“But I am not quite sober yet,” he thought. “I must remember the jailer’s wife.” As they emerged from the sunken road he noticed that they were no longer escorting Marshal Ney; the general they were now attending was tall and thin, with a severe face and a merciless eye.
He was no other than the Count d’A⸺, the Lieutenant Robert of May 15, 1796. What would have been his delight at seeing Fabrizio del Dongo!
For some time Fabrizio had ceased to notice the soil flying hither and thither under the action of the bullets. The party rode up behind a regiment of cuirassiers; he distinctly heard the missiles pattering on the cuirasses, and saw several men fall.
The sun was already low, and it was just about to set, when the escort, leaving the lane, climbed a little slope which led into a ploughed field. Fabrizio heard a curious little noise close to him, and turned his head. Four men had fallen with their horses; the general himself had been thrown, but was just getting up, all covered with blood. Fabrizio looked at the hussars on the ground; three of them were still moving convulsively, the fourth was shouting “Pull me out!” The sergeant and two or three troopers had dismounted to help the general, who, leaning on his aide-de-camp, was trying to walk a few steps away from his horse, which was struggling on the ground and kicking furiously.
The sergeant came up to Fabrizio. Just at that moment, behind him and close to his ear, he heard somebody say, “It’s the only one that can still gallop.” He felt his feet seized and himself lifted up by them, while somebody supported his body under the arms. Thus he was drawn over his horse’s hind quarters, and allowed to slip on to theground, where he fell in a sitting posture. The aide-de-camp caught hold of the horse’s bridle, and the general, assisted by the sergeant, mounted and galloped off, swiftly followed by the six remaining men. In a fury, Fabrizio jumped up and ran after them, shouting, “Ladri! ladri!” (“Thieves! thieves!”) There was something comical about this running after thieves over a battle-field. The escort and General Count d’A⸺ soon vanished behind a row of willow trees. Before very long Fabrizio, still beside himself with rage, reached a similar row, and just beyond it he came on a very deep water-course, which he crossed. When he reached the other side he began to swear again at the sight—but a very distant sight—of the general and his escort disappearing among the trees. “Thieves! thieves!” he shouted again, this time in French. Broken-hearted—much less by the loss of his horse than by the treachery with which he had been treated—weary, and starving, he cast himself down beside the ditch. If it had been the enemy which had carried off his fine charger he would not have given it a thought, but to see himself robbed and betrayed by the sergeant he had liked so much, and the hussars, whom he had looked on as his brothers, filled his soul with bitterness. The thought of the infamy of it was more than he could bear, and, leaning his back against a willow, he wept hot, angry tears. One by one his bright dreams of noble and chivalrous friendship—like the friendships of the heroes of Jerusalem Delivered—had faded before his eyes! The approach of death would have been as nothing in his sight if he had felt himself surrounded by heroic and tender hearts, by noble-souled friends, whose hands should have pressed his while he breathed out his last sigh. But how was he to keep up his enthusiasm when he was surrounded by such vile rascals? Fabrizio, like every angry man, had fallen into exaggeration. After a quarter of an hour spent in such melancholy thoughts, he became aware that the bullets were beginning to fall among the row of trees which sheltered his meditation. He rose to his feet, and made an effort to discover his whereabouts. He looked at the meadow, bounded by a broad canal and a line of bushywillows, and thought he recognised the spot. Then he noticed a body of infantry which was crossing the ditch and debouching into the meadows some quarter of a league ahead of him. “I was nearly caught napping,” thought he. “I must take care not to be taken prisoner.” And he began to walk forward very rapidly. As he advanced, his mind was relieved; he recognised the uniform. The regiments which he feared might have cut off his retreat belonged to the French army; he bore to the right, so as to reach them.
Besides the moral suffering of having been so vilely deceived and robbed, Fabrizio felt another, the pangs of which were momentarily increasing—he was literally starving. It was with the keenest joy, therefore, that after walking, or rather running, for ten minutes, he perceived that the body of infantry, which had also been moving very rapidly, had halted, as though to take up a position. A few minutes more and he was among the nearest soldiers.
“Comrades, could you sell me a piece of bread?”
“Halloo, here’s a fellow who takes us for bakers!”
The rude speech and the general titter that greeted it overwhelmed Fabrizio. Could it be that war was not, after all, that noble and general impulse of souls thirsting for glory which Napoleon’s proclamations had led him to conceive it? He sat down, or rather let himself drop upon the sward; he turned deadly pale. The soldier who had spoken, and who had stopped ten paces off to clean the lock of his gun with his handkerchief, moved a little nearer, and threw him a bit of bread; then, seeing he did not pick it up, the man put a bit of the bread into his mouth. Fabrizio opened his eyes, and ate the bread without having strength to say a word; when at last he looked about for the soldier, intending to pay him, he saw he was alone. The nearest soldiers to him were some hundred paces off, marching away. Mechanically he rose and followed them; he entered a wood. He was ready to drop with weariness, and was already looking about for a place where he might lay him down, when to his joy he recognized first the horse, then the cart, and finally thecantinièrehe had met in the morning. She ran to him, quite startled by his looks.
“March on, my boy,” she said. “Are you wounded? and where’s your fine horse?” As she spoke she led him toward her cart, into which she pushed him, lifting him under the arms. So weary was our hero that before he had well got into the cart he had fallen fast asleep.
Nothing woke him, neither the shots that rang out close to the little cart, nor the jolting of the horse, which the good woman whipped up with all her might. The regiment, after having believed all day long that victory was on its side, had been unexpectedly attacked by clouds of Prussian cavalry, and was retreating, or rather flying, toward the French border.
The colonel, a handsome, well-set-up young man, who had succeeded to Macon’s command, was cut down. The major who took his place, an old fellow with white hair, halted the regiment. “Come,” he shouted to his men, “in the days of the Republic none of us ran away till the enemy forced us to it. You must dispute every inch of the ground, and let yourselves be killed!” he added with an oath. “It’s our own country that these Prussians are trying to invade now.”
The little cart stopped short, and Fabrizio woke with a jump. The sun had disappeared long ago, and he noticed to his surprise that it was almost dark. The soldiers were running hither and thither in a state of confusion, which greatly astonished our hero. It struck him that they all looked very crestfallen.
“What’s the matter?” said he to thecantinière.
“Nothing at all. The matter is that we’re done for, my boy; that the Prussian cavalry is cutting us down—that’s all. The fool of a general took it for our own at first. Now then, look sharp! Help me to mend the trace; Cocotte has broken it!”
Several musket shots rang out ten paces off. Our hero, now thoroughly rested, said to himself: “But really, all this whole day through I have never fought at all! All I havedone was to ride escort to a general. I must go and fight,” said he to the woman.
“Make your mind easy; you’ll fight more than you want. We’re all done for!”
“Aubry, my boy,” she shouted to a corporal who was passing by, “give an eye to the little cart now and then.”
“Are you going to fight?” said Fabrizio to Aubry.
“No; I’m going to put on my pumps and go to the ball.”
“I’m after you.”
“Look after the little hussar,” shouted thecantinière; “he’s a plucky young chap.”
Corporal Aubry marched on without saying a word; eight or ten soldiers ran up and joined him. He led them up behind a big oak with brambles growing all round it. Once there, he stationed them, still without opening his lips, in a very open line, along the edge of the wood, each man at least ten paces from his neighbour.
“Now, then, you fellows,” he said, and it was the first time his voice had been heard, “don’t you fire until you hear the word of command. Remember, you’ve only three cartridges apiece.”
“But what is happening?” wondered Fabrizio to himself. At last, when he was alone with the corporal, he said, “I have no musket.”
“Hold your tongue, to begin with. Go forward fifty paces beyond the wood; you’ll find some of our poor fellows who’ve just been cut down. Take a musket and ammunition-pouch off one of them. But mind you don’t take them from a wounded man; take the gun and pouch from some man who is quite dead. And look sharp, for fear you should get shot at by our own people!”
Fabrizio started off at a run, and soon came back with a musket and ammunition-pouch.
“Load your musket, and get behind this tree; and above all, don’t fire till I give the word.”
“Great God!” said the corporal, breaking off, “he doesn’t even know how to load his weapon!” He came to Fabrizio’s rescue, and went on talking as he did it. “Ifany of the enemy’s cavalry ride at you to cut you down, slip round your tree, and don’t fire your shot till your man’s quite close—not more than three paces off; your bayonet must almost touch his uniform. But will you chuck that great sword of yours away?” exclaimed the corporal. “Do you want it to throw you down? ’Sdeath, what soldiers they send us nowadays!” And as he spoke he snatched at the sword himself and threw it angrily away. “Here, wipe the flint of your gun with your handkerchief. But have you ever fired a gun off?”
“I am a sportsman.”
“God be praised!” said the corporal, with a sigh of relief. “Well, mind you don’t fire till I give the word,” and he departed.
Fabrizio was filled with joy. “At last,” said he to himself, “I am really going to fight and kill an enemy! This morning they were shooting at us, and all I did was to expose myself—a fool’s errand!” He looked about in every direction with the most eager curiosity. After a moment seven or eight musket shots rang out close to him, but as he received no order himself he stood quietly behind his tree. It had grown almost quite dark; he could have fancied he was hunting bears in the Tramezzina, above Grianta. He bethought him of a hunter’s trick: took a cartridge from his pouch and extracted the ball. “If I get a sight of him,” said he, “I mustn’t miss him,” and he slipped the extra ball down the barrel of his gun. He heard two shots fired close to his tree, and at the same moment he beheld a trooper dressed in blue galloping in front of him from right to left. “He’s more than three paces off,” said he, “but at this distance I can’t well miss him.” He covered the horseman with his musket, and pulled the trigger. The horse fell, and his rider with him. Our hero fancied he was hunting, and ran joyfully up to the quarry he had just bagged. He had got quite close to the man, who seemed to him to be dying, when two Prussian troopers rode down upon him at the most astounding rate, with their swords lifted to cut him down. Fabrizio took to his heels, and ran for the wood, throwing away his gun so that hemight run the quicker. The Prussian troopers were not more than three paces behind him when he reached a plantation of young oaks, very straight growing, and about as thick as a man’s arm, which skirted the wood. The little oaks checked the horsemen for a moment, but they soon got through them and pursued Fabrizio across a clearing. They were quite close on him again when he managed to slip between seven or eight big trees. Just at that moment his face was almost scorched by the fire from five or six muskets just in front of him. He lowered his head, and when he raised it again he found himself face to face with the corporal.
“Have you killed yours?” said the corporal.
“Yes, but I’ve lost my musket.”
“Muskets are not the thing we are short of. You’re a good chap, though you do look like a muff. You’ve done well to-day, and these fellows have just missed the two who were after you, and were riding straight upon them. I didn’t see them.
“Now we must make off. The regiment must be half a mile away; and, besides, there’s a little bit of meadow to cross, where we may be taken in flank.” As he talked the corporal marched swiftly along at the head of his ten men, some two hundred paces farther on. As he entered the little meadow of which he had spoken they came upon a wounded general supported by his aide-de-camp and a servant. “You must give me four men,” said he to the corporal, and his voice was faint. “I must be carried to the ambulance; my leg is shattered.”
“You may go to the devil,” replied the corporal; “you and all the rest of the generals. You’ve all of you betrayed the Emperor this day.”
“What!” cried the general in a fury; “you won’t obey my orders? Do you know that I am General Count B⸺, commanding your division?” and so forth, with a string of invectives.
The aide-de-camp rushed at the soldier. The corporal thrust at him with his bayonet, and then made off at the double, followed by his men.
“May they all be like you!” he repeated with an oath. “With their legs shattered and their arms too! A pack of rascals, sold to the Bourbons and traitors to the Emperor, every one of them!”
Fabrizio heard the hideous accusation with astonishment.
Toward ten o’clock in the evening the little party came upon the regiment, at the entrance to a big village consisting of several narrow streets. But Fabrizio noticed that Corporal Aubry avoided speaking to any of the officers. “It’s impossible to get on!” cried the corporal. Every street was crowded with infantry, cavalry, and especially with artillery caissons and baggage wagons. The corporal tried to get up three of these streets, but after about twenty paces he was forced to stop. Everybody was swearing, and everybody was in a rage.
“Some other traitor must be in command!” cried the corporal. “If the enemy has the sense to move round the village we shall all be taken like dogs. Follow me, men!” Fabrizio looked; there were only six soldiers left of the corporal’s party. Through a big, open doorway they passed into a great poultry-yard, and thence into a stable, from which a little door admitted them into a garden. Here they lost their way for a moment, and wandered hither and thither. But at last, climbing over a hedge, they found themselves in a huge field of buckwheat, and within less than half an hour, following the noise of shouting and other confused sounds, they had got back into the high-road on the other side of the village.
The ditches on either side of the road were full of muskets which had been thrown away, and Fabrizio took one for himself. But the road, broad as it was, was so crowded with carts and fugitives that in half an hour the corporal and Fabrizio had hardly got five hundred paces forward. They were told that the road would lead them to Charleroi. As the village clock struck eleven—
“Let us strike across country again,” cried the corporal. The little band now only consisted of three privates,the corporal, and Fabrizio. When they had got about a quarter of a league from the high-road—
“I’m done up!” said one of the soldiers.
“And so am I,” said another.
“That’s fine news! We’re all in the same boat,” said the corporal. “But do as I tell you, and you’ll be the better for it.” He caught sight of five or six trees growing beside a little ditch in the middle of an immense field of corn.
“Make for the trees,” said he to his men. “Lie down here,” he added when they had reached them, “and, above all, make no noise. But before we go to sleep, which of you has any bread?”
“I have,” said one of the soldiers.
“Hand it over,” commanded the corporal, with a masterful air. He divided the bread into five pieces, and took the smallest for himself.
“A quarter of an hour before daybreak,” he said as he munched, “you’ll have the enemy’s cavalry upon you. The great point is not to get yourselves run through. On these great plains one man alone with cavalry at his heels is done for, but five men together may save themselves. All of you stick faithfully to me, don’t fire except at close quarters, and I’ll undertake to get you into Charleroi to-morrow night.” An hour before daybreak the corporal roused them; he made them reload their weapons. The noise on the highway still continued; it had been going on all night, like the noise of a distant torrent.
“It’s like the noise sheep make when they are running away,” said Fabrizio to the corporal, with an artless air.
“Will you hold your tongue, you greenhorn?” said the corporal angrily, and the three privates, who, with Fabrizio, composed the whole of his army, looked at our hero with an expression of indignation, as if he had said something blasphemous. He had insulted the nation!
“This is rather strong,” thought our hero to himself. “I noticed the same sort of thing at Milan under the viceroy. They are not running away—oh, dear, no! With these Frenchmen you must never tell the truth if it hurtstheir vanity. But as for their angry looks, I don’t care a farthing for them, and I must make them understand it.” They were still marching along some five hundred paces from the stream of fugitives which blocked the high-road. A league farther on the corporal and his party crossed a lane running into the high-road, in which many soldiers were lying. Here Fabrizio bought a tolerable horse for forty francs, and from among the numerous swords that were lying about he carefully chose a long, straight weapon. “As I am told I must thrust,” he thought, “this will be the best.” Thus equipped, he put his horse into a canter, and soon came up with the corporal, who had gone forward; he settled himself in his stirrups, seized the sheath of his sword with his left hand, and addressed the four Frenchmen. “These fellows who are fleeing along the highway look like a flock of sheep; they move like frightened sheep!”
In vain did he dwell upon the word sheep; his comrades had quite forgotten that only an hour previously it had kindled their ire. Here we perceive one of the contrasts between the French and the Italian character; the Frenchman is doubtless the happier of the two—events glide over him; he bears no spite.
I will not conceal the fact that Fabrizio was very much pleased with himself after he had talked about those sheep. They marched along, keeping up a casual conversation. Two leagues farther on the corporal, who was very much astonished at seeing nothing of the enemy’s cavalry, said to Fabrizio:
“You are our cavalry, so gallop toward that farm on the hillock yonder, and ask the peasant if he’ll sell us some breakfast. Be sure you tell him there are only five of us. If he demurs, give him five francs of your money, on account; but make your mind easy, we’ll take the silver piece back after we’ve had our breakfast.”
Fabrizio looked at the corporal; his gravity was imperturbable, and he really wore an appearance of moral superiority. He obeyed, and everything fell out just as the commander-in-chief had foretold, only Fabrizio insisted thepeasant should not be forced to return the five-franc piece he had paid him.
“The money is my own,” said he to his comrades. “I’m not paying for you; I’m paying for the corn he has given my horse.”
Fabrizio’s French was so bad that his comrades thought they detected a tone of superiority about his remark; they were very much offended, and from that instant they began to hatch a quarrel with him. They saw he was very different from themselves, and that fact displeased them. Fabrizio, on the contrary, began to feel exceedingly friendly toward them. They had been marching along silently for about two hours when the corporal, looking toward the high-road, shouted in a transport of delight, “There’s the regiment!” They were soon on the high-road themselves, but alas, there were not two hundred men round the eagle! Fabrizio soon caught sight of thecantinière; she was walking along with red eyes, and every now and then her tears overflowed. In vain did Fabrizio peer about, looking for Cocotte and the little cart.
“Pillaged! lost! stolen!” cried the poor woman, in answer to our hero’s inquiring glance. Without a word he threw himself from his horse, took him by the bridle, and said to her, “Get on his back!” She didn’t wait for a second invitation. “Shorten the stirrups for me,” she said. Once she was comfortably settled on horseback, she began to tell Fabrizio all the disasters of the preceding night.
After an endless story, eagerly listened to, however, by our hero, who could make nothing of it, we must admit, but who had a deep feeling of regard for the good-naturedcantinière, she added, “And to think that it should be Frenchmen who have robbed, and beaten, and ruined me!”
“What! it wasn’t the enemy?” cried Fabrizio, with an artlessness which made his handsome face, so grave and pale, look more charming than ever.
“What a silly you are, my poor child!” returned the woman, smiling through her tears; “and silly as you are, you are a very good fellow.”
“And however silly he may be, he pulled his Prussiandown well yesterday,” added Corporal Aubry, who had happened to find his way through the crowd to the other side of the horse on which the good woman was riding. “But he’s proud,” said the corporal. Fabrizio started a little. “And what’s your name?” continued he. “For, after all, if any report is sent in, I should like to give it.”
“My name is Vasi,” answered Fabrizio, with rather an odd look. “I mean,” correcting himself hastily, “Boulot.”
Boulot had been the name of the owner of the route papers the jailer’s wife had given him. Two nights before, as he marched along, he had studied them carefully, for he was beginning to reflect a little, and was not so astonished by everything that happened to him as he had been at first. In addition to poor Boulot’s papers he had also carefully kept the Italian passport according to which he claimed the noble name of Vasi, dealer in barometers. When the corporal had taxed him with being proud it had been on the tip of his tongue to reply, “Proud! I, Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, who is willing to bear the name of a dealer in barometers called Vasi?”
While he was considering all this and saying to himself, “I must really remember that my name is Boulot, or I shall find myself in the prison with which Fate threatens me,” the corporal and thecantinièrehad been exchanging ideas about him.
“Don’t take what I say for mere curiosity,” said thecantinière, and she dropped the second person singular, which, in her homely fashion, she had hitherto been using. “I’m going to ask you these questions for your own good. Who are you, really and truly?”
Fabrizio was silent for a moment; he was considering that he might never come across better friends from whom to ask advice, and advice he sorely needed. “We are going into a fortified town; the governor will want to know who I am, and if my answers show that I know nothing about the hussar regiment, the uniform of which I wear, I shall be thrown into prison at once.” Being an Austrian subject, Fabrizio realized all the importance of his passport. The members of his own family, highly born and religiousas they were, had suffered frequent annoyance in this particular. The good woman’s questions were not, therefore, the least displeasing to him, but when he paused before replying to choose out his clearest French expressions, thecantinière, pricked with eager curiosity, added by way of encouragement, “We’ll give you good advice about your behaviour, Corporal Aubry and I.”
“I’m sure of that,” answered Fabrizio. “My name is Vasi, and I belong to Genoa; my sister, who was a famous beauty, married a captain. As I am only seventeen, she sent for me that I might see France and improve myself. I did not find her in Paris, and knowing she was with this army I followed it, and have hunted in every direction without being able to find her. The soldiers, struck by my foreign accent, had me arrested. I had money at that time; I gave some to the gendarme in charge of me. He gave me papers and a uniform, and said, ‘Be off with you, and swear you’ll never mention my name to a living soul.’”
“What was his name?” said thecantinière.
“I gave my word,” said Fabrizio.
“He’s right,” said the corporal. “The gendarme was a blackguard, but our comrade mustn’t tell his name. And what was the name of the captain who married your sister? If we knew his name we might find him.”
“Teulier, of the Fourth Hussars,” answered our hero.
“Then,” said the corporal rather sharply, “your foreign accent made the soldiers take you for a spy?”
“That’s the vile word!” cried Fabrizio, and his eyes flamed. “I, who worship the Emperor and the French—that insult hurts me more than anything!”
“There’s no insult; there’s where you’re mistaken,” replied the corporal gravely. “The soldiers’ mistake was very natural.”
Then he explained, with more than a little pedantry, that in the army every man must belong to a regiment and wear a uniform, and, failing that, would certainly be taken for a spy.
“The enemy,” he said, “has sent us heaps of them. In this war traitors abound.”
The scales fell from Fabrizio’s eyes, and for the first time he understood that in everything that had happened to him during the past two months he himself had been at fault.
“But the boy must tell us the whole story,” said thecantinière, whose curiosity was momentarily growing keener.
Fabrizio obeyed, and when he had finished—
“The fact is,” said she seriously, and addressing the corporal, “the child knows nothing about soldiering. This war will be a wretched war, now that we are beaten and betrayed. Why should he get his bones broken,gratis pro Deo!”
“And with that,” said the corporal, “he doesn’t even know how to load his gun, either in slow time or in quick! It was I who put in the bullet that killed his Prussian for him.”
“And, besides,” added thecantinière, “he lets everybody see his money, and he’ll be stripped of everything as soon as he leaves us.”
“And the first cavalry sergeant he comes across,” the corporal went on, “will take possession of him and make him pay for his drinks, and he may even be recruited for the enemy, for there’s treachery everywhere. The first man he meets will tell him to follow him, and follow him he will! He would do much better to enlist in our regiment.”
“Not so, I thank you, corporal,” cried Fabrizio eagerly. “I’m much more comfortable on horseback; and, besides, I don’t know how to load a musket, and you’ve seen that I can manage a horse.”
Fabrizio was very proud of this little speech of his. I will not reproduce the long discussion as to his future which ensued between the corporal and thecantinière.
Fabrizio remarked that in the course of it they repeated all the incidents of his story three or four times over—the soldiers’ suspicions; the gendarme who sold him the uniform and the papers; the manner in which he had fallen in with the marshal’s escort on the previous day; the story of the horse, etc. Thecantinière, with feminine curiosity, constantlyharked back to the manner in which he had been robbed of the good horse she had made him buy.
“You felt somebody seize your feet, you were drawn gently over your horse’s tail, and were left sitting on the ground.”
“Why is it,” wondered Fabrizio, “that they keep going over things which we all know perfectly well!” He had not yet learned that this is the method whereby the humbler folk in France think a matter out.
“How much money have you?” inquired thecantinièreof him. Fabrizio answered unhesitatingly; he was sure of this woman’s noble-heartedness—that is the finest side of the French character.
“I may have about thirty napoleons in gold, and eight or ten five-franc pieces, altogether.”
“In that case your course is clear,” cried thecantinière. “Get yourself out of this routed army, turn off to one side, take the first tolerable road you can find on the right, ride steadily forward, away from the army always. Buy yourself civilian clothes at the first opportunity. When you are eight or ten leagues off, and you see no more soldiers about you, take post-horses, get to some good town, and rest there for a week, and eat good beefsteaks. Never tell any one that you have been with the army; the gendarmes would take you up at once as a deserter, and, nice fellow as you are, my boy, you are not sharp enough yet to take in the gendarmes. Once you have civilian clothes upon your back, tear your route papers into little bits, and take back your real name. Say you’re Vasi—and where should he say he comes from?” she added, appealing to the corporal.
“From Cambray, on the Scheldt—it’s a good old town, very small, do you hear? with a cathedral—and Fénelon.”
“That’s it,” said thecantinière, “and never let out that you’ve been in the battle, never breathe a word about B⸺ nor the gendarme who sold you the papers. When you want to get back to Paris, go first of all to Versailles, and get into the city from that side, just dawdling along on your feet as if you were out for a walk. Sew your money into your trousers, and when you have to pay for anything,mind you only show just the money you need for that. What worries me is that you’ll be made a fool of, and you’ll be stripped of everything you have. And what is to become of you without money, seeing you don’t even know how to behave?”
The good woman talked on and on, the corporal backing her opinions by nodding his head, for she gave him no chance of getting in a word. Suddenly the crowd upon the high-road quickened its pace, and then, like a flash, it crossed the little ditch on the left-hand side and fled at full speed.
“The Cossacks, the Cossacks!” rang out on every side.
“Take back your horse,” cried thecantinière.
“God forbid!” said Fabrizio. “Gallop! be off! I give him to you. Do you want money to buy another little cart? Half of what I have is yours.”
“Take back your horse, I say,” said the good woman in a rage, and she tried to get off. Fabrizio drew his sword. “Hold on tight!” he cried, and he struck the horse two or three times with the flat of the blade. It broke into a gallop and followed the fugitives.
Our hero looked at the high-road. Only a few minutes before it had been crowded with some two or three thousand people, packed like peasants in a religious procession.
Since that cry of “Cossacks” there was not a soul upon it. The fugitives had thrown away their shakos, their muskets, and their swords.
Fabrizio, thoroughly astonished, climbed about twenty or thirty feet into a field on the right of the road; thence he looked up and down the high-road and across the plain. There was not a sign of any Cossack. “Queer people, these Frenchmen,” said he to himself. Then he went on: “As I am to go to the right, I may as well start at once. These people may have had some reason for bolting which I don’t know.” He picked up a musket, made sure it was loaded, shook the powder in the priming, cleaned the flint, then chose himself a well-filled cartridge pouch and looked all round him again. He stood literally alone in the middleof the plain, which had lately been so packed with people. In the far distance he saw the fugitives still running along and beginning to disappear behind the trees. “This really is very odd,” he said. And remembering the corporal’s manœuvre on the preceding night, he went and sat down in the middle of a cornfield. He would not go far away, because he hoped to rejoin his friends the corporal and thecantinière.
Sitting in the corn, he discovered he had only eighteen napoleons left, instead of thirty, but he had a few little diamonds which he had hidden in the lining of his hussar boots on the morning of his parting with the jailer’s wife. He concealed his gold pieces as best he could, and pondered deeply the while over this sudden disappearance of his fellow-travellers.
“Is it a bad omen for me?” he wondered. His chief vexation was that he had not asked Corporal Aubry the following question: “Have I really been in a battle?” He thought he had, and he would have been perfectly happy if he could have been quite certain of it.
“In any case,” he said, “I was present at it under a prisoner’s name, and I had the prisoner’s route papers in my pocket, and even his coat upon my back. All that is fatal for my future. What would Father Blanès have said of it? And that unlucky Boulot died in prison, too. It all looks very ominous. My destiny will lead me to a prison!” Fabrizio would have given anything in the world to know whether Boulot had really been guilty. He had a recollection that the jailer’s wife had told him the hussar had been locked up, not only for stealing spoons and forks, but for having robbed a peasant of his cow, and further beaten the said peasant unmercifully. He had no doubt that he himself would some day find himself in prison for misdoings of the same nature as those of the hussar. He thought of his friend the priest. What would he not have given to be able to consult him! Then he recollected that he had not written to his aunt since he left Paris. “Poor Gina!” he said, and the tears rose to his eyes. All at once he heard a slight noise close to him. It was a soldier feeding threehorses, whose bridles he had removed and who seemed half dead with hunger, on the growing corn.
He was holding them by the snaffle. Fabrizio flew up like a partridge, and the soldier was startled. Our hero, perceiving it, could not resist the pleasure of playing the hussar for a moment. “Fellow,” he shouted, “one of those horses is mine, but I will give you five francs for the trouble you’ve taken to bring it to me!” “I wish you may get it,” said the soldier. Fabrizio, who was within six paces, levelled his musket at him. “Give up the horse, or I’ll blow your brains out!” The soldier had his musket slung behind him; he twisted his shoulder back to get at it. “If you stir a step you’re a dead man!” shouted Fabrizio, rushing at him. “Well, well! hand over the five francs, and take one of the horses,” said the soldier, rather crestfallen, after glancing regretfully up and down the road, on which not a soul was to be seen. Fabrizio, with his gun still raised in his left hand, threw him three five-franc pieces with the right. “Get down, or you’re a dead man! Put the bit on the black horse, and move off with the others. I’ll blow your brains out if you shuffle!” With an evil glance the man obeyed. Fabrizio came close to the horse and slipped the bridle over his left arm without taking his eyes off the soldier, who was slinking slowly away. When he saw he was about fifty paces off our hero sprang upon the horse’s back. He had hardly got into the saddle, and his foot was still searching for the right stirrup, when a bullet whistled close beside his head; it was the soldier who had fired his musket at him. Fabrizio, in a fury, galloped toward him. He took to his heels, and was soon galloping away on one of his horses. “Well, he’s out of range now,” said Fabrizio to himself. The horse he had just bought was a splendid animal, but it seemed to be almost starving. Fabrizio went back to the high-road, which was still quite deserted; he crossed it, and trotted on toward a little undulation in the ground on the left, where he hoped he might find thecantinière, but when he reached the top of the tiny eminence he could only see a few scattered soldiers more than a league away. He sighed. “It is written,” he said, “that I amnever to see that good kind woman again!” He went to a farm which he had noticed in the distance, on the right of the road. Without dismounting he fed his poor horse with oats, which he paid for beforehand. It was so starving that it actually bit at the manger. An hour later he was trotting along the high-road, still in the vague hope that he might find thecantinière, or at all events come across Corporal Aubry. As he pushed steadily forward, looking about on every side, he came to a marshy stream, spanned by a narrow wooden bridge. Near the entrance to the bridge and on the right-hand side of the road stood a lonely house, which displayed the sign of the White Horse. “I’ll have my dinner there,” said Fabrizio to himself. Beside the bridge was a cavalry officer with his arm in a sling. He was sitting on his horse and looked very sad. Ten paces from him three dismounted troopers were busy with their pipes.
“Those fellows,” said Fabrizio to himself, “look very much as if they might be inclined to buy my horse even cheaper than the price I’ve paid for him.” The wounded officer and the three men on foot were watching him, and seemed to be waiting for him. “I really ought to avoid that bridge and follow the river bank on the right; that’s what thecantinièrewould advise me to do, to get out of the difficulty. Yes,” said our hero to himself, “but if I take to flight I shall be ashamed of it to-morrow. Besides, my horse has good legs, and the officer’s horse is probably tired out. If he tries to dismount me I’ll take to my heels.” Reasoning thus, Fabrizio shook his horse together and rode on as slowly as possible.
“Come on, hussar!” shouted the officer, with a voice of authority. Fabrizio came on a few steps, and then halted. “Do you want to take my horse from me?” he called out.
“Not a bit of it! Come on!”
Fabrizio looked at the officer. His mustache was white, he had the most honest face imaginable, the handkerchief which supported his left arm was covered with blood, and his right hand was also wrapped in a bloody bandage. “It’s those men on foot who will snatch at the horse’sbridle,” thought Fabrizio; but when he looked closer he saw that the men on foot were wounded as well.
“In the name of all that’s honourable,” said the officer, who wore a colonel’s epaulettes, “keep watch here, and tell every dragoon, light-cavalry man, and hussar you may see that Colonel Le Baron is in the inn there, and that he orders them to report themselves to him.” The old colonel looked broken-hearted. His very first words had won our hero’s heart, and he replied very sensibly, “I’m very young, sir; perhaps nobody would listen to me. I ought to have a written order from you.”
“He’s right,” said the colonel, looking hard at him. “Write the order, La Rose; you can use your right hand.” Without a word, La Rose drew a little parchment-covered book from his pocket, wrote a few words, tore out the leaf, and gave it to Fabrizio. The colonel repeated his orders, adding that Fabrizio would be relieved after two hours, as was only fair, by one of the wounded soldiers who were with him. This done, he went into the tavern with his men. Fabrizio, so greatly had he been struck by the silent and dreary sorrow of the three men, sat motionless at the end of the bridge, watching them disappear. “They were like enchanted genii,” said he to himself. At last he opened the folded paper, and read the following order:
“Colonel Le Baron, Sixth Dragoons, commanding the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division of the Fourteenth Corps, orders all cavalry, dragoons, light-cavalry men, and hussars not to cross the bridge, and to report themselves to him at his headquarters, the White Horse Tavern, close to the bridge.“Dated.Headquarters, close to the bridge over the Sainte. June 19, 1815.“Signedfor Colonel Le Baron, wounded in the right arm, and by his orders.“Sergeant La Rose.”
“Colonel Le Baron, Sixth Dragoons, commanding the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division of the Fourteenth Corps, orders all cavalry, dragoons, light-cavalry men, and hussars not to cross the bridge, and to report themselves to him at his headquarters, the White Horse Tavern, close to the bridge.
“Dated.Headquarters, close to the bridge over the Sainte. June 19, 1815.
“Signedfor Colonel Le Baron, wounded in the right arm, and by his orders.
“Sergeant La Rose.”
Fabrizio had hardly kept guard on the bridge for half an hour when six light-cavalry men mounted, and three onfoot, approached him. He gave them the colonel’s order. “We are coming back,” said four of the mounted men, and they crossed the bridge at full trot. By that time Fabrizio was engaged with the two others. While the altercation grew warmer the three men on foot slipped over the bridge. One of the two remaining mounted men ended by asking to see the order, and carried it off, saying, “I’ll take it to my comrades, who are sure to come back; you wait patiently for them,” and he galloped off with his companion after him. The whole thing was done in an instant.
Fabrizio, in a fury, beckoned to one of the wounded soldiers who had appeared at one of the tavern windows. The man, whom Fabrizio observed to be wearing a sergeant’s stripes, came downstairs, and shouted, as he drew near him, “Draw your sword, sir! Don’t you know you’re on duty?” Fabrizio obeyed, and then said, “They’ve carried off the order!”
“They’re still savage over yesterday’s business,” answered the other drearily. “I’ll give you one of my pistols. If they break through again fire it in the air, and I’ll come down, or the colonel will make his appearance.”
Fabrizio had noticed the gesture of surprise with which the sergeant had received the intelligence that the order had been carried off. He had realized that the incident was a personal insult to himself, and was resolved that nothing of the sort should happen in future. He had gone back proudly to his post, armed with the sergeant’s pistol, when he saw seven hussars come riding up. He had placed himself across the entrance to the bridge. He gave them the colonel’s order, which vexed them very much. The boldest tried to get across. Fabrizio, obeying the wise advice of his friend thecantinière, who had told him the previous morning that he must cut and not thrust, lowered the point of his big straight sword, and made as though he would have run through anybody who disobeyed the order.
“Ha! the greenhorn wants to kill us, as if we had not been killed enough yesterday!” They all drew their swords, and fell upon Fabrizio. He gave himself up for dead, but he remembered the look of surprise on the sergeant’sface, and resolved he would not be despised a second time. He backed slowly over his bridge, trying to thrust with his point as he went. He looked so queer, with his great straight cavalry sword, much too heavy for him, and which he did not know how to handle, that the hussars soon saw who they had to do with. Then they tried not to wound him, but to cut his coat off his back. He thus received three or four small sword cuts on the arm. Meanwhile, faithful to thecantinière’sadvice, he kept on thrusting with all his might. Unluckily one of his lunges wounded a hussar in the hand. The man, furious at being touched by such a soldier, replied with a violent thrust which wounded Fabrizio in the thigh. The wound was all the deeper because our hero’s charger, instead of escaping from themêlée, seemed to delight in it, and to throw himself deliberately on the assailants. The hussars, seeing Fabrizio’s blood running down his right arm, were afraid they had gone too far, and, forcing him over to the left parapet of the bridge, they galloped off. The instant Fabrizio was free for a moment he fired his pistol in the air to warn the colonel.
Four mounted hussars and two on foot belonging to the same regiment as the last had been coming toward the bridge, and were still two hundred paces off when the pistol shot rang out. They were carefully watching what happened on the bridge, and thinking Fabrizio had fired upon their comrades, the four mounted men galloped down upon him, brandishing their swords; it was a regular charge. Colonel Le Baron, summoned by the pistol shot, opened the tavern door, rushed on to the bridge just as the hussars galloped up to it, and himself ordered them to halt.
“There’s no colonel here,” cried one of the men, and he spurred his horse. The colonel in his anger broke off his remonstrance, and seized the rein of the horse on the off side with his wounded hand. “Halt, sir!” he cried to the hussar. “I know you. You belong to Captain Henriet’s company.”
“Well, then, let the captain give me his orders! Captain Henriet was killed yesterday,” he added with a sneer, “andyou may go and be damned!” As he spoke he tried to force his way through, and knocked over the old colonel, who fell in a sitting posture on the floor of the bridge. Fabrizio, who was two paces farther on the bridge, but facing the tavern, urged his horse furiously forward, and while the hussar’s horse overthrew the colonel, who still clung to the off rein, he thrust vehemently and angrily at its rider. Luckily the man’s horse, which was dragged downward by the bridle, on to which the colonel was still hanging, started to one side, so that the long blade of Fabrizio’s heavy cavalry sword slipped along the hussar’s waistcoat and came right out under his nose. The hussar, in his fury, turned round and hacked at Fabrizio with all his strength, cutting through his sleeve and making a deep wound in his arm. Our hero tumbled off his horse. One of the dismounted hussars, seeing the two defenders of the bridge lying on the ground, seized his opportunity, sprang on to Fabrizio’s horse, and would have galloped it off the bridge and away, but the sergeant, who had hurried up from the tavern, had seen his colonel fall, and believed him to be seriously wounded. He ran after Fabrizio’s horse, and plunged the point of his sword into the thief’s back, so that he, too, fell. Then the hussars, seeing nobody but the sergeant standing on the bridge, galloped across it and rode rapidly away.
The sergeant went to look after the wounded. Fabrizio had already picked himself up; he was not in much pain, but he was losing a great deal of blood. The colonel rose to his feet more slowly; he was quite giddy from his fall, but he was not wounded at all.
“The only thing that hurts me,” he said to his sergeant, “is the old wound in my hand.” The hussar whom the sergeant had wounded was dying.
“The devil may take him!” cried the colonel. “But,” said he to the sergeant and the two other troopers who now hurried up, “look after this boy, whose life I did wrong to endanger. I will stay at the bridge myself, and try to stop these madmen. Take the young fellow to the inn and dress his arm. Use one of my shirts for bandages.”
The whole affair had not lasted more than a minute. Fabrizio’s wounds were of the most trifling description; his arm was bound up in strips torn off one of the colonel’s shirts. He was offered a bed in the upper story of the inn.
“But while I am lying comfortably here,” said Fabrizio to the sergeant, “my horse will feel lonely in the stable, and may take himself off with another master.”
“Not bad, for a recruit,” said the sergeant, and he settled Fabrizio on some clean straw in the very manger to which his horse was tied.
Then, as Fabrizio felt very faint, he brought him a bowl of hot wine and talked to him for a while. Certain compliments included in this conversation made our hero feel as happy as a king.
It was near daybreak on the following morning when Fabrizio awoke. The horses were neighing long and loud, and making a terrible racket. The stable was full of smoke. At first Fabrizio could make nothing of the noise, and did not even realize where he was. At last, when the smoke had half stifled him, it struck him that the house was on fire; in the twinkling of an eye he was out of the stable and on his horse’s back. He looked up and saw the smoke pouring out of the two windows above the stable, and the roof of the house hidden in a black, whirling cloud. A good hundred fugitives had reached the tavern during the night, and all of them were shouting and swearing at once. The five or six who were close to Fabrizio seemed to him to be completely drunk. One of them tried to stop him, shouting, “Where are you taking my horse?”
When Fabrizio had gone about a quarter of a league he looked back. Nobody was following him; the house was blazing. He recognised the bridge, thought of his wound,and touched his arm, which felt hot and tight in the bandages. And what had become of the old colonel? “He gave his shirt to bind up my arm.” That morning our hero was the coolest and most collected man in the world; the quantities of blood he had lost had washed all the romantic qualities out of his character.
“To the right,” said he, “and let us be off.” He quietly followed the course of the river, which, after passing under the bridge, flowed toward the right side of the road. He remembered the goodcantinière’sadvice. “What true friendship!” said he to himself; “what an honest soul!”
After an hour he began to feel very weak. “Now then,” he thought, “am I going to faint? If I faint somebody will steal my horse, and perhaps my clothes, and with my clothes my valuables.” He had not strength to guide his horse, and was doing his best to keep steady in the saddle, when a peasant digging in a field hard by the high-road noticed his pallor, and offered him a glass of beer and a bit of bread.
“Seeing you so pale,” said the man, “I thought you might have been wounded in the great battle.” Never did help come more in the nick of time. When Fabrizio began to chew that morsel of black bread his eyes had begun to sting when he looked in front of him. When he had pulled himself together a little he thanked his benefactor. “And where am I?” he inquired. The peasant informed him that three quarters of a league farther on he would find the little town of Zonders, where he would be well cared for. Fabrizio reached the town without well knowing what he was doing, his only care being how not to fall off at every step his horse took. He saw a big gate standing open and rode through it; it led to a tavern, The Currycomb. The good-natured mistress of the house, an exceedingly fat woman, ran forward, calling for help in a voice that shook with pity. Two young girls assisted Fabrizio to dismount. Before he was well out of his saddle he fainted dead away. A surgeon was summoned and he was bled. On that day and those following it he hardly knew what was being done to him. He slept almost incessantly.
The puncture in his leg threatened to turn into a serious abscess. Whenever he was in his senses he begged that care might be taken of his horse, and frequently reiterated that he would pay well, which mightily offended the good hostess and her daughters. He had been admirably tended for a fortnight, and was beginning to collect his thoughts a little, when he noticed, one evening, that his nurses seemed very much disturbed. Presently a German officer entered his room. The language in which his questions were answered was one which Fabrizio did not understand, but he clearly perceived that he himself was the subject of the conversation; he pretended to be asleep. Some time afterward, when he thought the officer must have departed, he called his hostess.
“Did not that officer come to write my name down on a list and take me prisoner?”
With tears in her eyes his hostess admitted the fact.
“Well, then,” he cried, raising himself up in his bed, “there’s money in my pocket. Buy me civilian clothes, and this very night I’ll ride away. You’ve saved my life once already by taking me in when I should have fallen and died in the street. Save it again by helping me to get back to my mother.”
At this point the landlady’s daughters both burst into tears. They trembled for Fabrizio’s safety, and as they could hardly understand any French, they came close to his bed to question him. They held a discussion with their mother in Flemish, but every moment their wet eyes turned pityingly upon our hero. He thought he gathered that his flight might compromise them seriously, but that they were ready to take the risk. He clasped his hands together and thanked them earnestly.
A local Jew undertook to provide him with a suit of clothes, but when he brought it, about ten o’clock that night, the young ladies discovered, by comparing the coat with Fabrizio’s hussar jacket, that it was a great deal too large for him. They set to work on it at once; there was no time to be lost. Fabrizio showed them several napoleons hidden in his garments, and begged them to sew them intothose which had just been bought. With the suit the Jew had brought a fine pair of new boots. Fabrizio did not hesitate to ask the kind-hearted girls to cut open his hussar boots at the place he showed them, and his little diamonds were soon hidden in the lining of his new foot-gear.
A singular result of his loss of blood, and his consequent weakness, was that Fabrizio had almost entirely forgotten his French. He talked to his hostesses in Italian, and as they spoke nothing but their Flemishpatois, intercourse was really carried on solely by signs. When the young girls, perfectly disinterested as they were, beheld the diamonds, their admiration for our hero knew no bounds. They were convinced he was a prince in disguise. Aniken, the younger and more artless of the two, kissed him without further ceremony. Fabrizio, for his part, thought them charming, and toward midnight, when, in consideration of the journey he was about to take, the surgeon had allowed him to drink a little wine, he was half inclined not to depart at all.
“Where could I be better off than I am here?” he said. Nevertheless, about two o’clock in the morning he got up and dressed. Just as he was leaving his room the kindly hostess informed him that his horse had been carried off by the officer who had searched the house a few hours previously.
“Ah, the blackguard!” cried Fabrizio, “to play such a trick on a wounded man!” and he began to swear. Our young Italian was not enough of a philosopher to recollect the price he himself had paid for the horse.
Aniken told him, through her tears, that a horse had been hired for him. If she could have had her will he would not have started at all. The parting was a tender one. Two tall young fellows, the good landlady’s kinsmen, lifted Fabrizio into his saddle and walked along, holding him up, while a third preceded the little party by a few hundred paces, on the lookout for any suspicious patrol upon the road. After two hours’ journey a halt was made at the house of a cousin of the hostess of The Currycomb. In spite of all Fabrizio could say he could not induce theyoung men to leave him. Nobody, they declared, knew the paths through the forest as well as they!
“But to-morrow morning, when my escape becomes known, and you are not seen in the neighbourhood, your absence will get you into trouble,” urged Fabrizio.
A fresh start was made, and by good luck, when daylight came, a heavy fog shrouded the plain. Toward eight o’clock in the morning they were near a small town. One of the young men went on to see whether the post-horses had all been stolen. The postmaster had been able to hide them, and to fill up his stables with vile screws instead. Two horses were fetched out of the swamps where they had been concealed, and three hours later Fabrizio clambered into a little cabriolet, shabby enough, but drawn by two excellent posters. He felt stronger already; his parting with the hostesses’ young kinsmen was pathetic in the extreme. Never—not under one of the friendly pretexts Fabrizio could invent—could he induce them to accept a halfpenny.
“In your condition, sir, you need it much more than we do,” was the honest young fellows’ invariable reply. They departed at last, bearing letters in which Fabrizio, somewhat steadied by the excitement of his journey, had endeavoured to express all he felt for his benefactresses. The tears were in his eyes as he wrote, and in his letter to little Aniken some love passages certainly occurred.
Nothing extraordinary happened during the rest of his journey. When he reached Amiens the sword thrust in his thigh was causing him great suffering. The country surgeon had not thought of keeping the wound open, and in spite of the bleeding, an abscess had formed. During the fortnight Fabrizio spent in the inn at Amiens, kept by an obsequious and covetous family, the allies were overrunning France, and so deeply did our hero reflect upon his late experiences that he became another man. There was only one point on which he still remained a child. Had the fighting he had seen really been a battle? and, secondly, Was it the battle of Waterloo?
For the first time in his life he found pleasure in reading; he was always hoping to discover in the newspapers orthe descriptions of the battle something which would enable him to recognise the ground he had ridden over with Marshal Ney’s and the other general’s escort. During his stay at Amiens he wrote almost every day to his good friends of the Currycomb Inn. As soon as he was cured he went to Paris. At his former hotel he found twenty letters from his mother and his aunt, all beseeching him to return as quickly as possible. The last one from the Countess Pietranera was couched in a sort of enigmatic tone which alarmed him very much. This letter dispelled all his tender dreams. To a man of his nature a word sufficed to stir up apprehensions of the gravest kind, and his imagination immediately depicted misfortunes aggravated by the most gruesome details.
“Be careful not to sign your letters when you write us news of yourself,” said the countess. “When you return you must not come straight to the Lake of Como. Stop in Swiss territory, at Lugano.” He was to arrive at that little town under the name of Cavi; there, at the principal inn, he was to find his aunt’s man-servant, who would tell him what he was to do next. The countess closed her letter with the following words: “Use every means to conceal the folly you have committed, and, above all, keep no paper, whether written or printed, about you! In Switzerland you will be surrounded by the friends of Ste.-Marguerite.[2]If I have money enough I will send somebody to the Hôtel des Balances, at Geneva, to give you details which I can not write, and which, nevertheless, you must have before you arrive. But for God’s sake, not another day in Paris; our spies there will recognise you!”
Fabrizio’s imagination began to picture the most extraordinary things, and the only pleasure of which he was capable was that of trying to guess what the amazing fact might be, with which his aunt desired to acquaint him. Twice, during his journey across France, he was arrested,but each time he contrived to obtain his release. These annoyances he owed to his Italian passport, and that strange title of “dealer in barometers,” which tallied so ill with his youthful countenance, and his arm in a sling.
At Geneva, at last, he met one of his aunt’s serving-men, who told him, from her, that he, Fabrizio, had been denounced to the Milanese police, as having gone over to Napoleon with proposals formulated by a huge conspiracy organized in his late Kingdom of Italy. “If this was not the object of his journey,” said his accuser, “why should he have taken a false name?” His mother would endeavour to prove the truth; firstly, that he had never gone beyond Switzerland, and, secondly, that he had left the castle hastily in consequence of a quarrel with his elder brother.
When Fabrizio heard the story, his first feeling was one of pride. “I’ve been taken for a sort of ambassador to Napoleon; I am supposed to have had the honour of speaking to that great man. Would to God it had been so!” He recollected that his ancestor seven generations back, grandson of that Valserra who had come to Milan with Sforza, underwent the honour of having his head cut off by the duke’s enemies, who laid hands upon him as he was going into Switzerland, to carry proposals to the cantons and to collect recruits. He could see, in his mind’s eye, the engraving recording this fact in the family genealogy. When Fabrizio cross-questioned the man-servant, he found him in a fury about a matter which he let slip at last, in spite of the fact that the countess had told him several times over to hold his tongue about it. It was Fabrizio’s elder brother, Ascanio, who had denounced him to the Milanese police. This cruel fact threw our hero into a state bordering on madness. To get into Italy from Geneva, it was necessary to pass through Lausanne. He insisted on starting instantly on foot, and walking ten or twelve leagues, although the diligence from Geneva to Lausanne was to depart within two hours. Before he left Geneva, he had a quarrel in one of the drearycafésof the place, with a young man who, so he declared, had looked at him strangely. It was perfectly true. The phlegmatic, sensible young citizen, who neverthought of anything but making money, believed him to be mad. When Fabrizio entered thecafé, he had cast wild glances about him on every side, and then spilled the cup of coffee he had ordered over his trousers. In this quarrel, Fabrizio’s first instinctive movement was quite in the style of the sixteenth century. Instead of suggesting a duel to the young Genevan, he drew his dagger and threw himself upon him to strike him. In that moment of fury Fabrizio forgot everything he had learned concerning the code of honour, and fell back on the instinct—or I should rather say on the memories—of his early boyhood.
The confidential servant whom he met at Lugano increased his rage by relating fresh details. Fabrizio was very much loved at Grianta, and nobody would ever have mentioned his name. But for his brother’s spiteful proceeding every one would have pretended to believe he was at Milan, and the attention of the police would never have been drawn to his absence. “You may be quite certain that the customs officers hold a description of your appearance,” said his aunt’s messenger, “and if we travel by the high-road you will be stopped on the frontier.”
Fabrizio and his attendants knew every mountain-path between Lugano and the Lake of Como. They disguised themselves as hunters—in other words, as smugglers—and as they were three together, and resolute-looking fellows into the bargain, the customs officers they met did no more than greet them civilly. Fabrizio arranged matters so as to arrive at the castle about midnight. At that hour his father and all the servants with powdered heads were sure to be safe in their beds. Without any difficulty he dropped into the deep ditch and entered the castle by a small window opening out of a cellar. Here his mother and his aunt were awaiting him. Very soon his sisters joined them. For a long time they were all in such a transport of tenderness and tears, that they had hardly begun to talk sensibly before the first rays of dawn warned these beings, who believed themselves unhappy, that time was slipping by.
“I hope your brother will not have suspected your return!” said the Countess Pietranera. “I have hardlyspoken to him since this fine prank of his, and his vanity did me the honour of being very much hurt. To-night, at supper, I condescended to address him—I had to find some pretext for hiding my wild delight, which might have roused his suspicions. Then, when I perceived how proud he was of this sham reconciliation, I took advantage of his satisfaction to make him drink a great deal more than was good for him, and he will certainly not have thought of lying in ambush to carry on his spying operations.”
“It’s in your room that we must hide our hussar,” said the marchesa. “He can not start at once. We have not collected our thoughts sufficiently as yet, and we must choose the best way of throwing that terrible Milanese police off the scent.”
This idea was promptly put into practice. But on the following day the marchese and his eldest son remarked that the marchesa spent all her time in her sister-in-law’s apartment. We will not depict the passion of joy and tenderness that filled these happy beings’ hearts during the whole of that day. The Italian nature is much more easily wrung than ours by the suspicions and wild fancies born of a feverish imagination. But its joys, on the other hand, are far deeper than ours, and last much longer. During the whole of that day the countess and the marchesa were absolutely beside themselves; they made Fabrizio begin all his stories over and over again. At last, so difficult did any further concealment of their feelings from the sharp eyes of the marchese and his son Ascanio appear, that they decided to betake themselves to Milan, and there conceal their mutual ecstasy.
The ladies took the usual boat belonging to the castle as far as Como; any other course would have aroused innumerable suspicions. But when they reached the port of Como, the marchesa recollected that she had left papers of the most important description at Grianta. She sent the boatmen back at once, and they were thus deprived of all opportunity of noticing the manner in which the two ladies employed their time at Como. The moment the latter arrived, they hired one of the carriages that always stand nearthe high tower, built in the middle ages, which rises above the Milan gate, and started off at once, without giving the coachman time to speak to a soul. About a quarter of a league beyond the town, they fell in with a young sportsman of their acquaintance, who, as they had no gentleman with them, was good-natured enough to attend them to the gates of Milan, whither he himself was bound, shooting on the way. Everything promised well, and the ladies were talking most merrily to the young traveller when, just where the road bends round the base of the pretty hill and wood of San Giovanni, three gendarmes in disguise sprang to the horses’ heads. “Ah!” cried the marchesa, “my husband has betrayed us!” and she fainted away.
A sergeant of gendarmes, who had been standing somewhat in the background, approached the carriage. He stumbled as he walked, and spoke in a voice that was redolent of the tavern: “I am sorry to have to perform this duty, but I arrest you, General Fabio Conti!” Fabrizio thought the sergeant was poking fun at him by calling him general. “I’ll pay you out for this,” thought he to himself. He had his eye on the gendarmes, and was watching his opportunity to leap from the carriage and take to his heels across the fields.
The countess smiled—at a venture, as I think—and then said to the sergeant, “But, my good sergeant, do you take this child of sixteen years old to be General Conti!”
“Are you not the general’s daughter?” said the sergeant.
“Behold my father!” said the countess, pointing to Fabrizio. The gendarmes burst into a roar of laughter.
“Show your passports, and don’t bandy words!” said the sergeant, nettled by the general mirth.
“These ladies never take any passport to go to Milan,” said the coachman, with a cool and philosophic air; “they are coming from their house at Grianta. This one is the Countess Pietranera, and that one is the Marchesa del Dongo.”
The sergeant, quite put out of countenance, went to the horses’ heads, and there held council with his men. Theconference had lasted quite five minutes, when the countess begged the carriage might be moved a few paces farther into the shade; the heat was overwhelming, though it was only eleven o’clock in the day. Fabrizio, who had been looking about carefully in all directions, with a view to making his escape, noticed, emerging from a field path which led on to the dusty road, a young girl of fourteen or fifteen, with her handkerchief to her face, shedding frightened tears. She walked between two gendarmes in uniform, and three paces behind her, also flanked by gendarmes, came a tall, bony man, who gave himself dignified airs, like a prefect walking in a procession.