During the day Fabrizio was attacked by certain serious and disagreeable
reflexions; but as he heard the hours strike that brought him nearer to
the moment of action, he began to feel alert and ready. The Duchessa had
written that he would feel the shock of the fresh air, and that once he
was out of his prison he might find it impossible to walk; in that case
it was better to run the risk of being caught than to let himself fall
from a height of a hundred and eighty feet. "If I have that misfortune,"
said Fabrizio, "I shall lie down beneath the parapet, I shall sleep for
an hour, then I shall start again. Since I have sworn to Clelia that I
will make the attempt, I prefer to fall from the top of a rampart,
however high, rather than always to have to think about the taste of the
bread I eat. What horrible pains one must feel before the end, when one
dies of poison! Fabio Conti will stand on no ceremony, he will make them
give me the arsenic with which he kills the rats in his citadel."
Towards midnight, one of those thick white fogs in which the Po
sometimes swathes its banks, spread first of all over the town, and then
reached the esplanade and the bastions from the midst of which rises the
great tower of the citadel. Fabrizio estimated that from the parapet of
the platform it would be impossible to make out the young acacias that
surrounded the gardens laid out by the soldiers at the foot of the
hundred and eighty foot wall. "That, now, is excellent," he thought.
_THE ESCAPE_
Shortly after half past twelve had struck, the signal of the little lamp
appeared at the aviary window. Fabrizio was ready for action; he crossed
himself, then fastened to his bed the fine cord intended to enable him
to descend the thirty-five feet that separated him from the platform on
which the _palazzo_ stood. He arrived without meeting any obstacle on
the roof of the guard-room occupied overnight by the reinforcement of
two hundred soldiers of whom we have spoken. Unfortunately, the
soldiers, at a quarter to one in the morning, as it now was, had not yet
gone to sleep; while he was creeping on tiptoe over the roof of large
curved tiles, Fabrizio could hear them saying that the devil was on the
roof, and that they must try to kill him with a shot from a musket.
Certain voices insisted that this desire savoured of great impiety;
others said that if a shot were fired without killing anything, the
governor would put them all in prison for having alarmed the garrison
without cause. The upshot of this discussion was that Fabrizio walked
across the roof as quickly as possible and made a great deal more noise.
The fact remains that at the moment when, hanging by his cord, he passed
opposite the windows, mercifully at a distance of four or five feet
owing to the projection of the roof, they were bristling with bayonets.
Some accounts suggest that Fabrizio, mad as ever, had the idea of acting
the part of the devil, and that he flung these soldiers a handful of
sequins. One thing certain is that he had scattered sequins upon the
floor of his room, and that he scattered more on the platform on his way
from the Torre Farnese to the parapet, so as to give himself the chance
of distracting the attention of the soldiers who might come in pursuit
of him.
Landing upon the platform where he was surrounded by soldiers, who
ordinarily called out every quarter of an hour a whole sentence: "All's
well around my post!" he directed his steps towards the western parapet
and sought for the new stone.
The thing that appears incredible and might make one doubt the truth of
the story if the result had not had a whole town for witnesses, is that
the sentries posted along the parapet did not see and arrest Fabrizio;
as a matter of fact the fog was beginning to rise, and Fabrizio said
afterwards that when he was on the platform the fog seemed to him to
have come already halfway up the Torre Farnese. But this fog was by no
means thick, and he could quite well see the sentries, some of whom were
moving. He added that, impelled as though by a supernatural force, he
went to take up his position boldly between two sentries who were quite
near one another. He calmly unwound the big cord which he had round his
body, and which twice became entangled; it took him a long time to
unravel it and spread it out on the parapet. He heard the soldiers
talking on all sides of him, and was quite determined to stab the first
who advanced upon him. "I was not in the least anxious," he added, "I
felt as though I were performing a ceremony."
He fastened his cord, when it was finally unravelled, through an opening
cut in the parapet for the escape of rain-water, climbed on to the said
parapet and prayed to God with fervour; then, like a hero of the days of
chivalry, he thought for a moment of Clelia. "How different I am," he
said to himself, "from the fickle, libertine Fabrizio of nine months
ago!" At length he began to descend that astounding height. He acted
mechanically, he said, and as he would have done in broad daylight,
climbing down a wall before friends, to win a wager. About halfway down,
he suddenly felt his arms lose their strength; he thought afterwards
that he had even let go the cord for an instant, but he soon caught hold
of it again; possibly, he said, he had held on to the bushes into which
he slipped, receiving some scratches from them. He felt from time to
time an agonising pain between his shoulders; it actually took away his
breath. There was an extremely unpleasant swaying motion; he was
constantly flung from the cord to the bushes. He was brushed by several
birds which he aroused, and which dashed at him in their flight. At
first, he thought that he was being clutched by men who had come down
from the citadel by the same way as himself in pursuit, and he prepared
to defend his life. Finally he arrived at the base of the great tower
without any inconvenience save that of having blood on his hands. He
relates that, from the middle of the tower, the slope which it forms was
of great use to him; he hugged the wall all the way down, and the plants
growing between the stones gave him great support. On reaching the foot,
among the soldiers' gardens, he fell upon an acacia which, looked at
from above, had seemed to him to be four or five feet high, but was
really fifteen or twenty. A drunken man who was lying asleep beneath it
took him for a robber. In his fall from this tree, Fabrizio nearly
dislocated his right arm. He started to run towards the rampart; but, as
he said, his legs felt like cotton, he had no longer any strength. In
spite of the danger, he sat down and drank a little brandy which he had
left. He dozed off for a few minutes to the extent of not knowing where
he was; on awaking, he could not understand how, lying in bed in his
cell, he saw trees. Then the terrible truth came back to his mind. At
once he stepped out to the rampart, and climbed it by a big stair. The
sentry who was posted close beside this stair was snoring in his box. He
found a cannon lying in the grass; he fastened his third cord to it; it
proved to be a little too short, and he fell into a muddy ditch in which
there was perhaps a foot of water. As he was picking himself up and
trying to take his bearings, he felt himself seized by two men; he was
afraid for a moment; but presently heard a voice close to his ear
whisper very softly: "Ah! Monsignore, Monsignore!" He gathered vaguely
that these men belonged to the Duchessa; at once he fell in a dead
faint. A minute later, he felt that he was being carried by men who were
marching in silence and very fast; then they stopped, which caused him
great uneasiness. But he had not the strength either to speak or to open
his eyes; he felt that he was being clasped in someone's arm; suddenly
he recognised the scent of the Duchessa's clothing. This scent revived
him; he opened his eyes; he was able to utter the words: "Ah! Dear
friend!" Then once again he fainted away.
The faithful Bruno, with a squad of police all devoted to the Conte, was
in reserve at a distance of two hundred yards; the Conte himself was
hidden in a small house close to the place where the Duchessa was
waiting. He would not have hesitated, had it been necessary, to take his
sword in his hand, with a party of half-pay officers, his intimate
friends; he regarded himself as obliged to save the life of Fabrizio,
who seemed to him to be exposed to great risk, and would long ago have
had his pardon signed by the Prince, if he, Mosca, had not been so
foolish as to seek to avoid making the Sovereign write a foolish thing.
Since midnight the Duchessa, surrounded by men armed to the teeth, had
been pacing in deep silence outside the ramparts of the citadel; she
could not stay in one place, she thought that she would have to fight to
rescue Fabrizio from the men who would pursue him. This ardent
imagination had taken a hundred precautions, too long to be given here
in detail, and of an incredible imprudence. It was calculated that more
than eighty agents were afoot that night, in readiness to fight for
something extraordinary. Fortunately Ferrante and Lodovico were at the
head of all these men, and the Minister of Police was not hostile; but
the Conte himself remarked that the Duchessa was not betrayed by anyone,
and that he himself, as Minister, knew nothing.
The Duchessa lost her head altogether on seeing Fabrizio again; she
clasped him convulsively in her arms, then was in despair on seeing
herself covered in blood: it was the blood from Fabrizio's hands; she
thought that he was dangerously wounded. With the assistance of one of
her men, she was taking off his coat to bandage him when Lodovico, who
fortunately happened to be on the spot, firmly put her and Fabrizio in
one of the little carriages which were hidden in a garden near the gate
of the town, and they set off at full gallop to cross the Po near Sacca.
Ferrante, with a score of well-armed men, formed the rearguard, and had
sworn on his head to stop the pursuit. The Conte, alone and on foot, did
not leave the neighbourhood of the citadel until two hours later, when
he saw that no one was stirring. "Look at me, committing high treason,"
he said to himself, mad with joy.
Lodovico had the excellent idea of placing in one of the carriages a
young surgeon attached to the Duchessa's household, who was of much the
same build as Fabrizio.
"Make your escape," he told him, "in the direction of Bologna; be as
awkward as possible, try to have yourself arrested; then contradict
yourself in your answers, and finally admit that you are Fabrizio del
Dongo; above all, gain time. Use your skill in being awkward, you will
get off with a month's imprisonment, and the Signora will give you fifty
sequins."
"Does one think of money when one is serving the Signora?"
He set off, and was arrested a few hours later, an event which gave
great joy to General Fabio Conti and also to Rassi, who, with Fabrizio's
peril, saw his Barony taking flight.
The escape was not known at the citadel until about six o'clock in the
morning, and it was not until ten that they dared inform the Prince. The
Duchessa had been so well served that, in spite of Fabrizio's deep
sleep, which she mistook for a dead faint, with the result that she
stopped the carriage three times, she crossed the Po in a boat as four
was striking. There were relays on the other side, they covered two
leagues more at great speed, then were stopped for more than an hour for
the examination of their passports. The Duchessa had every variety of
these for herself and Fabrizio; but she was mad that day, and took it
into her head to give ten napoleons to the clerk of the Austrian police,
and to clasp his hand and burst into tears. This clerk, greatly alarmed,
began the examination afresh. They took post; the Duchessa paid in so
extravagant a fashion that everywhere she aroused suspicions, in that
land where every stranger is suspect. Lodovico came to the rescue again:
he said that the Signora Duchessa was beside herself with grief at the
protracted fever of young Conte Mosca, son of the Prime Minister of
Parma, whom she was taking with her to consult the doctors of Pavia.
It was not until they were ten leagues beyond the Po that the prisoner
really awoke; he had a dislocated shoulder and a number of slight cuts.
The Duchessa again behaved in so extraordinary a fashion that the
landlord of a village inn where they dined thought he was entertaining a
Princess of the Imperial House, and was going to pay her the honours
which he supposed to be due to her when Lodovico told him that the
Princess would without fail have him put in prison if he thought of
ordering the bells to be rung.
At length, about six o'clock in the evening, they reached Piedmontese
territory. There for the first time Fabrizio was in complete safety; he
was taken to a little village off the high road, the cuts on his hands
were dressed, and he slept for several hours more.
_MADNESS_
It was in this village that the Duchessa allowed herself to take a step
that was not only horrible from the moral point of view, but also fatal
to the tranquillity of the rest of her life. Some weeks before
Fabrizio's escape; on a day when the whole of Parma had gone to the gate
of the citadel; hoping to see in the courtyard the scaffold that was
being erected for his benefit; the Duchessa had shown to Lodovico, who
had become the factotum of her household, the secret by which one raised
from a little iron frame, very cunningly concealed, one of the stones
forming the floor of the famous reservoir of the _palazzo_ Sanseverina,
a work of the thirteenth century, of which we have spoken already. While
Fabrizio was lying asleep in the _trattoria_ of this little village, the
Duchessa sent for Lodovico. He thought that she had gone mad, so strange
was the look that she gave him.
"You probably expect," she said to him, "that I am going to give you
several thousand francs; well, I am not; I know you, you are a poet, you
would soon squander it all. I am giving you the small _podere_ of La
Ricciarda, a league from Casalmaggiore." Lodovico flung himself at her
feet, mad with joy, and protesting in heartfelt accents that it was not
with any thought of earning money that he had helped to save Monsignor
Fabrizio; that he had always loved him with a special affection since he
had had the honour to drive him once, in his capacity as the Signora's
third coachman. When this man, who was genuinely warm-hearted, thought
that he had taken up enough of the time of so great a lady, he took his
leave; but she, with flashing eyes, said to him:
"Wait!"
She paced without uttering a word the floor of this inn room, looking
from time to time at Lodovico with incredible eyes. Finally the man,
seeing that this strange exercise showed no sign of coming to an end,
took it upon himself to address his mistress.
"The Signora has made me so extravagant a gift, one so far beyond
anything that a poor man like me could imagine, and moreover so much
greater than the humble services which I have had the honour to render,
that I feel, on my conscience, that I cannot accept the _podere_ of La
Ricciarda. I have the honour to return this land to the Signora, and to
beg her to grant me a pension of four hundred francs."
"How many times in your life," she said to him with the most sombre
pride, "how many times have you heard it said that I had abandoned a
project once I had made it?"
After uttering this sentence, the Duchessa continued to walk up and down
the room for some minutes; then suddenly stopping, cried:
"It is by accident, and because he managed to attract that little girl,
that Fabrizio's life has been saved! If he had not been attractive, he
would now be dead. Can you deny that?" she asked, advancing on Lodovico
with eyes in which the darkest fury blazed. Lodovico recoiled a few
steps and thought her mad, which gave him great uneasiness as to the
possession of his _podere_ of La Ricciarda.
"Very well!" the Duchessa went on, in the most winning and light-hearted
tone, completely changed, "I wish my good people of Sacca to have a mad
holiday which they will long remember. You are going to return to Sacca;
have you any objection? Do you think that you will be running any risk?"
"None to speak of, Signora: none of the people of Sacca will ever say
that I was in Monsignor Fabrizio's service. Besides, if I may venture to
say so to the Signora, I am burning to see _my_ property at La Ricciarda:
it seems so odd for me to be a landowner!"
"Your gaiety pleases me. The farmer at La Ricciarda owes me, I think,
three or four years' rent; I make him a present of half of what he owes
me, and the other half of all these arrears I give to you, but on this
condition: you will go to Sacca, you will say there that the day after
to-morrow is the _festa_ of one of my patron saints, and, on the evening
after your arrival, you will have my house illuminated in the most
splendid fashion. Spare neither money nor trouble; remember that the
occasion is the greatest happiness of my life. I have prepared for this
illumination long beforehand; more than three months ago, I collected in
the cellars of the house everything that can be used for this noble
_festa_; I have put the gardener in charge of all the fireworks
necessary for a magnificent display: you will let them off from the
terrace overlooking the Po. I have eighty-nine large barrels of wine in
my cellars, you will set up eighty-nine fountains of wine in my park. If
next day there remains a single bottle which has not been drunk, I shall
say that you do not love Fabrizio. When the fountains of wine, the
illumination and the fireworks are well started, you will slip away
cautiously, for it is possible, and it is my hope, that at Parma all
these fine doings may appear an insolence."
"It is not possible, it is only a certainty; as it is certain too that
the Fiscal Rassi, who signed Monsignore's sentence, will burst with
rage. And indeed," added Lodovico timidly, "if the Signora wished to
give more pleasure to her poor servant than by bestowing on him half the
arrears of La Ricciarda, she would allow me to play a little joke on
that Rassi. . . ."
"You are a stout fellow!" cried the Duchessa in a transport; "but I
forbid you absolutely to do anything to Rassi: I have a plan of having
him publicly hanged, later on. As for you, try not to have yourself
arrested at Sacca; everything would be spoiled if I lost you."
"I, Signora! After I have said that I am celebrating the _festa_ of one
of the Signora's patrons, if the police sent thirty constables to upset
things, you may be sure that before they had reached the Croce Rossa in
the middle of the village, not one of them would be on his horse.
They're no fools, the people of Sacca; finished smugglers all of them,
and they worship the Signora."
"Finally," went on the Duchessa with a singularly detached air, "if I
give wine to my good people of Sacca, I wish to flood the inhabitants of
Parma; the same evening on which my house is illuminated, take the best
horse in my stable, dash to my _palazzo_ in Parma, and open the
reservoir."
"Ah! What an excellent idea of the Signora!" cried Lodovico, laughing
like a madman; "wine for the good people of Sacca, water for the cits of
Parma, who were so sure, the wretches, that Monsignor Fabrizio was going
to be poisoned like poor L----."
Lodovico's joy knew no end; the Duchessa complacently watched his wild
laughter; he kept on repeating "Wine for the people of Sacca and water
for the people of Parma! The Signora no doubt knows better than I that
when they rashly emptied the reservoir, twenty years ago, there was as
much as a foot of water in many of the streets of Parma."
"And water for the people of Parma," retorted the Duchessa with a laugh.
"The avenue past the citadel would have been filled with people if they
had cut off Fabrizio's head. . . . They all call him _the great
culprit_. . . . But, above all, do everything carefully, so that not a
living soul knows that the flood was started by you or ordered by me.
Fabrizio, the Conte himself must be left in ignorance of this mad prank.
. . . But I was forgetting the poor of Sacca: go and write a letter to
my agent, which I shall sign; you will tell him that, for the _festa_ of
my holy patron, he must distribute a hundred sequins among the poor of
Sacca, and tell him to obey you in everything to do with the
illumination, the fireworks and the wine; and especially that there must
not be a full bottle in my cellars next day."
_DISAPPOINTMENT_
"The Signora's agent will have no difficulty except in one thing: in the
five years that the Signora has had the villa, she has not left ten poor
persons in Sacca."
"_And water for the people of Parma_!" the Duchessa went on chanting.
"How will you carry out this joke?"
"My plans are all made: I leave Sacca about nine o'clock, at half past
ten my horse is at the inn of the Tre Ganasce, on the road to
Casalmaggiore and to _my podere_ of La Ricciarda; at eleven, I am in my
room in the _palazzo_, and at a quarter past eleven water for the people
of Parma, and more than they wish, to drink to the health of the great
culprit. Ten minutes later, I leave the town by the Bologna road. I
make, as I pass it, a profound bow to the citadel, which Monsignore's
courage and the Signora's spirit have succeeded in disgracing; I take a
path across country, which I know well, and I make my entry into La
Ricciarda."
Lodovico raised his eyes to the Duchessa and was startled. She was
staring fixedly at the blank wall six paces away from her, and, it must
be admitted, her expression was terrible. "Ah! My poor _podere_!"
thought Lodovico. "The fact of the matter is, she is mad!" The Duchessa
looked at him and read his thoughts.
"Ah! Signor Lodovico the great poet, you wish a deed of gift in writing:
run and find me a sheet of paper." Lodovico did not wait to be told
twice, and the Duchessa wrote out in her own hand a long form of
receipt, ante-dated by a year, in which she declared that she had
received from Lodovico San Micheli the sum of 80,000 francs, and had
given him in pledge the lands of La Ricciarda. If after the lapse of
twelve months the Duchessa had not restored the said 80,000 francs to
Lodovico, the lands of La Ricciarda were to remain his property.
"It is a fine action," the Duchessa said to herself, "to give to a
faithful servant nearly a third of what I have left for myself."
"Now then," she said to Lodovico, "after the joke of the reservoir, I
give you just two days to enjoy yourself at Casalmaggiore. For the
conveyance to hold good, say that it is a transaction which dates back
more than a year. Come back and join me at Belgirate, and as quickly as
possible; Fabrizio is perhaps going to England, where you will follow
him."
Early the next day the Duchessa and Fabrizio were at Belgirate.
They took up their abode in that enchanting village; but a killing grief
awaited the Duchessa on Lake Maggiore. Fabrizio was entirely changed;
from the first moments in which he had awoken from his sleep, still
somewhat lethargic, after his escape, the Duchessa had noticed that
something out of the common was occurring in him. The deep-lying
sentiment, which he took great pains to conceal, was distinctly odd, it
was nothing less than this: he was in despair at being out of his
prison. He was careful not to admit this cause of his sorrow, which
would have led to questions which he did not wish to answer.
"What!" said the Duchessa, in amazement, "that horrible sensation when
hunger forced you to feed, so as not to fall down, on one of those
loathsome dishes supplied by the prison kitchen, that sensation: 'Is
there some strange taste in this, am I poisoning myself at this
moment?'--did not that sensation fill you with horror?"
"I thought of death," replied Fabrizio, "as I suppose soldiers think of
it: it was a possible thing which I thought to avoid by taking care."
_REGRET_
And so, what uneasiness, what grief for the Duchessa! This adored,
singular, vivid, original creature was now before her eyes a prey to an
endless train of fancies; he actually preferred solitude to the pleasure
of talking of all manner of things, and with an open heart, to the best
friend that he had in the world. Still he was always good, assiduous,
grateful towards the Duchessa; he would, as before, have given his life
a hundred times over for her; but his heart was elsewhere. They often
went four or five leagues over that sublime lake without uttering a
word. The conversation, the exchange of cold thoughts that from then
onwards was possible between them might perhaps have seemed pleasant to
others; but they remembered still, the Duchessa especially, what their
conversation had been before that fatal fight with Giletti which had set
them apart. Fabrizio owed the Duchessa an account of the nine months
that he had spent in a horrible prison, and it appeared that he had
nothing to say of this detention but brief and unfinished sentences.
"It was bound to happen sooner or later," the Duchessa told herself with
a gloomy sadness. "Grief has aged me, or else he is really in love, and
I have now only the second place in his heart." Demeaned, cast down by
the greatest of all possible griefs, the Duchessa said to herself at
times: "If, by the will of Heaven, Ferrante should become mad
altogether, or his courage should fail, I feel that I should be less
unhappy." From that moment this half-remorse poisoned the esteem that
the Duchessa had for her own character. "So," she said to herself
bitterly, "I am repenting of a resolution I have already made. Then I am
no longer a del Dongo!"
"It is the will of Heaven," she would say: "Fabrizio is in love, and
what right have I to wish that he should not be in love? Has one single
word of genuine love ever passed between us?"
This idea, reasonable as it was, kept her from sleeping, and in short, a
thing which shewed how old age and a weakening of the heart had come
over her, she was a hundred times more unhappy than at Parma. As for the
person who could be responsible for Fabrizio's strange abstraction, it
was hardly possible to entertain any reasonable doubt: Clelia Conti,
that pious girl, had betrayed her father since she had consented to make
the garrison drunk, and never once did Fabrizio speak of Clelia! "But,"
added the Duchessa, beating her breast in desperation, "if the garrison
had not been made drunk, all my stratagems, all my exertions became
useless; so it is she that saved him!"
It was with extreme difficulty that the Duchessa obtained from Fabrizio
any details of the events of that night, which, she said to herself,
"would at one time have been the subject of an endlessly renewed
discussion between us! In those happy times he would have talked for a
whole day, with a force and gaiety endlessly renewed, of the smallest
trifle which I thought of bringing forward."
As it was necessary to think of everything, the Duchessa had installed
Fabrizio at the port of Locarno, a Swiss town at the head of Lake
Maggiore. Every day she went to fetch him in a boat for long excursions
over the lake. Well, on one occasion when she took it into her head to
go up to his room, she found the walls lined with a number of views of
the town of Parma, for which he had sent to Milan or to Parma itself, a
place which he ought to be holding in abomination. His little
sitting-room, converted into a studio, was littered with all the
apparatus of a painter in water-colours, and she found him finishing a
third sketch of the Torre Farnese and the governor's _palazzo_.
_LOVE_
"The only thing for you to do now," she said to him with an air of
vexation, "is to make a portrait from memory of that charming governor
whose only wish was to poison you. But, while I think of it," she went
on, "you ought to write him a letter of apology for having taken the
liberty of escaping and making his citadel look foolish."
The poor woman little knew how true her words were: no sooner had he
arrived in a place of safety than Fabrizio's first thought had been to
write General Fabio Conti a perfectly polite and in a sense highly
ridiculous letter; he asked his pardon for having escaped, offering as
an excuse that a certain subordinate in the prison had been ordered to
give him poison. Little did he care what he wrote, Fabrizio hoped that
Clelia's eyes would see this letter, and his cheeks were wet with tears
as he wrote it. He ended it with a very pleasant sentence: he ventured
to say that, finding himself at liberty, he frequently had occasion to
regret his little room in the Torre Farnese. This was the principal
thought in his letter, he hoped that Clelia would understand it. In his
writing vein, and always in the hope of being read by someone, Fabrizio
addressed his thanks to Don Cesare, that good chaplain who had lent him
books on theology. A few days later Fabrizio arranged that the small
bookseller of Locarno should make the journey to Milan, where this
bookseller, a friend of the celebrated bibliomaniac Reina, bought the
most sumptuous editions that he could find of the works that Don Cesare
had lent Fabrizio. The good chaplain received these books and a handsome
letter which informed him that, in moments of impatience, pardonable
perhaps to a poor prisoner, the writer had covered the margins of his
books with silly notes. He begged him, accordingly, to replace them in
his library with the volumes which the most lively gratitude took the
liberty of presenting to him.
Fabrizio was very modest in giving the simple name of notes to the
endless scribblings with which he had covered the margins of a folio
volume of the works of Saint Jerome. In the hope that he might be able
to send back this book to the good chaplain, and exchange it for
another, he had written day by day on the margins a very exact diary of
all that occurred to him in prison; the great events were nothing else
than ecstasies of _divine love_ (this word _divine_ took the place of
another which he dared not write). At one moment this divine love led
the prisoner to a profound despair, at other times a voice heard in the
air restored some hope and caused transports of joy. All this,
fortunately, was written with prison ink, made of wine, chocolate and
soot, and Don Cesare had done no more than cast an eye over it as he put
back on his shelves the volume of Saint Jerome. If he had studied the
margins, he would have seen that one day the prisoner, believing himself
to have been poisoned, was congratulating himself on dying at a distance
of less than forty yards from what he had loved best in the world. But
another eye than the good chaplain's had read this page since his
escape. That fine idea: _To die near what one loves_! expressed in a
hundred different fashions, was followed by a sonnet in which one saw
that this soul, parted, after atrocious torments, from the frail body in
which it had dwelt for three-and-twenty years, urged by that instinct
for happiness natural to everything that has once existed, would not
mount to heaven to mingle with the choirs of angels as soon as it should
be free, and should the dread Judgment grant it pardon for its sins; but
that, more fortunate after death than it had been in life, it would go a
little way from the prison, where for so long it had groaned, to unite
itself with all that it had loved in this world. And "So," said the last
line of the sonnet, "I should find my earthly paradise."
_SELF-SACRIFICE_
Although they spoke of Fabrizio in the citadel of Parma only as of an
infamous traitor who had outraged the most sacred ties of duty, still
the good priest Don Cesare was delighted by the sight of the fine books
which an unknown hand had conveyed to him; for Fabrizio had decided to
write to him only a few days after sending them, for fear lest his name
might make the whole parcel be rejected with indignation. Don Cesare
said no word of this kind attention to his brother, who flew into a rage
at the mere name of Fabrizio; but since the latter's flight, he had
returned to all his old intimacy with his charming niece; and as he had
once taught her a few words of Latin, he let her see the fine books that
he had received. Such had been the traveller's hope. Suddenly Clelia
blushed deeply, she had recognized Fabrizio's handwriting. Long and very
narrow strips of yellow paper were placed by way of markers in various
parts of the volume. And as it is true to say that in the midst of the
sordid pecuniary interests, and of the colourless coldness of the vulgar
thoughts which fill our lives, the actions inspired by a true passion
rarely fail to produce their effect; as though a propitious deity were
taking the trouble to lead them by the hand, Clelia, guided by this
instinct, and by the thought of one thing only in the world, asked her
uncle to compare the old copy of Saint Jerome with the one that he had
just received. How can I describe her rapture in the midst of the gloomy
sadness in which Fabrizio's absence had plunged her, when she found on
the margins of the old Saint Jerome the sonnet of which we have spoken,
and the records, day by day, of the love that he had felt for her.
From the first day she knew the sonnet by heart; she would sing it,
leaning on her window-sill, before the window, henceforward empty, where
she had so often seen a little opening appear in the screen. This screen
had been taken down to be placed in the office of the criminal court,
and to serve as evidence in a ridiculous prosecution which Rassi was
drawing up against Fabrizio, accused of the crime of having escaped, or,
as the Fiscal said, laughing himself as he said it, _of having removed
himself from the clemency of a magnanimous Prince_!
Each stage in Clelia's actions was for her a matter for keen remorse,
and now that she was unhappy, her remorse was all the keener. She sought
to mitigate somewhat the reproaches that she addressed to herself by
reminding herself of the vow _never to see Fabrizio again_, which she
had made to the Madonna at the time when the General was nearly
poisoned, and since then had renewed daily.
Her father had been made ill by Fabrizio's escape, and, moreover, had
been on the point of losing his post, when the Prince, in his anger,
dismissed all the gaolers of the Torre Farnese, and sent them as
prisoners to the town gaol. The General had been saved partly by the
intercession of Conte Mosca, who preferred to see him shut up at the top
of his citadel, rather than as an active and intriguing rival in court
circles.
It was during the fortnight of uncertainty as to the disgrace of General
Fabio Conti, who was really ill, that Clelia had the courage to carry
out this sacrifice which she had announced to Fabrizio. She had had the
sense to be ill on the day of the general rejoicings, which was also
that of the prisoner's flight, as the reader may perhaps remember; she
was ill also on the following day, and, in a word, managed things so
well that, with the exception of Grillo, whose special duty it was to
look after Fabrizio, no one had any suspicion of her complicity, and
Grillo held his tongue.
But as soon as Clelia had no longer any anxiety in that direction, she
was even more cruelly tormented by her just remorse. "What argument in
the world," she asked herself, "can mitigate the crime of a daughter who
betrays her father?"
One evening, after a day spent almost entirely in the chapel, and in
tears, she begged her uncle, Don Cesare, to accompany her to the
General, whose outbursts of rage alarmed her all the more since into
every topic he introduced imprecations against Fabrizio, that abominable
traitor.
Having come into her father's presence, she had the courage to say to
him that if she had always refused to give her hand to the Marchese
Crescenzi, it was because she did not feel any inclination towards him,
and was certain of finding no happiness in such a union. At these words
the General flew into a rage; and Clelia had some difficulty in making
herself heard. She added that if her father, tempted by the Marchese's
great fortune, felt himself bound to give her a definite order to marry
him, she was prepared to obey. The General was quite astonished by this
conclusion, which he had been far from expecting; he ended, however,
by rejoicing at it. "So," he said to his brother, "I shall not be
reduced to a lodging on a second floor, if that scoundrel Fabrizio makes
me lose my post through his vile conduct."
Conte Mosca did not fail to shew himself profoundly scandalised by the
flight of that _scapegrace_ Fabrizio, and repeated when the occasion
served the expression invented by Rassi to describe the base conduct of
the young man--a very vulgar young man, to boot--who had removed himself
from the clemency of the Prince. This witty expression, consecrated by
good society, did not take hold at all of the people. Left to their own
good sense, while fully believing in Fabrizio's guilt they admired the
determination that he must have had to let himself down from so high a
wall. Not a creature at court admired this courage. As for the police,
greatly humiliated by this rebuff, they had officially discovered that a
band of twenty soldiers, corrupted by the money distributed by the
Duchessa, that woman of such atrocious ingratitude whose name was no
longer uttered save with a sigh, had given Fabrizio four ladders tied
together, each forty-five feet long; Fabrizio, having let down a cord
which they had tied to these ladders, had had only the quite commonplace
distinction of pulling the ladders up to where he was. Certain Liberals,
well known for their imprudence, and among them Doctor C----, an agent
paid directly by the Prince, added, but compromised themselves by adding
that these atrocious police had had the barbarity to shoot eight of the
unfortunate soldiers who had facilitated the flight of that wretch
Fabrizio. Thereupon he was blamed even by the true Liberals, as having
caused by his imprudence the death of eight poor soldiers. It is thus
that petty despotisms reduce to nothing the value of public opinion.