She managed even to deceive her coachman, who was devoted to her, and believed her to be visiting a neighbouring house.
One may imagine whether the Conte, after receiving the Fiscal's terrible confidence, at once made the signal arranged between them to the Duchessa.
Although it was the middle of the night, she begged him by Cecchina to come to her for a moment.
The Conte, enraptured, lover-like, by this prospect of intimate converse, yet hesitated before telling the Duchessa everything. He was afraid of seeing her driven mad by grief.
After first seeking veiled words in which to mitigate the fatal announcement, he ended by telling her all; it was not in his power to keep a secret which she asked of him.
In the last nine months her extreme misery had had a great influence on this ardent soul, this had fortified her courage, and she did not give way to sobs or lamentations.
On the following evening she sent Fabrizio the signal of great danger:
"The castle has taken fire."
He made the appropriate reply:
"Are my books burned?"
The same night she was fortunate enough to have a letter conveyed to him in a leaden ball.
It was a week after this that the marriage of the Marchese Crescenzi's sister was celebrated, when the Duchessa was guilty of an enormously rash action of which we shall give an account in its proper place.
Chapter 8
Almost a year before the time of these calamities the Duchessa had made a singular acquaintance: one day when she had the luna, as they say in those parts, she had gone suddenly, towards evening, to her villa of Sacca, situated on the farther side of Colorno, on the hill commanding the Po.
She was amusing herself in improving this property; she loved the vast forest which crowned the hill and reached to the house; she spent her time laying out paths in picturesque directions.
"You will have yourself carried off by brigands, fair Duchessa," the Prince said to her one day; "it is impossible that a forest in which it is known that you take the air should remain deserted."
The Prince threw a glance at the Conte, whose jealousy he hoped to quicken.
"I have no fear, Serene Highness," replied the Duchessa with an innocent air, "when I go walking in my woods; I reassure myself with this thought: I have done no harm to anyone, who is there that could hate me?"
This speech was considered daring, it recalled the insults offered by the Liberals of the country, who were most insolent people.
On the day of the walk in question, the Prince's words came back to the mind of the Duchessa as she observed a very ill-dressed man who was following her at a distance through the woods.
At a sudden turn which she took in the course of her walk, this person came so near her that she felt alarmed.
Her first impulse was to call her game-keeper whom she had left half a mile away, in the flower-garden close to the house.
The stranger had time to overtake her and fling himself at her feet.
He was young, extremely good looking, but horribly badly dressed; his clothes had rents in them a foot long, but his eyes burned with the fire of an ardent soul.
"I am under sentence of death, I am the physician, Ferrante Palla, I am dying of hunger, I and my five children."
The Duchessa had noticed that he was terribly thin; but his eyes were so fine, and filled with so tender an exaltation that they took from him any suggestion of crime.
"Pallagi," she thought, "might well have given eyes like those ,to the Saint John in the Desert he has just placed in the Cathedral."
The idea of Saint John was suggested to her by the incredible thinness of the vagabond.
The Duchessa gave him three sequins which she had in her purse, with an apology for offering him so little, because she had just paid her gardener's account.
Ferrante thanked her effusively.
"Alas!" he said to her, "once I lived in towns, I used to see beautiful women; now that in fulfilment of my duties as a citizen I have had myself sentenced to death, I live in the woods, and I was following you, not to demand alms of you nor to rob you, but like a savage fascinated by an angelic beauty.
It is so long since I last saw a pair of lovely white hands."
"Rise, then," the Duchessa told him; for he had remained on his knees.
"Allow me to remain like this," said Ferrante; "this posture proves to me that I am not for the present engaged in robbery, and that soothes me; for you must know that I steal to live, now that I am prevented from practising my profession.
But at this moment I am only a simple mortal who is adoring sublime beauty."
The Duchessa gathered that he was slightly mad, but she was not at all afraid; she saw in the eyes of the man that he had a good and ardent soul, and besides she had no objection to extraordinary physiognomies.
"I am a physician, then, and I was making love to the wife of the apothecary Sarasine of Parma: he took us by surprise and drove us from the house, with three children whom he supposed, and rightly, to be mine and not his.
I have had two since then.
The mother and five children are living in the direst poverty in a sort of hut which I built with my own hands a league from here, in the wood.
For I have to keep away from the police, and the poor woman refuses to be parted from me.
I was sentenced to death, and quite justly; I was conspiring.
I abominate the Prince, who is a tyrant.
I did not fly the country, for want of money.
My misfortunes have greatly increased, and I ought to have killed myself a thousand times over; I no longer love the unhappy woman who has borne me these five children and has ruined herself for me; I love another.
But if I kill myself, the five children will literally starve to death."
The man spoke with an accent of sincerity.
"But how do you live?" inquired the Duchessa, moved to compassion.
"The children's mother spins; the eldest girl is kept in a farm by some Liberals, where she tends the sheep; I am a highwayman on the road between Piacenza and Genoa."
"How do you harmonise highway robbery with your Liberal principles?"
"I keep a note of the people I rob, and if ever I have anything I shall restore to them the sums I have taken.