This discovery had given His Highness a happy day.
From time to time, the Duchessa let fall a few words about the plan she had in her mind of taking a few months' holiday every year, to be spent in seeing Italy, which she did not know at all; she would visit Naples, Florence, Rome.
Now nothing in the world was more capable of distressing the Prince than an apparent desertion of this sort: it was one of his most pronounced weaknesses; any action that might be interpreted as showing contempt for his capital city pierced him to the heart.
He felt that he had no way of holding Signora Sanseverina, and Signora Sanseverina was by far the most brilliant woman in Parma.
A thing without parallel in the lazy Italian character, people used to drive in from the surrounding country to attend her Thursdays; they were regular festivals; almost every week the Duchessa had something new and sensational to present.
The Prince was dying to see one of these Thursdays for himself; but how was it to be managed?
Go to the house of a private citizen!
That was a thing that neither his father nor he had ever done in their lives!
There came a certain Thursday of cold wind and rain; all through the evening the Prince heard carriages rattling over the pavement of the piazza outside the Palace, on their way to Signora Sanseverina's.
He moved petulantly in his chair: other people were amusing themselves, and he, their sovereign Prince, their absolute master, who ought to find more amusement than anyone in the world, he was tasting the fruit of boredom!
He rang for his aide-de-camp: he was obliged to wait until a dozen trustworthy men had been posted in the street that led from the Royal Palace to the palazzo Sanseverina.
Finally, after an hour that seemed to the Prince an age, during which he had been minded a score of times to brave the assassins' daggers and to go boldly out without any precaution, he appeared in the first of Signora Sanseverina's drawing-rooms.
A thunderbolt might have fallen upon the carpet and not produced so much surprise.
In the twinkling of an eye, and as the Prince advanced through them, these gay and noisy rooms were hushed to a stupefied silence; every eye, fixed on the Prince, was strained with attention.
The courtiers appeared disconcerted; the Duchessa alone shewed no sign of surprise.
When finally her guests had recovered sufficient strength to speak, the great preoccupation of all present was to decide the important question: had the Duchessa been warned of this visit, or had she like everyone else been taken by surprise?
The Prince was amused, and the reader may now judge of the utterly impulsive character of the Duchessa, and of the boundless power which vague ideas of departure, adroitly disseminated, had enabled her to assume.
As she went to the door with the Prince, who was making her the prettiest speeches, an odd idea came to her which she ventured to put into words quite simply, and as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"If Your Serene Highness would address to the Princess three or four of these charming utterances which he lavishes on me, he could be far more certain of giving me pleasure than by telling me that I am pretty.
I mean that I would not for anything in the world have the Princess look with an unfriendly eye on the signal mark of his favour with which His Highness has honoured me this evening."
The Prince looked fixedly at her and replied in a dry tone:
"I was under the impression that I was my own master and could go where I pleased."
The Duchessa blushed.
"I wished only," she explained, instantly recovering herself, "not to expose His Highness to the risk of a bootless errand, for this Thursday will be the last; I am going for a few days to Bologna or Florence."
When she reappeared in the rooms, everyone imagined her to be at the height of favour, whereas she had just taken a risk upon which, in the memory of man, no one had ever ventured.
She made a sign to the Conte, who rose from the whist-table and followed her into a little room that was lighted but empty.
"You have done a very bold thing," he informed her; "I should not have advised it myself, but when hearts are really inflamed," he added with a smile, "happiness enhances love, and if you leave to-morrow morning, I shall follow you to-morrow night.
I shall be detained here only by that burden of a Ministry of Finance which I was stupid enough to take on my shoulders; but in four hours of hard work, one can hand over a good many accounts.
Let us go back, dear friend, and play at ministerial fatuity with all freedom and without reserve; it may be the last performance that we shall give in this town.
If he thinks he is being defied, the man is capable of anything; he will call it making an example.
When these people have gone, we can decide on a way of barricading you for to-night; the best plan perhaps would be to set off without delay for your house at Sacca, by the Po, which has the advantage of being within half an hour of Austrian territory."
For the Duchessa's love and self-esteem this was an exquisite moment; she looked at the Conte, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
So powerful a Minister, surrounded by this swarm of courtiers who loaded him with homage equal to that which they paid to the Prince himself, to leave everything for her sake, and with such unconcern!
When she returned to the drawing-room she was beside herself with joy.
Everyone bowed down before her.
"How prosperity has changed the Duchessa!" was murmured everywhere by the courtiers, "one would hardly recognise her.
So that Roman spirit, so superior to everything in the world, does, after all, deign to appreciate the extraordinary favour that has just been conferred upon her by the Sovereign!"
Towards the end of the evening the Conte came to her:
"I must tell you the latest news."
Immediately the people who happened to be standing near the Duchessa withdrew.
"The Prince, on his return to the Palace," the Conte went on, "had himself announced at the door of his wife's room.
Imagine the surprise!
'I have come to tell you,' he said to her, 'about a really most delightful evening I have spent at the Sanseverina's.
It was she who asked me to give you a full description of the way in which she has decorated that grimy old palazzo.'
Then the Prince took a seat and went into a description of each of your rooms in turn.
"He spent more than twenty-five minutes with his wife, who was in tears of joy; for all her intelligence, she could not think of anything to keep the conversation going in the light tone which His Highness was pleased to impart to it."
This Prince was by no means a wicked man, whatever the Liberals of Italy might say of him.
As a matter of fact, he had cast a good number of them into prison, but that was from fear, and he used to repeat now and then, as though to console himself for certain unpleasant memories:
"It is better to kill the devil than to let the devil kill you."
The day after the party we have been describing, he was supremely happy; he had done two good actions: he had gone to the Thursday, and he had talked to his wife.