The Charterhouse of Parma

“Murder,” he had most forcibly accused himself before God of having killed a man, but in defence of his own life. He had passed rapidly, and without paying them the slightest attention, over the various articles relating to the sin of Simony (the procuring of ecclesiastical dignities with money). If anyone had suggested to him that he should pay a hundred louis to become First Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Parma, he would have rejected such an idea with horror; but, albeit he was not wanting in intelligence, nor above all in logic, it never once occurred to his mind that the employment on his behalf of Conte Mosca’s influence was a form of Simony. This is where the Jesuitical education triumphs: it forms the habit of not paying attention to things that are clearer than daylight. A Frenchman, brought up among conflicting personal interests and in the prevailing irony of Paris might, without being deliberately unfair, have accused Fabrizio of hypocrisy at the very moment when our hero was opening his soul to God with the utmost sincerity and the most profound emotion.

Fabrizio did not leave the church until he had prepared the confession which he proposed to make next day. He found Lodovico sitting on the steps of the vast stone peristyle which rises above the great piazza opposite the front of San Petronio. As after a storm the air becomes more pure, so now Fabrizio’s soul was tranquil and happy and so to speak refreshed.

“I feel quite well now, I hardly notice my wounds,” he said to Lodovico as he approached him; “but first of all I have to apologise to you; I answered you crossly when you came and spoke to me in the church; I was examining my conscience. Well, how are things going?”

“Excellently: I have taken lodgings, to tell the truth not at all worthy of Your Excellency, with the wife of one of my friends, who is a very pretty woman and, better still, on the best of terms with one of the heads of the police. Tomorrow I shall go to declare how our passports came to be stolen; my declaration will be taken in good part; but I shall pay the carriage of the letter which the police will write to Casalmaggiore, to find out whether there exists in that comune a certain San Micheli, Lodovico, who has a brother, named Fabrizio, in service with the Signora Duchessa Sanseverina at Parma. All is settled, siamo a cavallo.” (An Italian proverb meaning: “We are saved.”)

Fabrizio had suddenly assumed a most serious air: he begged Lodovico to wait a moment, almost ran back into the church, and when barely past the door flung himself down on his knees; he humbly kissed the stone slabs of the floor. “It is a miracle, Lord,” he cried with tears in his eyes: “when Thou sawest my soul disposed to return to the path of duty, Thou hast saved me. Great God! It is possible that one day I may be killed in some quarrel; in the hour of my death remember the state in which my soul is now.” It was with transports of the keenest joy that Fabrizio recited afresh the Seven Penitential Psalms. Before leaving the building he went up to an old woman who was seated before a great Madonna and by the side of an iron triangle rising vertically from a stand of the same metal. The sides of this triangle bristled with a large number of spikes intended to support the little candles which the piety of the faithful keeps burning before the famous Madonna of Cimabue. Seven candles only were lighted when Fabrizio approached the stand; he registered this fact in his memory, with the intention of meditating upon it later on when he had more leisure.

“What do the candles cost?” he asked the woman.

“Two bajocchi each.”

As a matter of fact they were scarcely thicker than quills and were not a foot in length.

“How many candles can still go on your triangle?”

“Sixty-three, since there are seven alight.”

“Ah!” thought Fabrizio, “sixty-three and seven make seventy; that also is to be borne in mind.” He paid for the candles, placed the first seven in position himself, and lighted them, then fell on his knees to make his oblation, and said to the old woman as he rose:

“It is for grace received.

“I am dying of hunger,” he said to Lodovico as he joined him outside.

“Don’t let us go to an osteria, let us go to our lodgings; the woman of the house will go out and buy you everything you want for your meal; she will rob you of a score of soldi, and will be all the more attached to the newcomer in consequence.”

“All this means simply that I shall have to go on dying of hunger for a good hour longer,” said Fabrizio, laughing with the serenity of a child: and he entered an osteria close to San Petronio. To his extreme surprise, he saw at a table near the one at which he had taken his seat, Peppe, his aunt’s first footman, the same who on a former occasion had come to meet him at Geneva. Fabrizio made a sign to him to say nothing; then, having made a hasty meal, a smile of happiness hovering over his lips, he rose; Peppe followed him, and, for the third time, our hero entered the church of San Petronio. Out of discretion, Lodovico remained outside, strolling in the piazza.

“Oh, Lord, Monsignore! How are your wounds? The Signora Duchessa is terribly upset: for a whole day she thought you were dead, and had been left lying on some island in the Po; I must go and send off a messenger to her this very instant. I have been looking for you for the last six days; I spent three at Ferrara, searching all the inns.”

“Have you a passport for me?”

“I have three different ones: one with Your Excellency’s