The World's Greatest Books - Volume 8 Part 14

To Oswald's a.s.sured knowledge of his father's wishes, and his fear that Corinne had been untrue to him, had been added a third consideration, Lady Edgarmond's health was rapidly declining, and when she died Lucy would be unprotected in the world. Was it not his duty to protect her?

He resolved to undertake the duty, if he could only be free from his promise to Corinne.

When his freedom came, with the mysterious return of the ring, all his doubts were removed. Soon afterwards he married Lucy, and after a short interval--during which he felt intense anxiety as to whether he had not wronged Corinne--he went with his regiment to the West Indies.

Ere she had left Scotland, Corinne had heard the announcement of the proposed marriage. She retired to Florence, and dwelt there in unending misery. Her poetic faculty, her love of the arts, could not console her, for they were utterly subjugated by her despair. Her whole soul had been given to her love for Oswald. And when he had forsaken her, her life had been broken by the blow.

It was four years ere Oswald returned to England, and soon afterwards he and Lucy were summoned to the deathbed of Lady Edgarmond. He now had a dangerous illness; in his delirium he cried for the southern sun. Lucy heard him, and remembered Corinne. Oswald had striven to forget his former pa.s.sion, but could not help at times contrasting Corinne's warmth of feeling with Lucy's coldness. Lucy had been taught by her mother that it was immodest to avow affection even for a husband. She loved Oswald, but her pride concealed her love.

Oswald was ordered to Italy by his physicians, and his wife and child accompanied him. At Milan the earth was snow-covered; beyond there, the rivers were in flood, and the land was covered by cold, damp fog.

"Where is your lovely Italy?" asked Lucy.

"I know not where or when I shall regain her," sadly answered Oswald. As he approached Florence, where he had heard that Corinne was dwelling, his heart became terribly agitated. He had learnt, through his old friend d'Erfeuil, that Corinne had been faithful to him, that she had followed him to England, and sought to see him, that he and not she was the betrayer.

On arriving at Florence, Oswald met Prince Castel Forte, whose faithful, unrewarded homage to Corinne was still unchanged. Corinne, the Prince told him, was ill and growing weaker every day. Oswald's desertion, he said plainly, had mortally wounded her.

Oswald, dismally repentant, handed Castel Forte a letter to Corinne in which he begged permission to see her. In answer she declined the permission, but asked to see his wife and child.

The little girl was taken to her; Lucy had resolved not to go, but was struck with fear lest the child's affection should be won away from her.

She went at length, determined to reproach Corinne, but all her anger vanished at the sight of the wasted woman on the sickbed. The sisters embraced in tears.

Castel Forte had told Corinne of the reserve and coldness that separated Lucy from her husband. Her last wish was to reconcile them, and thus aid by means of another, the happiness of the man she loved.

"Pride not yourself in your perfections, dear sister," she said; "let your charm consist in seeming to forget them; be Corinne and Lucy in one; let not grace be injured by self-respect."

Lucy bore her words in mind; the barriers between herself and her husband were gradually removed, and Oswald guessed who was removing them.

At last the end came. Corinne lay on a sofa, where she could gaze upon the sky. Castel Forte held her dying hand. Lucy entered; behind her came Oswald. He fell at her feet. She would have spoken, but her voice failed. She looked up--the moon was covered by just such a cloud as they had seen at Naples. Corinne pointed to it--one sigh--and her hand sank powerless in death.

STENDHAL (HENRI BEYLE)

The Chartreuse of Parma

Stendhal is the best-known pseudonym (for there were others) of the refined, somewhat eccentric, and still distinguished French author whose real name was C. Marie Henri Beyle. Born at Gren.o.ble on January 23, 1783, he found his way as a youth to Milan, and fought with Bonaparte at Marengo. Afterwards he followed various occupations at Paris and Ma.r.s.eilles; went through the Russian campaign of 1812; and returned to Italy, where he began to establish a reputation as a critic of music and of painting. "La Chartreuse de Parme," his most successful work of fiction, was written in the winter of 1830. Like his other novels, it is discursive and formless; but is considered remarkable alike for its keenness of a.n.a.lysis and its exposition of the acid, materialistic philosophy of its author. A friend of that other eclectic, Merimee, Stendhal was not much thought of in his own time until the profound praises of Balzac drew all eyes upon him; and in much more recent times interest in the best of his writings has revived on account of his keen and impartial a.n.a.lysis of whatever subject he touched upon. Beyle died on March 22, 1842.

_I. Fabrice del Dongo_

"Three members of your family," said Count Mosca to the d.u.c.h.ess of Sanseverina, "have been Archbishops of Parma. Could a better career be open to your nephew Fabrice?"

The d.u.c.h.ess disliked the notion; and indeed Fabrice del Dongo seemed a person but little fitted for an ecclesiastical career. His ambitions were military; his hero was Napoleon. The great escapade of his life had been a secret journey into France to fight at Waterloo. His father, the Marquis del Dongo, was loyal to the Austrian masters of Lombardy; and during Fabrice's absence his elder brother Arcanio had laid an information against him as a conspirator against Austrian rule.

Consequently Fabrice, on his return, found himself exposed to the risk of ten years in an Austrian prison. By his own address and by the good offices of his aunt, the Countess Pietravera, Fabrice was able to escape from Milanese territory.

Immediately afterwards the Countess wedded the aged and wealthy Duke of Sanseverina, and transferred her beauty and unbounded social talents from Milan to the court of Prince Ranuce Ernest IV., absolute ruler of Parma. The Duke had his ambitions gratified by an appointment as Amba.s.sador to a distant country; the d.u.c.h.ess, left behind at Parma, was able to devote herself to the interests of Count Mosca, the Prince's chief Minister, and to counteract the intrigues of the celebrated Marchioness Raversi, head of the party that sought to overthrow him.

The welfare of her beloved nephew was the most cherished of all the d.u.c.h.ess's aims, and she succeeded in inspiring Count Mosca with an equal enthusiasm for the prosperity of that errant youth. But she hesitated over the project of making him an Archbishop.

"You must understand," explained the Count, "that I do not intend to make Fabrice an exemplary priest of the conventional kind. No, he will above all remain a great n.o.ble; he may continue to be absolutely ignorant if he so pleases, and will become a Bishop and an Archbishop just the same--provided, of course, that I succeed in retaining the Prince's confidence."

Ultimately the d.u.c.h.ess agreed, and undertook to persuade Fabrice to enter the Church. The persuasion was not easy; but at length Fabrice, having been convinced that the clerical yoke would bear but lightly upon him, consented to the step, and as a preliminary spent three years in a theological college at Naples.

When at the end of the three years Fabrice, now a Monsignore, returned to Parma, matters there were at a crisis; the Raversi party were gaining ground, and Count Mosca was in danger. Nor did the Prince's interview with the young cleric improve matters. Ranuce Ernest IV. had two ruling pa.s.sions--an ambition to become ruler of united Italy, and a fear of revolution. Count Mosca, the diplomatist, was the only man who could further his hopes in the one direction; his fears in the other were carefully kept alive by Ra.s.si, the fiscal-general--to such an extent that each night the Prince looked under his bed to see if by chance a liberal were lurking there. Ra.s.si was a man of low origin, who kept his place partly by submitting good-humouredly to the abuse and even the kicks of his master, and partly by rousing that master's alarms and afterwards allaying them by hanging or imprisoning liberals, with the ready a.s.sistance of a carefully corrupted judicial bench.

Towards this nervous Prince, Fabrice bore himself with an aristocratic a.s.surance, and a promptness and coolness in conversation that made a bad impression. His political notions were correct enough, according to the Prince's standard; but plainly, he was a man of spirit, and the Prince did not like men of spirit; they were all cousins-germane of Voltaire and Rousseau. He deemed Fabrice, in short, a potential if not an actual liberal, and therefore dangerous.

Nevertheless Count Mosca carried the day against his rivals--a triumph due less to his own efforts than to those of the d.u.c.h.ess, to whose charms as the court's chief ornament the Prince was far from insusceptible. The Count's success was Fabrice's; that youth found himself established as co-adjutor to the Archbishop of Parma, with a reversion to the Archbishopric on the demise of its worthy occupant.

On Fabrice's return from Naples, the d.u.c.h.ess had found him developed from a boy into a young man, and the handsomest young man in Italy; her affection for him became sisterly; she was nearly in love with him. She had no cause for jealousy, for Fabrice, although p.r.o.ne to flirtation, had no affairs of the heart. The word love, as yet, had no meaning for him.

_II.--Giletti_

One of our hero's flirtations had consequences with a very p.r.o.nounced bearing on his after career. During a surrept.i.tious visit to the theatre he became captivated with the actress, Marietta Valserra. Stolen visits of two minutes duration to Marietta's lodging on the fourth floor of an old house behind the theatre were an agreeable variation of the monotony of Fabrice's clerical duties, and of his visits among the most important and least entertaining families in Parma. But the trifling little intrigue came to the ears of Count Mosca, with the result that the travelling company to which Marietta belonged received its pa.s.sports and was requested to move on.

In the affair, moreover, Fabrice had a rival. Giletti was the low comedian of the company, and the ugliest member of it; he a.s.sumed proprietors.h.i.+p over Marietta, who, although she did not love him, was at any rate horribly afraid of him. Giletti several times threatened to kill Fabrice; whereby Fabrice was not disturbed.

Count Mosca was pa.s.sionately archaeological, and this taste he shared with Fabrice, who had cultivated the hobby at Naples. It so happened that the two were engaged in excavations near the bridge over the Po where the main road pa.s.ses into Austrian territory at Castel-Maggiore.

Early one morning Fabrice, after surveying the work that was going on in the trenches, strolled away with a gun, intent upon lark-shooting. A wounded bird dropped on the road; and as Fabrice followed it he encountered a battered old carriage driving towards the frontier. In it were Giletti, Marietta and an old woman who pa.s.sed as Marietta's mother.

Giletti leapt to the conclusion that Fabrice had come there, gun in hand, to insult him, and possibly to carry off Marietta. He leapt out of the carriage.

"Brigand!" he yelled, "we are only a league from the frontier--now I can finish you!"

Fabrice saw a pistol levelled at him at a distance of three feet; he knocked it aside with the b.u.t.t of his gun, and it went off harmlessly.

Giletti then clutched the gun; the two men wrestled for it, and it exploded close to Giletti's ear. Staggered for an instant, he quickly recovered himself; drawing from its sheath a "property" sword, he fell once more upon Fabrice.

"Look out! he will kill you," came an agitated whisper from Marietta; "take this!"

A sort of hunting knife was flung out of the carriage door. Fabrice picked it up, and was nearly stunned forthwith by a blow from the handle of the "property" sword. Happily Giletti was too near to use his sword-point. Pulling himself together, Fabrice gave his enemy a gash on the thigh. Giletti, swearing furiously, injured Fabrice on the cheek.

Blood poured down our hero's face. The thought, "I am disfigured for life!" flashed through his mind. Enraged at the idea, he thrust the hunting knife at Giletti's breast with all his force. Giletti fell and lay motionless.

"He is dead!" said Fabrice to himself. Then, turning to the coach, he asked, "Have you a looking-gla.s.s?"

His eyes and teeth were undamaged; he was not permanently disfigured.

Hastily, then, he turned to thoughts of escape. Marietta gave him Giletti's pa.s.sport; obviously his first business was to get across the frontier. And yet the Austrian frontier was no safe one for him to cross. Were he recognised, he might expect ten years in an Imperial fortress. But this was the less immediate danger, and he determined to risk it.

With considerable trepidation he walked across the bridge, and presented Giletti's pa.s.sport to the Austrian gendarme.

The gendarme looked at it, and rose, "You must wait, monsieur; there is a difficulty," he said, and left the room. Fabrice was profoundly uncomfortable; he was nearly for bolting, when he heard the gendarme say to another, "I am done up with the heat; just go and put your visa on a pa.s.sport in there when you have finished your pipe; I'm going for some coffee."