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 good _cantinière’s_ advice.
“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 into those 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 Flemish
_patois_, 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 the
young 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 or the 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
dreary _cafés_ of 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 never thought of anything but making money, believed
him to be mad. When Fabrizio entered the _café_, 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 hardly spoken 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 near the 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. The conference 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.
“But where did you find them?” said the sergeant, who now appeared quite
drunk.
“Running away across the fields, and not a passport between them!” The
sergeant seemed to have quite lost his bearings. He had five prisoners
now, instead of the two he had been sent out to take. He retired a little
distance, leaving only one man to look after the prisoner with the
majestic demeanour, and another to keep the horses from moving on.
“Stay here,” whispered the countess to Fabrizio, who had already jumped
out of the carriage. “It will all come right.”
They heard a gendarme exclaim: “What does it matter? If they have no
passports we have a right to take them up.”
The sergeant did not seem quite so sure. The name of Pietranera had
alarmed him. He had known the general, and he was not aware of his death.
“The general,” he reflected, “is not the man to forego his vengeance if I
arrest his wife without authority.”
During this deliberation, which was somewhat lengthy, the countess had
entered into conversation with the young girl, who was still standing in
the dust, on the road beside the carriage. She had been struck by her
beauty.
“The sun will do you harm, signorina. That honest soldier,” she added,
addressing the gendarme standing at the horses’ heads, “will let you
get into the carriage, I am sure!” Fabrizio, who was prowling round the
carriage, came forward to help the young lady into it. She had her foot
on the step, and Fabrizio’s hand was under her arm, when the imposing
individual, who was standing six paces behind the carriage, called out,
in a voice that his desire to look dignified made yet more rasping: “Stop
on the road! Do not get into a carriage which does not belong to you!”
Fabrizio had not heard this order. The young girl, instead of trying to
get up, tried to get down, and as Fabrizio still held her, she fell into
his arms. He smiled, and she blushed deeply; for a moment after the girl
had freed herself from his clasp they stood looking into each other’s
eyes.
“What a charming prison companion!” said Fabrizio to himself. “What deep
thoughts lie behind that brow! That woman would know how to love!”
The sergeant approached with an air of importance.
“Which of these ladies is called Clelia Conti?”
“I,” said the young girl.
“And I,” exclaimed the elderly man, “I am General Fabio Conti,
Chamberlain to his Serene Highness the Prince of Parma, and I think it
most improper that a man of my position should be hunted like a thief!”
“The day before yesterday, when you embarked at the port of Como, did you
not send the police inspector, who asked you for your passport, about his
business? Well, to-day the inspector prevents you from going about your
business.”
“My boat had already pushed off from the shore. I was in a hurry, a storm
was coming on, a man without a uniform shouted to me from the pier to
come back into the port. I told him my name, and I went on my way.”
“And this morning you sneaked out of Como!”
“A man in my position does not take out a passport to go from Milan to
see the lake. This morning, at Como, I was told I should be arrested at
the gate. I left the town on foot with my daughter. I hoped I might meet
with some carriage on the road, which would take me to Milan, where my
first visit will certainly be to the general commanding the province, to
lay my complaint before him.”
The sergeant seemed relieved of a great weight.
“Very good, general, you are under arrest, and I shall take you to
Milan.—And who are you?” he said, turning to Fabrizio.
“My son,” put in the countess, “Ascanio, son of General Pietranera.”
“Without a passport, madam?” said the sergeant, very much more politely.
“He is so young! He has never had one; he never travels alone; he is
always with me!”
While this colloquy was proceeding, General Conti had been growing more
and more dignified, and more and more angry with the gendarmes.
“Not so many words!” said one of them at last; “you’re arrested, and
there’s an end of it.”
“You’ll be very lucky,” said the sergeant, “if we give you leave to hire
a horse from some peasant! Otherwise, in spite of the dust and the heat,
and your chamberlainship, you’ll just march along among our horses.”
The general began to swear.
“Will you hold your tongue?” said the gendarme. “Where’s your uniform?
Any man who chooses can say he is a general.”
The general grew more and more furious. In the carriage, meanwhile,
matters were going far better.
The countess was making all the gendarmes run about as if they had been
her servants. She had just given one of them a crown to go and fetch her
some wine, and above all some cool water, from a villa which stood about
two hundred paces off. She had found time to pacify Fabrizio, who was
most anxious to bolt into the wood that clothed the hill. “I have two
good pistols,” he kept saying. She persuaded the angry general to let
his daughter get into her carriage. On this occasion the general, who
was fond of talking of himself and his family, informed the ladies that
his daughter was only twelve years old, having been born on October 27,
1803, but that she was so sensible that every one took her for fourteen
or fifteen.
“Quite a common person,” was the verdict which the countess’s eyes
telegraphed to the marchesa’s. In an hour’s time, thanks to the former
lady, everything was settled. One of the gendarmes, who had business
in the adjoining village, hired his horse to General Conti, after the
countess had told him he would have ten francs for it.
The sergeant departed alone with the general, and his comrades remained
under a tree, with four huge bottles of wine which the gendarme, with
the assistance of a peasant, had brought back from the villa. The worthy
chamberlain authorized Clelia Conti to accept a seat in the ladies’
carriage back to Milan, and the idea of arresting the gallant General
Pietranera’s son never entered anybody’s head. After the first moments
devoted to general civilities, and remarks on the little incident just
brought to a close, Clelia Conti noticed the touch of enthusiasm evident
in the beautiful countess’s manner when she spoke to Fabrizio. Clelia was
sure she was not his mother. More especially was her attention attracted
by the constant allusions to something bold, heroic, dangerous in the
highest degree, which he had lately done. But what that might be the
young girl, clever as she was, could not divine. She gazed in wonder
on the young hero, whose eyes still seemed to sparkle with the fire of
action. He, on his side, was somewhat taken aback by the singular beauty
of the twelve-year-old girl, and his glances brought the colour to her
cheeks.
About a league from Milan, Fabrizio took leave of the ladies, saying he
must go and see his uncle. “If ever I get out of my difficulties,” said
he, addressing Clelia, “I shall go and see the great pictures at Parma.
Will you deign, then, to remember this name—Fabrizio del Dongo?”
“Very good!” said the countess. “So that’s how you keep your incognito!
Signorina, be good enough to remember that this scamp is my son, and that
his name is Pietranera, and not Del Dongo!”
That evening, very late, Fabrizio entered Milan by the Renza gate, which
leads to a fashionable promenade. The very modest hoards amassed by the
marchesa and her sister had been exhausted by the expense of sending
servants into Switzerland. Luckily Fabrizio still had a few napoleons,
and one of the diamonds, which they decided to sell.
The two ladies were much beloved, and knew everybody in the city. The
leading members of the Austrian and religious party spoke to Baron
Binder, the chief of the police, in Fabrizio’s favour. These gentlemen
could not understand, they declared, how the prank of a boy of sixteen,
who had quarrelled with his elder brother and left his father’s house,
could be taken seriously.
“My business is to take everything seriously,” gently replied the
baron, a wise and melancholy man. He was then engaged in organizing the
far-famed Milan police, and had undertaken to prevent a revolution like
that of 1746, which drove the Austrians out of Genoa. This Milanese
police, which afterward became celebrated by its connection with the
adventures of Pellico and Andryana, was not exactly cruel, but it carried
laws of great severity into logical and pitiless execution. The Emperor
Francis II was determined to strike terror into these bold Italian
imaginations.
“Give me,” said Baron Binder to Fabrizio’s friends, “the proved facts as
to what the young Marchesino del Dongo has been doing every day, from the
moment he left Grianta, on the 8th of March, until his arrival last night
in this city, where he is hidden in a room in his mother’s apartment, and
I am ready to look upon him as the most charming and frolicsome young
fellow in the town. But if you can not give me information as to the
young man’s goings and comings for every day since his departure from
Grianta, is it not my duty to have him arrested, however high may be his
birth, and however deep my respect for the friends of his family? And am
I not bound to keep him in prison until he has proved to me that he did
not convey a message to Napoleon from the few malcontents who may exist
among his Majesty, the Emperor-King’s, Lombard subjects? And further,
gentlemen, note well, that even if young Del Dongo contrives to justify
himself on this point, he will still remain guilty of having gone abroad
without a regular passport, and also of passing under a false name, and
knowingly using a passport issued to a mere artisan—that is to say, to
an individual of a class infinitely inferior to his own.”
This declaration, merciless in its logic, was accompanied by all that
show of deference and respect due from the head of the police to
the exalted position of the Marchesa del Dongo and of the important
personages who had come forward on her behalf.
When the marchesa heard the baron’s reply she was in despair.
“Fabrizio will be arrested!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears; “and
once he is in prison, God only knows when he will come out! His father
will cast him off!”
The two ladies took counsel with two or three of their closest friends,
and in spite of everything they said, the marchesa wished to insist on
sending her son away the following night.
“But,” said the countess, “you must surely see that Baron Binder knows
quite well that your son is here. He is not a spiteful man.”
“No, but he desires to please the Emperor Francis.”
“But if he thought he could serve his own ends by putting Fabrizio into
prison, he would have done it already, and if you insist on the boy’s
taking to flight, you insult him by your want of confidence.”
“But the very fact that he admits he knows Fabrizio’s whereabouts is as
good as telling us to send him away. No, I shall never breathe freely as
long as I can say to myself, ‘In a quarter of an hour my boy may be shut
up between four walls!’ Whatever Baron Binder’s ambition may be,” added
the marchesa, “he thinks his personal position in this country will be
strengthened by an affected consideration for a man of my husband’s rank,
and the strange frankness with which he avows that he knows where to lay
his hand on my son proves this to me. And besides, the baron calmly sets
forth the two offences of which Fabrizio stands accused according to his
brother’s vile denunciation, and explains that either of these entails
imprisonment. Is not that as good as telling us that if we prefer exile
to prison we have only to choose it?”
“If you choose exile,” repeated the countess, “we shall never see the
boy again.” Fabrizio, who had been present at the whole discussion with
one of the marchesa’s oldest friends, now one of the councillors of the
Austrian Tribunal, was strongly in favour of making himself scarce, and
that very evening, in fact, he left the palace, concealed in the carriage
which was to convey his mother and aunt to the Scala.
The coachman, whom they did not trust, betook himself, as usual, to a
neighbouring tavern, and while the footman, a faithful servant, held the
horses, Fabrizio, disguised as a peasant, slipped out of the carriage
and out of the town. By the next morning he had crossed the frontier
with equal success, and a few hours later he was safe in a country house
belonging to his mother in Piedmont, near Novara, at a place called
Romagnano, where Bayard met his death.
The amount of attention bestowed by the two ladies on the theatrical
performance after they reached their box may be easily conceived. They
had only gone to the theatre to secure an opportunity of consulting
several of their friends of the Liberal party, whose appearance at the
Palazzo del Dongo would have stirred suspicion on the part of the police.
The council in the box decided on making a fresh appeal to Baron Binder.
There could be no question of offering money to the magistrate, who was
a perfectly upright man. And besides, the ladies were very poor; they
had obliged Fabrizio to take all the money remaining over from the sale
of the diamond with him. Nevertheless, it was very important to know the
baron’s final word. The countess’s friends reminded her of a certain
Canon Borda, a very agreeable young man, who had formerly tried to pay
her court, and had behaved in a somewhat shabby fashion to her. When he
found his advances were rejected, he had gone to General Pietranera,
had told him of his wife’s friendship with Limercati, and was forthwith
turned out of the house for his pains. Now, the canon played cards every
evening with Baroness Binder, and was, naturally, her husband’s close
friend. The countess made up her mind to the horribly disagreeable step
of paying a visit to the canon, and the next morning early, before he
had gone out, she appeared in his rooms.
When the canon’s only servant pronounced the name of the Countess
Pietranera, his master was so agitated that his voice almost failed him,
and he made no attempt to rearrange a morning costume of the most extreme
simplicity.
“Show the lady in, and then go,” he said huskily. The countess entered
the room, and Borda cast himself on his knees before her.
“It is in this position only that an unhappy madman like myself can dare
to receive your orders,” said he to the countess, who looked irresistibly
charming in her morning dress, which was half a disguise.
Her deep grief at the idea of Fabrizio’s exile and the violence she
did her own feelings in appearing under the roof of a man who had once
behaved like a traitor to her, combined to make her eyes shine with an
extraordinary light.
“It is in this position,” cried the canon again, “that I must receive
your orders—for some service you must desire of me, otherwise the poor
dwelling of this unhappy madman would never have been honoured by your
presence. Once upon a time, wild with love and jealousy, and seeing he
had no chance of finding favour in your eyes, he played a coward’s part
toward you.”
The words were sincerely spoken, and were all the nobler because at that
moment the canon was in a position of great power. The countess was
touched to tears; her heart had been frozen with humiliation and dread,
but these feelings were replaced, in an instant, by a tender emotion
and a ray of hope. From a condition of great misery she passed, in the
twinkling of an eye, to one that was almost happiness.
“Kiss my hand,” she said, and she held it to the canon’s lips, “and stand
up. I have come to ask you to obtain mercy for my nephew Fabrizio. Here
is the truth, without the smallest disguise, just as it should be told
to an old friend. The boy, who is only sixteen years and a half old,
has committed an unspeakable folly. We were living at the Castle of
Grianta, on the Lake of Como. One night, at seven o’clock, a boat from
Como brought us the news that the Emperor had landed in the Gulf of Juan.
The next morning Fabrizio started for France, after having induced one of
his humble friends, a dealer in barometers of the name of Vasi, to give
him his passport. As he by no means looks like a dealer in barometers,
he had hardly travelled ten leagues through France when he was arrested.
His outbursts of enthusiasm, expressed in very bad French, were thought
suspicious. After some time he escaped, and contrived to get to Geneva.
We sent to meet him at Lugano.”
“At Geneva, you mean,” said the canon, smiling.
The countess finished her story.
“Everything that is humanly possible I will do for you,” replied the
canon earnestly. “I place myself entirely at your orders. I will even
risk imprudences,” he added. “Tell me, what am I to do at this moment,
when my poor room is to be bereft of the celestial vision which marks an
epoch in the history of my life?”
“You must go to Baron Binder; you must tell him you have loved Fabrizio
from his babyhood, that you saw the child at the time of his birth, when
you used to come to our house, and that you beseech Binder, in the name
of his friendship for you, to set all his spies to discover whether
before Fabrizio departed into Switzerland he ever had the shortest
interview with any of the suspected Liberals. If the baron is at all
decently served he will be convinced that this whole business has been
nothing but a childish freak. You know that when I lived in the Palazzo
Dugnani I had quantities of engravings of Napoleon’s battles. My nephew
learned to read from the inscriptions on those pictures. When he was only
five years old my poor husband would describe the battles to him; we used
to put the general’s helmet on the child’s head, and he would drag his
great sword about the room. Well, one fine day the boy hears that the man
my husband worshipped, the Emperor, is back in France. Like the young
madcap he is, he started off to join him, but he did not succeed. Ask
your baron what punishment he can possibly inflict for that one moment of
folly.”
“I was forgetting something,” cried the canon. “You shall see that I
am not quite unworthy of your gracious pardon. Here,” he said, hunting
about among the papers on his table, “here is the denunciation of that
vile _col-torto_ [hypocrite]—look! It is signed ‘Ascanio Valserra del
Dongo’—which is at the bottom of the whole business. I got it yesterday
in the police office, and I went to the Scala, hoping to meet somebody
who was in the habit of going to your box, by whom I might send it to
you. The copy of this paper reached Vienna long ago. This is the enemy we
have to fight!” The canon and the countess read the document together,
and agreed that in the course of the day he was to send her a copy by a
safe hand. Then the countess went back rejoicing to the Palazzo del Dongo.
“No one could have behaved more perfectly than this man, who once behaved
so ill,” said she to the marchesa. “To-night, at the Scala, when the
theatre clock strikes a quarter to eleven, we will turn everybody out of
our box, we will shut our door, and at eleven o’clock the canon will come
himself, and tell us what he has been able to do. This plan seemed to us
the one least likely to compromise him.”
The canon was no fool; he took good care not to break his appointment,
and having kept it, he gave proofs of a thorough kind-heartedness and
absolute straightforwardness rarely seen save in countries where vanity
does not override every other feeling. His accusation of the Countess
Pietranera to her own husband had caused him constant remorse, and he
hailed the opportunity for atonement.
That morning, when the countess left him, he had said to himself
bitterly, “Now there she is, in love with her nephew!” and his old
wound was not healed. “Otherwise, proud as she is, she would have never
come to me. When poor Pietranera died she refused all my offers of
service with horror, though they were couched in the most polite terms
and transmitted to her by Colonel Scotti, who had been her lover. To
think of the beautiful Pietranera living on fifteen hundred francs!” he
added, as he walked rapidly up and down his room, “and then settling
herself at Grianta with an odious _secatore_ like the Marchese del Dongo!
But that is all explained now. That young Fabrizio is certainly very
attractive—tall, well-built, with a face that is always gay, and, what’s
better, with a sort of tender voluptuous look about him—a Correggio
face!” added the canon bitterly.
“The difference of age—not too great, after all! Fabrizio was born after
the French came here—about ’98, I think. The countess may be seven or
eight and twenty. No woman could be prettier, more delightful. Even
in this country, where there are so many lovely women, she beats them
all—the Marini, the Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua—she
is better-looking than any of them! They were living happily together
on the banks of that lovely Lake of Como when the young man insisted on
following Napoleon. Ah, there are hearts in Italy still, in spite of
what every one may do! Beloved country! No,” he mused, and his breast
swelled with jealousy, “there is no other possible means of explaining
her willingness to vegetate in the country and endure the disgusting
sight, every day and at every meal, of the Marchese del Dongo’s hideous
countenance, and the vile sallow face of the Marchesino Ascanio, who will
be much worse than his father, on the top of it! Ah, well! I will serve
her faithfully. At all events, I shall have the satisfaction of seeing
her nearer than through my opera-glasses.”
Canon Borda explained the matter very clearly to the ladies. In his heart
Binder was disposed to do all he could for them. He was heartily glad
that Fabrizio had taken himself off before definite orders had arrived
from Vienna, for Baron Binder could decide nothing himself; on this
matter, as on every other, he was obliged to wait for orders. Every day
he sent an exact copy of all his information to Vienna, and awaited the
imperial reply.
During his exile at Romagnano, Fabrizio was to be sure, in the first
place, to go to mass every day, to choose some intelligent man, devoted
to the cause of the monarchy, as his confessor, and in confession to be
careful to confide none but the most irreproachable sentiments to his
ear; secondly, he was not to consort with any man who had the reputation
of being clever, and, when occasion offered, he was to speak of rebellion
with horror, as a thing that should never be permitted; thirdly, he was
never to be seen in a _café_, he was never to read any newspaper except
the Turin and Milan Official Gazettes, he was to express dislike of
reading in general, and he was never to peruse any work printed later
that 1720, the only possible exception being Sir Walter Scott’s novels;
“and lastly,” said the canon, with just a touch of spite, “he must not
fail to pay open court to some pretty woman in the district—one of
noble birth, of course. That will prove he has none of the gloomy and
discontented spirit of the juvenile conspirator.”
Before going to bed that night, the countess and the marchesa wrote
Fabrizio two voluminous letters, which explained, with an anxiety that
was most endearing, all the advice imparted by the canon.
Fabrizio had not the slightest wish to conspire. He loved Napoleon,
believed himself destined, as a nobleman, to be more fortunate than most
men, and despised the whole middle class.
Since he had left college he had never opened a book, and while there,
had only read books arranged by the Jesuits. He took up his residence
at some distance from Romagnano, in a magnificent palace which had been
one of the masterpieces of the famous architect San Michele. But it had
been left untenanted for thirty years, so that the rain came through
all the ceilings, and there was not a window that would shut. He took
possession of the agent’s horses, and rode them all day long, just as
it suited him. He never opened his lips, and thought a great deal. The
suggestion that he should take a mistress in some _ultra_ family tickled
his fancy, and he obeyed it to the letter. He chose for his confessor a
young and intriguing priest, who aimed at becoming a bishop (like the
confessor of the Spielberg).[3] But he travelled three leagues on foot,
and wrapped himself in what he believed to be impenetrable mystery, so as
to read the Constitutionnel, which he thought sublime—“as fine as Alfieri
and Dante,” he would often exclaim. Fabrizio resembled young Frenchmen
in this particular, that he thought much more about his horse and his
newspaper than about his high-born mistress. But there was no room, as
yet, for any imitation of others in that simple and steadfast soul, and
he made no friends in the society to be found in the town of Romagnano.
His simplicity was taken for pride; nobody could understand his nature;
“a younger son, who is discontented because he is not the eldest,” said
the parish priest.
[2] This name, thanks to Signor Pellico, is known all over Europe. It
is that of the street in Milan in which the Ministry of Police and the
prisons are situated.
[3] In Andryana’s curious memoirs which are as amusing as a fairy-tale
and should be as immortal as the works of Tacitus.