But next day she would be laughing as before: it was the lamentations of her sister-in-law, the Marchesa, that produced these sombre impressions on a mind naturally so active.
"Are we to spend all the youth that is left to us in this gloomy castle?" the Marchesa used to exclaim.
Before the Contessa came, she had not had the courage even to feel these regrets.
Such was their life during the winter of 1814 and 1815.
On two occasions, in spite of her poverty, the Contessa went to spend a few days at Milan; she was anxious to see a sublime ballet by Vigano, given at the Scala, and the Marchese raised no objections to his wife's accompanying her sister-in-law.
They went to draw the arrears of the little pension, and it was the penniless widow of the Cisalpine General who lent a few sequins to the millionaire Marchesa del Dongo.
These parties were delightful; they invited old friends to dinner, and consoled themselves by laughing at everything, just like children.
This Italian gaiety, full of surprise and brio, made them forget the atmosphere of sombre gloom which the stern faces of the Marchese and his elder son spread around them at Grianta.
Fabrizio, though barely sixteen, represented the head of the house admirably.
On the 7th of March, 1815, the ladies had been back for two days after a charming little excursion to Milan; they were strolling under the fine avenue of plane trees, then recently extended to the very edge of the lake.
A boat appeared, coming from the direction of Como, and made strange signals.
One of the Marchese's agents leaped out upon the bank: Napoleon had just landed from the Gulf of Juan.
Europe was kind enough to be surprised at this event, which did not at all surprise the Marchese del Dongo; he wrote his Sovereign a letter full of the most cordial effusion; he offered him his talents and several millions of money, and informed him once again that his Ministers were Jacobins and in league with the ringleaders in Paris.
On the 8th of March, at six o'clock in the morning, the Marchese, wearing all his orders, was making his elder son dictate to him the draft of a third political despatch; he was solemnly occupied in transcribing this in his fine and careful hand, upon paper that bore the Sovereign's effigy as a watermark.
At the same moment, Fabrizio was knocking at Contessa Pietranera's door.
"I am off," he informed her, "I am going to join the Emperor who is also King of Italy; he was such a good friend to your husband!
I shall travel through Switzerland.
Last night, at Menaggio, my friend Vasi, the dealer in barometers, gave me his passport; now you must give me a few napoleons, for I have only a couple on me; but if necessary I shall go on foot."
The Contessa wept with joy and grief.
"Great Heavens!
What can have put that idea into your head?" she cried, seizing Fabrizio's hands in her own.
She rose and went to fetch from the linen-cupboard, where it was carefully hidden, a little purse embroidered with pearls; it was all that she possessed in the world.
"Take it," she said to Fabrizio; "but, in heaven's name, do not let yourself be killed.
What will your poor mother and I have left, if you are taken from us?
As for Napoleon's succeeding, that, my poor boy, is impossible; our gentlemen will certainly manage to destroy him.
Did you not hear, a week ago, at Milan the story of the twenty-three plots to assassinate him, all so carefully planned, from which it was only by a miracle that he escaped?
And at that time he was all-powerful.
And you have seen that it is not the will to destroy him that is lacking in our enemies; France ceased to count after he left it."
It was in a tone of the keenest emotion that the Contessa spoke to Fabrizio of the fate in store for Napoleon.
"In allowing you to go to join him, I am sacrificing to him the dearest thing I have in the world," she said.
Fabrizio's eyes grew moist, he shed tears as he embraced the Contessa, but his determination to be off was never for a moment shaken.
He explained with effusion to this beloved friend all the reasons that had led to his decision, reasons which we take the liberty of finding highly attractive.
"Yesterday evening, it wanted seven minutes to six, we were strolling, you remember, by the shore of the lake along the plane avenue, below the casa Sommariva, and we were facing the south.
It was there that I first noticed, in the distance, the boat that was coming from Como, bearing such great tidings.
As I looked at this boat without thinking of the Emperor, and only envying the lot of those who are free to travel, suddenly I felt myself seized by a profound emotion.
The boat touched ground, the agent said something in a low tone to my father, who changed colour, and took us aside to announce the terrible news.
I turned towards the lake with no other object but to hide the tears of joy that were flooding my eyes.
Suddenly, at an immense height in the sky and on my right-hand side, I saw an eagle, the bird of Napoleon; he flew majestically past making for Switzerland, and consequently for Paris.
'And I too,' I said to myself at that moment, 'will fly across Switzerland with the speed of an eagle, and will go to offer that great man a very little thing, but the only thing, after all, that I have to offer him, the support of my feeble arm.
He wished to give us a country, and he loved my uncle.'
At that instant, while I was gazing at the eagle, in some strange way my tears ceased to flow; and the proof that this idea came from above is that at the same moment, without any discussion, I made up my mind to go, and saw how the journey might be made.
In the twinkling of an eye all the sorrows that, as you know, are poisoning my life, especially on Sundays, seemed to be swept away by a breath from heaven.
I saw that mighty figure of Italy raise herself from the mire in which the Germans keep her plunged; [2] she stretched out her mangled arms still half loaded with chains towards her King and Liberator.
'And I,' I said to myself, 'a son as yet unknown to fame of that unhappy Mother, I shall go forth to die or to conquer with that man marked out by destiny, who sought to cleanse us from the scorn that is heaped upon us by even the most enslaved and the vilest among the inhabitants of Europe.'
"You know," he added in a low tone drawing nearer to' the Contessa, and fastening upon her a pair of eyes from which fire darted, "you know that young chestnut which my mother, in the winter in which I was born, planted with her own hands beside the big spring in our forest, two leagues from here; before doing anything else I wanted to visit it.
'The spring is not far advanced,' I said to myself, 'very well, if my tree is in leaf, that shall be a sign for me.
I also must emerge from the state of torpor in which I am languishing in this cold and dreary castle.'
Do you not feel that these old blackened walls, the symbols now as they were once the instruments of despotism, are a perfect image of the dreariness of winter?
They are to me what winter is to my tree.
"Would you believe it, Gina? Yesterday evening at half past seven I came to my chestnut; it had leaves, pretty little leaves that were quite big already!