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 tomorrow 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."
"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 Ludovico. "The fact of the matter is, she is mad!"
The Duchessa looked at him and read bis 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 then" 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.