Even as he moralized, Fabrizio sprang upon the high-road from Lombardy to
Switzerland, which, at this spot, is quite four or five feet below the
level of the forest. “If my man takes fright,” said our hero to himself,
“he will start off at a gallop, and I shall be left here, looking a sorry
fool.” By this time he was not more than ten paces from the servant, who
had stopped singing. Fabrizio read in his eyes that he was frightened;
perhaps he was going to turn his horses round. Without any conscious
intention, Fabrizio made a bound, and seized the near horse by the bridle.
“My friend,” said he to the serving-man, “I am not a common thief, for
I am going to begin by giving you twenty francs; but I am obliged to
borrow your horse. I shall be killed if I do not clear out at once. The
four brothers Riva, those great hunters whom you doubtless know, are on
my heels. They have just caught me in their sister’s bedroom. I jumped
out of the window, and here I am. They have turned out into the forest,
with their hounds and their guns. I had hidden myself in that big hollow
chestnut tree because I saw one of them cross the road; their hounds will
soon be on my track. I am going to get on your horse and gallop a league
beyond Como; thence I shall go to Milan, to cast myself at the viceroy’s
feet. If you consent with a good grace, I’ll leave your horse at the
posting-house, with two napoleons for yourself. If you make the slightest
difficulty I shall kill you with these pistols. If, when I am once off,
you set the gendarmes after me, my cousin, the brave Count Alari, the
Emperor’s equerry, will see to your bones being broken for you.”
Fabrizio invented his speech as he delivered it, which he did in the
most gentle manner. “For the rest,” he said, laughing, “my name is no
secret. I am the Marchesino Ascanio del Dongo. My home is close by, at
Grianta. Now, then,” he cried, raising his voice, “let the horse go!”
The stupefied servant said never a word. Fabrizio put up the pistol
he had held in his left hand, laid hold of the bridle, which the man
had dropped, sprang on the horse, and cantered off. When he had ridden
three hundred paces he perceived he had forgotten to give him the twenty
francs he had promised. He pulled up; the road was still empty, except
for the servant, who was galloping after him. He waved him forward with
his handkerchief, and when he was within fifty paces threw a handful of
silver coins upon the road, and started off again. Looking back from a
distance, he saw the servant picking up the silver. “Now, that really
is a sensible man,” said Fabrizio, laughing; “not a useless word did he
say.” He rode rapidly southward, halted at a lonely house, and started
forth again a few hours later. By two o’clock in the morning he had
reached the Lago Maggiore. He soon saw his boat, standing on and off.
He made the signal agreed on, and she approached the shore. He could
find no peasant with whom he might leave the horse, so he turned the
noble creature loose, and three hours later, he was at Belgirate. Once
in a friendly country, he took some repose. He was full of joy, for he
had been thoroughly successful. Dare we mention the true cause of his
delight? His tree was growing splendidly, and his soul had been refreshed
by the deep emotion he had felt in Father Blanès’s arms. “Does he really
believe,” said he to himself, “in all the predictions he has made to me?
Or is it that as my brother has given me the reputation of a Jacobin, a
man who knows neither truth nor law, and capable of any crime, he simply
desired to induce me to resist the temptation of taking the life of some
villain who may do me an evil turn?” The day after the next, Fabrizio
was at Parma, where he vastly entertained the duchess and the count by
relating with the greatest exactness, as was his wont, the whole story of
his journey.
When Fabrizio arrived, he found the porter and all the servants at the
Palazzo Sanseverina garbed in the deepest mourning.
“Whose loss do we mourn?” he inquired of the duchess.
“That excellent man who was known as my husband has just died at Baden.
He has left me the palace—that was a settled thing; but, as a proof of
his regard, he has added a legacy of three hundred thousand francs, and
this places me in a serious difficulty. I will not give it up for the
benefit of his niece, the Marchesa Raversi, who plays me the vilest of
tricks every day of her life. You, who understand art, must really find
me some good sculptor, and I will put up a monument to the duke which
shall cost three hundred thousand francs.” The count began to tell
stories about the Raversi.
“In vain have I striven to soften her by kindness,” said the duchess. “As
for the duke’s nephews, I have had them all made colonels or generals,
and in return, never a month passes without their sending me some
abominable anonymous letter. I have been obliged to hire a secretary to
read all my letters of that description.”
“And their anonymous letters are the least of all their sins,” continued
Count Mosca. “They carry on a regular manufacture of vile accusations.
Twenty times over I ought to have had the whole set brought before the
courts, and your Excellency” (turning to Fabrizio) “will guess whether my
worthy judges would have condemned them or not.”
“Well, that’s what spoils all the rest, to me,” replied Fabrizio, with
that artlessness that sounded so comical at court. “I would much rather
see them sentenced by magistrates who would judge them according to their
own consciences.”
“If you, who travel to improve your mind, would give me the addresses of
a few such magistrates, you would do me a real kindness. I would write to
them before I went to bed to-night.”
“If I were a minister this lack of upright judges would wound my vanity.”
“But it strikes me,” rejoined the count, “that your Excellency, who is
so fond of the French, and once upon a time even lent them the help of
your invincible arm, is forgetting one of their great maxims, ‘It is
better to kill the devil than that the devil should kill you?’ I should
very much like to see how anybody could govern these eager beings who
read the history of the French Revolution all day long, with judges who
would acquit the persons I accused. They would end by acquitting rascals
whose guilt was perfectly evident, and every man of them would think
himself a Brutus. But I have a bone to pick with you. Does not your
sensitive soul feel some remorse concerning that fine horse, rather too
lean, which you have just turned loose on the shores of the Maggiore?”
“I certainly intend,” said Fabrizio very gravely, “to send the owner
of the horse whatever sum may be necessary to pay him the expenses of
advertising, and any others he may have incurred in recovering the beast
from the peasants who must have found it. I propose to read the Milanese
newspaper carefully, so as to find any advertisement touching a strayed
horse. I am quite familiar with the appearance of this one.”
“He really is _primitive_,” said the count to the duchess. “And what
would have become of your Excellency,” he continued, laughing, “if,
while you were galloping along on that horse’s back, he had happened to
stumble? You would have found yourself at the Spielberg, my dear young
nephew, and with all my credit, I should barely have contrived to get
some thirty pounds struck off the weight of the shackles on each of your
legs. In that delightful retreat you would have spent quite ten years;
your legs would possibly have swelled and mortified. Then they would have
been neatly cut off for you.”
“Ah, for pity’s sake, don’t carry the wretched story any further,” broke
in the duchess with tears in her eyes. “He is back, and safe——”
“And I am even more glad of it than you, you may be sure of that,”
responded the minister very gravely. “But pray, since this boy was set
on going into Lombardy, why did he not ask me to get him a passport in
a fitting name? The moment I heard of his arrest I should have hurried
off to Milan, and my friends there would have been willing enough to
close their eyes and pretend their police had taken up one of the Prince
of Parma’s subjects. The story of your trip is entertaining and amusing
enough, I am quite ready to admit that,” the count continued, and his
tone grew less gloomy. “Your leap on to the high-road decidedly enchants
me. But between ourselves, since that serving-man held your life in his
hands, you had a right to deprive him of his. We propose to raise your
Excellency to a brilliant position—at least, such are the orders this
lady gives me, and I do not think my bitterest enemies can accuse me of
ever having neglected her commands. What a heartbreak it would have been
to her if that lean horse of yours had happened to make a false step
while you were riding a steeple-chase upon his back! It would almost have
been better if he had broken your neck outright.”
“You are very tragic to-night, dear friend,” said the duchess, quite
overcome.
“Because tragic events are happening all around us,” replied the count,
and he, too, was moved. “This is not France, where everything ends with a
song or a sentence of imprisonment, and I really am wrong to laugh when
I talk to you of such matters. Well, nephew mine, granting that I find a
chance some day of making you a bishop—for, frankly, I can not begin with
making you Archbishop of Parma, as the duchess here would very reasonably
have me do. Supposing you were settled in your bishopric, and far from
the sound of our wise counsels; tell us what your policy would be.”
“I would kill the devil sooner than let him kill me, as my friends the
French so sensibly say,” answered Fabrizio, with shining eyes. “I would
hold the position you gave me by every means, even with my pistols. I
have read the story of our ancestor, who built Grianta, in the Del Dongo
Genealogy. Toward the end of his life his good friend Galeazzo, Duke of
Milan, sent him to inspect a fortified castle on our lake. There was
some fear of a fresh invasion by the Swiss. ‘I really must send a civil
word to the commandant of the fortress,’ said the duke, just as he was
dismissing him. He wrote two lines, and gave him the letter; then he
took it back. ‘It will be more courteous if I seal it,’ said the prince.
Vespasiano del Dongo departed. But as he was sailing over the lake he
remembered an old Greek story, for he was a learned man. He opened his
good master’s letter, and found it was an order to the commandant of
the fortress to put him to death the moment he arrived. So absorbed had
Sforza been in his effort to make the deception he had been playing on
our ancestor life-like, that he had left a considerable space between the
last line of his note and his signature. Vespasiano del Dongo inserted
an order to recognise him as governor-general of all the lake castles,
in the blank space, and tore the upper part of the letter off. When he
had reached the fortress, and his authority had been duly acknowledged,
he threw the commandant down a well, declared war on Sforza, and, after
a few years, exchanged his strong castle for the huge estates which have
enriched every branch of our family, and which will one day benefit me to
the extent of four thousand francs a year.”
“You talk like an academician!” cried the count laughingly. “You have
told the story of a splendid prank. But it is not once in ten years that
the delightful opportunity for doing such startling things presents
itself. A man who may be stupid at times, but is watchful and prudent
always, may often enjoy the pleasure of outwitting men of imagination. It
was a freak of the imagination that led Napoleon to put himself into the
hands of the prudent John Bull, instead of trying to escape to America.
John Bull sat in his counting-house, and laughed at the Emperor’s letter
and his reference to Themistocles. The mean Sancho Panzas of this world
will always triumph over the noble-hearted Don Quixotes. If you will
consent not to do anything extraordinary, I don’t doubt you may be a
highly respected, if not a highly respectable, bishop. Nevertheless,
I hold to my previous observation. In this matter of the horse your
Excellency behaved very foolishly. You have been within an ace of
imprisonment for life.”
Fabrizio shuddered at the words. He sat on, plunged in a deep
astonishment. “Was that the imprisonment which threatens me?” he mused.
“Is that the crime I was not to commit?” Father Blanès’s predictions,
the prophetic value of which he had despised, began to assume all the
importance of real omens in his eyes.
“Well,” cried the duchess, quite surprised, “what is the matter with you?
The count has cast you into a very gloomy reverie.”
“The light of a new truth has fallen upon my mind, and instead of
rebelling against it, I am adopting it. It is quite true. I have been
very near a prison that never would have opened its doors again. But the
servant lad looked so handsome in his English livery it would have been a
sin to kill him.”
The count was delighted with his air of youthful wisdom.
“He is satisfactory in every way,” he said, looking at the duchess. “I
must tell you, my boy, that you have made a conquest, and perhaps the
most desirable one you could possibly have made.”
“Ha!” thought Fabrizio, “now I shall hear some jest about little
Marietta.” He was mistaken. The count went on: “Your evangelic simplicity
has won the heart of our venerable archbishop, Father Landriani. One of
these days you will be made a grand vicar, and the beauty of the joke
is that the three present grand vicars, all of them men of parts and
hard-working, and two of them, I believe, grand vicars before you were
born, are about to send a fine letter to their archbishop, begging you
may take rank above them all. These gentlemen base this request on your
virtuous qualities, in the first place, and in the second, on the fact
that you are great-nephew to the famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo.
When I heard of the respect your virtues had inspired, I instantly
promoted the senior grand vicar’s nephew to a captaincy. He had remained
a lieutenant ever since he had served at the siege of Tarragona, under
Marshal Suchet.”
“Go at once, just as you are, in your travelling dress, and pay an
affectionate call on your archbishop,” exclaimed the duchess. “Tell
him all about your sister’s marriage. When he knows she is going to be
a duchess he will think you more _apostolic_ than ever. Of course, you
will forget everything the count has just confided to you about your
approaching appointment.”
Fabrizio hurried off to the archiepiscopal palace. His behaviour there
was both modest and simple. This was a tone he could assume only too
easily. For him the effort was when he had to play the nobleman. While he
was listening to Monsignore Landriani’s somewhat lengthy dissertations
he kept saying to himself, “Ought I to have fired my pistol at the
man-servant who was leading the lean horse?” His reason replied in the
affirmative. But he could not reconcile his heart to the thought of that
handsome young fellow dropping disfigured from his saddle.
“That prison which would have swallowed me up if the horse had
stumbled—was it the prison with which so many omens threaten me?”
The question was of sovereign importance to him. And the archbishop was
enchanted with his air of deep attention.