The arrival of our hero threw Clelia into despair: the poor girl, pious and sincere with herself, could not avoid the reflexion that there would never be any happiness for her apart from Fabrizio; but she had made a vow to the Madonna, at the time when her father was nearly poisoned, that she would offer him the sacrifice of marrying the Marchese Crescenzi.
She had made the vow that she would never see Fabrizio, and already she was a prey to the most fearful remorse over the admission she had been led to make in the letter she had written Fabrizio on the eve of his escape.
How is one to depict what occurred in that sorrowful heart when, occupied in a melancholy way with watching her birds flit to and fro, and raising her eyes from habit, and with affection, towards the window from which formerly Fabrizio used to look at her, she saw him there once again, greeting her with tender respect.
She imagined it to be a vision which Heaven had allowed for her punishment; then the atrocious reality became apparent to her reason.
"They have caught him again," she said to herself, "and he is lost!"
She remembered the things that had been said in the fortress after the escape; the humblest of the gaolers regarded themselves as mortally insulted.
Clelia looked at Fabrizio, and in spite of herself that look portrayed in full the passion that had thrown her into despair.
"Do you suppose," she seemed to be saying to Fabrizio, "that I shall find happiness in that sumptuous palace which they are making ready for me?
My father repeats to me till I am weary that you are as poor as ourselves; but, great God, with what joy would I share that poverty!
But, alas, we must never see one another again!"
Clelia had not the strength to make use of the alphabets: as she looked at Fabrizio she felt faint and sank upon a chair that stood beside the window.
Her head rested upon the ledge of this window, and as she had been anxious to see him until the last moment, her face was turned towards Fabrizio, who had a perfect view of it.
When, after a few moments, she opened her eyes again, her first glance was at Fabrizio: she saw tears in his eyes, but those tears were the effect of extreme happiness; he saw that absence had by no means made him forgotten.
The two poor young things remained for some time as though spell-bound by the sight of each other.
Fabrizio ventured to sing, as if he were accompanying himself on the guitar, a few improvised lines which said:
"It is to see you again that I have returned to prison; they are going to try me."
These words seemed to awaken all Clelia's dormant virtue: she rose swiftly, and hid her eyes; and, by the most vivid gestures, sought to express to him that she must never see him again; she had promised this to the Madonna, and had looked at him just now in a moment of forgetfulness.
Fabrizio venturing once more to express his love, Clelia fled from the room indignant, and swearing to herself that never would she see him again, for such were the precise words of her vow to the Madonna:
"My eyes shall never see him again."
She had written them on a little slip of paper which her uncle Don Cesare had allowed her to burn upon the altar at the moment of the oblation, while he was saying mass.
But, oaths or no oaths, Fabrizio's presence in the Torre Farnese had restored to Clelia all her old habits and activities.
Normally she passed all her days in solitude, in her room.
No sooner had she recovered from the unforeseen disturbance in which the sight of Fabrizio had plunged her, than she began to wander through the palazzo, and, so to speak, to renew her acquaintance with all her humble friends.
A very loquacious old woman, employed in the kitchen, said to her with an air of mystery:
"This time, Signor Fabrizio will not leave the citadel."
"He will not make the mistake of going over the walls again," said Clelia, "but he will leave by the door if he is acquitted."
"I say, and I can assure Your Excellency that he will go out of the citadel feet first."
Clelia turned extremely pale, a change which was remarked by the old woman and stopped the flow of her eloquence.
She said to herself that she had been guilty of an imprudence in speaking thus before the governor's daughter, whose duty it would be to tell everybody that Fabrizio had died a natural death.
As she went up to her room, Clelia met the prison doctor, an honest sort of man but timid, who told her with a terrified air that Fabrizio was seriously ill.
Clelia could hardly keep on her feet; she sought everywhere for her uncle, the good Don Cesare, and at length found him in the chapel, where he was praying fervently: from his face he appeared upset.
The dinner bell rang.
At table, not a word was exchanged between the brothers; only, towards the end of the meal, the General addressed a few very harsh words to his brother.
The latter looked at the servants, who left the room.
"General," said Don Cesare to the governor, "I have the honour to inform you that I am leaving the citadel: I give you my resignation."
"Bravo!
Bravissimo!
So that I shall be suspect! … And your reason, if you please?"
"My conscience."
"Go on, you're only a frock!
You know nothing about honour."
"Fabrizio is dead," thought Clelia; "they have poisoned him at dinner, or it is arranged for to-morrow."
She ran to the aviary, resolved to sing, accompanying herself on the piano.
"I shall go to confession," she said to herself, "and I shall be forgiven for having broken my vow to save a man's life."
What was her consternation when, on reaching the aviary, she saw that the screens had been replaced by planks fastened to the iron bars.
In desperation she tried to give the prisoner a warning in a few words shouted rather than sung.
There was no response of any sort: a deathly silence already reigned in the Torre Farnese.
"It is all over," she said to herself.
Beside herself, she went downstairs, then returned to equip herself with the little money she had and some small diamond earrings; she took also, on her way out, the bread that remained from dinner, which had been placed in a sideboard.
"If he still lives, my duty is to save him."