“The Prince of Parma is dead!”
The Duchessa turned extremely pale; she had barely the strength to say:
“Do they give any details?”
“No,” replied the Archpriest; “the report is confined to the announcement of his death, which is certain.”
The Duchessa looked at Fabrizio. “I have done this for him,” she said to herself; “I would have done things a thousand times worse, and there he is standing before me indifferent, and dreaming of another!” It was beyond the Duchessa’s strength to endure this frightful thought; she fell in a dead faint. Everyone hastened to her assistance; but, on coming to herself, she observed that Fabrizio was less active than the Archpriest and curate; he was dreaming as usual.
“He is thinking of returning to Parma,” the Duchessa told herself, “and perhaps of breaking off Clelia’s marriage to the Marchese; but I shall manage to prevent him.” Then, remembering the presence of the two priests, she made haste to add:
“He was a good Prince, and has been greatly maligned! It is an immense loss for us!”
The priests took their leave, and the Duchessa, to be alone, announced that she was going to bed.
“No doubt,” she said to herself, “prudence ordains that I should wait a month or two before returning to Parma; but I feel that I shall never have the patience; I am suffering too keenly here. Fabrizio’s continual dreaming, his silence, are an intolerable spectacle for my heart. Who would ever have said that I should find it tedious to float on this charming lake, alone with him, and at the moment when I have done, to avenge him, more than I can tell him! After such a spectacle, death is nothing. It is now that I am paying for the transports of happiness and childish joy which I found in my palazzo at Parma when I welcomed Fabrizio there on his return from Naples. If I had said a word, all was at an end, and it may be that, tied to me, he would not have given a thought to that little Clelia; but that word filled me with a horrible repugnance. Now she has prevailed over me. What more simple? She is twenty; and I, altered by my anxieties, sick, I am twice her age! … I must die, I must make an end of things! A woman of forty is no longer anything save to the men who have loved her in her youth! Now I shall find nothing more but the pleasures of vanity; and are they worth the trouble of living? All the more reason for going to Parma, and amusing myself. If things took a certain turn, I should lose my life. Well, where is the harm? I shall make a magnificent death, and, before the end, but then only, I shall say to Fabrizio: ‘Wretch! It is for you!’ Yes, I can find no occupation for what little life remains to me save at Parma. I shall play the great lady there. What a blessing if I could be sensible now of all those distinctions which used to make the Raversi so unhappy! Then, in order to see my happiness, I had to look into the eyes of envy. … My vanity has one satisfaction; with the exception of the Conte perhaps, no one can have guessed what the event was that put an end to the life of my heart. … I shall love Fabrizio, I shall be devoted to his interests; but he must not be allowed to break off Clelia’s marriage, and end by taking her himself. … No, that shall not be!”
The Duchessa had reached this point in her melancholy monologue, when she heard a great noise in the house.
“Good!” she said to herself, “they are coming to arrest me; Ferrante has let himself be caught, he must have spoken. Well, all the better! I am going to have an occupation, I am going to fight them for my head. But in the first place, I must not let myself be taken.”
The Duchessa, half clad, fled to the bottom of her garden: she was already thinking of climbing a low wall and escaping across country; but she saw someone enter her room. She recognised Bruno, the Conte’s confidential man; he was alone with her maid. She went up to the window. The man was telling her maid of the injuries he had received. The Duchessa entered the house. Bruno almost flung himself at her feet, imploring her not to tell the Conte of the preposterous hour at which he had arrived.
“Immediately after the Prince’s death,” he went on, “the Signor Conte gave the order to all the posts not to supply horses to subjects of the States of Parma. So that I had to go as far as the Po with the horses of the house, but on leaving the boat my carriage was overturned, broken, smashed, and I had such bad bruises that I could not get on a horse, as was my duty.”
“Very well,” said the Duchessa, “it is three o’clock in the morning: I shall say that you arrived at noon; but you must not go and give me away.”
“I am very grateful for the Signora’s kindness.”
Politics in a work of literature are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar and yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one’s attention.
We are about to speak of very ugly matters, as to which, for more than one reason, we should like to keep silence; but we are forced to do so in order to come to happenings which are in our province, since they have for their theatre the hearts of our characters.
“But, great God, how did that great Prince die?” said the Duchessa to Bruno.
“He was
