Their parting was a sad one; Robert set forth with Conte Pietranera, who followed the French in their retirement on Novi.
The young Contessa, to whom her brother refused to pay her marriage portion, followed the army, riding in a cart.
Then began that period of reaction and a return to the old ideas, which the Milanese call i tredici mesi (the thirteen months), because as it turned out their destiny willed that this return to stupidity should endure for thirteen months only, until Marengo.
Everyone who was old, bigoted, morose, reappeared at the head of affairs, and resumed the leadership of society; presently the people who had remained faithful to the sound doctrines published a report in the villages that Napoleon had been hanged by the Mamelukes in Egypt, as he so richly deserved.
Among these men who had retired to sulk on their estates and came back now athirst for vengeance, the Marchese del Dongo distinguished himself by his rabidity; the extravagance of his sentiments carried him naturally to the head of his party.
These gentlemen, quite worthy people when they were not in a state of panic, but who were always trembling, succeeded in getting round the Austrian General: a good enough man at heart, he let himself be persuaded that severity was the best policy, and ordered the arrest of one hundred and fifty patriots: quite the best man to be found in Italy at the time.
They were speedily deported to the Bocche di Cattaro, and, flung into subterranean caves, the moisture and above all the want of bread did prompt justice to each and all of these rascals.
The Marchese del Dongo had an exalted position, and, as he combined with a host of other fine qualities a sordid avarice, he would boast publicly that he never sent a scudo to his sister, the Contessa Pietranera: still madly in love, she refused to leave her husband, and was starving by his side in France.
The good Marchesa was in despair; finally she managed to abstract a few small diamonds from her jewel case, which her husband took from her every evening to stow away under his bed, in an iron coffer: the Marchesa had brought him a dowry of 800,000 francs, and received 80 francs monthly for her personal expenses.
During the thirteen months in which the French were absent from Milan, this most timid of women found various pretexts and never went out of mourning.
We must confess that, following the example of many grave authors, we have begun the history of our hero a year before his birth.
This essential personage is none other than Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, as the style is at Milan.
He had taken the trouble to be born just when the French were driven out, and found himself, by the accident of birth, the second son of that Marchese del Dongo who was so great a gentleman, and with whose fat, pasty face, false smile and unbounded hatred for the new ideas the reader is already acquainted.
The whole of the family fortune was already settled upon the elder son, Ascanio del Dongo, the worthy image of his father.
He was eight years old and Fabrizio two when all of a sudden that General Bonaparte, whom everyone of good family understood to have been hanged long ago, came down from the Mont Saint-Bernard. He entered Milan: that moment is still unique in history; imagine a whole populace madly in love.
A few days later, Napoleon won the battle of Marengo.
The rest needs no telling.
The frenzy of the Milanese reached its climax; but this time it was mingled with ideas of vengeance: these good people had been taught to hate.
Presently they saw arrive in their midst all that remained of the patriots deported to the Bocche di Cattaro; their return was celebrated with a national festa.
Their pale faces, their great startled eyes, their shrunken limbs were in strange contrast to the joy that broke out on every side.
Their arrival was the signal for departure for the families most deeply compromised.
The Marchese del Dongo was one of the first to flee to his castle of Grianta.
The heads of the great families were filled with hatred and fear; but their wives, their daughters, remembered the joys of the former French occupation, and thought with regret of Milan and those gay balls, which, immediately after Marengo, were organised afresh at the casa Tanzi.
A few days after the victory, the French General responsible for maintaining order in Lombardy discovered that all the farmers on the noblemen's estates, all the old wives in the villages, so far from still thinking of this astonishing victory at Marengo, which had altered the destinies of Italy and recaptured thirteen fortified positions in a single day, had their minds occupied only by a prophecy of San Giovila, the principal Patron Saint of Brescia.
According to this inspired utterance, the prosperity of France and of Napoleon was to cease just thirteen weeks after Marengo.
What does to some extent excuse the Marchese del Dongo and all the nobles sulking on their estates is that literally and without any affectation they believed in the prophecy.
Not one of these gentlemen had read as many as four volumes in his life; quite openly they were making their preparations to return to Milan at the end of the thirteen weeks; but time, as it went on, recorded fresh successes for the cause of France.
Returning to Paris, Napoleon, by wise decrees, saved the country from revolution at home as he had saved it from its foreign enemies at Marengo.
Then the Lombard nobles, in the safe shelter of their castles, discovered that at first they had misinterpreted the prophecy of the holy patron of Brescia; it was a question not of thirteen weeks, but of thirteen months.
The thirteen months went by, and the prosperity of France seemed to increase daily.
We pass lightly over ten years of progress and happiness, from 1800 to 1810.
Fabrizio spent the first part of this decade at the castle of Grianta, giving and receiving an abundance of fisticuffs among the little contadini of the village, and learning nothing, not even how to read.
Later on, he was sent to the Jesuit College at Milan.
The Marchese, his father, insisted on his being shewn the Latin tongue, not on any account in the works of those ancient writers who are always talking about Republics, but in a magnificent volume adorned with more than a hundred engravings, a masterpiece of seventeenth-century art; this was the Lathi genealogy of the Valserra, Marchesi del Dongo, published in 1650 by Fabrizio del Dongo, Archbishop of Parma.
The fortunes of the Valserra being pre-eminently military, the engravings represented any number of battles, and everywhere one saw some hero of the name dealing mighty blows with his sword.
This book greatly delighted the young Fabrizio.
His mother, who adored him, obtained permission, from time to time, to pay him a visit at Milan; but as her husband never offered her any money for these journeys, it was her sister-in-law, the charming Contessa Pietranera, who lent her what she required.
After the return of the French, the Contessa had become one of the most brilliant ladies at the court of Prince Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy.
When Fabrizio had made his First Communion, she obtained leave from the Marchese, still in voluntary exile, to invite him out, now and again, from his college.
She found him unusual, thoughtful, very serious, but a nice-looking boy and not at all out of place in the drawing-room of a lady of fashion; otherwise, as ignorant as one could wish, and barely able to write.
The Contessa, who carried her impulsive character into everything, promised her protection to the head of the establishment provided that her nephew Fabrizio made astounding progress and carried off a number of prizes at the end of the year.
So that he should be in a position to deserve them, she used to send for bun every Saturday evening, and often did not restore him to his masters until the following Wednesday or Thursday.
The Jesuits, although tenderly cherished by the Prince Viceroy, were expelled from Italy by the laws of the Kingdom, and the Superior of the College, an able man, was conscious of all that might be made out of his relations with a woman all-powerful at court.
He never thought of complaining of the absences of Fabrizio, who, more ignorant than ever, at the end of the year was awarded five first prizes.
This being so, the Contessa, escorted by her husband, now the General commanding one of the Divisions of the Guard, and by five or six of the most important personages at the viceregal court, came to attend the prize-giving at the Jesuit College.
The Superior was complimented by his chiefs.
The Contessa took her nephew with her to all those brilliant festivities which marked the too brief reign of the sociable Prince Eugene.
She had on her own authority created him an officer of hussars, and Fabrizio, now twelve years old, wore that uniform.
One day the Contessa, enchanted by his handsome figure, besought the Prince to give him a post as page, a request which implied that the del Dongo family was coming round.
Next day she had need of all her credit to secure the Viceroy's kind consent not to remember this request, which lacked only the consent of the prospective page's father, and this consent would have been emphatically refused.