The Jew, the owner of the house, had procured a discreet surgeon, who,
realising in his turn that there was money in the case, informed
Lodovico that his _conscience_ obliged him to make his report to the
police on the injuries of the young man whom he, Lodovico, called his
brother.
"The law is clear on the subject," he added; "it is evident that your
brother cannot possibly have injured himself, as he says, by falling
from a ladder while he was holding an open knife in his hand."
Lodovico replied coldly to this honest surgeon that, if he should decide
to yield to the inspirations of his conscience, he, Lodovico, would have
the honour, before leaving Ferrara, of falling upon him in precisely the
same way, with an open knife in his hand. When he reported this incident
to Fabrizio, the latter blamed him strongly, but there was not a moment
to be lost; they must fly. Lodovico told the Jew that he wished to try
the effect of a little fresh air on his brother; he went to fetch a
carriage, and our friends left the house never to return. The reader is
no doubt finding these accounts of all the manœuvres that the absence
of a passport renders necessary extremely wearisome; this sort of
anxiety does not exist in France; but in Italy, and especially in the
neighbourhood of the Po, people talk about passports all day long. Once
they had left Ferrara without hindrance, as though they were taking a
drive, Lodovico sent the carriage back, then re-entered the town by
another gate and returned to pick up Fabrizio with a _sediola_ which he
had hired to take them a dozen leagues. Coming near Bologna, our friends
had themselves taken through the fields to the road which leads from
Florence to Bologna; they spent the night in the most wretched inn they
could find, and on the following day, Fabrizio feeling strong enough to
walk a little, they entered Bologna like ordinary pedestrians. They had
burned Giletti's passport; the comedian's death must by now be common
knowledge, and there was less danger in being arrested as people without
passports than as bearing the passport of a man who had been killed.
Lodovico knew at Bologna two or three servants in great houses; it was
decided that he should go to them and find out how the land lay. He
explained to them that, while he was on his way from Florence,
travelling with his younger brother, the latter, wanting to sleep, had
let him come on by himself an hour before sunrise. He was to have joined
him in the village where he, Lodovico, would stop to escape the midday
heat. But Lodovico, seeing no sign of his brother, had decided to
retrace his steps; he had found his brother injured by a blow from a
stone and with several knife-wounds, and, in addition, robbed by some
men who had picked a quarrel with him. This brother was a good-looking
boy, knew how to groom and drive horses, read and write, and was anxious
to find a place with some good family. Lodovico reserved for use on a
future occasion the detail that, when Fabrizio was on the ground, the
robbers had fled, taking with them the little bag in which the brothers
had put their linen and their passports.
On arriving in Bologna, Fabrizio, feeling extremely tired and not
venturing, without a passport, to shew his face at an inn, had gone into
the huge church of San Petronio. He found there a delicious coolness;
presently he felt quite revived. "Ungrateful wretch that I am," he said
to himself suddenly, "I go into a church, simply to sit down, as it
might be in a _caffè_!" He threw himself on his knees and thanked God
effusively for the evident protection with which he had been surrounded
ever since he had had the misfortune to kill Giletti. The danger which
still made him shudder had been that of his being recognised in the
police office at Casalmaggiore. "How," he asked himself, "did that
clerk, whose eyes were so full of suspicion, who read my passport
through at least three times, fail to notice that I am not five feet ten
inches tall, that I am not thirty-eight years old, and that I am not
strongly pitted by small-pox? What thanks I owe to Thee, O my God! And I
have actually refrained until this moment from casting the nonentity
that I am at Thy feet. My pride has chosen to believe that it was to a
vain human prudence that I owed the good fortune of escaping the
Spielberg, which was already opening to engulf me."
_SAN PETRONIO_
Fabrizio spent more than an hour in this state of extreme emotion, in
the presence of the immense bounty of God. Lodovico approached, without
his hearing him, and took his stand opposite him. Fabrizio, who had
buried his face in his hands, raised his head, and his faithful servant
could see the tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Come back in an hour," Fabrizio ordered him, somewhat harshly.
Lodovico forgave this tone in view of the speaker's piety. Fabrizio
repeated several times the Seven Penitential Psalms, which he knew by
heart; he stopped for a long time at the verses which had a bearing on
his situation at the moment.
Fabrizio asked pardon of God for many things, but what is really
remarkable is that it never entered his head to number among his faults
the plan of becoming Archbishop simply because Conte Mosca was Prime
Minister and felt that office and all the importance it implied to be
suitable for the Duchessa's nephew. He had desired it without passion,
it is true, but still he had thought of it, exactly as one might think
of being made a Minister or a General. It had never entered his thoughts
that his conscience might be concerned in this project of the Duchessa.
This is a remarkable characteristic of the religion which he owed to the
instruction given him by the Jesuits of Milan. That religion _deprives
one of the courage to think of unfamiliar things_, and especially
forbids _personal examination_, as the most enormous of sins; it is a
step towards Protestantism. To find out of what sins one is guilty, one
must question one's priest, or read the list of sins, as it is to be
found printed in the books entitled, _Preparation for the Sacrament of
Penance_. Fabrizio knew by heart the list of sins, rendered into the
Latin tongue, which he had learned at the Ecclesiastical Academy of
Naples. So, when going through that list, on coming to the article,
_Murder_, he had most forcibly accused himself before God of having
killed a man, but in defence of his own life. He had passed rapidly, and
without paying them the slightest attention, over the various articles
relating to the sin of _Simony_ (the procuring of ecclesiastical
dignities with money). If anyone had suggested to him that he should pay
a hundred louis to become First Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Parma,
he would have rejected such an idea with horror; but, albeit he was not
wanting in intelligence, nor above all in logic, it never once occurred
to his mind that the employment on his behalf of Conte Mosca's influence
was a form of Simony. This is where the Jesuitical education triumphs:
it forms the habit of not paying attention to things that are clearer
than daylight. A Frenchman, brought up among conflicting personal
interests and in the prevailing irony of Paris might, without being
deliberately unfair, have accused Fabrizio of hypocrisy at the very
moment when our hero was opening his soul to God with the utmost
sincerity and the most profound emotion.
Fabrizio did not leave the church until he had prepared the confession
which he proposed to make next day. He found Lodovico sitting on the
steps of the vast stone peristyle which rises above the great piazza
opposite the front of San Petronio. As after a storm the air becomes
more pure, so now Fabrizio's soul was tranquil and happy and so to speak
refreshed.
"I feel quite well now, I hardly notice my wounds," he said to Lodovico
as he approached him; "but first of all I have to apologise to you; I
answered you crossly when you came and spoke to me in the church; I was
examining my conscience. Well, how are things going?"
"Excellently: I have taken lodgings, to tell the truth not at all worthy
of Your Excellency, with the wife of one of my friends, who is a very
pretty woman and, better still, on the best of terms with one of the
heads of the police. To-morrow I shall go to declare how our passports
came to be stolen; my declaration will be taken in good part; but I
shall pay the carriage of the letter which the police will write to
Casalmaggiore, to find out whether there exists in that _comune_ a
certain San Micheli, Lodovico, who has a brother, named Fabrizio, in
service with the Signora Duchessa Sanseverina at Parma. All is settled,
_siamo a cavallo_." (An Italian proverb meaning: "We are saved.")
Fabrizio had suddenly assumed a most serious air: he begged Lodovico to
wait a moment, almost ran back into the church, and when barely past the
door flung himself down on his knees; he humbly kissed the stone slabs
of the floor. "It is a miracle, Lord," he cried with tears in his eyes:
"when Thou sawest my soul disposed to return to the path of duty, Thou
hast saved me. Great God! It is possible that one day I may be killed in
some quarrel; in the hour of my death remember the state in which my
soul is now." It was with transports of the keenest joy that Fabrizio
recited afresh the Seven Penitential Psalms. Before leaving the building
he went up to an old woman who was seated before a great Madonna and by
the side of an iron triangle rising vertically from a stand of the same
metal. The sides of this triangle bristled with a large number of spikes
intended to support the little candles which the piety of the faithful
keeps burning before the famous Madonna of Cimabue. Seven candles only
were lighted when Fabrizio approached the stand; he registered this fact
in his memory, with the intention of meditating upon it later on when he
had more leisure.
"What do the candles cost?" he asked the woman.
"Two bajocchi each."
As a matter of fact they were scarcely thicker than quills and were not
a foot in length.
"How many candles can still go on your triangle?"
"Sixty-three, since there are seven alight."
"Ah!" thought Fabrizio, "sixty-three and seven make seventy; that also
is to be borne in mind." He paid for the candles, placed the first seven
in position himself, and lighted them, then fell on his knees to make
his oblation, and said to the old woman as he rose:
"It is _for grace received_.
"I am dying of hunger," he said to Lodovico as he joined him outside.
"Don't let us go to an _osteria_, let us go to our lodgings; the woman
of the house will go out and buy you everything you want for your meal;
she will rob you of a score of soldi, and will be all the more attached
to the newcomer in consequence."
"All this means simply that I shall have to go on dying of hunger for a
good hour longer," said Fabrizio, laughing with the serenity of a child:
and he entered an _osteria_ close to San Petronio. To his extreme
surprise, he saw at a table near the one at which he had taken his seat,
Peppe, his aunt's first footman, the same who on a former occasion had
come to meet him at Geneva. Fabrizio made a sign to him to say nothing;
then, having made a hasty meal, a smile of happiness hovering over his
lips, he rose; Peppe followed him, and, for the third time, our hero
entered the church of San Petronio. Out of discretion, Lodovico remained
outside, strolling in the _piazza_.
"Oh, Lord, Monsignore! How are your wounds? The Signora Duchessa is
terribly upset: for a whole day she thought you were dead, and had been
left lying on some island in the Po; I must go and send off a messenger
to her this very instant. I have been looking for you for the last six
days; I spent three at Ferrara, searching all the inns."
"Have you a passport for me?"
"I have three different ones: one with Your Excellency's names and
titles, a second with your name only, and the other in a false name,
Giuseppe Bossi; each passport is made out in duplicate, according to
whether Your Excellency prefers to have come from Florence or from
Modena. You have only to go for a turn outside the town. The Signor
Conte would be glad if you would lodge at the Albergo del Pellegrino;
the landlord is a friend of his."
Fabrizio, with the air of a casual visitor, advanced along the right
aisle of the church to the place where his candles were burning; he
fastened his eyes on Cimabue's Madonna, then said to Peppe as he fell on
his knees: "I must just give thanks for a moment." Peppe followed his
example. When they left the church, Peppe noticed that Fabrizio gave a
twenty-franc piece to the first pauper who asked him for alms: this
mendicant uttered cries of gratitude which drew into the wake of the
charitable stranger the swarms of paupers of every kind who generally
adorn the Piazza San Petronio. All of them were anxious to have a share
in the napoleon. The women, despairing of making their way through the
crowd that surrounded him, flung themselves on Fabrizio, shouting to him
to know whether it was not the fact that he had intended to give his
napoleon to be divided among all the _poveri del buon Dio_. Peppe,
brandishing his gold-headed cane, ordered them to leave His Excellency
alone.
"Oh! Excellency!" all the women proceeded to cry in still more piercing
accents, "give another gold napoleon for the poor women!" Fabrizio
increased his pace, the women followed him, screaming, and a number of
male paupers, running in from every street, created a sort of tumult.
All this crowd, horribly dirty and energetic, cried out: "_Eccellenza_!"
Fabrizio had great difficulty in escaping from the rabble; the scene
brought his imagination back to earth. "I have got only what I deserve,"
he said to himself; "I have rubbed shoulders with the mob."
Two women followed him as far as the Porta Saragozza, by which he left
the town: Peppe stopped them by threatening them seriously with his cane
and flinging them some small change; Fabrizio climbed the charming hill
of San Michele in Bosco, made a partial circuit of the town outside the
walls, took a path which brought him in five hundred yards to the
Florence road, then re-entered Bologna and gravely handed to the police
official a passport in which his description was given in the fullest
detail. This passport gave him the name of Giuseppe Bossi, student of
theology. Fabrizio noticed a little spot of red ink dropped, as though
by accident, at the foot of the sheet, near the right hand corner. A
couple of hours later he had a spy on his heels, on account of the title
of _Eccellenza_ which his companion had given him in front of the
beggars of San Petronio, although his passport bore none of the titles
which give a man the right to make his servants address him as
Excellency.
_THE INQUIRY_
Fabrizio saw the spy and made light of him; he gave no more thought
either to passports or to police, and amused himself with everything,
like a boy. Peppe, who had orders to stay beside him, seeing that he was
more than satisfied with Lodovico, preferred to go back in person to
convey these good tidings to the Duchessa. Fabrizio wrote two very long
letters to his dear friends; then it occurred to him to write a third to
the venerable Archbishop Landriani. This letter produced a marvellous
effect; it contained a very exact account of the affair with Giletti.
The good Archbishop, deeply moved, did not fail to go and read this
letter to the Prince, who was quite ready to listen to it, being
somewhat curious to know what line this young Monsignore took to excuse
so shocking a murder. Thanks to the many friends of the Marchesa
Raversi, the Prince, as well as the whole city of Parma, believed that
Fabrizio had procured the assistance of twenty or thirty peasants to
overpower a bad actor who had had the insolence to challenge him for the
favours of little Marietta. In despotic courts, the first skilful
intriguer controls the _Truth_, as the fashion controls it in Paris.
"But, what in the devil's name!" exclaimed the Prince to the Archbishop;
"one gets things of that sort done for one by somebody else; but to do
them oneself is not the custom; besides, one doesn't kill a comedian
like Giletti, one buys him."
Fabrizio had not the slightest suspicion of what was going on at Parma.
As a matter of fact, the question there was whether the death of this
comedian, who in his lifetime had earned a monthly salary of thirty-two
francs, was not going to bring about the fall of the Ultra Ministry, and
of its leader, Conte Mosca.
On learning of the death of Giletti, the Prince, stung by the
independent airs which the Duchessa was giving herself, had ordered the
Fiscal General Rassi to treat the whole case as though the person
charged were a Liberal. Fabrizio, for his part, thought that a man of
his rank was superior to the laws; he did not take into account that in
countries where bearers of great names are never punished, intrigue can
do anything, even against them. He often spoke to Lodovico of his
perfect innocence, which would very soon be proclaimed; his great
argument being that he was not guilty. Whereupon Lodovico said to him:
"I cannot conceive how Your Excellency, who has so much intelligence and
education, can take the trouble to say all that before me who am his
devoted servant; Your Excellency adopts too many precautions; that sort
of thing is all right to say in public, or before a court." "This man
believes me to be a murderer, and loves me none the less for it,"
thought Fabrizio, falling from the clouds.
Three days after Peppe's departure, he was greatly astonished to receive
an enormous letter, sealed with a plait of silk, as in the days of Louis
XIV, and addressed _a Sua Eccellenza reverendissima monsignor Fabrizio
del Dongo, primo gran vicario della diocesi di Parma, canonico_, etc.
"Why, am I still all that?" he asked himself with a laugh. Archbishop
Landriani's letter was a masterpiece of logic and lucidity; it filled
nevertheless nineteen large pages, and gave an extremely good account of
all that had occurred in Parma on the occasion of the death of Giletti.
"A French army commanded by Marshal Ney, and marching upon the town,
would not have had a greater effect," the good Archbishop informed him;
"with the exception of the Duchessa and myself, my dearly beloved son,
everyone believes that you gave yourself the pleasure of killing the
histrion Giletti. Had this misfortune befallen you, it is one of those
things which one hushes up with two hundred louis and six months'
absence abroad; but the Marchesa Raversi is seeking to overthrow Conte
Mosca with the help of this incident. It is not at all with the dreadful
sin of murder that the public blames you, it is solely with the
_clumsiness_, or rather the insolence of not having condescended to have
recourse to a _bulo_" (a sort of hired assassin). "I give you a summary
here in clear terms of the things that I hear said all around me, for
since this ever deplorable misfortune, I go every day to three of the
principal houses in the town to have an opportunity of justifying you.
And never have I felt that I was making a more blessed use of the scanty
eloquence with which heaven has deigned to endow me."
_THE ARCHBISHOP_
The scales fell from Fabrizio's eyes; the Duchessa's many letters,
filled with transports of affection, never condescended to tell him
anything. The Duchessa swore to him that she would leave Parma for ever,
unless presently he returned there in triumph. "The Conte will do for
you," she wrote to him in the letter that accompanied the Archbishop's,
"everything that is humanly possible. As for myself, you have changed my
character with this fine escapade of yours; I am now as great a miser as
the banker Tombone; I have dismissed all my workmen, I have done more, I
have dictated to the Conte the inventory of my fortune, which turns out
to be far less considerable than I supposed. After the death of the
excellent Conte Pietranera, whom, by the way, you would have done far
better to avenge, instead of exposing your life to a creature of
Giletti's sort, I was left with an income of twelve hundred francs and
five thousand francs of debts; I remember, among other things, that I
had two and a half dozen white satin slippers coming from Paris and not
a single pair of shoes to wear in the street. I have almost made up my
mind to take the three hundred thousand francs which the Duca has left
me, the whole of which I intended to use in erecting a magnificent tomb
to him. Besides, it is the Marchesa Raversi who is your principal enemy,
that is to say mine; if you find life dull by yourself at Bologna, you
have only to say the word, I shall come and join you. Here are four more
bills of exchange," and so on.
The Duchessa said not a word to Fabrizio of the opinion that was held in
Parma of his affair, she wished above all things to comfort him, and in
any event the death of a ridiculous creature like Giletti did not seem
to her the sort of thing that could be seriously charged against a del
Dongo. "How many Gilettis have not our ancestors sent into the other
world," she said to the Conte, "without anyone's ever taking it into his
head to reproach them with it?"
Fabrizio, taken completely by surprise, and getting for the first time a
glimpse of the true state of things, set himself down to study the
Archbishop's letter. Unfortunately the Archbishop himself believed him
to be better informed than he actually was. Fabrizio gathered that the
principal cause of the Marchesa Raversi's triumph lay in the fact that
it was impossible to find any eye-witnesses of the fatal combat. The
footman who had been the first to bring the news to Parma had been at
the village inn at Sanguigna when the fight occurred; little Marietta
and the old woman who acted as her mother had vanished, and the Marchesa
had bought the _vetturino_ who drove the carriage, and who had now made
an abominable deposition. "Although the proceedings are enveloped in the
most profound mystery," wrote the Archbishop in his Ciceronian style,
"and directed by the Fiscal General, Rassi, of whom Christian charity
alone can restrain me from speaking evil, but who has made his fortune
by harrying his wretched prisoners as the greyhound harries the hare;
although this Rassi, I say, whose turpitude and venality your
imagination would be powerless to exaggerate, has been appointed to take
charge of the case by an angry Prince, I have been able to read the
three depositions of the _vetturino_. By a signal piece of good fortune,
the wretch contradicts himself. And I shall add, since I am addressing
my Grand Vicar, him who, after myself, is to have the charge of this
Diocese, that I have sent for the curate of the parish in which this
straying sinner resides. I shall tell you, my dearly beloved son, but
under the seal of the confessional, that this curate already knows,
through the wife of the _vetturino_, the number of scudi that he has
received from the Marchesa Raversi; I shall not venture to say that the
Marchesa insisted upon his slandering you, but that is probable. The
scudi were transmitted to him through a wretched priest who performs
functions of a base order in the Marchesa's household, and whom I have
been obliged to banish from the altar for the second time. I shall not
weary you with an account of various other actions which you might
expect from me, and which, moreover, enter into my duty. A Canon, your
colleague at the Cathedral, who is a little too prone at times to
remember the influence conferred upon him by the wealth of his family,
to which, by divine permission, he is now the sole heir, having allowed
himself to say in the house of Conte Zurla, the Minister of the
Interior, that he regarded this _bagattella_ (he referred to the killing
of the unfortunate Giletti) as proved against you, I summoned him to
appear before me, and there, in the presence of my three other Vicars
General, of my Chaplain and of two curates who happened to be in the
waiting-room, I requested him to communicate to us his brethren the
elements of the complete conviction which he professed to have acquired
against one of his colleagues at the Cathedral; the unhappy man was able
to articulate only the most inconclusive arguments; every voice was
raised against him, and, although I did not think it my duty to add more
than a very few words, he burst into tears and made us the witnesses of
his full confession of his complete error, upon which I promised him
secrecy in my name and in the names of the persons who had been present
at the discussion, always on the condition that he would devote all his
zeal to correcting the false impressions that might have been created by
the language employed by him during the previous fortnight.
"I shall not repeat to you, my dear son, what you must long have known,
namely that of the thirty-four _contadini_ employed on the excavations
undertaken by Conte Mosca, whom the Raversi pretends to have been paid
by you to assist you in a crime, thirty-two were at the bottom of their
trench, wholly taken up with their work, when you armed yourself with
the hunting knife and employed it to defend your life against the man
who had attacked you thus unawares. Two of their number, who were
outside the trench, shouted to the others: 'They are murdering
Monsignore!' This cry alone reveals your innocence in all its whiteness.
Very well, the Fiscal General Rassi maintains that these two men have
disappeared; furthermore, they have found eight of the men who were at
the bottom of the trench; at their first examination, six declared that
they had heard the cry: 'They are murdering Monsignore!' I know, through
indirect channels, that at their fifth examination, which was held
yesterday evening, five declared that they could not remember distinctly
whether they had heard the cry themselves or whether it had been
reported to them by their comrades. Orders have been given that I am to
be informed of the place of residence of these excavators, and their
parish priests will make them understand that they are damning
themselves if, in order to gain a few soldi, they allow themselves to
alter the truth."
The good Archbishop went into endless details, as may be judged by those
we have extracted from his letter. Then he added, using the Latin
tongue:
"This affair is nothing less than an attempt to bring about a change of
government. If you are sentenced, it can be only to the galleys or to
death, in which case I should intervene by declaring from my
Archepiscopal Throne that I know you to be innocent, that you simply
and solely defended your life against a brigand, and that finally I have
forbidden you to return to Parma for so long as your enemies shall be
triumphant there; I propose even to stigmatise, as he deserves, the
Fiscal General; the hatred felt for that man is as common as esteem for
his character is rare. But finally, on the eve of the day on which this
Fiscal is to pronounce so unjust a sentence, the Duchessa Sanseverina
will leave the town, and perhaps even the States of Parma: in that
event, no doubt is felt that the Conte will hand in his resignation.
Then, very probably, General Fabio Conti will come into office and the
Marchesa Raversi will be triumphant. The great mistake in your case is
that no skilled person has been appointed to take charge of the
procedure necessary to bring your innocence into the light of day, and
to foil the attempts that have been made to suborn witnesses. The Conte
believes that he is playing this part; but he is too great a gentleman
to stoop to certain details; besides, in his capacity as Minister of
Police, he was obliged to issue, at the first moment, the most severe
orders against you. Lastly, dare I say it, our Sovereign Lord believes
you to be guilty, or at least feigns that belief, and has introduced a
certain bitterness into the affair." (The words corresponding to "our
Sovereign Lord" and "feigns that belief" were in Greek, and Fabrizio
felt infinitely obliged to the Archbishop for having had the courage to
write them. With a pen-knife he cut this line out of the letter, and
destroyed it on the spot.)
Fabrizio broke off a score of times while reading this letter; he was
carried away by transports of the liveliest gratitude: he replied at
once in a letter of eight pages. Often he was obliged to raise his head
so that his tears should not fall on the paper. Next day, as he was
sealing this letter, he felt that it was too worldly in tone. "I shall
write it in Latin," he said to himself, "that will make it appear more
seemly to the worthy Archbishop." But, while he was seeking to construct
fine Latin phrases of great length, in the true Ciceronian style, he
remembered that one day the Archbishop, in speaking to him of Napoleon,
had made a point of calling him Buonaparte; at that instant there
vanished all the emotion that, on the previous day, had moved him to
tears. "O King of Italy!" he exclaimed, "that loyalty which so many
others swore to thee in thy lifetime, I shall preserve for thee after
thy death. He is fond of me, no doubt, but because I am a del Dongo and
he a son of the people." So that his fine letter in Italian might not be
wasted, Fabrizio made a few necessary alterations in it, and addressed
it to Conte Mosca.
That same day, Fabrizio met in the street little Marietta; she flushed
with joy and made a sign to him to follow her without speaking. She made
swiftly for a deserted archway; there, she pulled forward the black lace
shawl which, following the local custom, covered her head, so that she
could not be recognised; then turning round quickly:
"How is it," she said to Fabrizio, "that you are walking freely in the
street like this?" Fabrizio told her his story.
_MARIETTA_
"Good God! You were at Ferrara! And there was I looking for everywhere
in the place! You must know that I quarrelled with the old woman,
because she wanted to take me to Venice, where I knew quite well that
you would never go, because you are on the Austrian black list. I sold
my gold necklace to come to Bologna, I had a presentiment that I should
have the happiness of meeting you here; the old woman arrived two days
after me. And so I shan't ask you to come and see us, she would go on
making those dreadful demands for money which make me so ashamed. We
have lived very comfortably since the fatal day you remember, and
haven't spent a quarter of what you gave us. I would rather not come and
see you at the Albergo del Pellegrino, it would be a _pubblicità_. Try
to find a little room in a quiet street, and at the Ave Maria"
(nightfall) "I shall be here, under this same archway." So saying, she
took to her heels.