As he is a man of infinite spirit, he is ashamed of these precautions; they seem to him ridiculous, even at the moment when he is giving way to them, and the source of Conte Mosca's enormous reputation is that he devotes all his skill to arranging that the Prince shall never have occasion to blush in his presence.
It is he, Mosca, who, in his capacity as Minister of Police, insists upon looking under the furniture, and, so people say in Parma, even in the cases in which the musicians keep their double-basses.
It is the Prince who objects to this and teases his Minister over his excessive punctiliousness.
'It is a challenge,' Conte Mosca replies; 'think of the satirical sonnets the Jacobins would shower on us if we allowed you to 'be killed.
It is not only your life that we are defending, it is our honour.'
But it appears that the Prince is only half taken in by this, for if anyone in the town should take it into his head to remark that they have passed a sleepless night at the castle, the Grand Fiscal Rassi sends the impertinent fellow to the citadel, and once in that lofty abode, and in the fresh air, as they say at Parma, it is a miracle if anyone remembers the prisoner's existence.
It is because he is a soldier, and in Spain got away a score of times, pistol in hand, from a tight corner, that the Prince prefers Conte Mosca to Rassi, who is a great deal more flexible and baser.
Those unfortunate prisoners in the citadel are kept in the most rigorously secret confinement, and all sort of stories are told about them.
The Liberals assert that (and this, they say, is one of Rassi's ideas) the gaolers and confessors are under orders to assure them, about once a month, that one of them is being led out to die.
That day the prisoners have permission to climb to the platform of the huge tower, one hundred and eighty feet high, and from there they see a procession file along the plain with some spy who plays the part of a poor devil going to his death."
These stories and a score of others of the same nature and of no less authenticity keenly interested Signora Pietranera: on the following day she asked Conte Mosca, whom she rallied briskly, for details. She found him amusing, and maintained to him that at heart he was a monster without knowing it.
One day as he went back to his inn the Conte said to himself:
"Not only is this Contessa Pietranera a charming woman; but when I spend the evening in her box I manage to forget certain things at Parma the memory of which cuts me to the heart."—This Minister, in spite of his frivolous air and his polished manners, was not blessed with a soul of the French type; he could not forget the things that annoyed him.
When there was a thorn in his pillow, he was obliged to break it off and .to blunt its point by repeated stabbings of his throbbing limbs. (I must apologise for the last two sentences, which are translated from the Italian.) On the morrow of this discovery, the Conte found that, notwithstanding the business that had summoned him to Milan, the day spun itself out to an enormous length; he could not stay in one place, he wore out his carriage-horses.
About six o'clock he mounted his saddle-horse to ride to the Corso; he had some hope of meeting Signora Pietranera there; seeing no sign of her, he remembered that at eight o'clock the Scala Theatre opened; he entered it, and did not see ten persons in that immense auditorium.
He felt somewhat ashamed of himself for being there.
"Is it possible," he asked himself, "that at forty-five and past I am committing follies at which a sub-lieutenant would blush?
Fortunately nobody suspects them."
He fled, and tried to pass the time by strolling up and down the attractive streets that surround the Scala.
They are lined with caffe which at that hour are filled to overflowing with people. Outside each of these caffe crowds of curious idlers perched on chairs in the middle of the street sip ices and criticise the passers-by.
The Conte was a passer-by of importance; at once he had the pleasure of being recognised and addressed.
Three or four importunate persons of the kind that one cannot easily shake off seized this opportunity to obtain an audience of so powerful a Minister.
Two of them handed him petitions; the third was content with pouring out a stream of long-winded advice as to his political conduct.
"One does not sleep," he said to himself, "when one has such a brain; one ought not to walk about when one is so powerful."
He returned to the theatre, where it occurred to him that he might take a box in the third tier; from there his gaze could plunge, unnoticed by anyone, into the box in the second tier in which he hoped to see the Contessa arrive.
Two full hours of waiting did not seem any too long to this lover; certain of not being seen he abandoned himself joyfully to the full extent of his folly.
"Old age," he said to himself, "is not that, more than anything else, the time when one is no longer capable of these delicious puerilities?"
Finally the Contessa appeared.
Armed with his glasses, he studied her with rapture:
"Young, brilliant, light as a bird," he said to himself, "she is not twenty-five. Her beauty is the least of her charms: where else could one find that soul, always sincere, which never acts with prudence, which abandons itself entirely to the impression of the moment, which asks only to be carried away towards some new goal?
I can understand Conte Nani's foolish behaviour."
The Conte supplied himself with excellent reasons for behaving foolishly, so long as he was thinking only of capturing the happiness which he saw before his eyes.
He did not find any quite so satisfactory when he came to consider his age and the anxieties, sometimes of the saddest nature, that burdened his life.
"A man of ability, whose spirit has been destroyed by fear, gives me a sumptuous life and plenty of money to be his Minister; but were he to dismiss me to-morrow, I should be left old and poor, that is to say everything that the world despises most; there's a fine partner to offer the Contessa!"
These thoughts were too dark, he came back to Signora Pietranera; he could not tire of gazing at her, and, to be able to think of her better, did not go down to her box.
"Her only reason for taking Nani, they tell me, was to put that imbecile Limercati in his place when he could not be prevailed upon to run a sword, or to hire someone else to stick a dagger into her husband's murderer.
I would fight for her twenty times over!" cried the Conte in a transport of enthusiasm.
Every moment he consulted the theatre clock which, with illuminated figures upon a black background, warned the audience every five minutes of the approach of the hour at which it was permissible for them to visit a friend's box.
The Conte said to himself:
"I cannot spend more than half an hour at the most in the box, seeing that I have known her so short a time; if I stay longer, I shall attract attention, and, thanks to my age and even more to this accursed powder on my hair, I shall have all the bewitching allurements of a Cassandra."
But a sudden thought made up his mind once and for all.
"If she were to leave that box to pay someone else a visit, I should be well rewarded for the avarice with which I am hoarding up this pleasure."
He rose to go down to the box in which he could see the Contessa; all at once he found that he had lost almost all his desire to present himself to her.
"Ah! this is really charming," he exclaimed with a smile at his own expense, and coming to a halt on the staircase; "an impulse of genuine shyness!
It must be at least five and twenty years since an adventure of this sort last came my way."
He entered the box, almost with an effort to control himself; and, making the most, like a man of spirit, of the condition in which he found himself, made no attempt to appear at ease, or to display his wit by plunging into some entertaining story; he had the courage to be shy, he employed his wits in letting his disturbance be apparent without making himself ridiculous.
"If she should take it amiss," he said to himself, "I am lost for ever.
What!
Shy, with my hair covered with powder, hair which, without the disguise of the powder, would be visibly grey!
But, after all, it is a fact; it cannot therefore be absurd unless I exaggerate it or make a boast of it."