General Fabio Conti’s ambition, goaded to madness by the difficulties
that had arisen in the way of the Prime Minister, Count Mosca, and which
seemed to threaten his fall, had driven him into violent scenes with his
daughter. Perpetually and angrily he told her that she would ruin his
prospects unless she made up her mind to choose a husband at last. She
was past twenty; it was high time she should come to some decision. An
end must be put, once for all, to the cruel state of isolation in which
her unreasonable obstinacy placed him, and so forth.
Clelia’s first object, when she took refuge in her aviary, had been to
escape from her father’s constant ill-humour. The only means of access
to the room was by climbing a small and very inconvenient staircase, a
serious obstacle to the governor’s gouty feet.
For the past few weeks, Clelia’s soul had been so storm-tossed, she was
so puzzled, herself, to know what she ought to desire, that without
actually giving her father her word, she had almost drifted into an
engagement. In one of his fits of rage the general had exclaimed that he
would thrust her into the gloomiest convent in Parma, and leave her there
to fret her heart out until she condescended to make a choice.
“You know that our family, old though it is, can not command more than
six thousand francs a year, whereas the Marchese Crescenzi’s income
amounts to over a hundred thousand crowns. Every soul at court gives him
the character of being the kindest of men; he is a very good-looking
fellow, young, high in the prince’s favour, and I say that nobody but a
mad woman would refuse his suit. If this refusal had been your first, I
could have endured it, but this is the fifth or sixth offer, the very
best at court, at which you turn up your nose, like the little fool you
are! What would become of you, may I inquire, if I were put on half-pay?
A fine triumph it would be for my enemies, who have so often heard me
spoken of as a possible minister, to see me living in some second-floor
apartment! No, ’pon my soul! my good nature has misled me often enough
into playing the part of Cassandra. You will either give me some valid
reason for your objections to this poor fellow Crescenzi, who does you
the honour to be in love with you, to be ready to marry you without a
fortune, and to insure you a dowry of thirty thousand francs a year,
which will, at all events, insure me a home—you will talk sense to me,
or—devil take it! I’ll make you marry him within the next two months.”
The only word in all this speech that had impressed Clelia was the threat
about the convent, which would remove her from the citadel at a moment
when Fabrizio’s life still seemed to hang upon a thread. For not a month
passed but that the report of his approaching death was noised afresh
about the town and court. However severely she argued with herself, she
could not make up her mind to run this risk. To be parted from Fabrizio,
and at the very moment when she was trembling for his life, was, in
her eyes, the greatest—at all events, it was the most pressing—of all
possible misfortunes.
It was not that proximity to Fabrizio fed her heart with any hope of
happiness. She believed the duchess loved him, and her soul was torn by
deadly jealousy. Her mind dwelt incessantly on the advantages possessed
by a lady who commanded such general admiration. The extreme reserve
with which she carefully treated Fabrizio, the language of signs to
which, in her dread of some possible indiscretion, she had restricted
him, all seemed to combine to deprive her of the means of reaching some
clearer knowledge of his feelings about the duchess. Thus, every day
made her more cruelly conscious of the terrible misfortune of having a
rival in Fabrizio’s heart, and every day her courage to expose herself
to the danger of giving him an opportunity of telling her all the truth
as to what that heart felt, grew less and less. Yet what exquisite joy
would it have been to hear him express his real feelings! How happy it
would have made Clelia to be able to lighten the hideous suspicions that
poisoned her existence.
Fabrizio was a trifler. At Naples he had borne the reputation of being a
man who was always changing his mistresses. In spite of all the reserve
natural to an unmarried girl, Clelia, since she had been a canoness, and
had frequented the court, had made herself acquainted—not by questioning,
but merely by a process of careful listening—with the reputation of each
of the young men who had successively sought her hand in marriage. Well,
compared with all these young men, Fabrizio’s reputation, as regarded his
love-affairs, was the most fickle. He was in prison, he was bored, he was
making love to the only woman to whom he had a chance of speaking. What
could be more simple? What, indeed, more usual? And that was the thought
which distressed Clelia. If some full revelation convinced her that
Fabrizio did not love the duchess, what confidence, even then, could she
place in his vows? And even if she had believed in the sincerity, what
trust could she place in the durability of his feelings? And finally, to
make her heart overflow with despair, was not Fabrizio already high up in
the ecclesiastical career? Was he not on the very eve of taking permanent
vows? Were not the highest dignities in that special line of life in
store for him? “If I had the faintest spark of good sense,” thought the
unhappy Clelia to herself, “should I not take to flight? Ought I not to
beseech my father to shut me up in some far distant convent? And to crown
my misery, it is my very terror of being sent away from the citadel,
and being shut up in a convent, which inspires all my actions. It is
this terror which drives me into deceit, and forces me into the hideous
and shameful falsehood of publicly accepting the Marchese Crescenzi’s
attentions.”
Clelia was exceedingly reasonable by nature; never once in her life,
hitherto, had she had reason to reproach herself with an ill-considered
action. Yet in this matter her behaviour was the very acme of
unreasonableness. Her misery may be imagined. It was all the more cruel
because the girl was under no illusion; she was giving her heart to a
man with whom the most beautiful woman at court, a woman who was her
own superior in numerous particulars, was desperately in love. And this
man, even if he had been free, was incapable of any serious attachment,
whereas she, as she felt only too clearly, would never care but for one
person in her life.
During her daily visits to her aviary, then, Clelia’s heart was torn
by the most cruel remorse. Yet when she reached the spot, the object
of her anxiety was changed; almost in spite of herself, it became less
cruel, and, for an instant, her remorse died away. With beating heart
she awaited the moments when Fabrizio was able to open the little
shutter he had made in the huge wooden screen that masked his window.
Often the presence of the jailer Grillo in his room prevented him from
communicating by signs with his friend.
One evening, about eleven o’clock, Fabrizio heard the strangest sounds
within the citadel. By lying on the window-sill and slipping his head
through his shutter-hole, he could contrive, at night, to make out the
louder noises on the great stairway, called the “Three Hundred Steps,”
which ran from the first courtyard within the Round Tower to the stone
terrace on which the governor’s palace and the Farnese Prison, in which
he was confined, were built.
Toward the middle of its course, somewhere near the hundred and eightieth
step, this staircase was carried from the southern to the northern side
of a great courtyard. At this point there was a very light and narrow
iron bridge, the centre of which was kept by a porter. The man was
relieved every six hours, and he was obliged to stand up and flatten
his body against the side of the bridge before any one could cross it.
This bridge was the only method of access to the governor’s palace and
the Farnese Tower. Two turns of a screw, the key of which the governor
always kept upon his person, sufficed to drop this iron bridge more than
a hundred feet down into the court below. Once this simple precaution had
been taken—as no other staircase existed in the citadel, and as every
night, as twelve o’clock struck, an adjutant brought the ropes belonging
to every well in the fortress into the governor’s house, and placed them
in a closet beyond his own bedroom—access to the governor’s palace was
utterly impossible, and it would have been equally impossible to get into
the Farnese Tower. Fabrizio had clearly realized this fact on the day of
his entrance into the citadel, and Grillo, who, like every jailer, was
fond of boasting about his prison, had re-explained the matter to him
several times over. His hopes of escape were therefore very faint. Yet
one of Father Blanès’s sayings lived in his memory: “The lover thinks
oftener of reaching his mistress than the husband thinks of guarding his
wife; the prisoner thinks more often of escape than the jailer thinks of
locking the doors. Therefore, in spite of every obstacle, the lover and
the prisoner are certain to succeed.”
That evening Fabrizio distinctly heard a numerous party of men cross the
iron bridge—called the “Bridge of the Slave,” because a Dalmatian slave
had once contrived to escape by throwing the keeper of it over into the
courtyard below.
“They are coming to carry somebody off; perhaps they are going to take me
out and hang me. But there may be some confusion; I must take advantage
of it.” He had taken his arms, and was just withdrawing his money from
some of his hiding-places, when he suddenly stopped short.
“Man is a strange animal; there’s no denying that,” he exclaimed. “What
would any invisible spectator think if he saw my preparations? Do I
really want to escape at all? What would become of me the day after that
on which I returned to Parma? Should I not make every possible effort
to get back to Clelia? If there is any confusion, let me take advantage
of it to slip into the governor’s palace. Perhaps I might get speech
of Clelia; perhaps the confusion would provide me with an excuse for
kissing her hand. General Conti, who is as naturally suspicious as he is
constitutionally vain, keeps five sentries on his palace, one at each
corner and one at the entrance door. But luckily for me the night is as
dark as pitch.” Fabrizio crept on tiptoe to find out what Grillo, the
jailer, and his dog were about. The jailer was sound asleep, wrapped in
an ox-skin slung by four cords, and supported by a coarse net. Fox, the
dog, opened his eyes, rose, and crawled over to Fabrizio to be patted.
Our prisoner went softly back up the six steps which led to his wooden
shed. The noise at the base of the tower, and just in front of the door,
had grown so loud that he quite expected Grillo would wake up. Fabrizio,
fully armed and prepared for action, believed this night was to bring
about some great adventure. But suddenly he heard the first notes of a
most beautiful symphony. Somebody had come to serenade the general or his
daughter. He burst into a violent fit of laughter. “And I was already
prepared to deal dagger thrusts in all directions. As if a serenade were
not an infinitely more probable thing than an abduction that necessitated
the presence of eighty persons in a prison, or than a revolt!” The music
was excellent, and to Fabrizio, whose soul had been a stranger to such
delights for many weeks, it seemed exquisite. He shed happy tears as
he listened, and poured out the most irresistible speeches to the fair
Clelia in his delight. But at noon next day she looked so deeply sad,
she was so pale, and the glances she cast at him were occasionally so
wrathful, that he did not venture to ask her any question about the
serenade; he was afraid of appearing rude.
Clelia had good reason to be sad; the serenade had been offered her by
the Marchese Crescenzi. Such a public step was tantamount to a kind of
official announcement of her marriage. Until that very day, and even
until nine o’clock that evening, she had stood out nobly. But she had
given in at last, on her father’s threat that he would instantly send her
to the convent.
“Then I should never see him again,” she said to herself, weeping. In
vain did her reason add: “I should never see him again—that man who will
bring me every sort of sorrow, the lover of the duchess, the fickle being
who is known to have had ten mistresses at Naples, and to have forsaken
them all. I should never see him again—that ambitious youth, who, if
he escapes the sentence now hanging over him, will immediately re-enter
the service of the Church. It would be a crime if I were ever to look
at him again, once he has left the citadel, and his natural inconstancy
will spare me that temptation. For what am I to him? A mere pretext for
lightening his boredom for a few hours of each of his days in prison.”
Even while she thus reviled him the memory of his smile, as he looked
at the gendarmes round him when he was leaving the jailer’s office on
his way to the Farnese Tower, came back to Clelia’s memory. Her eyes
overflowed with tears. “Dear friend, what would I not do for you! You
will be my ruin, I know; that is my fate. I work my own destruction, and
in the vilest way, when I listen to this terrible serenade to-night. But
at noon to-morrow I shall look into your eyes again!”
It was on the very morrow of that day on which Clelia had sacrificed so
much for the young prisoner whom she loved so passionately—it was on the
morrow of the day on which, conscious though she was of all his faults,
she had sacrificed her life to him, that her coldness almost drove
Fabrizio to despair. If, even through the imperfect language of signs, he
had done the least violence to Clelia’s feelings, she would probably not
have been able to restrain her tears, and Fabrizio would have obtained
her confession of all she felt for him. But he was not bold enough; he
was too mortally afraid of displeasing Clelia. The punishment she had it
in her power to inflict on him was too severe for him to face. In other
words, Fabrizio had no experience of the nature of the emotion stirred in
a man by the woman he really loves. It was a sensation he had never felt
before, even to the very faintest extent. It took him a week from the
night of the serenade to recover his accustomed terms of friendship with
Clelia. The poor girl, terrified lest she should betray herself, took
refuge in severity, and every day Fabrizio fancied his favour with her
grew less.
One day—Fabrizio had then been in prison almost three months, without
holding any communication with the outer world, yet without feeling
unhappy—Grillo had remained in his room far into the morning. Fabrizio
was in despair, not knowing how to get rid of him. Half-past twelve
o’clock had struck before he was able to open the two little traps, a
foot high, which he had cut in his hateful screen. Clelia was standing at
the aviary window, her eyes fixed on Fabrizio’s room. The deepest despair
hovered over her drawn features. Hardly had she caught sight of Fabrizio
than she made him a sign that all was lost; then, hurrying to her piano
and pretending to sing a recitative out of an opera then in vogue, she
said, in sentences broken by her despair and the fear of being understood
by the sentinels marching up and down under the window:
“Good God! you are still alive! How deeply I thank Heaven! Barbone, the
jailer whose insolence you punished on the day of your arrival here,
had disappeared, and left the citadel altogether. He returned the night
before last, and since yesterday I have had reason to think he is trying
to poison you. He comes and hangs about the private kitchen in the
palace, where your meals are cooked. I know nothing for certain, but my
waiting-woman believes that vile countenance only comes into the palace
kitchens with the object of destroying your life. I was beside myself
with anxiety when you did not appear; I thought you were dead! Do not eat
any food that is brought you, until I give you leave. I will contrive
some means of sending you a little chocolate. In any case, at nine
o’clock to-night, if, by Heaven’s mercy, you happen to have a thread, or
can make a line out of some of your linen, let it drop from your window
on to the orange trees below. I will fasten a cord to it, which you will
draw up, and by means of that cord I will send you bread and chocolate.”
Fabrizio had treasured up the scrap of charcoal he had found in the stove
in his room. He made haste to take advantage of Clelia’s emotion, and to
write on his hand a succession of letters which made up the following
words:
“I love you, and the only reason my life is precious to me is because I
see you. Above all things, send me paper and a pencil.”
As Fabrizio had hoped, the excessive terror he had read in Clelia’s face
prevented the young girl from breaking off their conversation after his
bold declaration that he loved her. All she did was to look very much
displeased. Fabrizio was clever enough to add: “There is so much wind
to-day that I can hardly make out the counsels you are good enough to
give me as you sing; the noise of the piano drowns your voice. What is
the poison of which you speak?”
At his words all the young girl’s alarm broke out afresh; she began
hastily writing large letters in ink on pages which she tore out of a
book, and Fabrizio was beside himself with delight at seeing the method
of correspondence he had so vainly begged, established at last, after
three months of effort. He carefully clung to the little deception
which had served his purpose so well. What he wanted to do was to write
letters, and he kept pretending he could not catch the sense of the
words, the letters of which Clelia held up to his gaze one after the
other.
She was obliged to leave the aviary and hurry to her father. Her greatest
terror was that he might come to look for her there. His suspicious
instinct would have been very much offended by the close vicinity of the
aviary window to the screen concealing that of the prisoner’s room. It
had occurred to Clelia herself, a few minutes previously, when Fabrizio’s
non-appearance was causing her such mortal anxiety, that a piece of paper
wrapped round a small stone might be thrown over the top of the screen.
If, by good luck, the jailer in charge of Fabrizio should not happen to
be in his room, this would be a quite reliable method of correspondence.
Our prisoner lost no time in fashioning a kind of line out of some of his
under-linen, and a little after nine o’clock in the evening he distinctly
heard a slight tapping on the boxes of the orange trees under his window.
He let down his line, and brought up, fastened to the end of it, a very
long, thin cord, by means of which he drew up, to begin with, a supply of
chocolate, and then, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a roll of paper
and a pencil. In vain did he drop his cord down again; nothing more was
sent up. Probably the sentries had approached the neighbourhood of the
orange trees. But he was beside himself with delight. He instantly wrote
an endless letter to Clelia, and the moment it was finished he fastened
it to his line and let it down. For more than three hours he waited
vainly for her to come and take it, and several times he drew it up again
to alter expressions in it. “If Clelia does not see my letter to-night,”
he thought, “while she is still softened by her idea about the poison,
she may, when morning comes, utterly refuse to receive any letter from me
at all.”
The real truth was that Clelia had not been able to get out of going
down into the town with her father. This idea occurred to Fabrizio when
he heard the general’s carriage drive up, about half an hour after
midnight. He knew the sound of his horses’ feet. What was his joy when,
a few minutes after he had heard the sentries salute the general as he
crossed the terrace, he felt a tremor shake the cord, which he had kept
wound about his arm. Something very heavy was being fastened to the end
of it. Two slight pulls gave him the signal to draw it up. He had some
difficulty in getting the heavy object past a very projecting cornice
that ran below his window.
The object he had found it so difficult to draw up was a bottle filled
with water, wrapped in a shawl. In a passion of delight the poor young
fellow, who had lived so long in such complete solitude, covered the
shawl with kisses. But no words of mine can depict his emotion when,
after all those many days of disappointed hope, his eyes fell on a little
scrap of paper, fastened to the shawl with a pin.
“Drink no water but this; live on the chocolate. To-morrow I will make
every effort to send you up some bread. I will mark it all over with
little crosses in ink.
“It is a horrible thing to say, but you must be told, that Barbone may
possibly be sent here to poison you. How comes it that you have not felt
the subject of your pencil letter must be most displeasing to me? And,
indeed, I would not write to you at all but for the excessive danger that
threatens us. I have just seen the duchess; she is very well, and so is
the count. But she has grown much thinner. Do not write to me again upon
that subject. Do you want me to be angry with you?”
It required a great effort of virtue on Clelia’s part to write the last
line but one of her note. Everybody about court was declaring that the
Duchess Sanseverina was beginning to feel a great regard for Count Baldi,
that very good-looking young man who had been the Marchesa Raversi’s
friend. One point was quite certain—he had broken in the most scandalous
fashion with the aforementioned marchesa, who had been a mother to him
for six years, and had established his social position. Clelia had been
obliged to write her hasty note twice over, because in the first copy she
had allowed something of the new love affair ascribed to the duchess by
public spite to appear.
“What a mean creature I am,” she exclaimed, “to speak evil of the woman
he loves to Fabrizio!”
The next morning, long before daylight, Grillo entered Fabrizio’s room,
put down a rather heavy parcel, and disappeared without a word. The
bundle contained a good-sized loaf of bread, covered all over with little
pen-and-ink crosses. Fabrizio covered them with kisses; he was very much
in love. With the loaf he found a “rouleau,” containing six thousand
francs in sequins, wrapped in numerous paper coverings, and finally a
beautiful new breviary. On the margin of the book the following words had
been traced, in a handwriting he was beginning to know:
“_Poison!_ Beware of water, of wine, of everything! Live on chocolate;
try to make the dog eat the dinner you will not touch. Do not betray your
suspicions. The enemy would seek out some other means. Let there be no
imprudence, in God’s name, and no carelessness!”
Fabrizio immediately removed the precious words, which might have
compromised Clelia, and, tearing a great number of leaves out of the
breviary, he made up several alphabets, each letter clearly written with
charcoal crushed up and moistened with wine. These alphabets were dry
by the time a quarter to twelve struck, and Clelia made her appearance
two paces from the aviary window. “Now,” said Fabrizio to himself, “the
great thing is to get her to make use of them.” But by good luck, she
had many things to tell the young prisoner about the attempt to poison
him. A dog belonging to the servant girls had died after eating of a dish
which had been cooked for Fabrizio. So that Clelia, far from objecting to
the use of alphabets, had prepared a splendid one of her own, written in
ink. The conversation thus carried on—not a very easy matter during the
first few minutes—lasted no less than an hour and a half; that is to say,
for as long as Clelia could stay in the aviary. Two or three times, when
Fabrizio ventured on forbidden subjects, she deigned him no answer, and
turned away for a moment to bestow some necessary care upon her birds.
Fabrizio had induced her to promise that at night, when she sent him
water, she would also send him one of her own alphabets, written in ink,
which was much more easily deciphered. He did not fail to write her a
very long letter, from which he was careful to exclude all expression of
tenderness, or any, at all events, likely to give offence. This method
proved successful, and his letter was accepted. When their alphabet
conversation began next day Clelia did not reproach him. She told him
the danger of poison was growing less; the serving-men who made love to
the governor’s kitchen-maids had fallen upon Barbone and half murdered
him. He would probably not venture to reappear in the kitchens. Clelia
confessed that for Fabrizio’s sake she had dared to steal an antidote in
her father’s possession; this she would send him. The great point was
that he should instantly reject any food the taste of which was unusual.
Clelia had questioned Don Cesare very closely, without being able to
discover the source of the six thousand sequins Fabrizio had received.
But in any case it was an excellent sign; his captors’ severity was
softening.
This poison episode advanced our prisoner’s business mightily. He could
not, indeed, extract the slightest confession of anything like love. But
he had the delight of living on the most intimate terms with Clelia.
Every morning, and sometimes in the evenings, too, they held a long
conversation with their alphabets. Every night at nine o’clock, Clelia
accepted a long letter, and sometimes returned a few words in reply. She
sent him up the newspaper and a few books, and Grillo had been coaxed
into bringing Fabrizio wine and bread, with which he was supplied every
day by Clelia’s waiting-maid. The jailer had concluded that the governor
was not in agreement with the persons who had sent Barbone to poison the
young monsignore, and he, as well as his comrades, was heartily glad of
it, for it had become a proverb in the prison that if a man only looked
Monsignore del Dongo in the face he was sure to give him money.
Fabrizio had grown very pallid. The total absence of exercise tried his
health, but except for that, he had never been so happy in his life. The
tone of his conversations with Clelia was intimate, and sometimes very
merry. The only moments in Clelia’s life that were not embittered by
terrible forebodings and remorse were those she spent talking to him.
One day she was so imprudent as to say:
“I admire your delicacy. As I am the governor’s daughter, you never speak
to me of your desire to recover your liberty.”
“That is because I have no such ridiculous desire,” replied Fabrizio. “If
I once got back to Parma how should I ever see you? And life would be
unendurable to me, henceforth, if I could not tell you all my thoughts.…
No, not exactly all my thoughts. You take good care of that. But, after
all, in spite of your unkindness, to live without seeing you every day
would be far worse suffering to me than this imprisonment. I never was so
happy in my life. Is it not comical that my happiness should have been
waiting for me in a prison?”
“There are a great many things to be said upon that subject,” replied
Clelia, suddenly growing very grave, and almost gloomy.
“What!” cried Fabrizio in great alarm, “am I in danger of losing that
little corner I have won in your heart, the only happiness I have in all
the world?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I have every reason to think you are not acting
honestly by me, although in the world you are considered a very
honourable man. But I will not go into this matter to-day.”
This curious confidence made that day’s conversation very awkward, and
tears often stood in the eyes of both speakers.
Chief-Justice Rassi still pined to change his name. He was very weary
of the one he had made himself, and longed to be called the Baron Riva.
Count Mosca, on his side, was working, with all the skill he possessed,
to feed the venal judge’s passion for his barony, and to double the
prince’s mad hope of making himself constitutional King of Lombardy.
These were the only two methods of delaying Fabrizio’s execution he had
been able to discover.
The prince kept saying to Rassi: “A fortnight’s despair, and a
fortnight’s hope. By patiently carrying out this treatment we shall
contrive to break down that haughty woman’s temper. It is this
alternation of gentleness and severity which is used to break in the most
unmanageable horses. Apply the caustic with a steady hand.”
So every fortnight a fresh report of Fabrizio’s approaching death spread
over Parma. Each of these stories plunged the unhappy duchess into the
deepest despair. Faithful to her resolve not to drag the count down into
her own ruin, she would only see him twice in the month. But her cruelty
to the poor man was punished by the continual alternations of hope and
dark despair in which her own life was spent. In vain did Count Mosca,
in spite of the bitter jealousy caused him by the attentions of the
good-looking Baldi, write to the duchess when he could not see her, and
acquaint her with all the information he owed to the future Baron Riva.
To make a stand against the horrible reports concerning Fabrizio, which
were in such constant circulation, the duchess should have spent all her
time with a clever and kind-hearted man such as Mosca. Baldi’s stupidity,
which left her alone with her own thoughts, rendered existence hideous
to her, and the count could not succeed in inspiring her with his own
reasons for hope.
By means of certain ingenious pretexts the minister induced the prince
to consent to send the documents concerning all the very complicated
intrigues which, according to Ranuzio Ernest IV’s wild hope, were to make
him constitutional King of Lombardy, to the house of an accomplice near
Sarono, in the very middle of that fair country.
More than a score of these very compromising papers were either in the
prince’s own hand or bore his signature, and the count intended, if
Fabrizio’s life should be seriously threatened, to inform his Highness
that he was about to place these proofs in the hands of a great Power
which could crush him with a word.
Count Mosca thought himself sure of the future Baron Riva. Poison was the
only thing he feared. Barbone’s attempt had greatly alarmed him—to such
a point, indeed, that he had made up his mind to risk what looked like
an act of madness. One morning he drove to the citadel gate, and sent
for General Fabio Conti, who came down to him on the bastion above the
gate. As they walked up and down in friendly fashion, the count did not
hesitate to say, after a little preface, which, though civil enough, was
decidedly bitter-sweet:
“If Fabrizio should die in any suspicious manner, his death may be
ascribed to me, and I should bear the reputation of a jealous fool. That
would make me look utterly ridiculous, a thing to which I am resolved
never to submit. Therefore, if he should die of any sickness, I shall
kill you with my own hands to clear myself; of that you may be perfectly
certain.”
General Fabio Conti made a very fine answer, and talked big about his
courage. But he never forgot the look the count had given him as he spoke.
A few days later, and as if he had arranged it with the count,
Chief-Justice Rassi ventured on an imprudence very remarkable in such
a man. The public scorn which clung to his name and made it a proverb
with the lowest of the populace, was sickening him, now that he had a
reasonable hope of escaping it. He forwarded General Fabio Conti an
official copy of the sentence condemning Fabrizio to twelve years in the
citadel. Legally speaking, this ought to have been done the very morning
after Fabrizio entered the prison. But what was unheard of in Parma, that
country of secret measures, was that the justiciary should have ventured
on such a step without an express order from the sovereign. For what hope
could there be of doubling the duchess’s terrors every fortnight, and
so breaking down her haughty temper, as the prince expressed it, once
an official copy of the sentence had passed out of the office of the
Ministry of Justice? On the evening before the day on which General Fabio
Conti received Chief-Justice Rassi’s official letter he was informed
that Barbone, the clerk, had been thoroughly thrashed on his way back to
the citadel, rather late at night. From this he concluded that there was
no longer any desire in high quarters to get rid of Fabrizio, and by an
instinct of prudence which saved Rassi from the immediate consequences
of his folly, he did not mention the transmission of the official copy
of the prisoner’s sentence at his next audience with the prince. The
count, mercifully for the poor duchess’s peace of mind, had discovered
that Barbone’s clumsy attempt had been inspired solely by his own private
vengeance, and it was he who had provided the clerk with the warning to
which we have just referred. It was a pleasant surprise for Fabrizio,
when, after a hundred and thirty-five days in his somewhat cramped cage,
Don Cesare, the worthy chaplain, came one Thursday to take him for a walk
on the leads of the Farnese Tower. Before Fabrizio had been there for
ten minutes, the fresh air overcame him, and he fainted away. Don Cesare
made this incident a pretext for allowing him half an hour’s walk every
day. This was a folly. The frequent outings soon restored our hero to a
strength which he abused.
Several more serenades were given. The only reason that induced the
punctilious governor to permit them was that they helped to bind his
daughter Clelia, whose character alarmed him, to the Marchese Crescenzi.
He had an uneasy feeling that there was nothing in common between himself
and his daughter, and lived in perpetual dread of some freak on her
part. She might take refuge in a convent, and then he would be helpless.
Otherwise the general had his fears that all this music, the sound of
which must reach the deepest dungeons reserved to the blackest Liberals,
might screen the making of signals. He was jealous, too, of the musicians
on their own account. Therefore, the moment the serenade was over, they
were locked up in those great, low-ceilinged rooms of the governor’s
palace which were used as offices by his staff in the daytime, and the
doors were not opened till broad daylight the next morning. The governor
himself stood on the “Bridge of the Slave” while the men were searched in
his presence, and never restored them to liberty without telling them,
several times over, that he would instantly hang any man who dared to
undertake to carry the most trifling message to any prisoner. It was well
known that in his terror of displeasing the prince he was certain to
keep his word; so, to overcome their horror of the night’s imprisonment,
Crescenzi was obliged to pay his musicians triple fees. All the duchess
could wring out of the cowardice of one of these men, and this with great
difficulty, was that he should carry a letter in, and give it to the
governor. The letter was addressed to Fabrizio, and deplored the sad fact
that during the five months he had been in prison his friends outside had
never been able to establish the smallest correspondence with him.
When the musician entered the citadel he cast himself at General Fabio
Conti’s feet, and confessed that a priest, a stranger to him, had so
insisted on his taking charge of a letter addressed to Signor del Dongo,
that he had not ventured to refuse, but that, faithful to his duty, he
now hastened to place it in his Excellency’s hands.
His Excellency was highly flattered. He knew how great the duchess’s
resources were, and was terribly afraid of being fooled by her. In
his joy the general carried the letter to the prince, who was equally
delighted.
“Then the firmness of my government has avenged me at last! For five
months that haughty woman has been in anguish. But one of these days we
will build a scaffold, and her wild imagination will not fail to convince
her it is for young Del Dongo.”