Very well, here is a real crime: I gave all my diamonds to a sort of lunatic, a most interesting man, named Ferrante Palla, I even kissed him so that he should destroy the man who wished to have Fabrizio poisoned.
Where is the harm in that?"
"Ah! So that is where Ferrante had found money for his rising!" said the Conte, slightly taken aback; "and you tell me all this in the guard-room!"
"It is because I am in a hurry, and now Rassi is on the track of the crime.
It is quite true that I never mentioned an insurrection, for I abhor Jacobins.
Think it over, and let me have your advice after the play."
"I will tell you at once that you must make the Prince fall in love with you. But perfectly honourably, please."
The Duchessa was called to return to the stage. She fled.
Some days later the Duchessa received by post a long and ridiculous letter, signed with the name of a former maid of her own; the woman asked to be employed at the court, but the Duchessa had seen from the first glance that the letter was neither in her handwriting nor in her style.
On opening the sheet to read the second page, she saw fall at her feet a little miraculous image of the Madonna, folded in a printed leaf from an old book.
After glancing at the image, the Duchessa read a few lines of the printed page. Her eyes shone, she found on it these words:
"The Tribune has taken one hundred francs monthly, not more; with the rest it was decided to rekindle the sacred fire in souls which had become frozen by selfishness.
The fox is upon my track, that is why I have not sought to see for the last time the adored being.
I said to myself, she does not love the Republic, she who is superior to me in mind as well as by her graces and her beauty.
Besides, how is one to create a Republic without Republicans?
Can I be mistaken?
In six months I shall visit, microscope in hand, and on foot, the small towns of America, I shall see whether I ought still to love the sole rival that you have in my heart.
If you receive this letter, Signora Baronessa, and no profane eye has read it before yours, tell them to break one of the young ash trees planted twenty paces from the spot where I dared to speak to you for the first time.
I shall then have buried, under the great box tree in the garden to which you called attention once in my happy days, a box in which will be found some of those things which lead to the slandering of people of my way of thinking.
You may be sure that I should have taken care not to write if the fox were not on my track, and there were not a risk of his reaching that heavenly being; examine the box tree in a fortnight's time."
"Since he has a printing press at his command," the Duchessa said to herself, "we shall soon have a volume of sonnets; heaven knows what name he will give me!"
The Duchessa's coquetry led her to make a venture; for a week she was indisposed, and the court had no more pleasant evenings.
The Princess, greatly shocked by all that her fear of her son was obliging her to do in the first moments of her widowhood, went to spend this week in a convent attached to the church in which the late Prince was buried.
This interruption of the evening parties threw upon the Prince an enormous burden of leisure and brought a noteworthy check to the credit of the Minister of Justice.
Ernesto V realised all the boredom that threatened him if the Duchessa left his court, or merely ceased to diffuse joy in it.
The evenings began again, and the Prince shewed himself more and more interested in the commedia dell'arte.
He had the intention of taking a part, but dared not confess this ambition.
One day, blushing deeply, he said to the Duchessa:
"Why should not I act, also?"
"We are all at Your Highness's orders here; if he deigns to give me the order, I will arrange the plot of a comedy, all the chief scenes in Your Highness's part will be with me, and as, on the first evenings, everyone falters a little, if Your Highness will please to watch me closely, I will tell him the answers that he ought to make."
Everything was arranged, and with infinite skill.
The very shy Prince was ashamed of being shy, the pains that the Duchessa took not to let this innate shyness suffer made a deep impression on the young Sovereign.
On the day of his first appearance, the performance began half an hour earlier than usual, and there were in the drawing-room, when the party moved into the theatre, only nine or ten elderly women.
This audience had but little effect on the Prince, and besides, having been brought up at Munich on sound monarchical principles, they always applauded.
Using her authority as Grand Mistress, the Duchessa turned the key in the door by which the common herd of courtiers were admitted to the performance.
The Prince, who had a literary mind and a fine figure, came very well out of his opening scenes; he repeated with intelligence the lines which he read in the Duchessa's eyes, or with which she prompted him in an undertone.
At a moment when the few spectators were applauding with all their might, the Duchessa gave a signal, the door of honour was thrown open, and the theatre filled in a moment with all the pretty women of the court, who, finding that the Prince cut a charming figure and seemed thoroughly happy, began to applaud; the Prince flushed with joy.
He was playing the part of a lover to the Duchessa.
So far from having to suggest his speeches to him, she was soon obliged to request him to curtail those speeches; he spoke of love with an enthusiasm which often embarrassed the actress; his replies lasted five minutes.
The Duchessa was no longer the dazzling beauty of the year before: Fabrizio's imprisonment, and, far more than that, her stay by Lake Maggiore with a Fabrizio grown morose and silent, had added ten years to the fair Gina's age.
Her features had become marked, they shewed more intelligence and less youth.
They had now only very rarely the playfulness of early youth; but on the stage, with the aid of rouge and all the expedients which art supplies to actresses, she was still the prettiest woman at court.
The passionate addresses uttered by the Prince put the courtiers on the alert; they were all saying to themselves this evening:
"There is the Balbi of this new reign."
The Conte felt himself inwardly revolted.
The play ended, the Duchessa said to the Prince before all the court:
"Your Highness acts too well; people will say that you are in love with a woman of eight-and-thirty, which will put a stop to my arrangement with the Conte.
And so I will not act any more with Your Highness, unless the Prince swears to me to address me as he would a woman of a certain age, the Signora Marchesa Raversi, for example."
The same play was three times repeated; the Prince was madly happy; but one evening he appeared very thoughtful.
"Either I am greatly mistaken," said the Grand Mistress to the Princess, "or Rassi is seeking to play some trick upon us; I should advise Your Highness to choose a play for to-morrow; the Prince will act badly, and in his despair will tell you something."