But if I abandon a project I have been following for so long, what will the Duchessa say when I tell her of my essays in love?"
One evening when, on the point of giving up everything, he was moralising thus to himself, as he strolled under the tall trees which divided Fausta's palazzo from the citadel, he observed that he was being followed by a spy of diminutive stature; in vain did he attempt to shake him off by turning down various streets, this microscopic being seemed always to cling to his heels.
Growing impatient, he dashed into a lonely street running along the bank of the Parma, where his men were ambushed; on a signal from him they leaped out upon the poor little spy, who flung himself at their feet; it was Bettina, Fausta's maid; after three days of boredom and seclusion, disguised as a man to escape the dagger of Conte M——, of whom her mistress and she were in great dread, she had undertaken to come out and tell Fabrizio to see someone who loved him passionately and was burning to see him, but that the said person could not appear any more in the church of San Giovanni.
"The time has come," Fabrizio said to himself, "hurrah for persistence!"
The little maid was exceedingly pretty, a fact which took Fabrizio's mind from his moralisings.
She told him that the avenue and all the streets through which he had passed that evening were being jealously watched, though quite unobtrusively, by M——'s spies.
They had taken rooms on the ground floors or on the first storeys of the houses; hidden behind the shutters and keeping absolutely silent, they observed everything that went on in the apparently quite deserted street, and heard all that was said.
"If those spies had recognised my voice," said little Bettina, "I should have been stabbed without mercy as soon as I got back to the house, and my poor mistress with me, perhaps."
This terror rendered her charming in Fabrizio's eyes.
"Conte M———," she went on, "is furious, and the Signora knows that he will stick at nothing… . She told me to say to you that she would like to be a hundred leagues away from here with you."
Then she gave an account of the scene on St. Stephen's day, and of the fury of M——, who had missed none of the glances and signs of affection which Fausta, madly in love that day with Fabrizio, had directed towards him.
The Conte had drawn his dagger, had seized Fausta by the hair, and, but for her presence of mind, she must have perished.
Fabrizio made the pretty Bettina come up to a little apartment which he had near there.
He told her that he came from Turin, and was the son of an important personage who happened at that moment to be in Parma, which meant that he had to be most careful in his movements.
Bettina replied with a smile that he was a far grander gentleman than he chose to appear.
It took our hero some little time to realise that the charming girl took him for no less a personage than the Crown Prince himself.
Fausta was beginning to be frightened, and to love Fabrizio; she had taken the precaution of not mentioning his name to her maid, but of speaking to her always of the Prince.
Finally Fabrizio admitted to the pretty girl that she had guessed aright:
"But if my name gets out," he added, "in spite of the great passion of which I have furnished your mistress with so many proofs, I shall be obliged to cease to see her, and at once my father's Ministers, those rascally jokers whom I shall bring down from their high places some day, will not fail to send her an order to quit the country which up to now she has been adorning with her presence."
Towards morning, Fabrizio arranged with the little lady's maid a number of plans by which he might gain admission to Fausta's house. He summoned Lodovico and another of his retainers, a man of great cunning, who came to an understanding with Bettina while he himself wrote the most extravagant letter to Fausta; the situation allowed all the exaggerations of tragedy, and Fabrizio did not miss the opportunity.
It was not until day was breaking that he parted from the little lady's maid, whom he left highly satisfied with the ways of the young Prince.
It had been repeated a hundred times over that, Fausta having now come to an understanding with her lover, the latter was no longer to pass to and fro beneath the windows of the little palazzo except when he could be admitted there, and that then a signal would be given.
But Fabrizio, in love with Bellina, and believing himself to have come almost to the point wilh Fausla, could not confine himself to his village two leagues outside Parma.
The following evening, about midnighl, he came on horseback and with a good escort to sing under Fausta's windows an air then in fashion, the words of which he altered.
"Is not this the way in which our friends the lovers behave?" he asked himself.
Now that Fausta had shewn a desire to meet him, all this pursuit seemed to Fabrizio very tedious.
"No, I am not really in love in the least," he assured himself as he sang (none too well) beneath the windows of the little palazzo;
"Bellina seems lo me a hundred limes preferable to Fausta, and it is by her that I should like to be received at this moment."
Fabrizio, distinclly bored, was returning to his village when, five hundred yards from Fausta's palazzo, fifteen or twenty men flung themselves upon him; four of them seized his horse by the bridle, two others look hold of his arms.
Lodovico and Fabrizio's bravi were attacked, bui managed to escape; they fired several shots with their pistols.
All Ihis was the affair of an instanl: fifty lighted torches appeared in Ihe slreet in the twinkling of an eye, as though by magic.
All these men were well armed.
Fabrizio had jumped down from his horse in spite of Ihe men who were holding him; he iried lo clear a space round him; he even wounded one of Ihe men who was gripping his arms in hands like a pair of vices; bui he was greally surprised to hear Ihis man say lo him, in the most respectful tone:
"Your Highness will give me a good pension for Ihis wound, which will be better for me than falling inlo the crime of high treason by drawing my sword againsl my Prince."
"So Ihis is Ihe punishment I get for my folly," thought Fabrizio; "I shall have damned myself for a sin which did not seem to me in the least attractive."
Scarcely had this little attempt at a battle finished, when a number of lackeys in full livery appeared with a sedan-chair gilded and painted in an odd fashion. It was one of those grotesque chairs used by masked revellers at carnival time.
Six men, with daggers in their hands, requested His Highness lo get into it, telling him that the cold night air might be injurious to his voice: they affected the most reverential forms, the title "Prince" being every moment repeated and almost shouted.
The procession began to move on.
Fabrizio counted in the street more than fifty men carrying lighted torches.
It might be about one o'clock in the morning; all the populace was gazing out of the windows, the whole thing went off with a certain gravity.
"I was afraid of dagger-thrusts on Conte M——'s part," Fabrizio said to himself; "he contents himself with making a fool of me; I had not suspected him of such good taste.
But does he really think that he has the Prince to deal with?
If he knows that I am only Fabrizio, ware the dirk!"
These fifty men carrying torches and the twenty armed men, after stopping for a long interval under Fausta's windows, proceeded to parade before the finest palazzi in the town.
A pair of maggiordomi, posted one on either side of the sedan-chair, asked His Highness from time to time whether he had any order to give them.
Fabrizio took care not to lose his head; by the light which the torches cast he saw that Lodovico and his men were following the procession as closely as possible.
Fabrizio said to himself:
"Lodovico has only nine or ten men, and dares not attack."
From the interior of his sedan-chair he could see quite plainly that the men responsible for carrying out this practical joke were armed to the teeth.
He made a show of talking and laughing with the maggiordomi who were looking after him.