Francesca lived nearby: by now he knew which house, knew the Swiss guard with his silver-tipped stick and bearskin cloak, had seen the lackeys, the hunters, and the postilions who escorted the duke of Parma on his journeys into town, and, in the evening, he would walk past the palazzo whose upper windows glimmered overhead — the duke enjoyed a busy social life, receiving guests, giving parties — and in the light that streamed from the window across the street he would imagine the magnificence of the reception halls. Balbi, who had talked to the servants, told him that every evening they replenished the golden branches of the chandeliers with three dozen candles, candles of the finest sort, made of goat fat, which the chandlers of Salzburg provided specially for the duke. “Francesca lives in the light,” he acknowledged with a shrug of his shoulder, but he didn’t talk about her to Balbi. Yes, Francesca lived in the light, in a palace, attended by lackeys, and on one or two evenings he could even hear the stamping and neighing of the bishop’s horses as he drew up at the coach entrance and imagined the horses glittering in silver and dressed with a variety of official insignia. For the duke of Parma kept a busy house in the winter months, as befitted his rank, and perhaps the dignity of his young wife, too. And yet there would have been nothing easier than to enter the house and pay his respects to Francesca; the duke would no longer complain of his attentions, and had, in any case, intimated that he wanted to see him — or that, at least, was what Giuseppe had said. It was true that he mentioned it only once, on his very first visit and not since then, for he came every day to run his delicate pink fingers along Giacomo’s jowls, to rub his temples and reset his curls, and, every morning, he would recount in considerable detail the events of the previous night: the manner of the reception, the nature of the party games, the gaiety of the dancing at midnight, and the ins and outs of the card sessions conducted into the early hours of dawn. Giacomo noted them all. Every evening there was dancing, cards, reciting of verses, and playing of party games; every evening there was feasting and drinking at the duke of Parma’s. “Does the duke not get tired?” he occasionally asked in his most arch manner. “What I mean is, does he not tire of so many parties, every night? He stays up late each time; don’t you think this might be tiring for a man of his age?…” Giuseppe shrugged but refused to say any more.
The barber had mentioned the invitation only once, on the first day, and having mentioned it once remained eloquently silent on the subject, skirting the guest’s ingenuous questions. “Is the duke tired?…” he echoed and, lisping fastidiously, chose his words with care. “He would have every reason to be tired, I suppose. His Excellency always rises early and goes to hunt at dawn, however late he retired the previous night, then he takes his breakfast in his wife’s bedroom, where they receive guests at the morning levee. Is the duke tired?” he repeated the question and shrugged. The tiredness of the privileged was quite different from the exhaustion of the poor. The wellborn eat a lot of meat and that is what makes them tired. He, Giuseppe, would only say that, as far as he personally was concerned, he was never tired of dancing, flirtation, or of cards, but thinking, fine manners, and the general standards of behavior required by high society had often exhausted him. “The duke is given to thinking!” he whispered confidentially. And he winked and fluttered his eyelashes as if he were betraying some secret passion of the duke’s, a major vice or a tendency to a peculiar form of depravity; he winked as if to suggest that he could say more if he chose, but would not, because he was a careful man and knew the ways of the world. The stranger heard the news and bowed. “Given to thinking, eh!” he asked in a low voice indicating intimacy. They understood each other perfectly. The language they spoke was their mother tongue in the full meaning of the word, the language of people who, without knowing it, share certain tastes, certain traits of character: it was an underworld language that the inhabitants of a superior world can never quite understand. However, Giuseppe made no further mention of the duke’s invitation to the visitor: it was something he passed on, that first day as a matter of minor courtesy, then kept his peace, a peace that, in its own way, said as much as his loquaciousness.
“Is the duchess beautiful?” asked the visitor one day, in a disinterested, airy sort of way, as if the question were of no importance. The barber composed himself to answer. He put the tongs, the scissors, and the comb down on the mantelpiece, raised his epicene, long-fingered hand like a priest bestowing a blessing during mass, cleared his throat, then quietly embarked on a singsong, pleasantly lilting speech. “The duchess has dark eyes. On the left side of her face, near her downy pitted jaw, there is a tiny little wart which the chemist once treated with vitriol, but it has grown back again. The duchess artfully covers up this wart.” He recited all this, and a wealth of other minor detail, as though he were a priest delivering a sermon or an apprentice painter discussing the graces and shortcomings of a masterpiece. The coolness of his judgment signified an appreciation far surpassing mere enthusiasm. For Giuseppe was every day in the presence of the duchess, before the lesser and the greater levee, when the maids were depilating Francesca’s shins with red-hot walnut shells, polishing her toenails with syrup, smearing her splendid body with oils, and scenting her hair with the steam of ambergris before combing it. “The duchess is beautiful!” he sternly declared, the solemn expression ludicrous on a face as childish and effeminate as his, a face so chubby it was not quite human, the kind of face some highly respectable artist might have painted on the walls of an aristocratic woman’s bedchamber at Versailles as the face of a shepherd in a naïve, sentimental, wholly unselfconscious, and charmingly corrupt pastoral. The visitor waited while the long, delicate fingers finished with his face and hair and, having learned that the duke was given to thinking and that the duchess was beautiful despite the fact that a tiny wart had grown on her face again, he listened to various other interesting items of news. He remained silent while the other talked. They might have shared a common language but now they were speaking of different things. The fact remained that the duke had not repeated his desire to see the visitor.