The Contessa had spent so many weary hours at the castle of Grianta, facing the powdered heads of her brother and nephew, and of various politically sound bores of the neighbourhood, that it never occurred to her to give a thought to her new adorer's style in hairdressing.
The Contessa's mind having this protection against the impulse to laugh on his entry, she paid attention only to the news from France which Mosca always had for her in detail, on coming to her box; no doubt he used to invent it.
As she discussed this news with him, she noticed this evening the expression in his eyes, which was good and kindly.
"I can imagine," she said to him, "that at Parma, among your slaves, you will not wear that friendly expression; it would ruin everything and give them some hope of not being hanged!"
The entire absence of any sense of self-importance in a man who passed as the first diplomat in Italy seemed strange to the Contessa; she even found a certain charm in it.
Moreover, as he talked well and with warmth, she was not at all displeased that he should have thought fit to take upon himself for one evening, without ulterior consequences, the part of squire of dames.
It was a great step forward, and highly dangerous; fortunately for the Minister, who, at Parma, never met a cruel fair, the Contessa had arrived from Grianta only a few days before: her mind was still stiff with the boredom of a country life.
She had almost forgotten how to make fun; and all those things that appertain to a light and elegant way of living had assumed in her eyes as it were a tint of novelty which made them sacred; she was in no mood to laugh at anyone, even a lover of forty-five, and shy.
A week later, the Conte's temerity might have met with a very different sort of welcome.
At the Scala, it is not usual to prolong for more than twenty minutes or so these little visits to one's friends' boxes; the Conte spent the whole evening in the box in which he had been so fortunate as to meet Signora Pietranera.
"She is a woman," he said to himself, "who revives in me all the follies of my youth!"
But he was well aware of the danger.
"Will my position as an all-powerful Bashaw in a place forty leagues away induce her to pardon me this stupid behaviour?
I get so bored at Parma!"
Meanwhile, every quarter of an hour, he registered a mental vow to get up and go.
"I must explain to you, Signora," he said to the Contessa with a laugh, "that at Parma I am bored to death, and I ought to be allowed to drink my fill of pleasure when the cup comes my way.
So, without involving you in anything and simply for this evening, permit me to play the part of lover in your company.
Alas, in a few days I shall be far away from this box which makes me forget every care and indeed, you will say, every convention."
A week after this monstrous visit to the Contessa's box, and after a series of minor incidents the narration of which here would perhaps seem tedious, Conte Mosca was absolutely mad with love, and the Contessa had already begun to think that his age need offer no objection if the suitor proved attractive in other ways.
They had reached this stage when Mosca was recalled by a courier from Parma.
One would have said that his Prince was afraid to be left alone.
The Contessa returned to Grianta; her imagination no longer serving to adorn that lovely spot, it appeared to her a desert.
"Should I be attached to this man?" she asked herself.
Mosca wrote to her, and had not to play a part; absence had relieved him of the source of all his anxious thoughts; his letters were amusing, and, by a little piece of eccentricity which was not taken amiss, to escape the comments of the Marchese del Dongo, who did not like having to pay for the carriage of letters, he used to send couriers who would post his at Como or Lecco or Varese or some other of those charming little places on the shores of the lake.
This was done with the idea that the courier might be employed to take back her replies. The move was successful.
Soon the days when the couriers came were events in the Contessa's life; these couriers brought her flowers, fruit, little presents of no value, which amused her, however, and her sister-in-law as well.
Her memory of the Conte was blended with her idea of his great power; the Contessa had become curious to know everything that people said of him; the Liberals themselves paid a tribute to his talents.
The principal source of the Conte's reputation for evil was that he passed as the head of the Ultra Party at the Court of Parma, while the Liberal Party had at its head an intriguing woman capable of anything, even of succeeding, the Marchesa Raversi, who was immensely rich.
The Prince made a great point of not discouraging that one of the two parties which happened not to be in power; he knew quite well that he himself would always be the master, even with a Ministry formed in Signora Raversi's drawing-room.
Endless details of these intrigues were reported at Grianta. The bodily absence of Mosca, whom everyone described as a Minister of supreme talent and a man of action, made it possible not to think any more of his powdered head, a symbol of everything that is dull and sad; it was a detail of no consequence, one of the obligations of the court at which, moreover, he was playing so distinguished a part.
"It is a ridiculous thing, a court," said the Contessa to the Marchesa, "but it is amusing; it is a game that it is interesting to play, but one must agree to the rules.
Who ever thought of protesting against the absurdity of the rules of piquet?
And yet, once you are accustomed to the rules, it is delightful to beat your adversary with repique and capot."
The Contessa often thought about the writer of these entertaining letters; the days on which she received them were delightful to her; she would take her boat and go to read them in one of the charming spots by the lake, the Pliniana, Belan, the wood of the Sfrondata.
These letters seemed to console her to some extent for Fabrizio's absence.
She could not, at all events, refuse to allow the Conte to be deeply in love; a month had not passed before she was thinking of him with tender affection.
For his part, Conte Mosca was almost sincere when he offered to hand in his resignation, to leave the Ministry and to come and spend the rest of his life with her at Milan or elsewhere.
"I have 400,000 francs," he added, "which will always bring us in an income of 15,000." —"A box at the play again, horses, everything," thought the Contessa; they were pleasant dreams.
The sublime beauty of the different views of the Lake of Como began to charm her once more.
She went down to dream by its shores of this return to a brilliant and distinctive life, which, most unexpectedly, seemed to be coming within the bounds of possibility.
She saw herself on the Corso, at Milan, happy and gay as in the days of the Viceroy:
"Youth, or at any rate a life of action, would begin again for me."
Sometimes her ardent imagination concealed things from her, but never did she have those deliberate illusions which cowardice induces.
She was above all things a woman who was honest with herself.
"If I am a little too old to be doing foolish things," she said to herself, "envy, which creates illusions as love does, may poison my stay in Milan for me.
After my husband's death, my noble poverty was a success, as was my refusal of two vast fortunes.
My poor little Conte Mosca had not a twentieth part of the opulence that was cast at my feet by those two worms, Limercati and Nani.
The meagre widow's pension which I had to struggle to obtain, the dismissal of my servants, which made some sensation, the little fifth-floor room, which brought a score of carriages to the door, all went to form at the time a striking spectacle.
But I shall have unpleasant moments, however skilfully I may handle things, if, never possessing any fortune beyond my widow's pension, I go back to live at Milan on the snug little middle-class comfort which we can secure with the 15,000 lire that Mosca will have left after he retires.
One strong objection, out of which eavy will forge a terrible weapon, is that the Conte, although separated long ago from his wife, is still a married man.