The amazement such a missive caused me may well be imagined. In an
instant a crowd of ideas rushed upon me; the veil was rent, the cloud
dispersed. At once I realized the reason for the immense differences
between myself and my supposed relatives.
I saw the reason for the ill-treatment I had endured at the hands of a
woman perhaps forced into calling herself my mother; I understood the
meaning of those many muttered enigmatical half-sentences of my first
husband, and still more those of the writer of the astounding letter I
held in my hand.
There was but one mystery left to clear up, and that was precisely the
one I was implored to let alone.
But the man who had so implored me was now in my eyes nothing but a
criminal for me to forgive, his paternity destroyed, his rights broken,
and my duty to him annihilated, or rather born anew—enjoined on me by
honour and the love I bore my children—namely, to try every possible
means to discover my real father.
In my anxiety I hastened to the postmaster, as if he were the person to
give me useful information; but all he could tell me was that the letter
in question had come in the bag from Florence and under the postmark of
that town; but he directed me to an old man, a native of Faenza, to whom
I went at once. He could tell me nothing at the time; but he wrote, and
received an answer that there were two maid-servants of the Countess
Camilla still living, and that there was a new Count Biancoli-Borghi, a
relation and heir of the Count Pompeo, whose widow he had even married.
For my part I had written to the Fathers Ringrezzi and Fabroni, the
first-named confessor to the former jailer, the other the nephew of the
confessor of the late old Countess.
Having accepted the invitation I sent them to come and see me, Father
Ringrezzi told me at once that his calling bound him to inviolable
secrecy, but added that his private opinion had always been that I was
the child of the Grand Duke Leopold.