THE CHARTREUSE OF PARMA

M Beyle (Stendhal)

THE CHARTREUSE
OF
PARMA

Translated from the French of
STENDHAL (Henri Beyle)

By
THE LADY MARY LOYD

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON & CO.

Copyright, 1901.
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Transcriber’s Note: This table of contents has been added for the convenience of the reader.

LIFE OF STENDHAL[v]
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION[vii]
CHAPTER I[1]
CHAPTER II[15]
CHAPTER III[36]
CHAPTER IV[53]
CHAPTER V[73]
CHAPTER VI[96]
CHAPTER VII[136]
CHAPTER VIII[155]
CHAPTER IX[171]
CHAPTER X[181]
CHAPTER XI[189]
CHAPTER XII[213]
CHAPTER XIII[227]
CHAPTER XIV[253]
CHAPTER XV[274]
CHAPTER XVI[291]
CHAPTER XVII[308]
CHAPTER XVIII[323]
CHAPTER XIX[343]
CHAPTER XX[360]
CHAPTER XXI[385]
CHAPTER XXII[406]
CHAPTER XXIII[424]
CHAPTER XXIV[446]
CHAPTER XXV[466]
CHAPTER XXVI[486]
CHAPTER XXVII[503]
CHAPTER XXVIII[518]

LIFE OF STENDHAL

Marie Henri Beyle, who called himself Stendhal, was born at Grenoble on the 23d of January, 1783. His father, Joseph Chérubin Beyle, was a lawyer and a member of the parliament of Dauphiné. His childhood and boyhood, excited by echoes of the Revolution, but repressed in the bosom of a royalist and conservative family, were turbulent and distressing; in later years Grenoble was to him “like the recollection of an abominable indigestion.” He escaped from it in 1799, and spent a short time in the War Office in Paris. In 1800 he went off to the wars, saw Italy for the first time, was present at the battle of Marengo, and fought his first duel at Milan. From 1801 to 1806 Beyle was in Paris and Grenoble, much occupied with affairs of the heart. In the latter year he entered Napoleon’s army, and remained in it until after the retreat from Moscow in 1814. He was made “intendant militaire,” and his zeal commended him to the Emperor. On one occasion, called upon to raise five million francs from a German state, Beyle produced seven millions. He seems to have been one of the few officers who kept their heads in the flood of disaster; during the retreat from Russia he was always clean-shaved and perfectly dressed. But the fatigues of 1814 shattered his health, and the ruin of Napoleon his hopes; he was obliged to withdraw to Como to recover his composure. He refused an administrative post in Paris under the new government, and settled definitely at Milan. His career of violent action had exhausted his spirits; he now adopted the mode of life of a dilettante. He gave himself up to music, books, and love. His first work, the “Letters Written from Vienna,” appeared in 1814; this essay, a musical criticism, was followed in 1817 by the “History of Italian Painting,” and “Rome, Naples, and Florence.” He became poor, and in 1821, being suspected of Italianism, was expelled from Milan by the Austrian police; he took refuge in Paris. Stendhal’s essay on “Love,” the earliest of his really remarkable books, was published in 1822, but attracted no attention whatever; in eleven years only seventeen copies of it were sold. His first novel, “Armance,” belongs to 1827. In 1830 he was appointed consul at Trieste, and while he was there the great novel, “Le Rouge et le Noir,” appeared in Paris without attracting any attention. Stendhal was so miserable at Trieste that he contrived to exchange his consulate for that of Civita Vecchia, which he held until he died. In spite of the complete and astonishing failures of each of his successive books, he continued to add to their number. He had but “one hundred readers” in all Europe, but these he continued to address. In 1838 he published a mystification, the supposed “Memoirs in France” of a commercial traveller. Stendhal did not taste literary success in any degree whatever until, in 1839, and at the age of fifty-six, he produced “La Chartreuse de Parme.” This novel gave him fame, but he did not long enjoy it. On the 23d of March, 1842, having reached his sixtieth year, he died in Paris, after a stroke of paralysis. He lies buried at Montmartre, under the epitaph, in Italian, which he had written for the purpose: “Here lies Arrigo Beyle, the Milanese. Lived, Wrote, Died.” The life of Stendhal was obscure and isolated throughout; but since his death he has excited boundless curiosity, and his influence has been steadily advancing. He said of himself that he could afford to wait, that he would certainly be appreciated in 1880. He proved himself a true prophet, for it was just forty years after his death that his reputation reached its highest pinnacle, and that, with the discovery of his Correspondence, Stendhal entered into his glory.

E. G.

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

This novel was written in the year 1830, in a place some three hundred leagues from Paris. Many years before that, when our armies were pouring across Europe, I chanced to be billeted in the house of a canon. It was at Padua—a fortunate city, where, as in Venice, men’s pleasure is their chief business, and leaves them little time for anger with their neighbours. My stay was of some duration, and a friendship sprang up between the canon and myself.

Passing through Padua again, in 1830, I hurried to the good canon’s house. He was dead, I knew, but I had set my heart on looking once more upon the room in which we had spent many a pleasant evening, sadly remembered in later days. I found the canon’s nephew, and his wife, who both received me like an old friend. A few acquaintances dropped in, and the party did not break up till a late hour. The nephew had an excellent sambaglione fetched from the Café Pedrocchi. But what especially caused us to linger was the story of the Duchess Sanseverina, to which some chance allusion was made, and the whole of which the nephew was good enough to relate, for my benefit.

“In the country whither I am bound,” said I to my friends, “I am very unlikely to find a house like this one. To while away the long evenings I will write a novel on the life of your charming Duchess Sanseverina. I will follow in the steps of that old story-teller of yours, Bandello, Bishop of Agen, who would have thought it a crime to overlook the true incidents of his tale, or add others to it.”

“In that case,” quoth the nephew, “I will lend you my uncle’s diaries. Under the head of Parma he mentions some of the court intrigues of that place, at the period when the influence of the duchess was supreme. But beware! it is anything but a moral tale, and now that you French people pique yourselves on your Gospel purity, it may earn you a highly criminal reputation.”

I send forth my novel without having made any change in the manuscript written in 1830. This course may present two drawbacks:

The first affects the reader. The characters, being Italian, may not interest him, for the hearts and souls of that nation are very different from the hearts and souls of Frenchmen. The Italians are a sincere and worthy folk, who, except when they are offended, say what they think. Vanity only attacks them in fits. Then it becomes a passion, and is known as puntiglio. And, further, among this nation poverty is not considered a cause of ridicule.

The second drawback is connected with the author.

I will avow that I have been bold enough to leave my personages in possession of the natural roughnesses of their various characters. But to atone for this—and I proclaim it loudly—I cast blame of the most highly moral nature upon many of their actions. Where would be the use of my endowing them with the high morality and pleasing charm of the French, who love money above every other thing, and are seldom led into sin either by love or hate? The Italians of my novel are of a very different stamp. And, indeed, it appears to me that every stage of six hundred miles northward from the regions of the South brings us to a different landscape, and to a different kind of novel. The old canon’s charming niece had known the duchess, and had even been very much attached to her. She has begged me not to alter anything concerning these adventures of her friend, which are certainly open to censure.

January 23, 1839.