I have already told our friend Fabrizio that I have managed to find all the witnesses of his fine and courageous action; it was evidently that fellow Giletti who tried to murder him.
I have not spoken to you of these witnesses, because I wished to give you a surprise, but the plan has failed; the Prince refused to sign.
I have told our friend Fabrizio that certainly I should procure him a high ecclesiastical dignity; but I shall have great difficulty if his enemies can raise the objection in the Roman Curia of a charge of murder.
"Do you realise, Signora, that, if he is not tried and judged in the most solemn fashion, all his life long the name of Giletti will be a reproach to him?
It would be a great act of cowardice not to have oneself tried, when one is sure of one's innocence.
Besides, even if he were guilty, I should make them acquit him.
When I spoke to him, the fiery youngster would not allow me to finish, he picked up the official almanac, and we went through it together choosing the twelve most upright and learned judges; when we had made the list, we cancelled six names for which we substituted those of six counsel, my personal enemies, and, as we could find only two enemies, we filled up the gaps with four rascals who are devoted to Rassi."
This proposal filled the Duchessa with a mortal anxiety, and not without cause; at length she yielded to reason, and, at the Minister's dictation, wrote out the order appointing the judges.
The Conte did not leave her until six o'clock in the morning; she endeavoured to sleep, but in vain.
At nine o'clock, she took breakfast with Fabrizio, whom she found burning with a desire to be tried; at ten, she waited on the Princess, who was not visible; at eleven, she saw the Prince, who was holding his levee, and signed the order without the slightest objection.
The Duchessa sent the order to the Conte, and retired to bed.
It would be pleasant perhaps to relate Rassi's fury when the Conte obliged him to countersign, in the Prince's presence, the order signed that morning by the Prince himself; but we must go on with our story.
The Conte discussed the merits of each judge, and offered to change the names.
But the reader is perhaps a little tired of all these details of procedure, no less than of all these court intrigues.
From the whole business one can derive this moral, that the man who mingles with a court compromises his happiness, if he is happy, and, in any event, makes his future depend on the intrigues of a chambermaid.
On the other hand in America, in the Republic, one has to spend the whole weary day paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street, and must become as stupid as they are; and there, one has no Opera.
The Duchessa, when she rose in the evening, had a moment of keen anxiety: Fabrizio was not to be found; finally, towards midnight, during the performance at court, she received a letter from him.
Instead of making himself a prisoner in the town prison, where the Conte was in control, he had gone back to occupy his old cell in the citadel, only too happy to be living within a few feet of Clelia.
This was an event of vast consequence: in this place he was exposed to the risk of poison more than ever.
This act of folly filled the Duchessa with despair; she forgave the cause of it, a mad love for Clelia, because unquestionably in a few days' time that young lady was going to marry the rich Marchese Crescenzi.
This folly restored to Fabrizio all the influence he had originally enjoyed over the Duchessa's heart.
"It is that cursed paper which I went and made the Prince sign that will be his death!
What fools men are with their ideas of honour!
As if one needed to think of honour under absolute governments, in countries where a Rassi is Minister of Justice!
He ought to have accepted the pardon outright, which the Prince would have signed just as readily as the order convening this extraordinary tribunal.
What does it matter, after all, that a man of Fabrizio's birth should be more or less accused of having himself, sword in hand, killed an actor like Giletti?"
No sooner had she received Fabrizio's note than the Duchessa ran to the Conte, whom she found deadly pale.
"Great God!
Dear friend, I am most unlucky in handling that boy, and you will be vexed with me again.
I can prove to you that I made the gaoler of the town prison come here yesterday evening; every day your nephew would have come to take tea with you.
What is so terrible is that it is impossible for you and me to say to the Prince that there is fear of poison, and of poison administered by Rassi; the suspicion would seem to him the height of immorality.
However, if you insist, I am ready to go up to the Palace; but I am certain of the answer.
I am going to say more; I offer you a stratagem which I would not employ for myself.
Since I have been in power in this country, I have not caused the death of a single man, and you know that I am so sensitive in that respect that sometimes, at the close of day, I still think of those two spies whom I had shot, rather too light-heartedly, in Spain.
Very well, do you wish me to get rid of Rassi?
The danger in which he is placing Fabrizio is unbounded; he has there a sure way of sending me packing."
This proposal pleased the Duchessa extremely, but she did not adopt it.
"I do not wish," she said to the Conte, "that in our retirement, beneath the beautiful sky of Naples, you should have dark thoughts in the evenings."
"But, dear friend, it seems to me that we have only the choice between one dark thought and another.
What will you do, what will I do myself, if Fabrizio is carried off by an illness?"
The discussion returned to dwell upon this idea, and the Duchessa ended it with this speech:
"Rassi owes his life to the fact that I love you more than Fabrizio; no, I do not wish to poison all the evenings of the old age which we are going to spend together."
The Duchessa hastened to the fortress; General Fabio Conti was delighted at having to stop her with the strict letter of the military regulations: no one might enter a state prison without an order signed by the Prince.
"But the Marchese Crescenzi and his musicians come every day to the citadel?"
"Because I obtained an order for them from the Prince."
The poor Duchessa did not know the full tale of her troubles.
General Fabio Conti had regarded himself as personally dishonoured by Fabrizio's escape: when he saw him arrive at the citadel, he ought not to have admitted him, for he had no order to that effect.
"But," he said to himself, "it is Heaven that is sending him to me to restore my honour, and to save me from the ridicule which would assail my military career.
This opportunity must not be missed: doubtless they are going to acquit him, and I have only a few days for my revenge."
Chapter 12