"No; but he is anxious to please the Emperor Francis."
"But, if he thought it would lead to his promotion to put Fabrizio in prison, the boy would be there now; it is showing an insulting defiance of the Barone to send him away."
"But his admission to us that he knows where Fabrizio is, is as much as to say:
'Send him away!'
No, I shan't feel alive until I can no longer say to myself:
'In a quarter of an hour my son may be within. prison walls.'
Whatever Barone Binder's ambition may be," the Marchesa went on, "he thinks it useful to his personal standing in this country to make certain concessions to oblige a man of my husband's rank, and I see a proof of this in the singular frankness with which he admits that he knows where to lay hands on my son.
Besides, the Barone has been so kind as to let us know the two offences with which Fabrizio is charged, at the instigation of his unworthy brother; he explains that each of these offences means prison: is not that as much as to say that if we prefer exile it is for us to choose?"
"If you choose exile," the Contessa kept on repeating, "we shall never set eyes on him again as long as we live."
Fabrizio, who was present at the whole conversation, with an old friend of the Marchesa, now a counsellor on the tribunal set up by Austria, was strongly inclined to take the key of the street and go; and, as a matter of fact, that same evening he left the palazzo, hidden in the carriage that was taking his mother and aunt to the Scala theatre.
The coachman, whom they, distrusted, went as usual to wait in an osteria, and while the footmen, on whom they could rely, were looking after the horses, Fabrizio, disguised as a contadino, slipped out of the carriage and escaped from the town.
Next morning he crossed the frontier with equal ease, and a few hours later had established himself on a property which his mother owned in Piedmont, near Novara, to be precise, at Romagnano, where Bayard was killed.
It may be imagined how much attention the ladies, on reaching their box in the Scala, paid to the performance.
They had gone there solely to be able to consult certain of their friends who belonged to the Liberal party and whose appearance at the palazzo del Dongo might have been misconstrued by the police. In the box it was decided to make a fresh appeal to Barone Binder.
There was no question of offering a sum of money to this magistrate who was a perfectly honest man; moreover, the ladies were extremely poor; they had forced Fabrizio to take with him all the money that remained from the sale of the diamond.
It was of the utmost importance that they should be kept constantly informed of the Barone's latest decisions.
The Contessa's friends reminded her of a certain Canon Borda, a most charming young man who at one time had tried to make advances to her, in a somewhat violent manner; finding himself unsuccessful he had reported her friendship for Limercati to General Pietranera, whereupon he had been dismissed from the house as a rascal.
Now, at present this Canon was in the habit of going every evening to play tarocchi with Baronessa Binder, and was naturally the intimate friend of her husband.
The Contessa made up her mind to take the horribly unpleasant step of going to see this Canon; and the following morning, at an early hour, before he had left the house, she sent in her name. When the Canon's one and only servant announced: "Contessa Pietranera," his master was so overcome as to be incapable of speech; he made no attempt to repair the disorder of a very scanty attire.
"Shew her in, and leave us," he said in faint accents.
The Contessa entered the room; Borda fell on his knees.
"It is in this position that an unhappy madman ought to receive your orders," he said to the Contessa, who, that morning, in a plain costume that was almost a disguise, was irresistibly attractive.
Her intense grief at Fabrizio's exile, the violence that she was doing to her own feelings in coming to the house of a man who had behaved treacherously towards her, all combined to give an incredible brilliance to her eyes.
"It is in this position that I wish to recieve your orders," cried the Canon, "for it is obvious that you have some service to ask of me, otherwise you would not have honoured with your presence the poor dwelling of an unhappy madman; once before, carried away by love and jealousy, he behaved towards you like a scoundrel, as soon as he saw that he could not win your favour."
The words were sincere, and all the more handsome in that the Canon now enjoyed a position of great power; the Contessa was moved to tears by them; humiliation and fear had frozen her spirit; now in a moment affection and a gleam of hope took their place.
From a most unhappy state she passed in a flash almost to happiness.
"Kiss my hand," she said, as she held it out to the Canon, "and rise." (She used the second person singular, which in Italy, it must be remembered, indicates a sincere and open friendship just as much as a more tender sentiment.) "I have come to ask your favour for my nephew Fabrizio.
This is the whole truth of the story without the slightest concealment, as one tells it to an old friend.
At the age of sixteen and a half he has done an intensely stupid thing.
We were at the castle of Grianta on the Lake of Como.
One evening at seven o'clock we learned by a boat from Como of the Emperor's landing on the shore of the Gulf of Juan.
Next morning Fabrizio went off to France, after borrowing the passport of one of his plebeian friends, a dealer in barometers, named Vasi.
As he does not exactly resemble a dealer in barometers, he had hardly gone ten leagues into France when he was arrested on sight; his outbursts of enthusiasm in bad French seemed suspicious.
After a time he escaped and managed to reach Geneva; we sent to meet him at Lugano… ."
"That is to say, Geneva," put in the Canon with a smile.
The Contessa finished her story.
"I will do everything for you that is humanly possible," replied the Canon effusively; "I place myself entirely at your disposal.
I will even do imprudent things," he added.
"Tell me, what am I to do as soon as this poor parlour is deprived of this heavenly apparition which marks an epoch in the history of my life?"
"You must go to Barone Binder and tell him that you have loved Fabrizio ever since he was born, that you saw him in his cradle when you used to come to our house, and that accordingly, in the name of the friendship he has shown for you, you beg him to employ all his spies to discover whether, before his departure for Switzerland, Fabrizio was in any sort of communication whatsoever with any of the Liberals whom he has under supervision.
If the Barone's information is of any value, he is bound to see that there is nothing more in this than a piece of boyish folly.
You know that I used to have, in my beautiful apartment in the palazzo Dugnani, prints of the battles won by Napoleon: it was by spelling out the legends engraved beneath them that my nephew learned to read.
When he was five years old, my poor husband used to explain these battles to him; we put my husband's helmet on his head, the boy strutted about trailing his big sabre.
Very well, one fine day he learns that my husband's god, the Emperor, has returned to France, he starts out to join him, like a fool, but does not succeed in reaching him.
Ask your Barone with what penalty he proposes to punish this moment of folly?"
"I was forgetting one thing," said the Canon, "you shall see that I am not altogether unworthy of the pardon that you grant me.
Here," he said, looking on the table among his papers, "here is the accusation by that infamous collo-torto" (that is, hypocrite), "see, signed Ascanio Vdiserra del DONGO, which gave rise to the whole trouble; I found it yesterday at the police headquarters, and went to the Scala in the hope of finding someone who was in the habit of going to your box, through whom I might be able to communicate it to you.
A copy of this document reached Vienna long ago.
There is the enemy that we have to fight."
The Canon read the accusation through with the Contessa, and it was agreed that in the course of the day he would let her have a copy by the hand of some trustworthy person.