She did not find him: he had managed to escape.
She saw on the table a purse full of sequins and a box containing different kinds of poison.
The sight of these poisons made her shudder.
"How can I be sure," she thought, "that they have given nothing but laudanum to my father, and that the Duchessa has not sought to avenge herself for Barbone's attempt?
"Great God!" she cried, "here am I in league with my father's poisoners. And I allow them to escape!
And perhaps that man, when put to the question, would have confessed something else than laudanum!"
Clelia at once fell on her knees, burst into tears, and prayed to the Madonna with fervour.
Meanwhile the doctor of the citadel, greatly surprised by the information he had received from Don Cesare, according to which he had to deal only with laudanum, applied the appropriate remedies, which presently made the more alarming symptoms disappear.
The General came to himself a little as day began to dawn.
His first action that shewed any sign of consciousness was to hurl insults at the Colonel who was second in command of the citadel, and had taken upon himself to give certain orders, the simplest in the world, while the General was unconscious.
The governor next flew into a towering rage with a kitchen-maid who, when bringing him his soup, had been so rash as to utter the word apoplexy.
"Am I of an age," he cried, "to have apoplexies?
It is only my deadly enemies who can find pleasure in spreading such reports.
And besides, have I been bled, that slander itself dare speak of apoplexy?"
Fabrizio, wholly occupied with the preparations for his escape, could not understand the strange sounds that filled the citadel at the moment when the governor was brought in half dead.
At first he had some idea that his sentence had been altered, and that they were coming to put him to death.
Then, seeing that no one came to his cell, he thought that Clelia had been betrayed, that on her return to the fortress they had taken from her the cords which probably she was bringing back, and so, that his plans of escape were for the future impossible.
Next day, at dawn, he saw come into his room a man unknown to him, who, without saying a word, laid down a basket of fruit: beneath the fruit was hidden the following letter:
"Penetrated by the keenest remorse for what has been done, not, thank heaven, by my consent, but as the outcome of an idea which I had, I have made a vow to the Blessed Virgin that if, by the effect of Her holy intercession my father is saved, I will never refuse to obey any of his orders; I will marry the Marchese as soon as he requires me to do so, and I will never see you again.
However, I consider it my duty to finish what has been begun.
Next Sunday, when you return from mass, to which you will be taken at my request (remember to prepare your soul, you may kill yourself in the difficult enterprise) ; when you return from mass, I say, put off as long as possible going back to your room; you will find there what is necessary for the enterprise that you have in mind.
If you perish, my heart will be broken!
Will you be able to accuse me of having contributed to your death?
Has not the Duchessa herself repeated to me upon several occasions that the Raversi faction is winning? They seek to bind the Prince by an act of cruelty that must separate him for ever from Conte Mosca.
The Duchessa, with floods of tears, has sworn to me that there remains only this resource: you will perish unless you make an attempt.
I cannot look at you again, I have made my vow; but if on Sunday, towards evening, you see me dressed entirely in black, at the usual window, it will be the signal that everything will be ready that night so far as my feeble means allow.
After eleven, perhaps at midnight or at one o'clock, a little lamp will appear in my window, that will be the decisive moment; commend yourself to your Holy Patron, dress yourself in haste in the priestly habit with which you are provided, and be off.
"Farewell, Fabrizio, I shall be at my prayers, and shedding the most bitter tears, as you may well believe, while you are running such great risks.
If you perish, I shall not outlive you a day; Great God!
What am I saying?
But if you succeed, I shall never see you again.
On Sunday, after mass, you will find in your prison the money, the poison, the cords, sent by that terrible woman who loves you with passion, and who has three times over assured me that this course must be adopted. May God preserve you, and the Blessed Madonna!"
Fabio Conti was a gaoler who was always uneasy, always unhappy, always seeing in his dreams one of his prisoners escaping: he was loathed by everyone in the citadel; but misfortune inspiring the same resolutions in all men, the poor prisoners, even those who were chained in dungeons three feet high, three feet wide and eight feet long, in which they could neither stand nor sit, all the prisoners, even these, I say, had the idea of ordering a Te Deum to be sung at their own expense, when they knew that their governor was out of danger.
Two or three of these wretches composed sonnets in honour of Fabio Conti.
Oh, the effect of misery upon men!
May he who would blame them be led by his destiny to spend a year in a cell three feet high, with eight ounces of bread a day and fasting on Fridays!
Clelia, who left her father's room only to pray in the chapel, said that the governor had decided that the rejoicings should be confined to Sunday.
On the morning of this Sunday, Fabrizio was present at mass and at the Te Deum; in the evening there were fireworks, and in the lower rooms of the palazzo the soldiers received a quantity of wine four times that which the governor had allowed; an unknown hand had even sent several barrels of brandy which the soldiers broached.
The generous spirit of the soldiers who were becoming intoxicated would not allow the five of their number who were on duty as sentries outside the palazzo to suffer accordingly; as soon as they arrived at their sentry-boxes, a trusted servant gave them wine, and it was not known from what hand those who came on duty at midnight and for the rest of the night received also a glass each of brandy, while the bottle was in each case forgotten and left by the sentry-box (as was proved in the subsequent investigations).
The disorder lasted longer than Clelia had expected, and it was not until nearly one o'clock that Fabrizio, who, more than a week earlier, had sawn through two bars of his window, the window that did not look out on the aviary, began to take down the screen; he was working almost over the heads of the sentries who were guarding the governor's palazzo, they heard nothing.
He had made some fresh knots only in the immense cord necessary for descending from that terrible height of one hundred and eighty feet.
He arranged this cord as a bandolier about his body: it greatly embarrassed him, its bulk was enormous; the knots prevented it from being wound close, and it projected more than eighteen inches from his body.
"This is the chief obstacle," said Fabrizio.
This cord once arranged as well as possible, Fabrizio took the other with which he counted on climbing down the thirty-five feet which separated his window from the terrace on which the governor's palazzo stood.
But inasmuch as, however drunken the sentries might be, he could not descend exactly over their heads, he climbed out, as we have said, by the second window of his room, that which looked over the roof of a sort of vast guard-room.
By a sick man's whim, as soon as General Fabio Conti was able to speak, he had ordered up two hundred soldiers into this old guard-room, disused for over a century. He said that after poisoning him, they would seek to murder him in his bed, and these two hundred soldiers were to guard him.
One may judge of the effect which this unforeseen measure had on the heart of Clelia: that pious girl was fully conscious to what an extent she was betraying her father, and a father who had just been almost poisoned in the interests of the prisoner whom she loved.
She almost saw in the unexpected arrival of these two hundred men an act of Providence which forbade her to go any farther and to give Fabrizio his freedom.
But everyone in Parma was talking of the immediate death of the prisoner.
This grim subject had been discussed again at the party given on the occasion of the marriage of Donna Giulia Crescenzi.