I must see you, and signing it with their own names or initials, and by some mysterious process the text will actually have become theirs — like all true texts it will be diffused into the world and be blended with life itself, for that is its nature. All the same, I would prefer it if this process were to follow literary precedent at an appropriate pace, not through your bragging and boasting, or declaiming the text aloud in taverns or in a whore’s bed. I would be extremely sorry if that were to happen. But now that I have given you the letter whose true meaning we have, I hope, solved and understood, we must be careful lest our enthusiasm as literary critics, the peculiar and obstinate delight we take in studying it, should divert us from our true obligation: for letters can be as passionate and terrifying as kissing or murder; there is something real and living in them, and we two critics — you the writer and I the reader and connoisseur — have almost forgotten the person behind the letters, she who has committed these perfect lines to paper. It is, after all, she whom we are discussing, and Francesca is inclined to the belief that she must see you. That is the reality to which we must return now that we have finished admiring the beauties of the letter. And here we must be businesslike, since time is passing and the evening is upon us — isn’t it the case that time never flies so fast as when we lose ourselves in admiration of the hidden graces of a first-class text? — but our business is to proceed beyond the eternal literary merits of the text and to explore the meaning in its practical sense, that meaning being neither more nor, alas, less than that the duchess of Parma has fallen in love and must see you. That is an obligation you cannot avoid, even should you wish to. I have already said that I have not come to threaten you, Giacomo: I have simply brought you a letter and all I want is to understand, articulate, and settle something. I have not come to threaten: there is no need for you to stand so rigidly or to twitch like that, there is no question of us engaging in another armed encounter for the sake of Francesca, as we once did in such a laughable and yet admirably masculine manner in Tuscany, our chests bare in the moonlight! The time for that is gone: and I don’t mean just the time of year, however awful in its effects that may be, for the cold cuts through me to the bone even when I am wearing my furs, and heaven knows what it would do if I presented myself half-naked, no, I mean another kind of time, the time that has passed. I have thrown away my sword. I could, of course, buy other swords, better and finer than the old one, for once upon a time, as you will recall, I was not altogether hopeless in a duel. I could buy a sword, one that glittered as I wielded it, a rapier of ice-cold steel to twist wickedly between your ribs: I do, after all, hold your life in my hands. But this is not a threat either, Giacomo: it is a statement, no more. Please don’t protest. There is no need to get excited. Your life is in my hands, that’s alclass="underline" in vain did you escape from the republic, in vain did the world look on and chuckle in approval, in vain do local laws protect you with their guarantees of personal and institutional freedom, in vain does tradition underwrite the international rights of refugees. According to laws and customs you are invulnerable here, untouchable. But people are aware, and you in particular have good reason to know, that there exists another law, a more subtle, unwritten law, whose custom and practice underlie the visible, practical, and constitutionally approved sort, a law that is more real and more effective everywhere. It is my kind of law: I dispense it, I and a few others in the world, those who are sufficiently intelligent and powerful to live by such unwritten laws without exploiting them. Believe me, Giacomo, when I say that it really was in vain that you escaped, clever monkey that you are, from the Leads on the roof of the Doge’s Palace; in vain that you scuttled like some fugitive water-rat down the filthy and noble waters of the lagoon and reached the far shore in Mestre and later, Valdepiadene; it is in vain that you reside here beyond the perilous border, in a room of The Stag, strutting with confidence, as if you had escaped every danger, for if I wished it you’d be back on the other side of the border in the clutches of the messer grande by this time tomorrow, after sunset, you can bet your life on it. And why?… Because power does not work precisely as these local boobies believe it works, and you, who are better traveled and more nimble-witted than they are, will be perfectly aware of the fact. You therefore know that there is no nook or cranny in the world where these calloused, exhausted hands, that are no longer up to dueling, would not reach you if I so wished. That is why I am not threatening you. And it’s not out of the kindness of my heart, nor out of any false if noble sense of compassion that I allow you to keep running — because run you must, Giacomo, on fleet horses, in covered coaches, or on sleighs with polished runners before the night is through. As soon as you have finished your business in Bolzano and met the duchess, who, as she has commanded both you and me, must see you, we will draw a line under the affair and place a full stop at the end of the last sentence. That is why I have no thought of threatening you in revealing to you the vague outline of what might happen behind the scenes, and exposing the real, effective relations of power. I am merely explaining and cautioning. And there is no trace of bitterness in my heart when I say that, no sense of injury, no false male pride, not any more. For you, like me, are merely a cat’s-paw, an actor, the tool of the fate that is toying with us both, a fate whose purposes sometimes appear unfathomable. Sometimes it seems the hand it is playing is not entirely above board, that it is playing for its own amusement; a manner of playing that you, who understand not only written slips of paper but those prinked out with spots and numbers too, are in the best position to comprehend. That is why I have come to you. What I want is that you should stay till morning and accommodate yourself to the duchess’s desire, which is more command than desire, something neither of us can refuse to obey, for behind it lies the must to which the duchess of Parma gives such perfect literary expression. You are, therefore, to remain in Bolzano until the morning. Should I threaten you? Should I reason with you? Should I beg you? Explain things to you? What should I do with you?… I could kill you, but then you would be more deadly than before. You would retain your current stocky, fleshy, full-blooded reality, a reality I would have turned into a shade, a memory, a rival impervious to blows, the rotten corpse of a once vigorous presence, an amorous shadow forever lurking in the folds of the curtains of my wife’s four-poster bed, taking my place on her pillow after midnight, your voice haunting other men’s voices, your eyes looking at her through unknown men’s eyes. That is why I will not kill you. Should I send you away? Order you now, this very night, to take to the sledge waiting at the gate, shrouded in the wings of your cloak, so that, under the stewardship and protection of my servants, you should rush over mountain passes, through moonlit forests restless with the shadows of wolves, into a foreign country where you might disappear from the best years of the duchess’s life?… I could insist on that, too, and you’d have no choice but to obey, because, after all, you want to save your skin, and it is that fact which allows me to exercise a degree of control over you, for you are still careful of your life, solicitous of your esteemed person, your flesh and bones and are not desperately anxious to risk them, while I, on the other hand, no longer fear for my life and am interested only in one thing which, to me, is finer and more valuable. That is why you must obey me. For this and other reasons of your own. For now I am willing to put my power and strength at the disposal of your own interests and intentions, providing we can come to a friendly, sensible agreement. That is the reason I have come to you tonight. I want to make you an offer. I have thought a great deal about you. I saw before me your face in the theater at Bologna, the way you yawned, and I remembered how, in that moment, without knowing anything much about you, I instinctively understood the nature of your being. And now I know you properly, or as well as anyone can know you, I am sure it would be a mistake to kill you. A man who is loved is a dangerous rival in death: you’d sit with us at table, lie beside the duchess in her bed, precede us into rooms, your light, ghostly footsteps would tread close behind us as we walked through the garden: you would, in short, be omnipresent. You would become funereal, your outlines blurred by ceremony, hidden among the silver and black hangings of feeling and memory. But a fierce scarlet cloud of revenge would trail behind you, its silently smoking fire lighting up the corridors. And I would have become the selfish, cowardly, stupid nonentity who had killed the unique, the miraculous person that Francesca had to see! No, my boy, I will not kill you. I could, of course, simply hand you over into the clutches of the