How can I describe her rapture in the midst of the gloomy sadness in which Fabrizio's absence had plunged her, when she found on the margins of the old Saint Jerome the sonnet of which we have spoken, and the records, day by day, of the love that he had felt for her. >
From the first day she knew the sonnet by heart; she would sing it, leaning on her window-sill, before the window, "henceforward empty, where she had so often seen a little opening appear in the screen.
This screen had been taken down to be placed in the office of the criminal court, and to serve as evidence in a ridiculous prosecution which Rassi was drawing up against Fabrizio, accused of the crime of having escaped, or, as the Fiscal said, laughing himself as he said it, of having removed himself from the clemency of a magnanimous Prince!
Each stage in Clelia's actions was for her a matter for keen remorse, and now that she was unhappy, her remorse was all the keener.
She sought to mitigate somewhat the reproaches that she addressed to herself by reminding herself of the vow never to see Fabrizio again, which she had made to the Madonna at the time when the General was nearly poisoned, and since then had renewed daily.
Her father had been made ill by Fabrizio's escape, and, moreover, had been on the point of losing his post, when the Prince, in his anger, dismissed all the gaolers of the Torre Farnese, and sent them as prisoners to the town gaol.
The General had been saved partly by the intercession of Conte Mosca, who preferred to see him shut up at the top of his citadel, rather than as an active and intriguing rival in court circles.
It was during the fortnight of uncertainty as to the disgrace of General Fabio Conti, who was really ill, that Clelia had the courage to carry out this sacrifice which she had announced to Fabrizio.
She had had the sense to be ill on the day of the general rejoicings, which was also that of the prisoner's flight, as the reader may perhaps remember; she was ill also on the following day, and, in a word, managed things so well that, with the exception of Grillo, whose special duty it was to look after Fabrizio, no one had any suspicion of her complicity, and Grillo held his tongue.
But as soon as Clelia had no longer any anxiety in that direction, she was even more cruelly tormented by her just remorse.
"What argument in the world," she asked herself, "can mitigate the crime of a daughter who betrays her father?"
One evening, after a day spent almost entirely in the chapel, and in tears, she begged her uncle, Don Cesare, to accompany her to the General, whose outbursts of rage alarmed her all the more since into every topic he introduced imprecations against Fabrizio, that abominable traitor.
Having come into her father's presence, she had the courage to say to him that if she had always refused to give her hand to the Marchese Crescenzi, it was because she did not feel any inclination towards him, and was certain of finding no happiness in such a union.
At these words the General flew into a rage; and Clelia had some difficulty in making herself heard.
She added that if her father, tempted by the Marchese's great fortune, felt himself bound to give her a definite order to marry him, she was prepared to obey.
The General was quite astonished by this conclusion, which he had been far from expecting; he ended, however, by rejoicing at it.
"So," he said to his brother, "I shall not be reduced to a lodging on a second floor, if that scoundrel Fabrizio makes me lose my post through his vile conduct."
Conte Mosca did not fail to shew himself profoundly scandalised by the flight of that scapegrace Fabrizio, and repeated when the occasion served the expression invented by Rassi to describe the base conduct of the young man—a very vulgar young man, to boot—who had removed himself from the clemency of the Prince.
This witty expression, consecrated by good society, did not take hold at all of the people.
Left to their own good sense, while fully believing in Fabrizio's guilt they admired the determination that he must have had to let himself down from so high a wall.
Not a creature at court admired this courage.
As for the police, greatly humiliated by this rebuff, they had officially discovered that a band of twenty soldiers, corrupted by the money distributed by the Duchessa, that woman of such atrocious ingratitude whose name was no longer uttered save with a sigh, had given Fabrizio four ladders tied together, each forty-five feet long; Fabrizio, having let down a cord which they had tied to these ladders, had had only the quite commonplace distinction of pulling the ladders up to where he was.
Certain Liberals, well known for their imprudence, and among them Doctor C——, an agent paid directly by the Prince, added, but compromised themselves by adding that these atrocious police had had the barbarity to shoot eight of the unfortunate soldiers who had facilitated the flight of that wretch Fabrizio.
Thereupon he was blamed even by the true Liberals, as having caused by his imprudence by the death of eight poor soldiers.
It is thus that petty despotisms reduce to nothing the value of public opinion.
Chapter 10
Amid this general uproar, Archbishop Landriani alone shewed himself loyal to the cause of his young friend; he made bold to repeat, even at the Princess's court, the legal maxim according to which, in every case, one ought to keep an ear free from all prejudice to hear the plea of an absent party.
The day after Fabrizio's escape a number of people had received a sonnet of no great merit which celebrated this flight as one of the fine actions of the age, and compared Fabrizio to an angel arriving on the earth with outspread wings.
On the evening of the following day, the whole of Parma was repeating a sublime sonnet.
It was Fabrizio's monologue as he let himself slide down the cord, and passed judgment on the different incidents of his life.
This sonnet gave him a place in literature by two magnificent lines; all the experts recognised the style of Ferrante Palla.
But here I must seek the epic style : where can I find colours in which to paint the torrents of indignation that suddenly flooded every orthodox heart, when they learned of the frightful insolence of this illumination of the house at Sacca?
There was but one outcry against the Duchessa; even the true Liberals decided that such an action compromised in a barbarous fashion the poor suspects detained in the various prisons, and needlessly exasperated the heart of the Sovereign.
Conte Mosca declared that there was but one thing left for the Duchessa's former friends—to forget her.
The concert of execration was therefore unanimous: a stranger passing through the town would have been struck by the energy of public opinion.
But in the country, where they know how to appreciate the pleasure of revenge, the illumination and the admirable feast given in the park to more than six thousand contadini had an immense success.
Everyone in Parma repeated that the Duchessa had distributed a thousand sequins among her contadini; thus they explained the somewhat harsh reception given to a party of thirty constables whom the police had been so foolish as to send to that small village, thirty-six hours after the sublime evening and the general intoxication that had followed it.
The constables, greeted with showers of stones, had turned and fled, and two of their number, who fell from their horses, were flung into the Po.
As for the bursting of the great reservoir of the palazzo Sanseverina, it had passed almost unnoticed: it was during the night that several streets had been more or less flooded, next morning one would have said that it had rained.
Lodovico had taken care to break the panes of a window in the palazzo, so as to account for the entry of robbers.
They had even found a little ladder.
Only Conte Mosca recognised his friend's inventive genius.
Fabrizio was fully determined to return to Parma as soon as he could; he sent Lodo vico with a long letter to the Archbishop, and this faithful servant came back to post at the first village in Piedmont, San Nazzaro, to the west of Pavia, a Latin epistle which the worthy prelate addressed to his young client.
We may add here a detail which, like many others no doubt, will seem otiose in countries where there is no longer any need of precaution.
The name of Fabrizio del Dongo was never written; all the letters that were intended for him were addressed to Lodovico San Micheli, at Locarno in Switzerland, or at Belgirate in Piedmont.
The envelope was made of a coarse paper, the seal carelessly applied, the address barely legible and sometimes adorned with recommendations worthy of a cook; all the letters were dated from Naples six days before their actual date. >
From the Piedmontese village of San Nazzaro, near Pavia, Lodovico returned in hot haste to Parma; he was charged with a mission to which Fabrizio attached the greatest importance; this was nothing less than to convey to Clelia Conti a handkerchief on which was printed a sonnet of Petrarch.
It is true that a word was altered in this sonnet: Clelia found it on the table two days after she had received the thanks of the Marchese Crescenzi, who professed himself the happiest of men; and there is no need to say what impression this token of a still constant remembrance produced on her heart.
Lodovico was to try to procure all possible details as to what was happening at the citadel.
He it was who told Fabrizio the sad news that the Marchese Crescenzi's marriage seemed now to be definitely settled; scarcely a day passed without his giving a festa for Clelia, inside the citadel.