The World's Greatest Books - Volume 8 Part 16

She saw the danger clearly. Fabrice was in the hands of Count Mosca's political opponents, among whom General Conti was still a leading spirit. They would not suffer him to escape this time. Fabrice would be poisoned.

Clelia, too, knew that this would be his fate. When she saw him once again at the old window, happily signalling to her, she was smitten with panic terror. Her alarm was realised when she learnt of a plot between Ra.s.si and her father to poison the prisoner.

On the second day of his confinement Fabrice was about to eat his dinner when Clelia, in desperate agitation, forced her way into his cell.

"Have you tasted it?" she cried, grasping his arm.

Fabrice guessed the state of affairs with delight. He seized her in his arms and kissed her.

"Help me to die," he said.

"Oh, my beloved," she answered, "let me die with you."

"Let me not spoil our happiness with a lie," said he as he embraced her.

"I have not yet tasted."

For an instant Clelia looked at him in anger; then she fell again into his arms.

At that instant there came a sound of men hurrying. There entered the Prince's aide-de-camp, with order to remove Fabrice from the citadel and to seize the poisoned food. The d.u.c.h.ess had heard of the plot, and had persuaded the Prince to take instant action.

Clelia, when her father was in danger of death on account of the plot, vowed before the Virgin Mary never again to look upon the face of Fabrice. Her father escaped with a sentence of banishment; and Clelia, to the profound satisfaction of the d.u.c.h.ess, was wedded to the Marquis Crescenzi. The d.u.c.h.ess was now a widow, Count Mosca a widower. Their long friendship, after Fabrice's triumphant acquittal, was cemented by marriage.

The loss of Clelia left Fabrice inconsolable. He shunned society; he lived a life of religious retirement, and gained a reputation for piety that even inspired the jealousy of his good friend the Archbishop.

At length Fabrice emerged from his solitude; he came forth as a preacher, and his success was unequalled. All Parma, gentle and simple, flocked to hear the famous devotee--slender, ill-clad, so handsome and yet so profoundly melancholy. And ere he began each sermon, Fabrice looked earnestly round his congregation to see if Clelia was there.

But Clelia, adhering to her vow, stayed away. It was not until she was told that a certain Anetta Marini was in love with the preacher, and that gossip a.s.serted that the preacher was smitten with Anetta Marini, that she changed her mind.

One evening, as Fabrice stood in the pulpit, he saw Clelia before him.

Her eyes were filled with tears; he looked so pale, so thin, so worn.

But never had he preached as he preached that night.

After the sermon he received a note asking him to be at a small garden door of the Crescenzi Palace at midnight on the next night. Eagerly he obeyed; when he reached the door, a voice called him enter. The darkness was intense; he could see nothing.

"I have asked you to come here," said the voice, "to say that I still love you. But I have vowed to the Virgin never to see your face; that is why I receive you in this darkness. And let me beg you--never preach again before Anetta Marini.

"My angel," replied the enraptured Fabrice, "I shall never preach again before anyone; it was only in the hope of seeing you that I preached at all."

During the following three years the two often met in darkness. But twice, by accident, Clelia again broke her vow by looking on Fabrice's face. Her conscience preyed upon her; she wore away and died.

A few days afterwards Fabrice resigned his reversion to the Archbishopric, and retired to the Chartreuse of Parma. He ended his days in the monastery only a year afterwards.

LAURENCE STERNE

Tristram Shandy

A more uncanonical book than the Rev. Laurence Sterne's "Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," has never been printed since the monk Rabelais gave to the world his celebrated masterpiece. "Shandy" made its first appearance in 1757 at York, whose inhabitants were greatly shocked, generally, at its audacious wit; and particularly at the caricature of a local physician. But the success of "Shandy"

was p.r.o.nounced: it spread to the southern counties and to London, where a second edition was published in 1760. "Parson Yorick," as he styles himself in the book, was continually invited to add to it, with the result that between 1761 and 1767 eight more numbers were added to the original slim volume. There are many imperfections in "Tristram Shandy,"

both from the standpoint of art and taste; yet withal it remains one of the great cla.s.sics in English literature, its many pa.s.sages of genuine humour and wit ensuring an immortality for the wayward genius of Laurence Sterne.

(Sterne, biography: See Vol. XIX.)

_I_

On the fifth day of November, 1718, was I, Tristram Shandy, gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours. I wish I had been born in the moon, or in any of the planets (except Jupiter or Saturn), because I never could bear cold weather; for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile dirty planet of ours, which of my conscience with reverence be it spoken I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest; not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great t.i.tle or to a great estate, or could anyhow contrive to be called up to public charges and employments of dignity and power; but that is not my case; and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it; for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made; for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew breath in it, to this--I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in skating against the wind in Flanders--I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune, and though I will not wrong her by saying she has ever made me feel the weight of any great and signal evil, yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious d.u.c.h.ess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small hero sustained.

_II_

"I wonder what's all that noise and running backwards and forwards for above stairs?" quoth my father, addressing himself after an hour and a half's silence to my Uncle Toby, who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoking his pipe all the time in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush breeches which he had got on.

"What can they be doing, brother?" quoth my father; "We can scarce hear ourselves talk."

"I think," replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb as he began his sentence; "I think," says he--but to enter rightly into my Uncle Toby's sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter just a little into his character.

_III_

The wound in my Uncle Toby's groin, which he received at the siege of Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

He was four years totally confined, partly to his bed and all of it to his room; and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffered unspeakable misery.

My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had taken a house, and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers, and as my father thought my Uncle Toby could nowhere be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house, he a.s.signed him the very best apartment in it. And what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or acquaintance to step into the house, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him upstairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his bedside.

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it--my uncle's visitors at least thought so, and they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject, and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.

_IV_

When my Uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it. The more my Uncle Toby pored over the map, the more he took a liking to it.

In the latter end of the third year my Uncle began to break in upon daily regularity of a clean shirt, and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it as not to ask him once in seven times dressing how it went on, when, lo!

all of a sudden--for the change was as quick as lightning--he began to sigh heavily for his recovery, complained to my father, grew impatient with the surgeon; and one morning, as he heard his foot coming upstairs, he shut up his books and thrust aside his instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of his cure, which he told him might surely have been accomplished at least by that time.

Desire of life and health is implanted in man's nature; the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-pa.s.sion to it. These my Uncle Toby had in common with his species. But nothing wrought with our family after the common way.

_V_