He made an excellent dinner, then settled himself down to sleep for a few minutes: he did not awake until half-past eight in the evening; the Priore Blanes was shaking him by the arm; it was dark.
Blanes was extremely tired, and looked fifty years older than the night before.
He said nothing more about serious matters, sitting in his wooden armchair. "Embrace me," he said to Fabrizio.
He clasped him again and again in his arms.
"Death," he said at last, "which is coming to put an end to this long life, will have nothing about it so painful as this separation.
I have a purse which I shall leave in Ghita's custody, with orders to draw on it for her own needs, but to hand over to you what is left, should you ever come to ask for it.
I know her; after those instructions, she is capable, from economy on your behalf, of not buying meat four times in the year, if you do not give her quite definite orders.
You may yourself be reduced to penury, and the oboi of your aged friend will be of service to you.
Expect nothing from your brother but atrocious behaviour, and try to earn money by some work which will make you useful to society.
I foresee strange storms; perhaps, in fifty years' time, the world will have no more room for idlers!
Your mother and aunt may fail you, your sisters will have to obey their husbands… . Away with you, away with you, fly!" exclaimed Blanes urgently; he had just heard a little sound in the clock which warned him that ten was about to strike, and he would not even allow Fabrizio to give him a farewell embrace.
"Hurry, hurry!" he cried to him; "it will take you at least a minute to get down the stair; take care not to fall, that would be a terrible omen."
Fabrizio dashed down the staircase and emerging on to the piazza began to run.
He had scarcely arrived opposite his father's castle when the bell sounded ten times; each stroke reverberated in his bosom, where it left a singular sense of disturbance.
He stopped to think, or rather to give himself up to the passionate feelings inspired in him by the contemplation of that majestic edifice which he had judged so coldly the night before.
He was recalled from his musings by the sound of footsteps; he looked up and found himself surrounded by four constables.
He had a brace of excellent pistols, the priming of which he had renewed while he dined; the slight sound that he made in cocking them attracted the attention of one of the constables, and he was within an inch of being arrested.
He saw the danger he ran, and decided to fire the first shot; he would be justified in doing so, for this was the sole method open to him of resisting four well-armed men.
Fortunately, the constables, who were going round to clear the osteria, had not shown themselves altogether irresponsive to the hospitality that they had received in several of those sociable resorts; they did not make up their minds quickly enough to do their duty.
Fabrizio took to his heels and ran.
The constables went a few yards, running also, and shouting
"Stop!
Stop!" then everything relapsed into silence.
After every three hundred yards Fabrizio halted to recover his breath.
"The sound of my pistols nearly made me get caught; this is just the sort of thing that would make the Duchessa tell me, should it ever be granted me to see her lovely eyes again, that my mind finds pleasure in contemplating what is going to happen in ten years' time, and forgets to look out for what is actually happening beneath my nose."
Fabrizio shuddered at the thought of the danger he had just escaped; he increased his pace, and presently found himself impelled to run, which was not over-prudent, as it attracted the attention of several contadini who were going back to their homes.
He could not bring himself to stop until he had reached the mountain, more than a league from Grianta, and even when he had stopped, he broke into a cold sweat at the thought of the Spielberg.
"There's a fine fright!" he said aloud: on hearing the sound of this word, he was almost tempted to feel ashamed.
"But does not my aunt tell me that the thing I most need is to learn to make allowances for myself?
I am always comparing myself with a model of perfection, which cannot exist.
Very well, I forgive myself my fright, for, from another point of view, I was quite prepared to defend my liberty, and certainly all four of them would not have remained on their feet to carry me off to prison.
What I am doing at this moment," he went on, "is not military; instead of retiring rapidly, after having attained my object, and perhaps given the alarm to my enemies, I am amusing myself with a fancy more ridiculous perhaps than all the good Priore's predictions."
For indeed, instead of retiring along the shortest line, and gaining the shore of Lake Maggiore, where his boat was awaiting him, he made an enormous circuit to go and visit his tree.
The reader may perhaps remember the love that Fabrizio bore for a chestnut tree planted by his mother twenty-three years earlier.
"It would be quite worthy of my brother," he said to himself, "to have had the tree cut down; but those creatures are incapable of delicate shades of feeling; he will never have thought of it.
And besides, that would not be a bad augury," he added with firmness.
Two hours later he was shocked by what he saw; mischief-makers or a storm had broken one of the main branches of the young tree, which hung down withered; Fabrizio cut it off reverently, using his dagger, and smoothed the cut carefully, so that the rain should not get inside the trunk.
Then, although time was highly precious to him, for day was about to break, he spent a good hour in turning the soil round his dear tree.
All these acts of folly accomplished, he went rapidly on his way towards Lake Maggiore.
All things considered, he was not at all sad; the tree was coming on well, was more vigorous than ever, and in five years had almost doubled in height.
The branch was only an accident of no consequence; once it had been cut off, it did no more harm to the tree, which indeed would grow all the better if its spread began higher from the ground.
Fabrizio had not gone a league when a dazzling band of white indicated to the east the peaks of the Resegon di Lee, a mountain famous throughout the district.
The road which he was following became thronged with contadini; but, instead of adopting military tactics, Fabrizio let himself be melted by the sublime or touching aspect of these forests in the neighbourhood of Lake Como.
They are perhaps the finest in the world; I do not mean to say those that bring in most new money, as the Swiss would say, but those that speak most eloquently to the soul.
To listen to this language in the position in which Fabrizio found himself, an object for the attentions of the gentlemen of the Lombardo-Venetian police, was really childish.
"I am half a league from the frontier," he reminded himself at length, "I am going to meet doganieri and constables making their morning rounds: this coat of fine cloth will look suspicious, they will ask me for my passport; now that passport is inscribed at full length with my name, which is marked down for prison; so here I am under the regrettable necessity of committing a murder.
If, as is usual, the police are going about in pairs, I cannot wait quietly to fire until one of them tries to take me by the collar; he has only to clutch me for a moment while he falls, and off I go to the Spielberg."
Fabrizio, horrified most of all by the necessity of firing first, possibly on an old soldier who had served under his uncle, Conte Pietranera, ran to hide himself in the hollow trunk of an enormous chestnut; he was renewing the priming of his pistols, when he heard a man coming towards him through the wood, singing very well a delicious air from Mercadante, which was popular at that time in Lombardy.
"There is a good omen for me," he said to himself.
This air, to which he listened religiously, took from him the little spark of anger which was finding its way into his reasonings.