"Serene Highness," Fabrizio replied without a moment's hesitation, "I used to admire, when they passed me in the street, the excellent bearing of the troops of the various regiments of His Majesty the King; the better classes are respectful towards their masters, as they ought to be; but I must confess that, all my life, I have never allowed the lower orders to speak to me about anything but the work for which I am paying them."
"Plague!" said the Prince, "what a slyboots!
This is a well-trained bird, I recognise the Sanseverina touch."
Becoming interested, the Prince employed great skill in leading Fabrizio on to discuss this scabrous topic.
The young man, animated by the danger he was in, was so fortunate as to hit upon some admirable rejoinders:
"It is almost insolence to boast of one's love for one's King," he said; "it is blind obedience that one owes to him."
At the sight of so much prudence the Prince almost lost his temper:
"Here, it seems, is a man of parts come among us from Naples, and I don't like that breed; a man of parts may follow the highest principles and even be quite sincere; all the same on one side or the other he is always first cousin to Voltaire and Rousseau."
This Prince felt himself almost defied by such correctness of manner and such unassailable rejoinders coming from a youth fresh from college; what he had expected never occurred; in an instant he assumed a tone of good-fellowship and, reverting in a few words to the basic principles of society and government, repeated, adapting them to the matter in hand, certain phrases of Fenelon which he had been made to learn by heart in his boyhood for use in public audiences.
"These principles surprise you, young man," he said to Fabrizio (he had called him Monsignore at the beginning of the audience, and intended to give him his Monsignore again in dismissing him, but in the course of the conversation he felt it to be more adroit, better suited to moving turns of speech, to address him in an informal and friendly style). "These principles surprise you, young man.
I admit that they bear little resemblance to the bread and butter absolutism" (this was the expression in use) "which you can read every day in my official newspaper… .
But, great heavens, what is the good of my quoting that to you?
Those writers in my newspaper must be quite unknown to you."
"I beg Your Serene Highness's pardon; not only do I read the Parma newspaper, which seems to me to be very well written, but I hold, moreover, with it, that everything that has been done since the death of Louis XIV, in 1715, has been at once criminal and foolish.
Man's chief interest in life is his own salvation, there can be no two ways of looking at it, and that is a happiness that lasts for eternity.
The words Liberty, Justice, the Good of the Greatest Number, are infamous and criminal: they form in people's minds the habits of discussion and want of confidence.
A Chamber of Deputies votes no confidence in what these people call the Ministry.
This fatal habit of want of confidence once contracted, human weakness applies it to everything, man loses confidence in the Bible, the Orders of the Church, Tradition and everything else; from that moment he is lost.
Even upon the assumption—which is abominably false, and criminal even to suggest—that this want of confidence in the authority of the Princes by God established were to secure one's happiness during the twenty or thirty years of life which any of us may expect to enjoy, what is half a century, or a whole century even, compared with an eternity of torment?" And so on.
One could see, from the way in which Fabrizio spoke, that he was seeking to arrange his ideas so that they should be grasped as quickly as possible by his listener; it was clear that he was not simply repeating a lesson.
Presently the Prince lost interest in his contest with this young man whose simple and serious manner had begun to irritate him.
"Good-.bye, Monsignore," he said to him abruptly, "I can see that they provide an excellent education at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Naples, and it is quite simple when these good precepts fall upon so distinguished a mind, one secures brilliant results.
Good-bye."
And he turned his back on him.
"I have quite failed to please this animal," thought Fabrizio.
"And now, it remains to be seen," said the Prince as soon as he was once more alone, "whether this fine young man is capable of passion for anything; in that case, he would be complete… .
Could anyone repeat with more spirit the lessons he has learned from his aunt?
I felt I could hear her speaking; should we have a revolution here, it would be she that would edit the Monitore, as the Sanfelice did at Naples!
But the Sanfelice, in spite of her twenty-five summers and her beauty, got a bit of a hanging all the same!
A warning to women with brains."
In supposing Fabrizio to be his aunt's pupil, the Prince was mistaken: people with brains who are born on the throne or at the foot of it soon lose all fineness of touch; they proscribe, in their immediate circle, freedom of conversation which seems to them coarseness; they refuse to look at anything but masks and pretend to judge the beauty of complexions; the amusing part of it is that they imagine their touch to be of the finest.
In this case, for instance, Fabrizio believed practically everything that we have heard him say; it is true that he did not think twice in a month of these great principles.
He had keen appetites, he had brains, but he had faith.
The desire for liberty, the fashion and cult of the greatest good of the greatest number, after which the nineteenth century has run mad, were nothing in his eyes but a heresy which, like other heresies, would pass away, though not until it had destroyed many souls, as the plague while it reigns unchecked in a country destroys many bodies.
And in spite of all this Fabrizio read the French newspapers with keen enjoyment, even taking rash steps to procure them.
Fabrizio having returned quite flustered from his audience at the Palace, and having told his aunt of the various attacks launched on him by the Prince:
"You ought," she told him, "to go at once to see Father Landriani, our excellent Archbishop; go there on foot; climb the staircase quietly, make as little noise as possible in the ante-rooms; if you are kept waiting, so much the better, a thousand times better!
In a word, be apostolic!"
"I understand," said Fabrizio, "our man is a Tartuffe."
"Not the least bit in the world, he is virtue incarnate."
"Even after the way he behaved," said Fabrizio in some bewilderment, "when Conte Palanza was executed?"
"Yes, my friend, after the way he behaved: the father of our Archbishop was a clerk in the Ministry of Finance, a man of humble position, and that explains everything.
Monsignor Landriani is a man of keen, extensive and deep intelligence; he is sincere, he loves virtue; I am convinced that if an Emperor Decius were to reappear in the world he would undergo martyrdom like Polyeuctes in the opera they played last week.
So much for the good side of the medal, now for the reverse: as soon as he enters the Sovereign's, or even the Prime Minister's presence, he is dazzled by the sight of such greatness, he becomes confused, he begins to blush; it is physically impossible for him to say no.
This accounts for the things he has done, things which have won him that cruel reputation throughout Italy; but what is not generally known is that, when public opinion had succeeded in enlightening him as to the trial of Conte Palanza, he set himself the penance of living upon bread and water for thirteen weeks, the same number of weeks as there are letters in the name Davide Palanza.
We have at this court a rascal of infinite cleverness named Rossi, a Chief Justice or Fiscal General, who at the time of Conte Palanza's death cast a spell over Father Landriani.
During his thirteen weeks' penance, Conte Mosca, from pity and also a little out of malice, used to ask him to dinner once and even twice a week: the good Archbishop, in deference to his host, ate like everyone else; he would have thought it rebellious and Jacobinical to make a public display of his penance for an action that had the Sovereign's approval.
But we knew that, for each dinner at which his duty as a loyal subject had obliged him to eat like everyone else, he set himself a penance of two days more of bread and water.
"Monsignor Landriani, a man of superior intellect, a scholar of the first order, has only one weakness: he likes to be loved: therefore, grow affectionate as you look at him, and, on your third visit, shew your love for him outright.
That, added to your birth, will make him adore you at once.