The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal Read Free Book Online

without disturbing a single one, and respectfully spaded the soil around the beloved tree. And then and there, filled with new hopes, I crossed the mountain to Menaggio: I would need a passport in order to enter Switzerland. Time had flown, it was already one in the morning when I found myself at Vasi’s door. At my first words he exclaimed, ‘You are going to join Napoleon!’ and flung himself into my arms. The others, too, embraced me passionately. ‘Why am I a married man?’ one of them asked.”
    Signora Pietranera had grown pensive; she regarded it as her duty to raise certain objections. If Fabrizio had had any experience of the world at all, he would have realized that the Countess herself did not believe in the good reasons she hastened to offer him. But though lacking such experience, he had his resolve; he did not even deign to listen to such objections. The Countess was soon reduced to making him promise that at least he would inform his mother of his plans.
    “She will tell my sisters, and these women will betray me in spite of themselves!” cried Fabrizio, with a kind of heroic arrogance.
    “Speak more respectfully,” said the Countess, smiling through her tears, “of the sex which will make your fortune; for you will always displease the men—you have too much spirit for prosaic souls.”
    The Marchesa dissolved into tears upon learning of her son’s strange plan; she was quite indifferent to such heroism and did everythingshe could to keep him from leaving. When she was convinced that nothing in the world but prison walls could keep him beside her, she gave him what little money she possessed, and then remembered that the day before the Marchese had entrusted her with eight or ten little diamonds, worth perhaps ten thousand francs, to take to Milan to be set. Fabrizio’s sisters came into their mother’s room while the Countess was sewing these diamonds into our hero’s overcoat; he restored their scanty napoleons to these poor women. His sisters were so excited by his plan and embraced him so noisily that he snatched up the few diamonds still to be concealed and tried to leave then and there.
    “You will betray me without even meaning to,” he told them. “Since I am now so rich, there is no need for me to pack any clothes. I can buy them anywhere.” He embraced these persons who were so dear to him, and left immediately, without even returning to his own room. He walked so fast, constantly fearing to be pursued by men on horseback, that he reached Lugano that very evening. Thank Heaven he was in a Swiss town, and no longer in danger of being attacked on a lonely road by officers in his father’s pay. To the latter he wrote a noble letter from Lugano, a boyish weakness which added fuel to the Marchese’s fury. Fabrizio took the post through the Saint-Gothard Pass, he traveled fast, and entered France through Pontarlier. The Emperor was in Paris. Here Fabrizio’s misfortunes began; he had left with the firm intention of speaking to the Emperor; it had never occurred to him that this might be a difficult enterprise. In Milan, he had seen Prince Eugène ten times a day and could have addressed him on any occasion. In Paris, he went every morning to the courtyard of the Tuileries to watch Napoléon review his troops; but he could never approach the Emperor. Our hero supposed all Frenchmen were as deeply moved as himself by the extreme danger which threatened their country. At the hotel dining-table, he made no secret of his intentions and his devotion; the young men he met there were remarkably kind and even more enthusiastic than himself; in a few days they succeeded in relieving him of all the money he possessed. Fortunately, out of sheer modesty, he had not mentioned the diamonds his mother had givenhim. When he realized, one morning after a night’s orgy, that he had certainly been robbed, he purchased two fine horses, hired one of the horse-dealer’s grooms as his servant, and in his