You ought to have seen the indignant air of our hero under the searching eye of this police official, adorned with his brass jewelry.
"If I were to kill him," thought Fabrizio, "I should be convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty years in the galleys, or to death, which is a great deal less terrible than the Spielberg with a chain weighing a hundred and twenty pounds on each foot and nothing but eight ounces of bread to live on; and that lasts for twenty years; so that I should not get out until I was forty-four."
Fabrizio's logic overlooked the fact that, as he had burned his own passport, there was nothing to indicate to the police official that he was the rebel, Fabrizio del Dongo.
Our hero was sufficiently alarmed, as we have seen; he would have been a great deal more so could he have read the thoughts that were disturbing the official's mind.
This man was a friend of Giletti; one may judge of his surprise when he saw his friend's passport in the hands of a stranger; his first impulse was to have that stranger arrested, then he reflected that Giletti might easily have sold his passport to this fine young man who apparently had just been doing something disgraceful at Parma.
"If I arrest him," he said to himself, "Giletti will get into trouble; they will at once discover that he has sold his passport; on the other hand, what will my chiefs say if it is proved that I, a friend of Giletti, put a visa on his passport when it was carried by someone else."
The official got up with a yawn and said to Fabrizio:
"Wait a minute, sir"; then, adopting a professional formula, added:
"A difficulty has arisen."
On which Fabrizio murmured:
"What is going to arise is my escape."
As a matter of fact, the official went out of the office, leaving the door open; and the passport was left lying on the deal table.
"The danger is obvious," thought Fabrizio; "I shall take my passport and walk slowly back across the bridge; I shall tell the constable, if he questions me, that I forgot to have my passport examined by the commissary of police in the last village in the State of Parma."
Fabrizio had already taken the passport in his hand when, to his unspeakable astonishment, he heard the clerk with the brass jewelry say:
"Upon my soul, I can't do any more work; the heat is stifling; I am going to the caffe to have half a glass.
Go into the office when you have finished your pipe, there's a passport to be stamped; the party is in there."
Fabrizio, who was stealing out on tiptoe, found himself face to face with a handsome young man who was saying to himself, or rather humming:
"Well, let us see this passport; I'll put my scrawl on it.
"Where does the gentleman wish to go?"
"To Mantua, Venice and Ferrara."
"Ferrara it is," said the official, whistling; he took up a die, stamped the visa in blue ink on the passport, rapidly wrote in the words:
"Mantua, Venice and Ferrara," in the space left blank by the stamp, then waved his hand several times in the air, signed, and dipped his pen in the ink to make his flourish, which he executed slowly and with infinite pains.
Fabrizio followed every movement of his pen; the clerk studied his flourish with satisfaction, adding five or six finishing touches, then handed the passport back to Fabrizio, saying in a careless tone:
"A good journey, sir!"
Fabrizio made off at a pace the alacrity of which he was endeavouring to conceal, when he felt himself caught by the left arm: instinctively his hand went to the hilt of his dagger, and if he had not observed that he was surrounded by houses he might perhaps have done something rash.
The man who was touching his left arm, seeing that he appeared quite startled, said by way of apology:
"But I called the gentleman three times, and got no answer; has the gentleman anything to declare before the customs?"
"I have nothing on me but my handkerchief; I am going to a place quite near here, to shoot with one of my family."
He would have been greatly embarrassed had he been asked to name this relative.
What with the great heat and his various emotions, Fabrizio was as wet as if he had fallen into the Po.
"I am not lacking in courage to face actors, but clerks with brass jewelry send me out of my mind; I shall make a humorous sonnet out of that to amuse the Duchessa."
Entering Casalmaggiore, Fabrizio at once turned to the right along a mean street which leads down to the Po.
"I am in great need," he said to himself, "of the succour of Bacchus and Ceres," and he entered a shop outside which there hung a grey clout fastened to a stick; on the clout was inscribed the word Trattoria.
A meagre piece of bed-linen supported on two slender wooden hoops and hanging down to within three feet of the ground sheltered the doorway of the Trattoria from the vertical rays of the sun.
There, a half-undressed and extremely pretty woman received our hero with respect, which gave him the keenest pleasure; he hastened to inform her that he was dying of hunger.
While the woman was preparing his breakfast, there entered a man of about thirty; he had given no greeting on coming in; suddenly he rose from the bench on which he had flung himself down with a familiar air, and said to Fabrizio:
"Eccellenza, la riverisco!" (Excellency, your servant!) Fabrizio was in the highest spirits at the moment, and, instead of forming sinister plans, replied with a laugh:
"And how the devil do you know my Excellency?"
"What! Doesn't Your Excellency remember Lodovico, one of the Signora Duchessa Sanseverina's coachmen?
At Sacca, the place in the country where we used to go every year, I always took fever; I asked the Signora for a pension, and retired from service.
Now I am rich; instead of the pension of twelve scudi a year, which was the most I was entitled to expect, the Signora told me that, to give me the leisure to compose sonnets, for I am a poet in the lingua volgare, she would allow me twenty-four scudi and the Signor Conte told me that if ever I was in difficulties I had only to come and tell him.
I have had the honour to drive Monsignore for a stage, when he went to make his retreat, like a good Christian, in the Certosa of Velleja."
Fabrizio studied the man's face and began to recognise him. He had been one of the smartest coachmen in the Sanseverina establishment; now that he was what he called rich his entire clothing consisted of a coarse shirt, in holes, and a pair of cloth breeches, dyed black at some time in he past, which barely came down to his knees; a pair of shoes and a villainous hat completed his equipment. In addition to this, he had not shaved for a fortnight.
As he ate his omelette Fabrizio engaged in conversation with him, absolutely as between equals; he thought he detected that Lodovico was in love with their hostess.
He finished his meal rapidly, then said in a low voice to Lodovico:
"I want a word with you."
"Your Excellency can speak openly before her, she is a really good woman," said Lodovico with a tender air.
"Very well, my friends," said Fabrizio without hesitation, "I am in trouble, and have need of your help.
First of all, there is nothing political about my case; I have simply and solely killed a man who wanted to murder me because I spoke to his mistress."
"Poor young man!" said the landlady.