But I should like to pick a crow with you; does not your delicate soul feel a touch of remorse at the thought of that fine (though perhaps a little too thin) horse which you have just abandoned on the shore of Lake Maggiore?"
"I fully intend," said Fabrizio, with the utmost seriousness, "to send whatever is necessary to the owner of the horse to recompense him for the cost of advertising and any other expenses which he may be made to incur by the contadini who may have found it; I shall study the Milan newspaper most carefully to find the announcement of a missing horse; I know the description of that one very well."
"He is truly primitive" said the Conte to the Duchessa. "And where would Your Excellency be now," he went on with a smile, "if, while he was galloping away hell for leather on this borrowed horse, it had taken it into its head to make a false step?
You would be in the Spielberg, my dear young nephew, and all my authority would barely have managed to secure the reduction by thirty pounds of the weight of the chain attached to each of your legs.
You would have had some ten years to spend in that pleasure-resort; perhaps your legs would have become swollen and gangrened, then they would have cut them clean off."
"Oh, for pity's sake, don't go any farther with so sad a romance!" cried the Duchessa, with tears in her eyes. "Here he is back again… ."
"And I am more delighted than you, you may well believe," replied the Minister with great seriousness, "but after all why did not this cruel boy come to me for a passport in a suitable name, since he was anxious to penetrate into Lombardy?
On the first news of his arrest, I should have set off for Milan, and the friends I have in those parts would have obligingly shut their eyes and pretended to believe that their police had arrested a subject of the Prince of Parma.
The story of your adventures is charming, amusing, I readily agree," the Conte went on, adopting a less sinister tone; "your rush from the wood on to the high road quite thrills me; but, between ourselves, since this servant held your life in his hands, you had the right to take his.
We are about to arrange a brilliant future for Your Excellency; at least, the Signora here orders me to do so, and I do not believe that my greatest enemies can accuse me of having ever disobeyed her commands.
What a bitter grief for her and for myself if, in this sort of steeplechase which you appear to have been riding on this thin horse, he had made a false step!
It would almost have been better," the Conte added, "if the horse had broken your neck for you."
"You are very tragic this evening, my friend," said the Duchessa, quite overcome.
"That is because we are surrounded by tragic events," replied the Conte, also with emotion; "we are not in France, where everything ends in song, or in imprisonment for a year or two, and really it is wrong of me to speak of all this to you in a jocular tone.
Well, now, my young nephew, just suppose that I find a chance to make you a Bishop, for really I cannot begin with the Archbishopric of Parma, as is desired, most reasonably, by the Signora Duchessa here present; in that Bishopric, where you will be far removed from our sage counsels, just tell us roughly what your policy will be?"
"To kill the devil rather than let him kill me, in the admirable words of my friends the French," replied Fabrizio with blazing eyes; "to keep, by every means in my power, including pistols, the position you will have secured for me.
I have read in the del Dongo genealogy the story of that ancestor of ours who built the castle of Grianta.
Towards the end of his life, his good friend Galeazze, Duke of Milan, sent him to visit a fortress on our lake; they were afraid of another invasion by the Swiss.
'I must just write a few civil words to the governor,' the Duke of Milan said to him as he was sending him off.
He wrote and handed our ancestor a note of a couple of lines; then he asked for it back to seal it.
'It will be more polite,' the Prince explained.
Vespasiano del Dongo started off, but, as he was sailing over the lake, an old Greek tale came into his mind, for he was a man of learning; he opened his liege lord's letter and found inside an order addressed to the governor of the castle to put him to death as soon as he should arrive.
The Sforza, too much intent on the trick he was playing our ancestor, had left a space between the end of the letter and his signature; Vespasiano del Dongo wrote in this space an order proclaiming himself Governor General of all the castles on the lake, and tore off the original letter.
Arriving at the fort, where his authority was duly acknowledged, he flung the commandant down a well, declared war on the Sforza, and after a few years exchanged his fortress 'for those vast estates which have made the fortune of every branch of our family, and one day will bring in to me, personally, an income of four thousand lire."
"You talk like an academician," exclaimed the Conte, laughing; "that was a bold stroke with a vengeance; but it is only once in ten years that one has a chance to do anything so sensational.
A creature who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp look-out, and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of imagination.
It was by a foolish error of imagination that Napoleon was led to surrender to the prudent John Bull, instead of seeking to conquer America.
John Bull, in his counting-house, had a hearty laugh at his letter in which he quotes Themistocles.
In all ages, the base Sancho Panza triumphs, you will find, in the long run, over the sublime Don Quixote.
If you are willing to agree to do nothing extraordinary, I have no doubt that you will be a highly respected, if not a highly respectable Bishop.
In any case, what I said just now holds good: Your Excellency acted with great levity in the affair of the horse; he was within a finger's breadth of perpetual imprisonment."
This statement made Fabrizio shudder. He remained plunged in a profound astonishment.
"Was that," he wondered, "the prison with which I am threatened? Is that the crime which I was not to commit?"
The predictions of Blanes, which as prophecies he utterly derided, assumed in his eyes all the importance of authentic forecasts.
"Why, what is the matter with you?" the Duchessa asked him, in surprise; "the Conte has plunged you in a sea of dark thoughts."
"I am illuminated by a new truth, and, instead of revolting against it, my mind adopts it.
It is true, I passed very near to an endless imprisonment!
But that footman looked so nice in his English jacket!
It would have been such a pity to kill him!"
The Minister was enchanted with his little air of wisdom.
"He is excellent in every respect," he said, with his eyes on the Duchessa. "I may tell you, my friend, that you have made a conquest, and one that is perhaps the most desirable of all."
"Ah!" thought Fabrizio, "now for some joke about little Marietta."
He was mistaken; the Conte went on to say:
"Your Gospel simplicity has won the heart of our venerable Archbishop, Father Landriani.
One of these days we are going to make a Grand Vicar of you, and the charming part of the whole joke is that the three existing Grand Vicars, all most deserving men, workers, two of whom, I fancy, were Grand Vicars before you were born, will demand, in a finely worded letter addressed to their Archbishop, that you shall rank first among them.
These gentlemen base their plea in the first place upon your virtues, and also upon the fact that you are the great-nephew of the famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo.
When I learned the respect that they felt for your virtues, I immediately made the senior Vicar General's nephew a captain; he had been a lieutenant ever since the siege of Tarragona by Marshal Suchet."
"Go right away now, dressed as you are, and pay a friendly visit to your Archbishop!" exclaimed the Duchessa.
"Tell him about your sister's wedding; when he hears that she is to be a Duchessa, he will think you more apostolic than ever.
But, remember, you know nothing of what the Conte has just told you about your future promotion."