The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

Author:Stendhal
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780141927282
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Two hours later, poor Fabrizio, wearing handcuffs and attached by a long chain to the actual sediola into which he had been made to climb, left for the citadel in Parma, escorted by eight policemen. The latter had had orders to take with them all the policemen stationed in the villages through which the cortège was to pass. The podestà himself followed this important prisoner. At around seven in the evening, the sediola, escorted by all the street urchins of Parma and by thirty policemen, crossed the beautiful esplanade, passed in front of the small palazzo where Fausta had been living a few months earlier, and finally presented itself at the gateway to the citadel at the very moment when General Fabio Conti and his daughter were about to emerge. The governor's carriage stopped before reaching the drawbridge in order to allow the sediola to which Fabrizio was attached to enter. The general at once shouted for the gates of the citadel to be closed, and hurried down to the office in the gateway to try to get some idea of what all this was about. He was no little surprised when he recognized the prisoner, who had become very stiff, after being chained to his sediola throughout so long a journey. Four policemen had lifted him out and were carrying him to the gaolers' office. So, the governor told himself with great self-satisfaction, I have in my power the famous Fabrizio del Dongo, with whom Parma's high society seems to have sworn to concern itself exclusively for close on a year now!

The general had met him a score of times at court, at the duchess's and elsewhere. But he was careful not to let it be seen that he knew him. He would have feared putting himself at risk.

‘Draw up a detailed report of the handing over of the prisoner by the worthy podestà of Castelnovo,’ he cried to the prison clerk.

Barbone1 the clerk, a fearsome figure thanks to the size of his beard and his warlike appearance, adopted an even more self-important expression than usual, for all the world like a German gaoler. Believing he knew that it was largely the Duchess Sanseverina who had prevented his master, the governor, from becoming minister of war, he was more than ordinarily insolent towards the prisoner. He addressed him as ‘Voi’, which in Italy is the way one addresses servants.

‘I am a prelate of the Holy Roman Church,’ Fabrizio told him firmly, ‘and vicar-general of this diocese. My birth alone gives me a right to consideration.’

‘I know nothing about that!’ replied the clerk impertinently. ‘Prove your assertions by showing the letters patent that give you the right to those highly respectable titles.’ Fabrizio had no letters patent and did not answer. General Fabio Conti, standing next to his clerk, watched him writing without looking up at the prisoner, so as not to be obliged to say that he really was Fabrizio del Dongo.

All of a sudden, Clelia Conti, who was waiting in the carriage, heard a fearful uproar in the guardroom.

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