"One must draw a distinction," said the Princess: "the daughter of a King of France, for instance, has no hope of ever succeeding to the Throne; but things are not like that in the House of Parma.
And that is why we Farnese must always keep up a certain dignity in externals; and I, a poor Princess such as you see me now, I cannot say that it is absolutely impossible that one day you may be my Prime Minister."
This idea, by its fantastic unexpectedness, gave the poor Conte a second momentary thrill of perfect gaiety.
On leaving the apartments of the Princess Isotta, who had blushed deeply on receiving the avowal of the Prime Minister's passion, he met one of the grooms from the Palace: the Prince had sent for him in hot haste.
"I am unwell," replied the Minister, delighted at being able to play a trick on his Prince.
"Oh! Oh! You drive me to extremes," he exclaimed in a fury, "and then you expect me to serve you; but learn this, my Prince, that to have received power from Providence is no longer enough in these times: it requires great brains and a strong character to succeed in being a despot."
After dismissing the groom from the Palace, highly scandalised by the perfect health of this invalid, the Conte amused himself by going to see the two men at court who had the greatest influence over General Fabio Conti.
The one thing that made the Minister shudder and robbed him of all his courage was that the governor of the citadel was accused of having once before made away with a captain, his personal enemy, by means of the acquetta di Perugia.
The Conte knew that during the last week the Duchessa had been squandering vast sums with a view to establishing communications with the citadel; but, in his opinion, there was small hope of success; all eyes were still too wide open.
We shall not relate to the reader all the attempts at corruption made by this unhappy woman: she was in despair, and agents of every sort, all perfectly devoted, were supporting her.
But there is perhaps only one kind of business which is done to perfection in small despotic courts, namely the custody of political prisoners.
The Duchessa's gold had no other effect than to secure the dismissal from the citadel of nine or ten men of all ranks.
Chapter 5
Thus, with an entire devotion to the prisoner, the Duchessa and the Prime Minister had been able to do but very little for him.
The Prince was in a rage, the court as well as the public were piqued by Fabrizio, delighted to see him come to grief: he had been too fortunate.
In spite of the gold which she spent in handfuls, the Duchessa had not succeeded in advancing an inch in her siege of the citadel; not a day passed but the Marchesa Raversi or Cavaliere Riscara had some fresh report to communicate to General Fabio Conti. They were supporting his weakness.
As we have already said, on the day of his imprisonment, Fabrizio was taken first of all to the governor's palazzo. This was a neat little building erected in the eighteenth century from the plans of Vanvitelli, who placed it one hundred and eighty feet above the ground, on the platform of the huge round tower.
From the windows of this little palazzo, isolated on the back of the enormous tower like a camel's hump, Fabrizio could make out the country and the Alps to a great distance; he followed with his eye beneath the citadel the course of the Parma, a sort of torrent which, turning to the right four leagues from the town, empties its waters into the Po.
Beyond the left bank of this river, which formed so to speak a series of huge white patches in the midst of the green fields, his enraptured eye caught distinctly each of the summits of the immense wall with which the Alps enclose Italy to the north.
These summits, always covered in snow, even in the month of August which it then was, give one as it were a reminder of coolness in the midst of these scorching plains; the eye can follow them in the minutest detail, and yet they are more than thirty leagues from the citadel of Parma.
This expansive view from the governor's charming palazzo is broken at one corner towards the south by the Torre Farnese, in which a room was being hastily prepared for Fabrizio.
This second tower, as the reader may perhaps remember, was built on the platform of the great tower in honour of a Crown Prince who, unlike Hippolytus the son of Theseus, had by no means repelled the advances of a young stepmother.
The Princess died in a few hours; the Prince's son regained his liberty only seventeen years later, when he ascended the throne on the death of his father.
This Torre Farnese to which, after waiting for three quarters of an hour, Fabrizio was made to climb, of an extremely plain exterior, rises some fifty feet above the platform of the great tower, and is adorned with a number of lightning conductors.
The Prince who, in his displeasure with his wife, built this prison visible from all parts of the country, had the singular design of trying to persuade his subjects that it had been there for many years: that is why he gave it the name of Torre Farnese.
It was forbidden to speak of this construction, and from all parts of the town of Parma and the surrounding plains people could perfectly well see the masons laying each of the stones which compose this pentagonal edifice.
In order to prove that it was old, there was placed above the door two feet wide and four feet high which forms its entrance a magnificent bas-relief representing Alessandro Farnese, the famous general, forcing Henri IV to withdraw from Paris.
This Torre Farnese, standing in so conspicuous a position, consists of a hall on the ground floor, at least forty yards long, broad in proportion and filled with extremely squat pillars, for this disproportionately large room is not more than fifteen feet high.
It is used as the guard-room, and in the middle of it the staircase rises in a spiral round one of the pillars; it is a small staircase of iron, very light, barely two feet in width and wrought in filigree.
By this staircase, which shook beneath the weight of the gaolers who were escorting him, Fabrizio came to a set of vast rooms more than twenty feet high, forming a magnificent first floor.
They had originally been furnished with the greatest luxury for the young Prince who spent in them the seventeen best years of his life.
At one end of this apartment, the new prisoner was shewn a chapel of the greatest magnificence; the walls and ceiling were entirely covered in black marble; pillars, black also and of the noblest proportions, were placed in line along the black walls without touching them, and these walls were decorated with a number of skulls in white marble, of colossal proportions, elegantly carved and supported underneath by crossbones.
"There is an invention of the hatred that cannot kill," thought Fabrizio, "and what a devilish idea to let me see it."
An iron staircase of light filigree, similarly coiled about a pillar, gave access to the second floor of this prison, and it was in the rooms of this second floor, which were some fifteen feet in height, that for the last year General Fabio Conti had given proof of his genius.
First of all, under his direction, solid bars had been fixed in the windows of these rooms, originally occupied by the Prince's servants, and standing more than thirty feet above the stone slabs which paved the platform of the great round tower.
It was by a dark corridor, running along the middle of this building, that one approached these rooms, each of which had two windows; and in this very narrow corridor Fabrizio noticed three iron gates in succession, formed of enormous bars and rising to the roof.
It was the plans, sections and elevations of all these pretty inventions that, for two years past, had entitled the General to an audience of his master every week.
A conspirator placed in one of these rooms could not complain to public opinion that he was being treated in an inhuman fashion, and yet was unable to communicate with anyone in the world, or to make a movement without being heard.
The General had had placed in each room huge joists of oak in the form of trestles three feet high, and this was his paramount invention, which gave him a claim to the Ministry of Police.
On these trestles he had set up a cell of planks, extremely resonant, ten feet high, and touching the wall only at the side where the windows were. On the other three sides ran a little corridor four feet wide, between the original wall of the prison, which consisted of huge blocks of dressed stone, and the wooden partitions of the cell. These partitions, formed of four double planks of walnut, oak and pine, were solidly held together by iron bolts and by innumerable nails.
It was into one of these rooms, constructed a year earlier, and the masterpiece of General Fabio Conti's inventive talent, which had received the sounding title of Passive Obedience, that Fabrizio was taken.
He ran to the windows.
The view that one had from these barred windows was sublime: one little piece of the horizon alone was hidden, to the north-west, by the terraced roof of the governor's palazzo, which had only two floors; the ground floor was occupied by the offices of the staff; and from the first Fabrizio's eyes were attracted to one of the windows of the upper floor, in which were to be seen, in pretty cages, a great number of birds of all sorts.
Fabrizio amused himself in listening to their song and in watching them greet the last rays of the setting sun, while the gaolers busied themselves about him.
This aviary window was not more than five-and-twenty feet from one of his, and stood five or six feet lower down, so that his eyes fell on the birds.
There was a moon that evening, and at the moment of Fabrizio's entering his prison it was rising majestically on the horizon to the right, over the chain of the Alps, towards Treviso.
It was only half past eight, and, at the other extremity of the horizon, to the west, a brilliant orange-red sunset showed to perfection the outlines of Monviso and the other Alpine peaks which run inland from Nice towards Mont Cenis and Turin.
Without a thought of his misfortunes, Fabrizio was moved and enraptured by this sublime spectacle.
"So it is in this exquisite world that Clelia Conti dwells; with her pensive and serious nature, she must enjoy this view more than anyone; here it is like being alone in the mountains a hundred leagues from Parma."
It was not until he had spent more than two hours at the window, admiring this horizon which spoke to his soul, and often also letting his eyes rest on the governor's charming palazzo, that Fabrizio suddenly exclaimed: