The Chartreuse of Parma. Stendhal
Читать онлайн книгу.
with equal success, and a few hours later he was safe in a country house belonging to his mother in Piedmont, near Novara, at a place called Romagnano, where Bayard met his death.
The amount of attention bestowed by the two ladies on the theatrical performance after they reached their box may be easily conceived. They had only gone to the theatre to secure an opportunity of consulting several of their friends of the Liberal party, whose appearance at the Palazzo del Dongo would have stirred suspicion on the part of the police. The council in the box decided on making a fresh appeal to Baron Binder. There could be no question of offering money to the magistrate, who was a perfectly upright man. And besides, the ladies were very poor; they had obliged Fabrizio to take all the money remaining over from the sale of the diamond with him. Nevertheless, it was very important to know the baron’s final word. The countess’s friends reminded her of a certain Canon Borda, a very agreeable young man, who had formerly tried to pay her court, and had behaved in a somewhat shabby fashion to her. When he found his advances were rejected, he had gone to General Pietranera, had told him of his wife’s friendship with Limercati, and was forthwith turned out of the house for his pains. Now, the canon played cards every evening with Baroness Binder, and was, naturally, her husband’s close friend. The countess made up her mind to the horribly disagreeable step of paying a visit to the canon, and the next morning early, before he had gone out, she appeared in his rooms.
When the canon’s only servant pronounced the name of the Countess Pietranera, his master was so agitated that his voice almost failed him, and he made no attempt to rearrange a morning costume of the most extreme simplicity.
“Show the lady in, and then go,” he said huskily. The countess entered the room, and Borda cast himself on his knees before her.
“It is in this position only that an unhappy madman like myself can dare to receive your orders,” said he to the countess, who looked irresistibly charming in her morning dress, which was half a disguise.
Her deep grief at the idea of Fabrizio’s exile and the violence she did her own feelings in appearing under the roof of a man who had once behaved like a traitor to her, combined to make her eyes shine with an extraordinary light.
“It is in this position,” cried the canon again, “that I must receive your orders—for some service you must desire of me, otherwise the poor dwelling of this unhappy madman would never have been honoured by your presence. Once upon a time, wild with love and jealousy, and seeing he had no chance of finding favour in your eyes, he played a coward’s part toward you.”
The words were sincerely spoken, and were all the nobler because at that moment the canon was in a position of great power. The countess was touched to tears; her heart had been frozen with humiliation and dread, but these feelings were replaced, in an instant, by a tender emotion and a ray of hope. From a condition of great misery she passed, in the twinkling of an eye, to one that was almost happiness.
“Kiss my hand,” she said, and she held it to the canon’s lips, “and stand up. I have come to ask you to obtain mercy for my nephew Fabrizio. Here is the truth, without the smallest disguise, just as it should be told to an old friend. The boy, who is only sixteen years and a half old, has committed an unspeakable folly. We were living at the Castle of Grianta, on the Lake of Como. One night, at seven o’clock, a boat from Como brought us the news that the Emperor had landed in the Gulf of Juan. The next morning Fabrizio started for France, after having induced one of his humble friends, a dealer in barometers of the name of Vasi, to give him his passport. As he by no means looks like a dealer in barometers, he had hardly travelled ten leagues through France when he was arrested. His outbursts of enthusiasm, expressed in very bad French, were thought suspicious. After some time he escaped, and contrived to get to Geneva. We sent to meet him at Lugano.”
“At Geneva, you mean,” said the canon, smiling.
The countess finished her story.
“Everything that is humanly possible I will do for you,” replied the canon earnestly. “I place myself entirely at your orders. I will even risk imprudences,” he added. “Tell me, what am I to do at this moment, when my poor room is to be bereft of the celestial vision which marks an epoch in the history of my life?”
“You must go to Baron Binder; you must tell him you have loved Fabrizio from his babyhood, that you saw the child at the time of his birth, when you used to come to our house, and that you beseech Binder, in the name of his friendship for you, to set all his spies to discover whether before Fabrizio departed into Switzerland he ever had the shortest interview with any of the suspected Liberals. If the baron is at all decently served he will be convinced that this whole business has been nothing but a childish freak. You know that when I lived in the Palazzo Dugnani I had quantities of engravings of Napoleon’s battles. My nephew learned to read from the inscriptions on those pictures. When he was only five years old my poor husband would describe the battles to him; we used to put the general’s helmet on the child’s head, and he would drag his great sword about the room. Well, one fine day the boy hears that the man my husband worshipped, the Emperor, is back in France. Like the young madcap he is, he started off to join him, but he did not succeed. Ask your baron what punishment he can possibly inflict for that one moment of folly.”
“I was forgetting something,” cried the canon. “You shall see that I am not quite unworthy of your gracious pardon. Here,” he said, hunting about among the papers on his table, “here is the denunciation of that vile col-torto [hypocrite]—look! It is signed ‘Ascanio Valserra del Dongo’—which is at the bottom of the whole business. I got it yesterday in the police office, and I went to the Scala, hoping to meet somebody who was in the habit of going to your box, by whom I might send it to you. The copy of this paper reached Vienna long ago. This is the enemy we have to fight!” The canon and the countess read the document together, and agreed that in the course of the day he was to send her a copy by a safe hand. Then the countess went back rejoicing to the Palazzo del Dongo.
“No one could have behaved more perfectly than this man, who once behaved so ill,” said she to the marchesa. “To-night, at the Scala, when the theatre clock strikes a quarter to eleven, we will turn everybody out of our box, we will shut our door, and at eleven o’clock the canon will come himself, and tell us what he has been able to do. This plan seemed to us the one least likely to compromise him.”
The canon was no fool; he took good care not to break his appointment, and having kept it, he gave proofs of a thorough kind-heartedness and absolute straightforwardness rarely seen save in countries where vanity does not override every other feeling. His accusation of the Countess Pietranera to her own husband had caused him constant remorse, and he hailed the opportunity for atonement.
That morning, when the countess left him, he had said to himself bitterly, “Now there she is, in love with her nephew!” and his old wound was not healed. “Otherwise, proud as she is, she would have never come to me. When poor Pietranera died she refused all my offers of service with horror, though they were couched in the most polite terms and transmitted to her by Colonel Scotti, who had been her lover. To think of the beautiful Pietranera living on fifteen hundred francs!” he added, as he walked rapidly up and down his room, “and then settling herself at Grianta with an odious secatore like the Marchese del Dongo! But that is all explained now. That young Fabrizio is certainly very attractive—tall, well-built, with a face that is always gay, and, what’s better, with a sort of tender voluptuous look about him—a Correggio face!” added the canon bitterly.
“The difference of age—not too great, after all! Fabrizio was born after the French came here—about ’98, I think. The countess may be seven or eight and twenty. No woman could be prettier, more delightful. Even in this country, where there are so many lovely women, she beats them all—the Marini, the Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua—she is better-looking than any of them! They were living happily together on the banks of that lovely Lake of Como when the young man insisted on following Napoleon. Ah, there are hearts in Italy still, in spite of what every one may do! Beloved country! No,” he mused, and his breast swelled with jealousy, “there is no other possible means of explaining her willingness to vegetate in the country and endure the disgusting sight, every