The Chartreuse of Parma. Stendhal
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had to find some pretext for hiding my wild delight, which might have roused his suspicions. Then, when I perceived how proud he was of this sham reconciliation, I took advantage of his satisfaction to make him drink a great deal more than was good for him, and he will certainly not have thought of lying in ambush to carry on his spying operations.”
“It’s in your room that we must hide our hussar,” said the marchesa. “He can not start at once. We have not collected our thoughts sufficiently as yet, and we must choose the best way of throwing that terrible Milanese police off the scent.”
This idea was promptly put into practice. But on the following day the marchese and his eldest son remarked that the marchesa spent all her time in her sister-in-law’s apartment. We will not depict the passion of joy and tenderness that filled these happy beings’ hearts during the whole of that day. The Italian nature is much more easily wrung than ours by the suspicions and wild fancies born of a feverish imagination. But its joys, on the other hand, are far deeper than ours, and last much longer. During the whole of that day the countess and the marchesa were absolutely beside themselves; they made Fabrizio begin all his stories over and over again. At last, so difficult did any further concealment of their feelings from the sharp eyes of the marchese and his son Ascanio appear, that they decided to betake themselves to Milan, and there conceal their mutual ecstasy.
The ladies took the usual boat belonging to the castle as far as Como; any other course would have aroused innumerable suspicions. But when they reached the port of Como, the marchesa recollected that she had left papers of the most important description at Grianta. She sent the boatmen back at once, and they were thus deprived of all opportunity of noticing the manner in which the two ladies employed their time at Como. The moment the latter arrived, they hired one of the carriages that always stand near the high tower, built in the middle ages, which rises above the Milan gate, and started off at once, without giving the coachman time to speak to a soul. About a quarter of a league beyond the town, they fell in with a young sportsman of their acquaintance, who, as they had no gentleman with them, was good-natured enough to attend them to the gates of Milan, whither he himself was bound, shooting on the way. Everything promised well, and the ladies were talking most merrily to the young traveller when, just where the road bends round the base of the pretty hill and wood of San Giovanni, three gendarmes in disguise sprang to the horses’ heads. “Ah!” cried the marchesa, “my husband has betrayed us!” and she fainted away.
A sergeant of gendarmes, who had been standing somewhat in the background, approached the carriage. He stumbled as he walked, and spoke in a voice that was redolent of the tavern: “I am sorry to have to perform this duty, but I arrest you, General Fabio Conti!” Fabrizio thought the sergeant was poking fun at him by calling him general. “I’ll pay you out for this,” thought he to himself. He had his eye on the gendarmes, and was watching his opportunity to leap from the carriage and take to his heels across the fields.
The countess smiled—at a venture, as I think—and then said to the sergeant, “But, my good sergeant, do you take this child of sixteen years old to be General Conti!”
“Are you not the general’s daughter?” said the sergeant.
“Behold my father!” said the countess, pointing to Fabrizio. The gendarmes burst into a roar of laughter.
“Show your passports, and don’t bandy words!” said the sergeant, nettled by the general mirth.
“These ladies never take any passport to go to Milan,” said the coachman, with a cool and philosophic air; “they are coming from their house at Grianta. This one is the Countess Pietranera, and that one is the Marchesa del Dongo.”
The sergeant, quite put out of countenance, went to the horses’ heads, and there held council with his men. The conference had lasted quite five minutes, when the countess begged the carriage might be moved a few paces farther into the shade; the heat was overwhelming, though it was only eleven o’clock in the day. Fabrizio, who had been looking about carefully in all directions, with a view to making his escape, noticed, emerging from a field path which led on to the dusty road, a young girl of fourteen or fifteen, with her handkerchief to her face, shedding frightened tears. She walked between two gendarmes in uniform, and three paces behind her, also flanked by gendarmes, came a tall, bony man, who gave himself dignified airs, like a prefect walking in a procession.
“But where did you find them?” said the sergeant, who now appeared quite drunk.
“Running away across the fields, and not a passport between them!” The sergeant seemed to have quite lost his bearings. He had five prisoners now, instead of the two he had been sent out to take. He retired a little distance, leaving only one man to look after the prisoner with the majestic demeanour, and another to keep the horses from moving on.
“Stay here,” whispered the countess to Fabrizio, who had already jumped out of the carriage. “It will all come right.”
They heard a gendarme exclaim: “What does it matter? If they have no passports we have a right to take them up.”
The sergeant did not seem quite so sure. The name of Pietranera had alarmed him. He had known the general, and he was not aware of his death. “The general,” he reflected, “is not the man to forego his vengeance if I arrest his wife without authority.”
During this deliberation, which was somewhat lengthy, the countess had entered into conversation with the young girl, who was still standing in the dust, on the road beside the carriage. She had been struck by her beauty.
“The sun will do you harm, signorina. That honest soldier,” she added, addressing the gendarme standing at the horses’ heads, “will let you get into the carriage, I am sure!” Fabrizio, who was prowling round the carriage, came forward to help the young lady into it. She had her foot on the step, and Fabrizio’s hand was under her arm, when the imposing individual, who was standing six paces behind the carriage, called out, in a voice that his desire to look dignified made yet more rasping: “Stop on the road! Do not get into a carriage which does not belong to you!” Fabrizio had not heard this order. The young girl, instead of trying to get up, tried to get down, and as Fabrizio still held her, she fell into his arms. He smiled, and she blushed deeply; for a moment after the girl had freed herself from his clasp they stood looking into each other’s eyes.
“What a charming prison companion!” said Fabrizio to himself. “What deep thoughts lie behind that brow! That woman would know how to love!”
The sergeant approached with an air of importance.
“Which of these ladies is called Clelia Conti?”
“I,” said the young girl.
“And I,” exclaimed the elderly man, “I am General Fabio Conti, Chamberlain to his Serene Highness the Prince of Parma, and I think it most improper that a man of my position should be hunted like a thief!”
“The day before yesterday, when you embarked at the port of Como, did you not send the police inspector, who asked you for your passport, about his business? Well, to-day the inspector prevents you from going about your business.”
“My boat had already pushed off from the shore. I was in a hurry, a storm was coming on, a man without a uniform shouted to me from the pier to come back into the port. I told him my name, and I went on my way.”
“And this morning you sneaked out of Como!”
“A man in my position does not take out a passport to go from Milan to see the lake. This morning, at Como, I was told I should be arrested at the gate. I left the town on foot with my daughter. I hoped I might meet with some carriage on the road, which would take me to Milan, where my first visit will certainly be to the general commanding the province, to lay my complaint before him.”
The sergeant seemed relieved of a great weight.
“Very good, general, you are under arrest, and I shall take you to Milan.—And who are you?” he said, turning to Fabrizio.
“My son,” put in the countess, “Ascanio,