The Charterhouse of Parma

Clélia forestalls betrothal to a rich courtier until her father threatens to send her to a convent. Although she reasons that Fabrizio’s attentions stem from boredom, she remains in Parma in order to be near him. Clélia’s suitor, the Marchese Crescenzi, sends an orchestra to serenade her, but while Fabrizio enjoys the music Clélia despairs over this public announcement of engagement. She ceases communications with Fabrizio until alerting him to a plot to poison him. Fabrizio takes advantage of Clélia’s anxiety to confess his love and advance their intimacy, which Clélia resists.

Mosca and Gina continue their efforts to outwit the Prince in his crusade to execute Fabrizio. Mosca understands that if Fabrizio dies, it will be rumored that his own jealousy was involved. After five months in prison, Fabrizio finally notices a light flashing in the distance like a code. He discerns a message from Gina, who shares her plan of escape. Fabrizio bemoans the prospect of leaving Clélia, who is alarmed and sends him a letter in which she regrets her part in risking his life. Fabrizio uses the opportunity to propose a meeting but rejects the prospect of a free life away from Clélia: “What would salon conversation be, compared to the words they were exchanging with their alphabets?” (404). Clélia cuts off communication and considers again retreating to a convent, feeling herself more vulnerable to Fabrizio than ever. A guard lets slip to Fabrizio word of Clélia’s engagement which prompts him to request another meeting. He is finally accepted. In a “historic speech,” Clélia openly bares her heart as well as her misgivings (412). Fabrizio, seeing that his love is requited, responds with rapturous words that are left to the reader’s imagination (412).

Back in court, Rassi offers insight into how the limits of the Prince’s power stem from tyranny in a dialogue with him: “[Y]ou crave blood, but at the same time you want to keep the esteem of reasonable Italians […] so you will recall me” (424). The need for the appearance of a just rule, however false, restrains the Prince. Nobility also stands in the way of his revenge, as Rassi reminds him that nobles can be put to death only on the charge of conspiracy, which the Prince refuses based on the fear that “[conspiracy] puts ideas into people’s heads” (425). They agree to poisoning, but Rassi betrays the Prince by informing Mosca. Gina conveys to Fabrizio the emergency signal, and the plan of escape is set in motion.

By means of a catapult, Gina sends a written message to Fabrizio detailing this elaborate plan whereby Fabrizio descends the tower with ropes. She assures him that the ropes had been tested by trustworthy men, including Ludovic, the coachman-cum-poet, and another poet, Ferrante Palla, whose death sentence Mosca had signed long ago. Ferrante includes a sonnet exhorting Fabrizio “not to let his spirit be corrupted and his body wasted” (423). Gina had met this poet in a nearby forest, where he lives in secrecy and where Gina strolled in the days before Fabrizio’s arrest. One day, she notices someone following her. Ferrante asks for money before confessing his long-harbored love for Gina and revealing his identity as “one of the greatest poets of the age” (430). He explains his destitute life stealing from passersby in terms of his poetry. Whereas other poets are “paid by the government or by the religion they sought to undermine,” Ferrante is determined “to waken [hearts] from that false and altogether material happiness afforded by Monarchies” (431). He is nevertheless attracted to Gina’s “fine clothes [and] white hands” (431). When Fabrizio is arrested, Ferrante offers to help: “it is my joy to die for the defeat of the tyrant, and a much greater joy to die for you [Gina].” Gina gives money to Ferrante’s family and tasks Ferrante with the Prince’s death by poison, which is to be carried out when Gina releases water from the reservoir of her palazzo. Gina feels a special bond with Ferrante: “There is the only man who has understood me” (439).

Three judges arrive at Fabrizio’s cell to share with him a letter from his mother about the death of his father. They threaten him by insinuating the danger of his mother’s comments about his “unjust punishment.” Clélia extracts from Fabrizio a promise to escape against his will and vows never to set eyes on him again after procuring the ropes needed for his escape. She sees this vow as requisite punishment for betraying her father. At a wedding, Clélia receives the ropes from Gina, who is not content to entrust their delivery to Clélia alone and devises another scheme. Slipping a dose of laudanum to Conti so that he falls ill and is carried back into prison by a rope-laden Ludovic, Gina causes Clélia to reaffirm her vow in her horror at her father’s near-poisoning. Clélia informs Fabrizio of her intent to part with him after signaling to him the moment he must escape.

Fabrizio receives the signal just as the threats to his life increase. He makes his descent in a story that is later told throughout Parma, where such details as Fabrizio scattering coins around his cell are embellished. “What seems incredible” in fact occurs: Fabrizio lands at the bottom of the tower from a cloud of fog and with a calm that he later explains as if he was “performing a ceremony.” Just before his final descent, Fabrizio, “like a hero of the age of chivalry,” thinks of Clélia and of his own transformation in prison (453). Unconscious from exhaustion but with only mild injuries, Fabrizio is carried to safety by Gina’s men. Mosca celebrates his participation: “Here I am, committing high treason!” (456)

The company makes their escape from Parma, armed with “every kind of passport” but compromised by Gina’s extravagant bribes. They reach Piedmont, where Gina realizes the escape depended on Clélia and troubles over Fabrizio’s melancholy. They spend their time in tense silence; Fabrizio’s “soul was elsewhere” (463). He writes a letter of apology to Conti and sends books to Conti’s brother in the hopes that Clélia would see notes scrawled in their pages. Clélia reads these notes with an “instinct of passion” which the narrator contrasts to “the sordid pecuniary interests and the insipid chill of the vulgar thoughts which fill our lives” (467). When her father falls ill, however, she recalls her vow.

Gina asks Ludovic to throw a lively feast for the servants of one of her estates in Parma, where news of Fabrizio’s escape reaches the Prince, and to open the reservoir at her palazzo in order to kill him: “Wine for the good people of Sacca and water for the bourgeoise of Parma!” (460). Such is the poetic statement of Gina’s revenge, repeated with glee by Ludovic, but Gina suffers a passing instance of regret: “I am repenting a resolution I have already made: then I am no longer a del Dongo!” (464). Back in Parma, Rassi coins the phrase which society opinion repeats: “the young rascal … ‘removed himself from the Prince’s clemency’” (469). In contrast, the larger populace is enthralled with Fabrizio’s courage, but when it is claimed that the Prince executed prison guards after the escape, some accuse Fabrizio of their death. Sympathy for Fabrizio is revived with a sonnet by Ferrante which imagines Fabrizio’s judgments on life as he slides down the rope.

Gina plans to return to Parma to hasten Clélia’s marriage and secures a posting with the Princess. She foresees danger for herself, once Ferrate carries out his orders to poison the Prince. When this happens, Gina justifies her conscience with the thought, “I have done this for [Fabrizio]” (479). She wonders how she could ever have found tedious the dream she had long nourished of their reunion, much like Fabrizio had found his paradise in his long-held fear of prison. In exile, they spend time floating on a lake but without the joy of times past. Gina looks upon her old life with envy, as if through the perspective of the many others who have envied her.

The narrator reports that the Prince seemed to have died from a chill caught while hunting, although some speculate poisoning (481). With the Prince dead, chaos erupts in Parma. A mob demands the death of Rassi, beats and hangs a jail clerk, and sets out to topple the Prince’s statue before Mosca orders about 60 men shot, reasoning that “without me, Parma would have become a republic […] with the poet Ferrante Palla as its dictator” (489). Mosca suggests that his cool reasoning may be mistaken for immorality, but “there would have been three days of bloodshed […] then two weeks of pillage until […] regiments [from abroad] put a stop to it” (491). Gina learns that Ferrante distributed the money she had given him to the crowd during the uprising in which he passionately participated. Mosca is falsely labeled a Liberal by his court enemies and quips that Gina is “the only member” of that party which he supposed leads.

Gina’s admiration if not love for Mosca is rekindled; she resolves to marry him and return to Parma. Yet while the new Prince commends Gina to her post in his mother’s court, he distances himself from Mosca, with whom he is angry for treating him like a child. Because Fabrizio’s sentencing remains a threat, Mosca proposes that they withdraw from the game, but Gina uses her new position with the Princess to exile Rassi and exonerate Fabrizio. She shocks the Princess with court realities: “[E]veryone here steals; and who would not steal in a country where the recognition of the greatest services last no more than a month?” (493). Having painted a grim picture from which she alone is exempted, Gina suggests that she will leave the Princess to fend for herself if she does not fulfill her requests. Fabrizio enters Parma in the disguise of a peasant.