The Charterhouse of Parma

Rassi attempts to investigate the Prince’s poisoning, but Gina, who manipulates the court against Rassi and endears herself to the young Prince, little fears her arrest. She stages theater performances in which she facilitates the young Prince’s participation as a boon to his confidence and advises him on the case of “his father’s alleged murderers.” Ferrante, whose involvement in the murder Rassi had already determined, writes to Gina of his planned departure for America as a lover of republican, anti-monarchic revolution—which he characterizes as “the one rival you have in my heart” (500). It is not from anti-tyrannical sentiments that Gina advises the Prince to avoid executions but rather to avoid the gallows herself. He considers this advice, in the company of his mother the dowager Princess, who together constitute with Gina “three actors in this tedious scene” of a monarch’s long struggle to relinquish retributive power (504). Gina eventually convinces him to destroy Rassi’s investigations by reading a fable of La Fontaine’s “The Gardener and his Lord,” in which a gardener’s plot is ruined by his lord’s attempt to save it. She also invokes Rassi’s low birth, which assures the Prince of her respect for nobility above intelligence. As the Prince decides, Gina thinks to herself, “[H]e really has a stupid face” (509). Yet, money more than nobility motivates the Prince’s resistance as he bemoans his lost investment.

When the Prince agrees to destroy the evidence, Gina pilfers a handful of depositions. Mosca uses these as he schemes to secure a trial for Fabrizio that will clear his name. The details of this scheme are intricate and at times absurd. All the intrigues are nevertheless undone by Fabrizio’s willful return to the Farnese Tower, where he is in even greater danger of poisoning than before. Fabrizio and Clélia lock eyes across their windows before Clélia once more recalls her vow. When Conti’s brother resigns as prison chaplain on suspicion of poisoning Fabrizio, Clélia rushes to stop Fabrizio from eating his meal. Fabrizio takes advantage of Clélia’s anxiety by falsely claiming to have eaten, admitting to the lie only after a sexual encounter. Clélia is indignant but joyous that Fabrizio is not poisoned and, before she can respond, an aide-de-camp sent by Gina arrives to release Fabrizio on the orders of the Prince.

The Prince issues to Gina an ultimatum whereby she “gives herself to his disposal” for sex in return for Fabrizio’s safety (529). She agrees, adding into the bargain Fabrizio’s promotion to Archbishop. The Prince basks in his uncharacteristic boldness with Gina, by means of which “he achieved some character.” He dismisses Rassi but exiles Conti, whom Gina, despite her claim no longer to love Fabrizio, wants to avoid disgracing until Clélia’s marriage (533). Gina hopes that she can avoid fulfilling her promise of sexual favors to the Prince by making herself indispensable to him.

After his release, Fabrizio is tried, acquitted, and quickly promoted, but he remains miserable. During Fabrizio’s initial imprisonment, Mosca commissioned a translation of his family’s genealogy from Latin into Italian. Its completion, along with a portrait, fail to affect Fabrizio. The del Dongo genealogy is affixed with Fabrizio’s portrait and becomes a best-seller in Parma. Archbishop Landriani vents his jealousy, prompting Fabrizio to think, “That is what these common people are like […] even when they have some intelligence!” (546). Landriani changes his tack to profit from Fabrizio’s renown, but Fabrizio remains “perfectly indifferent […] to the things of this world.” Nearly the only character who is no longer jealous of Fabrizio, Mosca sees Fabrizio’s success in “that frayed little black soutane” (548).

Clélia is sent to her aunt’s when her father is exiled. Fabrizio rents a room across the street and the pair espy one another through their windows, but Clélia hastens her marriage when she learns that her father may return to Parma as a result. Before the wedding, Fabrizio steals into the aunt’s house to see Clélia, who rebuffs him. He retreats to a monastery.

Fabrizio is compelled to appear in court for the Prince’s birthday, where he suppresses an impulse, attributed to a 16th-century ancestor, to stab the Marchese Crescenzi when he enters with Clélia. Fabrizio nevertheless succumbs to melancholy, which Clélia notices with alarm. Clélia’s husband encourages her not to debase herself in court and speaks of their superior position in society as members of the middle-class, which stems from their invulnerability to a republican uprising. Fabrizio whispers to Clélia lines from a Petrarch sonnet: “Happiest was I when all believed me sad.” Clélia murmurs to herself another line—“No, never shall you see a change in me”—but responds with a plea to forget the past (556). The encounter nevertheless inspires Fabrizio to return to the city just as Gina and Mosca decide to take a leave of absence from court.

Subverting the proprieties of his own court, the Prince visits Gina at her palazzo to demand the fulfillment of his promise. Gina offers instead her devotion as an advisor, to which the Prince responds with a marriage proposal and the offer to become Prime Minister: “Well then […] rule both me and my kingdom.” Gina refuses, thinking of her freedom with Mosca as compared to the Prince, who “would have ruled her, more or less” (560). She performs her rejection as delicately as ever, “little by little [bringing] the negotiations to her actual terms” (561). Her basic tactic remains threatening to leave the Prince’s court as its shining source of life. This time the tactic fails, and Gina concedes to receive the Prince at night. An inwardly disgraced Gina departs Parma forever for Naples after marrying Mosca, who receives a large pension and commendation from the Prince.

Still in Parma, Fabrizio dutifully keeps Mosca apprised of intrigues at Court, which had returned to the power of his enemies in Rassi and Conti. Fabrizio also pursues Clélia, who evades him for more than a year. His mournfulness continues to contribute to his pious image, which gains him enough favor to make him vulnerable. Gina advises that he begin preaching in order to speak of his faults and mollify those growing envious. Fabrizio agrees with the hope that he may as well be useful to Gina and Mosca, his benefactors, and begins preaching with “unparalleled success.” He nourishes the hope that Clélia might appear with the crowds flocking to his pulpit, while his preaching gives outlet to his ever-active imagination. His sermons are improvised with “impassioned inspiration,” but he writes a tender prayer in the event that Clélia appears. Impatient with her absence, Fabrizio attends an opera when Clélia is present and arranges a sermon for the same day, so that she might be compelled to attend in the future. This sermon “preaches on the pity a generous soul ought to have for someone in misfortune, even when he is guilty,” but Clélia is not in attendance, even as Fabrizio sends the public into raptures; they call for a statute of him to be built (569). A merchant’s daughter promised to Rassi’s son falls in love with him and commissions his portrait in simple clerical garb.

The narrator interrupts to describe membership in that Court as depending on mere protocols, including never reading Voltaire or Rousseau, indulging the Sovereign, and never missing a single day’s Mass. Such are the requirements for political power, emblematized in part by a new character, Gonzo (“fool”) who is a frequent attendee to the Crescenzi salon and, like Rassi, relishes those who demean him. Gonzo notices a change in Clélia whenever the merchant’s daughter is mentioned and tests his observations with a mention of Fabrizio’s new portrait. When Clélia withdraws, others assume she is angry on behalf of her father. Gonzo relishes the effects of his gossip, “exquisitely postponing all mention of the longed-for word,” and eventually shares with Clélia everything he has heard (580).

The gossip about the daughter’s infatuation impels Clélia to attend a sermon after more than a year of avoiding Fabrizio, while Gonzo considers the affair a profitable act: “…the seats would be worth two francs and cheap at the price!” (582). Clélia rests her decision on whether the next woman who enters her salon, Raversi, plans to see Fabrizio preach. Raversi’s enthusiasm for her long-hated rival’s nephew is unlikely, but she is moved by the fervor of his sublime speeches. Taking the response as an omen, Clélia attends a service where she sits, not without some embarrassment, in gilded armchair in the front row. Upon seeing Clélia, Fabrizio turns to his prepared prayer, which induces the whole crowd, Gonzo included, to cry. She sends him a note to arrange a meeting in her palazzo’s orange grove, where she agrees to meet only in the darkness so as not to break her vow. Fabrizio promises in return never to preach again: “I only preached in the hope of seeing you” (587).

Three years pass. Mosca returns to Parma as Prime Minister; Clélia gives birth to Fabrizio’s son, Sandrino; Fabrizio is made Archbishop. Fabrizio bemoans this condition not to look at Clélia and his separation from his son. Clélia agrees to allow Fabrizio to abduct Sandrino by feigning his death. Kept in bed, the child actually falls ill, so that Fabrizio appeals to Mosca to arrange for the absence of the Marchese. The child is stolen away and a false funeral staged, but Sandrino dies after several months living in secret, which Clélia takes as her own just punishment and subsequently dies. Fabrizio divides his fortune and finally enters the novel’s eponymous monastery, the Charterhouse of Parma. Gina does not return to Parma and lives with Mosca in a nearby village, where she holds court and where Fabrizio frequently visits until he dies, one year after he enters the monastery. Gina’s death follows.