Since for such a mere trifle as a clumsy sword-thrust given to an actor, a man of Fabrizio's birth was not set at liberty at the end of nine months' imprisonment, and when he had the protection of the Prime Minister, it must be because politics entered into the case.
And in that event, it was useless to think any more about him, people said; if it was not convenient to authority to put him to death in a public place, he would soon die of sickness.
A locksmith who had been summoned to General Fabio Conti's palazzo spoke of Fabrizio as of a prisoner long since dispatched, whose death was being kept secret from motives of policy.
This man's words decided Clelia.
Chapter 9
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.
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 be 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.