps I shall collapse in this box; the flock gathering at the Church of the Visitation will never see me arrive, and tomorrow they will learn that their future Archbishop fainted away in a box at the opera, disguised, moreover, as a servant and wearing livery! Good-bye reputation! And who cares anyway?”

Yet around quarter to nine, Fabrizio made an effort, and pulled himself together; he left his box in the fourth ring and with great difficulty managed to make his way on foot to the place where he was to get rid of his livery and put on a more suitable outfit. It was only around nine o’clock that he reached the Church of the Visitation, in a state of such pallor and weakness that the rumor spread through the church that the Signor Coadjutor would be unable to preach that evening. One can imagine the attentions lavished upon him by the nuns, at the grille of their inner parlor, to which he had retired, These ladies chattered a great deal; Fabrizio asked to be alone a few moments, then hurried to his pulpit. One of his assistants had informed him, around three o’clock, that the Church of the Visitation was entirely filled, but with people belonging to the lower classes, apparently attracted by the spectacle of the brightly lighted church. Entering the pulpit, Fabrizio was agreeably surprised to find all the seats occupied by young people of fashion and personages of the greatest distinction.

A few words of apology opened his sermon, received with stifled cries of admiration. Then came the impassioned description of the wretch on whom pity must be taken in order worthily to honor the
Madonna della Pietà
, who herself had suffered so on earth. The orator was greatly moved; there were moments when he could scarcely utter the words so as to be heard throughout this little church. In the eyes of all the women and of many of the men, he himself seemed to be the
wretch on whom pity must be taken, so extreme was his pallor. A few minutes after the phrases of apology by which he had begun his discourse, it was noticed that he was not in his usual condition: his melancholy, that evening, appeared to be much deeper and more tender than usual. On one occasion, tears were seen in his eyes: at that moment there arose among his hearers a universal sigh so loud that the sermon itself was interrupted.

This first irregularity was followed by ten more; cries of admiration broke out, floods of tears were shed; at every moment such phrases as
“Ah, Santa Madonna!
” and
“Ah, Gran Dio!
”could be heard. Emotion was so general and so overpowering in this select audience that no one was ashamed of uttering such cries, and the people who were carried away did not seem ridiculous to their neighbors.

At the interval customarily allowed in the middle of the sermon, Fabrizio was told that absolutely no one was left in the theater; only one lady was still to be seen in her box, the Marchesa Crescenzi. During this interval, suddenly there was a great clamor in the church: the faithful were proposing to put up a statue to the Signor Coadjutor. His success in the second part of the sermon was so wild, and so worldly, the impulses of Christian contrition were so completely replaced by cries of quite profane admiration, that he felt he must offer, as he left the pulpit, some sort of reprimand to his auditors. Whereupon all of them left at once with a singularly shamefaced movement; and out in the street, everyone began applauding furiously and shouting:
“Evviva del Dongo!
”

Fabrizio hurriedly glanced at his watch and ran to a tiny barred window which illuminated the narrow passageway from the organ to the interior of the convent. As a concession to the incredible and unprecedented crowd which filled the street, the porter of the Palazzo Crescenzi had set a dozen torches in those iron fists one sees emerging from the outer walls of medieval Palaces. After a few minutes, and long before the cries had ceased, the event Fabrizio was awaiting so anxiously occurred: the Marchesa’s carriage, returning from the theater, appeared in the street; the coachman was obliged to stop, and it was only at the slowest pace, and by means of many shouts, that the carriage could reach the door.

The Marchesa had been touched by the sublime music, as is the way of sorrowing hearts, but even more the perfect solitude of the performance when she had learned the reason for it. In the middle of the second act, while the splendid tenor was on stage, even the people in the pit had suddenly abandoned their places to try their luck and attempt to enter the Church of the Visitation. The Marchesa, seeing that she was blocked by the crowd before her own door, burst into tears. “I did not make the wrong choice!” she said to herself.

But precisely on account of this moment of tenderness, she firmly resisted the urgings of the Marchese and all the friends of her house, who could not imagine that she would not go to hear so amazing a preacher. “After all, he outdraws the best tenor in Italy!”

“If I see him, I am lost!” the Marchesa said to herself.

It was in vain that Fabrizio, whose talent seemed more brilliant every day, preached several more times in that little church so close to the Palazzo Crescenzi; he never caught sight of Clélia, who ultimately took offense at this insistence on coming to disturb her quiet street, after having already driven her out of her own garden.

Glancing at the faces of the women who listened to him, Fabrizio had noticed some while back an extremely pretty dark little face, with eyes that seemed to dart flames. These splendid eyes were usually bathed in tears by the eighth or ninth sentence of the sermon. When Fabrizio was obliged to say things he himself found overlong and tiresome, he gladly rested his gaze on this countenance whose youth delighted him. He learned that this young person was called Anetta Marini, and that she was the sole daughter and heiress of the richest cloth merchant in Parma, who had died a few months earlier.

Soon the name of this Anetta Marini, the cloth merchant’s daughter, was on everyone’s lips; she had fallen madly in love with Fabrizio. When the famous sermons began, her marriage had just been arranged with Giacomo Rassi, the elder son of the Minister of Justice, whom she found by no means unattractive; but no sooner had she heard Monsignore Fabrizio a couple of times than she declared that she no longer wished to marry; and when asked the reason for such a singular change of heart, she replied that it was not suitable for an honorable
girl to marry one man when she had fallen madly in love with another. At first her family sought to learn, without success, who this other man might be.

But the burning tears Anetta shed during the sermons led them to the truth of the matter; her mother and her uncles having asked her if she loved Monsignore Fabrizio, she boldly replied that since the truth had been discovered, she would not demean herself by a lie; she added that, having no hope of marrying the man she adored, she wished at least no longer to offend her eyes by the sight of the Contino Rassi. This flouting of the son of a man pursued by the envy of the entire bourgeoisie of Parma became, in two days, the talk of the town. Anetta Marini’s reply was thought charming, and was repeated by everyone. It was mentioned in the Palazzo Crescenzi, as everywhere else.

Clélia was careful not to open her mouth on such a subject in her own salon; but she put certain questions to her chambermaid, and the following Sunday, after hearing Mass in her Palace chapel, she took her chambermaid with her in her carriage and went in search of a second Mass in Signorina Marini’s parish. There she found all the town gallants assembled, attracted by the same object; these gentlemen were standing close to the door. Soon, from the great stir made among them, the Marchesa realized that Signorina Marini must be entering the church; Clélia found herself quite advantageously placed to see her, and in spite of her piety, paid little or no attention to the Mass. She found this bourgeois beauty to have a certain look of self-confidence which, she considered, might have been more suitable in a woman married for a number of years. Aside from that, she was pretty enough, in her petite way, and her eyes, as people say in Lombardy, seemed to make conversation with the things they looked at. The Marchesa escaped before the Mass was over.