You were at Ferrara!
And there was I looking for you everywhere in the place!
You must know that I quarrelled with the old woman, because she wanted to take me to Venice, where I knew quite well that you would never go, because you are on the Austrian black list.
I sold my gold necklace to come to Bologna, I had a presentiment that I should have the happiness of meeting you here; the old woman arrived two days after me.
And so I shan't ask you to come and see us, she would go on making those dreadful demands for money which make me so ashamed. We have lived very comfortably since the fatal day you remember, and haven't spent a quarter of what you gave us.
I would rather not come and see you at the Albergo del Pellegrino, it would be a pubblicita.
Try to find a little room in a quiet street, and at the Ave Maria" (nightfall) "I shall be here, under this same archway."
So saying, she took to her heels.
Chapter 13
All serious thoughts were forgotten on the unexpected appearance of this charming person.
Fabrizio settled himself to live at Bologna in a joy and security that were profound.
This artless tendency to take delight in everything that entered into his life shewed through in the letters which he wrote to the Duchessa; to such an extent that she began to take offence.
Fabrizio paid little attention; he wrote, however, in abridged symbols on the face of his watch:
"When I write to the D., must never say When I was prelate, when I was in the Church: that annoys her."
He had bought a pair of ponies with which he was greatly pleased: he used to harness them to a hired carriage whenever little Marietta wished to pay a visit to any of the enchanting spots in the neighbourhood of Bologna; almost every evening he drove her to the Cascata del Reno.
On their way back, he would call on the friendly Crescentini, who regarded himself as to some extent Marietta's father.
"Upon my soul, if this is the caffe life which seemed to me so ridiculous for a man of any worth, I did wrong to reject it," Fabrizio said to himself.
He forgot that he never went near a caffe except to read the Constitutionnel, and that, since he was a complete stranger to everyone in Bologna, the gratification of vanity did not enter at all into his present happiness.
When he was not with little Marietta, he was to be seen at the Observatory, where he was taking a course in astronomy; the Professor had formed a great affection for him, and Fabrizio used to lend him his ponies on Sundays, to cut a figure with his wife on the Corso della Montagnola.
He loathed the idea of harming any living creature, however undeserving that creature might be.
Marietta was resolutely opposed to his seeing the old woman, but one day, when she was at church, he went up to visit the Mammaccia, who flushed with anger when she saw him enter the room.
"This is a case where one plays the del Dongo," he said to himself.
"How much does Marietta earn in a month when she is working?" he cried, with the air with which a self-respecting young man, in Paris, enters the balcony at the Bouffes.
"Fifty scudi."
"You are lying, as usual; tell the truth, or, by God, you shall not have a centesimo!"
"Very well, she was getting twenty-two scudi in our company at Parma, when we had the bad luck to meet you; I was getting twelve scudi, and we used to give Giletti, our protector, a third of what each of us earned. Out of which, every month almost, Giletti would make Marietta a present; the present might be worth a couple of scudi."
"You're lying still; you never had more than four scudi.
But if you are good to Marietta, I will engage you as though I were an impresario; every month you shall have twelve scudi for yourself and twenty-two for her; but if I see her with red eyes, I make you bankrupt."
"You're very stiff and proud; very well, your fine generosity will be the ruin of us," replied the old woman in a furious tone; "we lose our avviamento" (our connexion).
"When we have the enormous misfortune to be deprived of Your Excellency's protection, we shall no longer be known in any of the companies, they will all be filled up; we shall not find any engagement, and, all through you, we shall starve to death."
"Go to the devil," said Fabrizio as he left the room.
"I shall not go to the devil, you impious wretch! But I will go straight away to the police office, where they shall learn from me that you are a Monsignore who has flung his cassock to the winds, and that you are no more Giuseppe Bossi than I am."
Fabrizio had already gone some way down the stairs. He returned.
"In the first place, the police know better than you what my real name may be; but if you take it into your head to denounce me, if you do anything so infamous," he said to her with great seriousness, "Lodovico shall talk to you, and it is not six slashes with the knife that your old carcass shall get, but two dozen, and you will be six months in hospital, and no tobacco."
The old woman turned pale, and dashed at Fabrizio's hand, which she tried to kiss.
"I accept with gratitude the provision that you are making for Marietta and me.
You look so good that I took you for a fool; and, you bear in mind, others besides myself may make the same error; I advise you always to adopt a more noblemanly air."
Then she added with an admirable impudence:
"You will reflect upon this good advice, and, as the winter is not far off, you will make Marietta and me a present of two good jackets of that fine English stuff which they sell at the big shop in the Piazza San Petronio."
The love of the pretty Marietta offered Fabrizio all the charms of the most delightful friendship, which set him dreaming of the happiness of the same order which he might have been finding in the Duchessa's company.
"But is it not a very pleasant thing," he asked himself at times, "that I am not susceptible to that exclusive and passionate preoccupation which they call love?
Among the intimacies into which chance has brought me at Novara or at Naples, have I ever met a woman whose company, even in the first few days, was to my mind preferable to riding a good horse that I did not know?
What they call love," he went on, "can that be just another lie?
I feel myself in love, no doubt, as I feel a good appetite at six o'clock!
Can it be out of this slightly vulgar propensity that those liars have fashioned the love of Othello, the love of Tancred?
Or am I indeed to suppose that I am constructed differently from other men?
That my soul should be lacking in one passion, why should that be?
It would be a singular destiny!"
At Naples, -especially in the latter part of his time there, Fabrizio had met women who, proud of their rank, their beauty and the position held in society by the adorers whom they had sacrificed to him, had attempted to lead him.
On discovering their intention, Fabrizio had broken with them in the most summary and open fashion.