The Chartreuse of Parma. Stendhal
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up from the tavern, had seen his colonel fall, and believed him to be seriously wounded. He ran after Fabrizio’s horse, and plunged the point of his sword into the thief’s back, so that he, too, fell. Then the hussars, seeing nobody but the sergeant standing on the bridge, galloped across it and rode rapidly away.
The sergeant went to look after the wounded. Fabrizio had already picked himself up; he was not in much pain, but he was losing a great deal of blood. The colonel rose to his feet more slowly; he was quite giddy from his fall, but he was not wounded at all.
“The only thing that hurts me,” he said to his sergeant, “is the old wound in my hand.” The hussar whom the sergeant had wounded was dying.
“The devil may take him!” cried the colonel. “But,” said he to the sergeant and the two other troopers who now hurried up, “look after this boy, whose life I did wrong to endanger. I will stay at the bridge myself, and try to stop these madmen. Take the young fellow to the inn and dress his arm. Use one of my shirts for bandages.”
CHAPTER V
The whole affair had not lasted more than a minute. Fabrizio’s wounds were of the most trifling description; his arm was bound up in strips torn off one of the colonel’s shirts. He was offered a bed in the upper story of the inn.
“But while I am lying comfortably here,” said Fabrizio to the sergeant, “my horse will feel lonely in the stable, and may take himself off with another master.”
“Not bad, for a recruit,” said the sergeant, and he settled Fabrizio on some clean straw in the very manger to which his horse was tied.
Then, as Fabrizio felt very faint, he brought him a bowl of hot wine and talked to him for a while. Certain compliments included in this conversation made our hero feel as happy as a king.
It was near daybreak on the following morning when Fabrizio awoke. The horses were neighing long and loud, and making a terrible racket. The stable was full of smoke. At first Fabrizio could make nothing of the noise, and did not even realize where he was. At last, when the smoke had half stifled him, it struck him that the house was on fire; in the twinkling of an eye he was out of the stable and on his horse’s back. He looked up and saw the smoke pouring out of the two windows above the stable, and the roof of the house hidden in a black, whirling cloud. A good hundred fugitives had reached the tavern during the night, and all of them were shouting and swearing at once. The five or six who were close to Fabrizio seemed to him to be completely drunk. One of them tried to stop him, shouting, “Where are you taking my horse?”
When Fabrizio had gone about a quarter of a league he looked back. Nobody was following him; the house was blazing. He recognised the bridge, thought of his wound, and touched his arm, which felt hot and tight in the bandages. And what had become of the old colonel? “He gave his shirt to bind up my arm.” That morning our hero was the coolest and most collected man in the world; the quantities of blood he had lost had washed all the romantic qualities out of his character.
“To the right,” said he, “and let us be off.” He quietly followed the course of the river, which, after passing under the bridge, flowed toward the right side of the road. He remembered the good cantinière’s advice. “What true friendship!” said he to himself; “what an honest soul!”
After an hour he began to feel very weak. “Now then,” he thought, “am I going to faint? If I faint somebody will steal my horse, and perhaps my clothes, and with my clothes my valuables.” He had not strength to guide his horse, and was doing his best to keep steady in the saddle, when a peasant digging in a field hard by the high-road noticed his pallor, and offered him a glass of beer and a bit of bread.
“Seeing you so pale,” said the man, “I thought you might have been wounded in the great battle.” Never did help come more in the nick of time. When Fabrizio began to chew that morsel of black bread his eyes had begun to sting when he looked in front of him. When he had pulled himself together a little he thanked his benefactor. “And where am I?” he inquired. The peasant informed him that three quarters of a league farther on he would find the little town of Zonders, where he would be well cared for. Fabrizio reached the town without well knowing what he was doing, his only care being how not to fall off at every step his horse took. He saw a big gate standing open and rode through it; it led to a tavern, The Currycomb. The good-natured mistress of the house, an exceedingly fat woman, ran forward, calling for help in a voice that shook with pity. Two young girls assisted Fabrizio to dismount. Before he was well out of his saddle he fainted dead away. A surgeon was summoned and he was bled. On that day and those following it he hardly knew what was being done to him. He slept almost incessantly.
The puncture in his leg threatened to turn into a serious abscess. Whenever he was in his senses he begged that care might be taken of his horse, and frequently reiterated that he would pay well, which mightily offended the good hostess and her daughters. He had been admirably tended for a fortnight, and was beginning to collect his thoughts a little, when he noticed, one evening, that his nurses seemed very much disturbed. Presently a German officer entered his room. The language in which his questions were answered was one which Fabrizio did not understand, but he clearly perceived that he himself was the subject of the conversation; he pretended to be asleep. Some time afterward, when he thought the officer must have departed, he called his hostess.
“Did not that officer come to write my name down on a list and take me prisoner?”
With tears in her eyes his hostess admitted the fact.
“Well, then,” he cried, raising himself up in his bed, “there’s money in my pocket. Buy me civilian clothes, and this very night I’ll ride away. You’ve saved my life once already by taking me in when I should have fallen and died in the street. Save it again by helping me to get back to my mother.”
At this point the landlady’s daughters both burst into tears. They trembled for Fabrizio’s safety, and as they could hardly understand any French, they came close to his bed to question him. They held a discussion with their mother in Flemish, but every moment their wet eyes turned pityingly upon our hero. He thought he gathered that his flight might compromise them seriously, but that they were ready to take the risk. He clasped his hands together and thanked them earnestly.
A local Jew undertook to provide him with a suit of clothes, but when he brought it, about ten o’clock that night, the young ladies discovered, by comparing the coat with Fabrizio’s hussar jacket, that it was a great deal too large for him. They set to work on it at once; there was no time to be lost. Fabrizio showed them several napoleons hidden in his garments, and begged them to sew them into those which had just been bought. With the suit the Jew had brought a fine pair of new boots. Fabrizio did not hesitate to ask the kind-hearted girls to cut open his hussar boots at the place he showed them, and his little diamonds were soon hidden in the lining of his new foot-gear.
A singular result of his loss of blood, and his consequent weakness, was that Fabrizio had almost entirely forgotten his French. He talked to his hostesses in Italian, and as they spoke nothing but their Flemish patois, intercourse was really carried on solely by signs. When the young girls, perfectly disinterested as they were, beheld the diamonds, their admiration for our hero knew no bounds. They were convinced he was a prince in disguise. Aniken, the younger and more artless of the two, kissed him without further ceremony. Fabrizio, for his part, thought them charming, and toward midnight, when, in consideration of the journey he was about to take, the surgeon had allowed him to drink a little wine, he was half inclined not to depart at all.
“Where could I be better off than I am here?” he said. Nevertheless, about two o’clock in the morning he got up and dressed. Just as he was leaving his room the kindly hostess informed him that his horse had been carried off by the officer who had searched the house a few hours previously.
“Ah, the blackguard!” cried Fabrizio, “to play such a trick on a wounded man!” and he