The Jew landlord of their lodgings brought them a discreet surgeon, who, soon coming to the conclusion that there was money to be made, informed Ludovico that his conscience obliged him to report the wounds of the young man, whom Ludovico called his brother, to the police.
“The law is clear,” he added. “It is quite evident that your brother has not hurt himself, as he declares, by falling off a ladder with an open knife in his hand.”
Ludovico coldly answered the worthy surgeon to the effect that if he ventured to listen to the promptings of his conscience, he, Ludovico, would have the honour, before he left Ferrara, of falling upon him with an open knife in his hand. When he related the incident to Fabrizio he blamed him severely. But there was not an instant to be lost about decamping. Ludovico told the Jew he was going to try what an airing would do for his brother. He fetched a carriage, and our friends left the house, never to return to it again. My readers doubtless find these descriptions of all the steps necessitated by the lack of a passport very lengthy. But in Italy, and especially in the neighbourhood of the Po, everybody’s talk is about passports. As soon as they had slipped safely out of Ferrara, as if they were merely taking a drive, Ludovico dismissed the carriage, re-entered the town by a different gate, and then came back to fetch Fabrizio in asediola, which he had hired to take them twelve leagues. When they were near Bologna, our friends had themselves driven across country, to the road leading into the city from Florence. They spent the night in the most wretched tavern they could discover, and the next morning, as Fabrizio felt strong enough to walk a little, they entered Bologna on foot. Giletti’s passport had been burned. Theactor’s death must now be known, and it was less dangerous to be arrested for having no passport, than for presenting one belonging to a man who had been killed.
Ludovico knew several servants in great houses at Bologna. It was agreed that he should go and collect intelligence from them. He told them he had come from Florence with his young brother, who, being overcome with sleep, had let him start alone an hour before sunrise. They were to have met in the village where Ludovico was to halt during the sultry midday hours, but when his brother did not arrive, Ludovico had resolved to retrace his steps. He had found him wounded by a blow from a stone and several knife thrusts, and robbed into the bargain, by people who had picked a quarrel with him. The brother was a good-looking young fellow; he could groom and manage horses, and would be glad to take service in some great house. Ludovico intended to add, if necessity should arise, that when Fabrizio had fallen down, the thieves had taken to flight, and had carried off a little bag containing their linen and their passports.
When Fabrizio reached Bologna he felt very weary, and not daring to go into an inn without a passport, he turned into the large Church of San Petronio. It was deliciously cool within the building, and he soon felt quite recovered. “Ungrateful wretch that I am,” said he to himself suddenly; “I walk into a church, and just sit myself down as if I were in acafé.” He threw himself on his knees, and thanked God fervently for the protection He had so evidently extended to him since he had had the misfortune of killing Giletti. The danger which still made him shudder was that of being recognised in the police office at Casal-Maggiore. “How was it,” he thought, “that the clerk, whose eyes were so full of suspicion, and who read my passport three times over, did not perceive that I am not five foot ten tall, that I am not eight-and-thirty years old, and that I am not deeply pitted with the small-pox? What mercies do I owe thee, oh, my God! and I have waited until now to lay my nothingness at Thy feet. My pride would fain have believed it was to vain human prudence that I owed the happinessof escaping the Spielberg, which was already yawning to engulf me.”
More than an hour did Fabrizio spend in the deepest emotion at the thought of the immense goodness of the Most High. He did not hear Ludovico approach him and stand in front of him. Fabrizio, who had hidden his face in his hands, raised his head, and his faithful servant saw the tears coursing down his cheeks.
“Come back in an hour,” said Fabrizio to him with some asperity.
Ludovico forgave his tone in consideration of his piety. Fabrizio recited the seven penitential psalms, which he knew by heart, several times over, making long pauses over the verses applicable to his present position.
Fabrizio asked pardon of God for many things, but it is a remarkable fact that it never occurred to him to reckon among his faults his plan of becoming an archbishop simply and solely because Count Mosca was a prime minister, and considered this dignity, and the great position it conferred, suitable for the duchess’s nephew. He had not indeed desired the thing at all passionately, but still he had considered it exactly as he would have considered his appointment to a ministry or a military command. The thought that his conscience might be involved in the duchess’s plan had never struck him. This is a remarkable feature of the teaching he owed to the Jesuits at Milan. This form of religion deprives men of courage to think of unaccustomed matters, and more especially forbids self-examination, as the greatest of all sins—a step toward Protestantism. To discover in what one is guilty, we must ask questions of one’s priest, or read the list of sins as printed in the book entitled Preparation for the Sacrament of Penitence. Fabrizio knew the Latin list of sins, which he had learned at the Ecclesiastical Academy at Naples, by heart, and when, as he repeated this list, he came to the word “Murder,” he had honestly accused himself before God of having killed a man, though in defence of his own life. He had run rapidly, and without the smallest attention, through the various clauses relating to the sin of simony (the purchase ofecclesiastical dignities with money). If he had been invited to give a hundred louis to become grand vicar to the Archbishop of Parma, he would have shrunk from the idea with horror. But although he neither lacked intelligence nor, more especially, logic, it never once came into his head that the employment of Count Mosca’s credit in his favour constituted a simony. Herein lies the triumph of the Jesuits’ teaching; it instils the habit of paying no attention to things which are as clear as day. A Frenchman brought up amid Parisian self-interest and scepticism might honestly have accused Fabrizio of hypocrisy at the very moment when our hero was laying open his heart before his God with the utmost sincerity, and the deepest possible emotion.
Fabrizio did not leave the church until he had prepared the confession which he had resolved to make the very next morning. He found Ludovico sitting on the steps of the huge stone peristyle which rises on the great square before the façade of San Petronio. Just as the air is purified by a great thunder-storm, so Fabrizio’s heart felt calmer, happier, and, so to speak, cooler. “I am much better. I hardly feel my wounds at all,” he said, as he joined Ludovico. “But, first of all, I must ask your forgiveness; I answered you crossly when you came to speak to me in the church. I was examining my conscience. Well, how does our business go?”
“It’s going right well. I’ve engaged a lodging—not at all worthy of your Excellency, indeed—kept by the wife of one of my friends, who is a very pretty woman, and in close intimacy, besides, with one of the principal police agents. To-morrow I shall go and report that our passports have been stolen. This declaration will be well received, but I shall pay the postage of a letter which the police will send to Casal-Maggiore to inquire whether there is a man there of the name of San Micheli, who has a brother named Fabrizio in the service of the Duchess Sanseverina of Parma. It’s all done,siamo à cavallo” (an Italian proverb, meaning “we are saved”).
Fabrizio had suddenly become very grave. He askedLudovico to wait for him a moment, returned to the church almost at a run, and had hardly got inside when he cast himself once more upon his knees and humbly kissed the stone pavement. “This is a miracle,” he cried, with tears in his eyes. “Thou sawest my soul ready to return to the path of duty, and Thou hast saved me. O God, I may be killed some day in a scuffle. Remember, O Lord, when my dying moment comes, the condition of my heart at this moment.” In a passion of the liveliest joy, Fabrizio once more recited the seven penitential psalms. Before he left the church, he approached an old woman who sat in front of a great Madonna and beside an iron triangle set vertically on a support of the same metal. The edges of this triangle bristled with little spikes, destined to support the small tapers which the faithful burn before Cimabue’s famous Madonna.
Only seven tapers were burning when Fabrizio approached. He noted the fact in his memory, so as to reflect on it when he should have time.
“How much do the tapers cost?” said he to the woman.
“Twobaiocchieach.”
And, indeed, they were no thicker than a penholder, and not a foot high.
“How many tapers will your triangle hold?”
“Sixty-three, since there are seven already.”
“Ha!” said Fabrizio. “Sixty-three and seven make seventy; I must remember that, too.” He paid for the tapers, set up and lighted the first seven himself, and then knelt down to make his offering. As he rose from his knees he said to the old woman, “It is for a mercy bestowed.”
“I am dying of hunger,” said Fabrizio to Ludovico as he rejoined him.
“Don’t let us go into a tavern; let us go to the lodgings,” said his servant. “The mistress of the house will go out and buy you what you want for breakfast; she’ll cheat us out of a score of sous, and that will make her feel all the more kindly to the new arrival.”
“That means that I shall have to go on starving for another hour,” said Fabrizio, laughing as merrily as a child, and he entered a tavern close to San Petronio. To his extreme astonishment he beheld, sitting at a table close to his own his aunt’s principal man-servant, Pepe, the very man who had once been sent to meet him at Geneva. Fabrizio signed to him to keep silence; then, after a hasty repast, with a happy smile trembling on his lips, he rose to his feet. Pepe followed him, and for the third time our hero passed into San Petronio. Ludovico discreetly held back, and walked up and down the square.
“Oh, monsignore, how are your wounds? The duchess is in dreadful anxiety. For one whole day she believed you were dead, and cast away on some island in the river. I must send a messenger to her instantly. I have been hunting for you for six days; I spent three of them at Ferrara, going to all the inns.”
“Have you a passport for me?”
“I have three. One with all your Excellency’s names and titles, one with nothing but your name, and the third with a false name, Giuseppe Bossi. Each of the passports will serve your Excellency’s purpose, whether you choose to arrive from Florence or from Modena. All you have to do is to walk out beyond the town. The count would be glad if you would lodge at the Albergo del Pellegrino, which is kept by a friend of his.”
Fabrizio walked, as though by chance, up the right aisle of the church to the spot where his tapers were burning. He fixed his eyes on the Cimabue Madonna, then, kneeling down, he said to Pepe, “I must thank God for a moment.” Pepe followed his example. As they left the church Pepe noticed that Fabrizio gave a twenty-franc piece to the first beggar who asked charity of him. The beggar set up a shout of gratitude, which attracted the crowds of indigent people of every sort who generally collect on the square of San Petronio all round the charitable donor. Everybody wanted his or her share of the napoleon. The women, despairing of getting through the press round the lucky mendicant, fell upon Fabrizio, shrieking to him to say it wastrue he had given his gold piece to be divided among all the poor beggars. Pepe brandished his gold-headed cane, and ordered them to leave “his Excellency” alone.
“Oh, your Excellency,” screamed all the women at once, even louder than before, “give the poor women another gold piece.” Fabrizio quickened his pace; the women ran after him, calling aloud, and many male beggars ran up from side streets, so that quite a little disturbance ensued. The whole of the filthy and noisy crowd kept shouting “Your Excellency!” Fabrizio found it by no means easy to get out of the press. The scene recalled his imagination to earth. “I am only getting what I deserve,” thought he. “I have been rubbing shoulders with the common folk.”
Two of the women followed him as far as the Saragossa Gate, through which he passed out of the town. There Pepe stopped them by threatening them seriously with his cane and throwing them some small coins. Fabrizio climbed the pretty hill of San Michele in Bosco, walked partly round the town, outside the walls, turned into a foot-path, which, five hundred paces farther on, ran into the road from Florence, returned to Bologna, and gravely presented a passport containing a very accurate description of his person to the police commissary. This passport described him as Giuseppe Bossi, student of theology. Fabrizio noticed a little splash of red ink that seemed to have been dropped by accident on the lower right-hand corner of the paper. Two hours later he had a spy upon his heels, on account of the title “your Excellency” applied to him by his companion in the presence of the beggars at San Petronio, although his passport detailed none of those honours which entitle a man to be addressed as “Excellency” by his servants.
Fabrizio perceived the spy, and snapped his fingers at him. He gave not a thought, now, either to passports or police officers, and was as amused as a child with everything about him. When Pepe, who had been ordered to stay with him, saw how well pleased he was with Ludovico, he thought his own best course was to carry the good news tothe duchess himself. Fabrizio wrote two long letters to his dear ones. Then he bethought him of writing a third to the venerable Archbishop Landriani. This letter produced a most extraordinary effect. It contained the exact history of his fight with Giletti. The good archbishop, quite overcome by his emotion, did not fail to go and read the letter to the prince, whose curiosity to know how the young monsignore would set about excusing so terrible a murder made him willing to listen. Thanks to the Marchesa Raversi’s many friends, the prince, like the whole city of Parma, believed Fabrizio had obtained the assistance of some twenty or thirty peasants to kill an inferior actor who had ventured to dispute his possession of little Marietta. At despotic courts truth lies at the mercy of the first clever schemer, just as in Paris it is ruled by fashion.
“But, devil take it,” said the prince to the archbishop, “one has those things done by a third person. It is not customary to do them oneself. And then actors like Giletti are not killed; they are bought.”
Fabrizio had not the smallest suspicion of what was going on at Parma. As a matter of fact, the death of a player who only earned thirty-two francs a month in his lifetime was going near to overthrow theultraministry, with Count Mosca at its head.
When the news of Giletti’s death reached him, the prince, nettled by the airs of independence which the duchess gave herself, had ordered Rassi, his Minister of Justice, to deal with the whole trial as if the accused person had been a Liberal. Fabrizio, for his part, believed that a man of his rank was above all law. The fact that in countries where the bearers of great names are never punished, there is nothing that can not be achieved, even against such persons, by intrigue, had not entered into his calculations. He would often talk to Ludovico of his perfect innocence, which was soon to be proclaimed. His great argument was that he was not guilty. At last, one day, Ludovico said to him: “I can not conceive why your Excellency, who is so clever and knows so much, takes the trouble of saying such things to me, who am his devoted servant. Your Excellency is toocautious. Such things are only good for use in public or before the judges.”
“This man believes I am a murderer, and he does not love me the less,” mused Fabrizio, thunder-struck.
Three days after Pepe’s departure, Fabrizio was astonished to receive a huge letter bound with a silken cord, like those used in Louis XIV’s time, and addressed to “His Most Reverend Excellency, Monsignore Fabrizio del Dongo, Chief Grand Vicar of the Diocese of Parma, Canon, etc.”
“But am I all that already?” he said to himself with a laugh. Archbishop Landriani’s epistle was a masterpiece of perspicacity and logic. It covered no less than nineteen large sheets, and gave a very good account of everything that had happened at Parma with regard to Giletti’s death.
“The march of a French army on the town, under the command of Marshal Ney, would not have made more stir,” wrote the good archbishop. “Every soul, my very dear son, except the duchess and myself, believes you killed the actor Giletti because you wanted to do it. If that misfortune had befallen you, it would have been one of those matters that can be hushed up by means of a couple of hundred louis and an absence of six months. But the Raversi is bent on using the incident to overthrow Count Mosca. It is not the terrible sin of murder for which the public blames you, it is simply for your awkwardness, or rather insolence, in not having condescended to employ abulo[a kind of inferior bully]. I give you the clear substance of the talk I hear all round me. For since this most deplorable event I go every day to three of the most important houses in this city, so as to find opportunity for justifying you, and never have I felt I was making a holier use of what little eloquence Heaven has bestowed on me.”
The scales began to fall from Fabrizio’s eyes. The numerous letters he received from the duchess, all throbbing with affection, never condescended to report anything of what was happening around her. The duchess assured him she would leave Parma forever, unless he soon returned there in triumph. “The count,” she wrote, in a letter which reached him together with the archbishop’s, “will do allthat is humanly possible for you. As for me, this last prank of yours has changed my nature; I have grown as stingy as Tombone, the banker. I have discharged all my workmen. I have done more—I have dictated the inventory of my belongings to the count, and I find I have very much less than I thought. After the death of that excellent Pietranera (whose murder, by the way, you would have done far better to avenge, than to risk your life against such a creature as Giletti), I was left with twelve hundred francs a year, and debts amounting to five thousand. Among other things, I remember, I had thirty pairs of white satin slippers which had come from Paris, and only one single pair of walking shoes. I have almost made up my mind to take the three hundred thousand francs the duke left me, and which I had intended to lay out entirely on a magnificent monument to his memory. For the rest, it is the Marchesa Raversi who is your bitterest enemy, and therefore mine. If you are bored at Bologna, you have only to say one word, and I will go to you there. Here are four more bills of exchange.”
The duchess never told Fabrizio a word about the opinion concerning his business which prevailed at Parma. Her first object was to console him, and in any case the death of such an absurd person as Giletti did not strike her as matter of any serious reproach to a Del Dongo.
“How many Gilettis have our ancestors sent into the next world!” she would say to the count; “and nobody ever dreamed of finding fault with them for it.”
Fabrizio, filled with astonishment, and perceiving for the first time the real condition of things, set himself to study the archbishop’s letter. Unfortunately the archbishop himself believed him better informed than he really was. As Fabrizio understood the matter, the Marchesa Raversi’s triumph rested on the impossibility of discovering any eye-witnesses of the fatal scuffle. His own servant, who had been the first to bring the news to Parma, had been inside the village tavern at Sanguigna when the incident occurred. Little Marietta, and the old woman who acted as her mother, had disappeared, and the marchesa had bought over the manwho had driven the carriage, and who was now making a deposition of the most abominable kind. “Although the proceedings are wrapped in the deepest mystery,” wrote the good archbishop in his Ciceronian style, “and directed by Rassi, of whom Christian charity forbids me to speak evil, but who has made his fortune by pursuing unfortunate beings accused of crime, even as the hound pursues the hare; though Rassi, I say, whose baseness and venality you can not overrate, has been charged with the management of the trial by an angry prince, I have obtained a sight of thevetturino’sthree depositions. By a signal piece of good fortune the wretch has flatly contradicted himself, and I will add, seeing I speak to my vicar-general, who will rule this diocese when I am gone, that I sent for the priest of the parish in which this wandering sinner dwells. I will confide to you, my very dear son, though under the secret of the confessional, that the priest already knows, through thevetturino’swife, the actual number of crowns her husband has received from the Marchesa Raversi. I will not dare to say that the marchesa has insisted on his slandering you, but that is very likely. The crowns were paid over by a miserable priest who performs very dubious functions in the marchesa’s service, and whom I have been obliged, for the second time, to prohibit from saying mass. I will not weary you with the recital of several other steps which you might fairly have expected from me, and which, indeed, it was only my duty to take. A canon, a colleague of yours at the cathedral, who is occasionally too apt to remember the influence conferred on him by the possession of the family fortune, of which, by God’s will, he has become the sole inheritor, ventured to say, in the house of Count Zurla, Minister of the Interior, that he considered this trifle clearly proved against you (he was speaking of the unhappy Giletti’s murder). I summoned him to my palace, and there, in presence of my three other vicars-general, of my chaplain, and of two priests who happened to be in my waiting-room, I requested him to enlighten us, his brothers, as to the grounds on which he based the complete conviction he declared himself to have acquired, of the guilt of one of his colleaguesat the cathedral. The only reasons the poor wretch could articulate were very inconclusive. Every one present rose up against him, and although I did not think it necessary to add more than a very few words, he burst into tears, and before us all made a full confession of his complete error. Whereupon I promised him secrecy, in my own name and that of all those who had been present at the conference, on condition, however, that he should use all his zeal to rectify the false impression produced by the remarks he had been making during the past fortnight.
“I will not repeat, my dear son, what you must have known for long—that out of the four-and-thirty peasants working on Count Mosca’s excavation, and who, according to the Raversi, were paid to assist you in your crime, thirty-two men were hard at work at the bottom of their ditch at the moment when you seized the hunting-knife and used it to defend your life against the man who had so unexpectedly attacked you. Two of them who were not in the ditch shouted to them, ‘He is murdering monsignore!’ This one exclamation is a brilliant testimony to your innocence. Well, Rassi declares that these two men have disappeared, and further, eight of the men who were in the trench have been found. When they were first examined six of these declared they had heard the shout, ‘He is murdering monsignore!’ I know indirectly that when they were examined for the fifth time, yesterday evening, five of them asserted that they could not remember whether they had actually heard the exclamation, or whether they had been told of it afterward, by one of their comrades. Orders have been given which will make me acquainted with the localities in which these workmen live, and their priest will make them understand that if they allow themselves to be tempted to wrest the truth, for the sake of earning a few crowns, they will be damned everlastingly.”
The good archbishop proceeded with infinite detail, as may be judged by what we have already reported. Then he added these lines in Latin:
“This business is nothing less than an attempt to turn out the ministry. If you are sentenced it can only be to thegalleys or to execution. In that case I should intervene, and declare, with all the weight of my archiepiscopal authority, that I know you to be innocent; that you have simply defended your life against a rascal; and further, that I have forbidden you to return to Parma as long as your enemies triumph there. I even propose to brand the Minister of Justice as he deserves; the hatred felt for that man is as common as esteem for his character is rare. But on the eve of the day whereon the minister pronounces so unjust a sentence, the Duchess of Sanseverina will leave the city, and perhaps even the dominion of Parma. In that case, no one doubts that the count will immediately hand in his resignation. Then, most probably, General Fabio Conti will be made minister, and the Marchesa Raversi will triumph. The great difficulty about your business is that no capable man has been placed in charge of the steps indispensable for the demonstration of your innocence, and for the frustration of the attempts being made to suborn witnesses. The count thinks he is doing this himself, but he is too great a gentleman to condescend to certain details, and besides, his position as Minister of Police obliged him, at the very outset, to issue the severest orders against you. And finally—dare I say it?—our sovereign master believes you guilty, or simulates the belief, at all events, and imports a certain bitterness into the affair.” (The words corresponding toour sovereign masterandsimulates the beliefwere in Greek characters, and Fabrizio was infinitely grateful to the archbishop for having dared to write them at all. He cut the line out of the letter with his penknife, and instantly destroyed it.)
Twenty times over Fabrizio broke off in the perusal of this letter. He was filled with the deepest and most lively gratitude, and instantly wrote a letter of eight pages in reply. Often he had to lift his head, so as to prevent the tears from dropping on his paper. The next morning, just as he was about to seal his missive, he bethought him that it was too worldly in tone. “I will write it in Latin,” said he to himself; “it will seem more correct to the worthy archbishop.” But while he was striving to turn fine long Latinphrases, careful imitations of Cicero, he remembered that one day, when the archbishop had been speaking to him of Napoleon, he had made it a point to call him “Buonaparte.” That instant every trace of the emotion which, only the night before, had affected him even to tears, fled utterly. “Oh, King of Italy!” he cried, “the faith so many swore to you in your lifetime shall be kept by me, now that you are no more. He cares for me, no doubt, but that is because I am a Del Dongo and he the son of a common man.” So that his fine Italian letter might not be wasted, Fabrizio made some necessary changes in it, and despatched it to Count Mosca.
That very some day, Fabrizio met little Marietta in the street. She reddened with delight, and signed to him to follow without speaking to her. She took her way swiftly toward a lonely portico; once there, she drew forward the black lace which covered her head, in the fashion of that country, so that no one could recognise her, and then, turning round sharply—
“How is it,” said she to Fabrizio, “that you are walking about freely in the streets?” Fabrizio told her his story.
“Great heavens, you’ve been to Ferrara! And I have been hunting for you everywhere. You must know that I quarrelled with the old woman because she wanted to take me to Venice, where I knew quite well you would never go, because you are on the Austrian black list. I sold my gold necklace to get to Bologna. Something told me I should have the happiness of meeting you here, and the old woman arrived two days after me. I would not advise you to visit us, because she would make more of those shabby attempts to get money out of you, of which I am so ashamed. We have lived very comfortably since that fatal day you know of, and we have not spent a quarter of what you gave her. I should not like to go to see you at the Albergo del Pellegrino; that would be apublicity. Try to hire some little room in a lonely street, and at theAve Maria(nightfall) I will be here under this same portico.”
Having said these words, she took to flight.
The unexpected appearance of this charming young person drove every serious thought away. Fabrizio lived on at Bologna with a sense of the deepest delight and security. His artless propensity to find happiness in anything which filled his life, betrayed itself in his letters to the duchess, and to such a point as to annoy her.
Fabrizio hardly noticed it; only he noted in abbreviated signs on the dial plate of his watch, “When I write to the duchess I must never say ‘when I was a prelate, when I was a churchman’—it vexes her.” He had bought a pair of ponies, with which he was very much pleased, and harnessed them to a hired chaise whenever little Marietta had a fancy to go and see one of the delightful spots in the neighbourhood of Bologna. Almost every evening he drove her to the Reno Cascade. On the way back he would stop at the house of the good-natured Crescentini, who rather believed himself to be Marietta’s father.
“Faith,” said Fabrizio to himself, “if this be thecafélife which struck me as being so absurd for any serious man to lead, I did wrong to turn up my nose at it.” He forgot that he never went near acaféexcept to read the Constitutionnel, and that as he was utterly unknown to any one in Bologna, the pleasures of vanity had nothing to do with his present state of felicity. When he was not with little Marietta, he was to be seen at the observatory, where he was attending a course of astronomy. The professor had taken a great fancy to him, and Fabrizio would lend him his horses on a Sunday, so that he and his wife might go and ruffle it in the Corso of the Montagnola.
He had a horror of making any one unhappy, however unworthy the person might be. Marietta would not hearof his seeing themamaccia, but one day, when she was in church, he went up to the old woman’s room. She flushed with anger when she saw him enter. “I must play the Del Dongo here,” said Fabrizio to himself. “How much does Marietta earn a month when she has an engagement?” he called out, with very much the same air as that with which a self-respecting young Parisian takes his seat in thebalconat the Opéra Bouffe.
“Fifty crowns.”
“You lie, as usual. Tell me the truth, or, by God, you’ll not get a centime.”
“Well, she was earning twenty-two crowns in our company at Parma, when we were so unlucky as to meet you. I earned twelve crowns, and we each gave Giletti, our protector, a third of our earnings; on that Giletti made Marietta a present almost every month—something like two crowns——”
“You lie again; you only earned four crowns. But if you are good to Marietta, I will engage you as if I were animpresario. You shall have twelve crowns for yourself every month, and twenty-two for her, but if I see her eyes red once I shall go bankrupt.”
“You’re mighty proud of yourself! Well, let me tell you, your fine generosity is ruining us,” rejoined the old woman furiously. “We are losingl’avviamento[our custom]. When we have the crushing misfortune of losing your Excellency’s protection, no comedy company will know anything about us. They will all be full, we shall find no engagement, and, thanks to you, we shall die of hunger.”
“Go to the devil!” said Fabrizio, departing.
“I will not go to the devil, you ungodly wretch! But I will go straight to the police, and they shall know from me that you are a monsignore who has cast away his cassock, and that Giuseppe Bossi is no more your name than it’s mine.”
Fabrizio had already descended several steps; he turned and came back. “In the first place, the police probably know my real name better than you do. But, if you venture to denounce me, if you dare to do anything so infamous,”he said very seriously, “Ludovico will talk to you, and it will not be six knife thrusts that you will have in your old carcass, but four times six, and you will spend six months in hospital, and without tobacco.”
The hag turned pale, rushed at Fabrizio’s hand, and tried to kiss it.
“I accept what you are ready to do for me and Marietta thankfully; you looked so good-natured that I took you for a simpleton. And consider this well; other people might make the same mistake. I would advise you to look more like a great gentleman, as a rule.” Then she added, with the most admirable impudence, “You will think over this piece of good advice, and, as winter is not far off, you will make Marietta and me each a present of a good coat of that fine English stuff in the big shop on the Piazza San Petronio.”
The pretty Marietta’s love offered Fabrizio all the charms of the most tender friendship, and this made him think of the happiness of the same description he might have found in the company of the duchess.
“But is it not a very comical thing,” said he to himself, “that I am not capable of that exclusive and passionate preoccupation which men call love? Amid all my chanceliaisons, at Novara or at Naples, did I ever meet a woman whose presence I preferred, even in the earliest days, to a ride on a good-looking horse that I had never mounted before? Can it be,” he added, “that what is called ‘love’ is yet another lie? I love, of course, just as I am hungry at six o’clock in the evening. Can it be that this somewhat vulgar propensity is what these liars have lifted into the love of Othello and the love of Tancred? Or must I believe that my organization is different from that of other men. What if no passion should ever touch my heart? That would be a strange fate!”
At Naples, especially toward the close of his residence there, Fabrizio had met women who, proud of their rank, their beauty, and the worldly position of the adorers they had sacrificed to him, had tried to govern him. At the very first inkling of their plans Fabrizio had broken with themin the promptest and most scandalous manner. “Now,” said he, “if I ever allow myself to be carried away by the pleasure, no doubt a very keen one, of being on good terms with that pretty woman known as the Duchess Sanseverina, I am exactly like the blundering Frenchman who killed the hen that laid the golden eggs. To the duchess I owe the only happiness with which a tender feeling has ever inspired me. My affection for her is my life; and besides, apart from her what am I? A miserable exile condemned to a hand-to-mouth existence, in a ruinous castle near Novara. I remember that when the great autumn rains came I used to be obliged to fasten an umbrella over the head of my bed, for fear of accidents. I used to ride the agent’s horses, and he just allowed it out of respect for my blue blood (and my muscular strength). But he was beginning to think I had stayed there too long. My father allowed me twelve hundred francs a year, and thought himself damned because he was supporting a Jacobin. My poor mother and my sisters went without gowns so as to enable me to make some trifling presents to my mistresses. This kind of generosity used to wring my heart, and besides, my state of penury was beginning to be suspected, and the young noblemen in the neighbourhood would soon have been pitying me. Sooner or later some coxcomb would have betrayed his scorn for a poor and unsuccessful Jacobin, for in their eyes I was nothing else. I should have bestowed or received some hearty sword thrust, which would have brought me to the fortress of Fenestrella or forced me to take refuge in Switzerland once more—still with my twelve hundred francs a year. To the duchess I owe the happiness of having escaped all these ills, and further, she it is who feels for me those transports of affection which I ought to feel for her.
“Instead of the ridiculous and shabby existence which would have turned me into that sorry animal, a fool, I have spent four years in a great city, and with an excellent carriage, which has prevented me from feeling envy, and other low provincial sentiments. This aunt, in her extreme kindness, is always scolding me because I do not draw enoughmoney from her banker. Shall I spoil this admirable position forever? Shall I lose the only friend I have in the world? All I have to do is to tell her a lie, and say to a charming woman, who probably has not her equal in the world, and for whom I have the most passionate regard, ‘I love you.’ This from me, who do not know what real love means! She would spend whole days reproaching me with the absence of those transports which I have never known. Now, Marietta, who can not see into my heart, and who takes a caress for an outburst of passion, thinks me madly in love with her, and believes herself the happiest of living women.
“As a matter of fact, the only slight acquaintance that I have ever had with that tender absorption which is, I believe, denominatedlove, was for that young girl Aniken, at the inn at Zonders, near the Belgian frontier.”
It is with much regret that we must here relate one of Fabrizio’s worst actions. In the midst of his tranquil life, a foolish sting to his vanity took possession of the heart which love could not vanquish, and carried him quite off his feet. Living in Bologna at the same time as himself, was the celebrated Fausta F⸺, undoubtedly one of the first singers of our time, and perhaps the most capricious woman ever seen. The gifted Venetian poet Burati had written a famous satirical sonnet concerning her, which, at that time, was in the mouth of every one, from princes to the lowest urchins in the street:—
“To will and not to will, to adore and detest in one and the same day, to find no happiness save in inconstancy, to scorn that which the world adores, so long as the world adores it—Fausta has all these faults and many more. Wherefore, never cast your eyes upon the serpent; if once thou seest her, oh, imprudent man, all her caprices are forgotten. If thou hast the happiness of hearing her, thou forgettest even thyself, and love, at that moment, makes of thee what Circe once made the comrades of Ulysses.”
Just at that moment this miracle of beauty was so fascinated by the huge whiskers and overweening insolence of the young Count M⸺ that even his abominable jealousydid not revolt her. Fabrizio saw the count in the streets of Bologna, and was nettled by the air of superiority with which he swaggered along the pavements, and graciously condescended to show off his charms before the public. The young man was very rich, believed he might venture anything, and as hisprepotenzihad earned him several threats, he hardly ever appeared unaccompanied by eight or tenbuli(a sort of ruffian) who wore his liveries, and came from his property near Brescia.
Once or twice, when he had chanced to hear the Fausta sing, Fabrizio had crossed glances with the doughty count. He was astonished by the angelic sweetness of her voice; he had never dreamed of anything like it. It gave him sensations of supreme delight, a fine contrast to the placidity of his existence. “Can this, at last, be love?” said he to himself. Full of curiosity to feel the passion, and amused, too, by the idea of braving the count, who looked far more threatening than any drum-major, our hero committed the childish folly of appearing much too frequently in front of the Palazzo Tanari, in which the count had installed the Fausta.
One day, toward nightfall, Fabrizio, who was trying to make Fausta look at him, was greeted by shrieks of laughter, evidently intentional, from the count’sbuli, who were standing round the door of the palace. He hurried home, armed himself well, and returned.
Fausta, hidden behind her sun-blinds, was expecting this return, and noted it down to his credit. The count, who was jealous of everybody on earth, became especially jealous of Signor Giuseppe Bossi, and indulged in all sorts of absurd threats, whereupon our hero sent him a letter every morning containing nothing but these words: “Signor Giuseppe Bossi destroys vermin, and lives at the Pellegrino, in the Via Larga, No. 79.”
Count M⸺, inured to the respect ensured him everywhere by his great fortune, his blue blood, and the bravery of his thirty serving-men, refused to understand the language of the little note.
Fabrizio wrote more notes to the Fausta. M⸺ setspies upon his rival, who was not, perhaps, unpleasing to the lady. He first of all learned his real name, and that, for the moment, at all events, he did not dare to show his face in Parma. A few days later Count M⸺, with hisbuli, his splendid horses, and Fausta, all departed to Parma.
Fabrizio, warming to the game, followed them next morning. In vain did the faithful Ludovico remonstrate pathetically with him. Fabrizio would not listen, and Ludovico, who was a brave man himself, admired him for it. Besides, this journey would bring him nearer his own pretty mistress at Casal-Maggiore. By Ludovico’s care, eight or ten old soldiers who had served in Napoleon’s regiments, entered Signor Giuseppe Bossi’s service, nominally as servants.
“If,” said Fabrizio to himself, “when I commit this folly of going after the Fausta, I only hold no communication with the Minister of Police, Count Mosca, nor with the duchess, I risk no one but myself. Later on I will tell my aunt that I did it all in search of love, that beautiful thing that I have never been able to discover. The fact is that I do think about Fausta, even when I don’t see her; but is it the memory of her voice that I love, or is it her person?”
As he had given up all thoughts of the Church as a career, Fabrizio had grown moustaches and whiskers almost as tremendous as those of Count M⸺, and these somewhat disguised him. He established his headquarters, not at Parma—that would have been too imprudent—but in a village hard by, on the road to Sacca, where his aunt’s country house was situated. Advised by Ludovico, he gave himself out in the village as the valet of a very eccentric English nobleman who spent a hundred thousand francs a year on sport, and who was shortly to arrive from the Lake of Como, where he was detained by the trout-fishing.
Fortunately the pretty little palace which Count M⸺ had hired for the fair Fausta stood at the southernmost end of the town of Parma, and just on the Sacca road, and Fausta’s windows looked on to the fine avenues of tall trees which stretch away below the high tower of the citadel.
Fabrizio was not known in that lonely quarter of thetown. He did not fail to have Count M⸺ followed, and one day, when he had just left the exquisite singer’s house, Fabrizio was bold enough to appear in the street in broad daylight. He was well armed, indeed, and mounted on an excellent horse. Musicians, such as are constantly found in the Italian streets, and who occasionally are very good indeed, ranged themselves with their instruments under the Fausta’s windows, and, after some introductory chords, sang, very fairly, a cantata in her honour. Fausta appeared at the window, and her attention was easily caught by a very courteous young gentleman, who first of all saluted her, and then began to bombard her with most significant glances. In spite of the exaggeratedly English dress Fabrizio had donned, she soon recognised the sender of the passionate letters which had brought about her departure from Bologna. “This is a strange being,” said she to herself. “I fancy I am going to fall in love with him. I have a hundred louis in my pocket. I can very well afford to break with the terrible count. He really has no intelligence, and there is nothing novel about him; the only thing that rather entertains me is the frightful appearance of his followers.”
The next morning Fabrizio, having heard that the Fausta went to mass every day about eleven o’clock, in that very church of San Giovanni which contained the tomb of his great-uncle, the Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo, ventured to follow her there. It must be said that Ludovico had provided him with a fine English wig of the brightest red hair.À proposto the colour of these locks—that of the flame which devoured his heart—he wrote a sonnet which delighted the Fausta. An unknown hand had laid it carefully on her piano. This manœuvring went on for quite a week, but Fabrizio felt that in spite of all his various efforts, he was making no real progress.
Fausta refused to receive him. He had overdone his eccentricity, and she has since acknowledged that she was afraid of him. Fabrizio still retained a faint hope of arriving at the sensation which is known as love, but in the meanwhile, he was very often sorely bored.
“Sir, let us take ourselves off,” said Ludovico to him over and over again. “You are not the least in love; your coolness and reasonableness are quite hopeless, and besides, you make no progress whatsoever. Let us decamp, for very shame.”
In the first flush of disgust, Fabrizio was on the very point of departing. Then he heard that the Fausta was to sing at the Duchess Sanseverina’s house. “Perhaps that sublime voice will really set my heart on fire at last,” thought he, and he actually dared to introduce himself, in disguise, into his aunt’s palace, where every one knew him.
The emotion of the duchess may be imagined, when, quite toward the end of the concert, she noticed a man in a chasseur’s livery standing near the door of the great drawing-room; something in his appearance stirred her memory. She sought Count Mosca, and it was not until then that he informed her of Fabrizio’s extraordinary and really incomprehensible folly. He took the matter very well—this love for somebody who was not the duchess was very agreeable to him—and the count, who, politics apart, was a man of perfect honour, acted on the maxim that his own happiness depended entirely on that of the duchess. “I will save him from himself,” said he to his friend. “Imagine our enemies’ delight if he were arrested in this very palace! So I have posted a hundred men of my own in the house, and it was on this account that I asked you to give me the keys of the great water-tank. He gives himself out as being desperately in love with the Fausta, and hitherto he has not been able to carry her off from Count M⸺, who gives the giddy creature all the luxuries of a queen.”
The liveliest sorrow was painted on the features of the duchess.
Fabrizio was nothing more than a libertine, then—incapable of any tender or serious feeling! “And not to see us! That is what I shall never be able to forgive him,” she said at last. “And I, who am writing to him every day, to Bologna——”
“I give him great credit for his self-restraint,” said the count. “He does not desire to compromise us by hisfreak, and it will be very amusing to hear his account of it later.”
The Fausta was too giddy-pated to be able to hold her tongue about anything which occupied her thoughts. The morning after the concert, during which she had sung all her airs at the tall young man dressed as a chasseur, she referred, in conversation with the count, to an unknown and attentive individual. “Where do you see him?” inquired the count in a fury. “In the streets, in church,” replied the Fausta, in confusion. She immediately tried to repair her imprudence, or at all events to remove any idea which could recall Fabrizio’s person. She launched into an endless description of a tall red-haired young man with blue eyes, some very rich and clumsy Englishman, doubtless, or else some prince. At this word the count, the definiteness of whose impressions was their only virtue, jumped to the conclusion—a delightful one for his vanity—that his rival was none other than the hereditary Prince of Parma. This poor melancholy youth, watched over by five or six governors, sub-governors, tutors, etc., who never allowed him to go out without holding a preliminary council, was in the habit of casting strange looks at every decent-looking woman whom he was allowed to approach. At the duchess’s concert he had been seated, as his rank demanded, in front of all the other auditors, in a separate arm-chair, and three paces from the fair Fausta, and had gazed at her in a manner which had caused excessive vexation to the count. This delightful piece of wild vanity, the idea of having a prince for his rival, entertained Fausta vastly, and she amused herself by strengthening it with a hundred details, imparted in the most apparently artless fashion.
“Is your family,” said she to the count, “as old as that of the Farnese, to which this young man belongs?”
“As old! What do you mean? There are no bastards in my family.”[5]
It so fell out that Count M⸺ never could get a clear view of his pretended rival, and this confirmed his flattering conviction that he had a prince for his antagonist. As a matter of fact, Fabrizio, when the necessities of his enterprise did not summon him to Parma, spent his time in the woods near Sacca, and on the banks of the Po. Count M⸺ had grown more haughty than ever, but far more prudent, too, since he had believed himself to be disputing Fausta’s affections with a prince. He besought her very earnestly to behave with the utmost reserve in everything she did.
After casting himself at her feet, like a jealous and passionate lover, he told her very plainly that his honour demanded that she should not be duped by the young prince.
“Excuse me,” she replied. “I should not be his dupe if I loved him. I have never yet seen a prince at my feet.”
“If you yield,” he responded, with a haughty look, “I may not, perhaps, be able to avenge myself on the prince, but vengeance I will have, you may be certain,” and he went out, banging the doors behind him. Had Fabrizio made his appearance at that moment, he would have won his cause.
“If you value your life,” said Count M⸺ to her that evening, as he took leave of her after the play, “see to it that I never find out that the young prince has entered your house. I can do nothing to him, but s’death, madam, do not force me to remember that I can do anything I please to you!”
“Ah, my little Fabrizio,” exclaimed the Fausta, “if I only knew where to lay my hand on you!”
Wounded vanity may drive a wealthy young man, who has been surrounded by flatterers since his birth, into many things. The very real passion with which the Fausta had inspired Count M⸺ burned up again furiously. The dangerous prospect of a struggle with the only son of the sovereign in whose country he was sojourning did not daunt him, and at the same time he was not clever enough to make any attempt to get a sight of the prince, or at least have him followed. As he could discover no other method of attack, M⸺ ventured on the idea of making him look ridiculous.“I shall be banished forever from the dominion of Parma,” said he. “Well, what matter?”
If he had made any attempt to reconnoitre the enemy’s position, Count M⸺ would have discovered that the poor young prince never went out of doors except in the company of three or four old men, the tiresome guardians of official etiquette, and that the only pleasure of his own choice in which he was allowed to indulge, was his taste for mineralogy. Both in the daytime, and at night, the little Palazzo occupied by Fausta, and to which the best company in Parma crowded, was surrounded by watchers. M⸺ was kept informed, hour by hour, of what she was doing, and especially of what was done by those about her. One point, at least, was praiseworthy, in the precautions taken by the jealous man—the lady, whimsical as she was, had no suspicion, at first, of the increasing watchfulness about her. All Count M⸺’s agents reported that a very young man, wearing a wig of red hair, constantly appeared under the Fausta’s windows, but every time in some fresh disguise. “Clearly that is the young prince,” said M⸺ to himself; “otherwise why should he disguise himself? Egad, I am not the man to make way for him! But for the usurpations of the Venetian republic I should now be a reigning prince like him.”
On San Stefano’s Day the spies’ reports grew more gloomy; they seemed to indicate that the Fausta was beginning to respond to her unknown admirer’s attentions. “I might depart instantly, and take the woman with me,” said M⸺ to himself, “but I fled from Bologna before Del Dongo. Here I should flee before a prince, and what would the young man say? He might think he had contrived to frighten me, and on my soul, my family is as good as his!”
M⸺ was beside himself with rage, and to crown his misery, his great object was to prevent his jealousy from making him look ridiculous in the eyes of Fausta, with whose jeering disposition he was well acquainted. Therefore, on San Stefano’s Day, after having spent an hour with her, and received a welcome which seemed to him the very acme of falsehood, he left her, toward eleven o’clock, whenshe was dressing to go and hear mass at the Church of San Giovanni. Count M⸺ returned to his rooms, put on the shabby black dress of a young theological student, and hurried off to San Giovanni. He chose out a place behind one of the tombs which adorned the third chapel on the right. Under the arm of a cardinal, who was represented kneeling on this tomb, he could see everything that went on in the church. The statue blocked the light within the chapel, and concealed him very sufficiently. Soon he saw Fausta enter, looking more beautiful than ever. She was in full dress, and twenty admirers of the highest rank attended her. Smiles and delight shone on her lips and in her eyes. “Clearly,” thought the unhappy man, “she is expecting to meet the man she loves, and whom, thanks to me, she has perhaps not been able to see for a long time.”
Suddenly the liveliest expression of happiness shone in Fausta’s eyes. “My rival is here,” said M⸺ to himself, and the fury of his wounded vanity knew no bounds. “What am I doing here, acting as counter-weight to a young prince who puts on disguises?” But, hard as he tried, he could not discover the rival whom his hungry glance sought on every side. Every instant the Fausta, after looking all round the church, would fix her eyes, heavy with love and happiness, on the dark corner in which M⸺ stood concealed. In a passionate heart, love is apt to exaggerate the very slightest things, and deduce consequences of the most ridiculous nature. Thus, poor M⸺ ended by persuading himself that the Fausta had caught sight of him, and that, having perceived his mortal jealousy, in spite of his desperate efforts to conceal it, she was seeking, by her tender glances, at once to reproach and to console him.
The cardinal’s tomb, behind which he had taken up his post of observation, was raised some four or five feet above the marble pavement of San Giovanni. When, toward one o’clock, the fashionable mass was brought to a close, most of the congregation departed, and the Fausta dismissed the city beaux on the pretext that she desired to perform her devotions. She remained kneeling on her chair, and her eyes, which had grown softer and more brilliant than ever,rested on M⸺. Now that only a few persons remained in the church, she did not take the trouble of looking all round it before allowing them to dwell with delight on the cardinal’s statue. “What delicacy!” said Count M⸺, who thought she was gazing at him. At last the Fausta rose and went quickly out of church, after having made some curious motions with her hands.
M⸺, drunk with love, and almost wholly cured of his foolish jealousy, was leaving his place to fly to his mistress’s palace and overwhelm her with his gratitude, when, as he passed in front of the cardinal’s tomb, he noticed a young man all in black. This fatal being had remained kneeling close against the epitaph on the tomb in such a position that the lover’s jealous eyes had passed over his head, and so failed to catch sight of him.
The young man rose, moved quickly away, and was instantly surrounded by seven or eight rather awkward and odd-looking fellows, who seemed to belong to him. M⸺ rushed after him, but, without any too evident effort, the clumsy men, who seemed to be protecting his rival, checked his progress in the little procession necessitated by the wooden screen round the entrance door. When, at last, he got out into the street behind them, he had only time to see the door of a sorry-looking carriage, which, by an odd contrast, was drawn by two excellent horses, swiftly closed, and in a moment it was out of sight.
He went home, choking with fury. He was soon joined by his spies, who coolly informed him that on that day the mysterious lover, disguised as a priest, had knelt very devoutly close up against a tomb standing at the entrance of a dark chapel in the Church of San Giovanni; that the Fausta had remained in the church until it was almost empty, and that she had then swiftly exchanged certain signs with the unknown person, making something like crosses with her hands. M⸺ rushed to the faithless woman’s house. For the first time she could not conceal her confusion. With all the lying simplicity of a passionate woman, she related that she had gone to San Giovanni as usual, but had not seen her persecutor there. On thesewords M⸺, beside himself, told her she was the vilest of creatures, related all he had seen himself, and, as the more bitterly he accused her, the more boldly she lied to him, he drew his dagger and would have fallen upon her. With the most perfect calmness the Fausta said:
“Well, everything you complain of is perfectly true, but I have tried to hide it from you, so as to prevent your boldness from carrying you into mad plans of vengeance which may be the ruin of us both. Let me tell you, once for all, I take this man who persecutes me with his attentions to be one who will find no obstacle to his will, in this country, at all events.” Then, having skilfully reminded M⸺ that, after all, he had no rights over her, the Fausta ended by saying that she should probably not go again to the Church of San Giovanni. M⸺ was desperately in love; it was possible that a touch of coquetry might have mingled with prudence in the young woman’s heart. He felt himself disarmed. He thought of leaving Parma; the young prince, powerful as he was, would not be able to follow him, or, if he followed him, he would be no more than his equal. Then his pride reminded him once more that such a departure would always look like flight, and Count M⸺ forbade himself to think of it again.
“He has not an idea of my little Fabrizio’s existence,” thought the delighted singer. “And now we shall be able to laugh at him most thoroughly.”
Fabrizio had no suspicion of his own good fortune. The next morning, when he saw the fair lady’s windows all carefully closed, and could not catch sight of her anywhere, the joke began to strike him as lasting rather too long. His conscience began to prick him. “Into what a position am I putting poor Count Mosca, the Minister of Police? He will be taken for my accomplice, and my coming to this country will be the ruin of his fortunes. But if I give up a plan I have followed for so long, what will the duchess say when I tell her of my attempts at love-making?”
One night when, feeling sorely inclined to give up the game, he thus reasoned with himself, as he prowled up and down under the great trees which divide the palace in whichFausta was living from the citadel, he became aware that he was being followed by a spy of exceedingly small stature. In vain did he walk through several streets in his endeavour to get away from him. He could not shake off the tiny form which seemed to dog his steps. Losing patience at last, he moved quickly into a lonely street, running along the river, in which his servants were lying in wait. At a signal from him they sprang upon the poor little spy, who threw himself at their feet. It turned out to be Bettina, the Fausta’s waiting-woman. After three days of boredom and retirement she had disguised herself in man’s attire, to escape Count M⸺’s dagger—which both she and her mistress greatly dreaded—and had undertaken to come and tell Fabrizio that he was passionately loved and intensely longed for, but that any reappearance at the Church of San Giovanni was quite impossible. “It was high time,” thought Fabrizio to himself. “Well done, my obstinacy!”
The little waiting-woman was exceedingly pretty, a fact which soon weaned Fabrizio from his communings with morality. She informed him that the public promenade and all the streets through which he had passed that evening, were carefully, though secretly, guarded by spies in the count’s pay. They had hired rooms on the ground floor and on the first floor, and, hidden behind the window shutters, they watched everything that went on in the streets, even those which seemed the loneliest, and heard everything that was said.
“If the spies had recognised my voice,” said little Bettina, “I should have been stabbed without mercy as soon as I got home, and my poor mistress with me, perhaps.” Fabrizio thought her terror increased her charms.
“Count M⸺,” she added, “is furious, and my mistress knows he is capable of anything.… She bade me tell you that she wishes she were with you, and a hundred leagues from here.”
Then she told the story of all that had happened on San Stefano’s Day and of the fury of the count, who had not missed one of the loving glances and signs which the Fausta, who had been quite beside herself with passion thatday, had bestowed on Fabrizio. The count had unsheathed his dagger, had caught hold of Fausta by the hair, and but for her presence of mind would certainly have killed her.
Fabrizio conducted the pretty waiting-maid to a lodging he had hard by. He told her that he was the son of a great Turinese nobleman who chanced to be at Parma at that moment, and that therefore he was obliged to act with the greatest caution. Bettina answered laughingly that he was a much greater man than he chose to appear. It was some time before our hero contrived to understand that the charming girl took him for no less a person than the hereditary prince himself. The Fausta was beginning to take alarm, and also to care for Fabrizio. She had resolved not to tell her waiting-maid his real name, and had spoken of him to her as “the prince.” Fabrizio ended by confessing to the pretty girl that she had guessed aright. “But if my name is noised abroad,” he added, “in spite of my great passion for your mistress, of which I have given her so many proofs, I shall not be able to see her any more; and my father’s ministers, those spiteful wretches whom I shall one day send about their business, will not fail to give her instant orders to clear out of the country which she has hitherto embellished by her presence.”
Toward morning, Fabrizio and the fair waiting-maid laid several plans for meeting, so as to enable him to get to Fausta. He sent for Ludovico and another of his men, a very cunning fellow, who arrived at an understanding with Bettina, while he was writing the most exaggerated letter to Fausta. Tragic exaggeration quite fitted in with the situation, and Fabrizio used it without stint. It was not till daybreak that he parted with the pretty waiting-maid, who was highly delighted with the treatment she had received at the hands of the young prince.
A hundred times over they had agreed that now the Fausta had entered into communication with her lover, he was not to appear under the windows of the little palace until she was able to admit him, when he would be duly warned. But Fabrizio, who was now in love with Bettina and believed himself near success with Fausta, could not stayquietly in his village two leagues from Parma. Toward midnight on the morrow, he came on horseback, with a sufficient train of servants, and sang, under the Fausta’s windows, an air then fashionable, to which he had put words of his own. “Is not this a common practice among lovers?” said he to himself.
Now that the Fausta had given him to understand that she desired a meeting, this long pursuit seemed very wearisome to Fabrizio. “No, this is not love,” said he to himself as he sang, not particularly well, under the windows of the little palace. “Bettina seems to me a hundred times more attractive than Fausta, and it is she whom I should best like to see at this moment.” He was returning to his village, feeling rather bored, when, about five hundred paces from Fausta’s palace, he was sprung upon by some fifteen or twenty men. Four of them seized his horse’s bridle, two others took hold of his arms. Ludovico and Fabrizio’s bravi were attacked, but contrived to escape, and several pistols were fired. The whole affair was over in an instant. Then, as though by magic, and in the twinkling of an eye, fifty men, bearing lighted torches, appeared in the street, every man well armed. Fabrizio, in spite of the people who were holding him, had jumped off his horse, and struggled fiercely to get free. He even wounded one of the men, who was holding his arms in a vice-like grasp, but he was very much astonished to hear the fellow say, in the most respectful tone:
“Your Highness will give me a good pension for this wound, and that will be far better for me than to fall into the crime of high treason by drawing my sword against my prince.”
“Now here comes the chastisement of my folly,” thought Fabrizio. “I shall have damned myself for a sin which did not even strike me as attractive.”
Hardly had the attempted scuffle come to an end, when several lackeys, dressed in magnificent liveries, brought forward a sedan-chair, gilt and painted in a most extraordinary manner. It was one of those grotesque conveyances used by masks during carnival time. Six men, dagger inhand, requested “his Highness” to get in, saying the cold night air might hurt his voice. The most respectful forms of address were used, and the title “prince” was constantly repeated, and almost shouted aloud. The procession began to move on. Fabrizio counted more than fifty men carrying lighted torches down the street. It was about one o’clock in the morning, all the world was looking out of window, there was a certain solemnity about the whole affair. “I was afraid Count M⸺ might treat me to dagger thrusts,” said Fabrizio to himself, “but he contents himself with making game of me. I should not have accused him of so much taste. But does he really believe he has to do with the prince? If he knows I am only Fabrizio, I must beware of the stiletto.”
The fifty torch-bearers and the twenty armed men, having made a long halt under the Fausta’s windows, paraded up and down in front of the finest palaces in the city. From time to time the major-domos who walked by the side of the sedan-chair inquired whether “his Highness” had any orders to give them. Fabrizio did not lose his head. He could see by the torch-light that Ludovico and his men were following the procession as closely as they could. Fabrizio argued to himself: “Ludovico has only eight or ten men; he does not dare to attack.” From within his sedan-chair Fabrizio saw plainly enough that the people charged with the execution of this doubtful joke were armed to the teeth. He affected to laugh with the major-domos in attendance on him. After more than two hours of this triumphal march he perceived that they were about to cross the street in which the Palazzo Sanseverina stood. Just as they passed by the street leading to the palace he suddenly opened the door in the front of the chair, jumped over one of the staves, overthrew one of the footmen, who thrust his torch into his face, with a dagger thrust, received one himself in the shoulder, a second footman singed his beard with his lighted torch, and finally, Fabrizio reached Ludovico, to whom he shouted, “Kill! kill every one who carries a torch!” Ludovico hacked with his sword, and saved him from two men who were trying to pursue him. Fabriziorushed up to the entrance of the Palazzo Sanseverina. The porter, in his curiosity, had opened the little door three feet high, set in the large one, and was staring in astonishment at the great train of torches. Fabrizio bounded through the tiny door, slammed it behind him, ran to the garden, and escaped by another door opening on to a deserted street. An hour later he was beyond the city walls; when day broke he was over the frontier into the state of Modena, and in perfect safety; by the evening he was back in Bologna. “Here’s a pretty expedition!” said he to himself. “I have not even succeeded in getting speech with my flame.” He lost no time about writing letters of excuse to the count and to the duchess, prudent missives which, though they described his emotions, furnished no clew that any enemy could lay hold of. “I was in love with love,” he wrote to the duchess. “I have done everything in the world to make its acquaintance. But nature, it appears, has refused me a heart capable of love and melancholy; I can not rise above vulgar enjoyment, etc.” The stir this adventure made in Parma can not be described. The mystery of it whetted the general curiosity. Numbers of people had seen the torches and the sedan-chair, but who was the man who had been carried off and treated with such formal ceremony? No well-known personage was missing from the city on the following day.
The humble folk living in the street in which the prisoner made his escape declared they had seen a corpse. But when broad daylight came, and the inhabitants ventured to emerge from their houses, the only trace of the struggle they could discover was the quantity of blood which stained the paving stones. More than twenty thousand sightseers visited the street during the day. The dwellers in Italian towns are accustomed to see strange sights, but thehowandwhyis always clearly known to them. What annoyed the Parmese about this incident, was that even a whole month after, when the torch-light procession had ceased to be the only subject of general conversation, no one, thanks to Count Mosca’s prudence, had been able to discover the name of the rival who would fain have carried the Fausta off from CountM⸺. This jealous and vindictive lover had taken to flight as soon as the procession had set forth on its way. By the count’s orders, the Fausta was shut up in the citadel. The duchess was vastly entertained by a little piece of injustice in which the count was forced to indulge, to check the curiosity of the prince, who might otherwise have tried to discover Fabrizio’s name.