"I am leaving the States of Your Serene Highness for ever, so as never to hear the names of the Fiscal Rassi and of the other infamous assassins who have condemned my nephew and so many others to death; if Your Serene Highness does not wish to introduce a feeling of bitterness into the last moments that I shall pass in the presence of a Prince who is courteous and intelligent when he is not led astray, I beg him most humbly not to recall to me the thought of those infamous judges who sell themselves for a thousand scudi or a Cross."
The admirable—and, above all, genuine—accent in which these words were uttered made the Prince shudder; he feared for a moment to see his dignity compromised by an accusation even more direct, but on the whole his sensation soon became one of pleasure; he admired the Duchessa; her face and figure attained at that moment to a sublime beauty.
"Great God! How beautiful she is!" the Prince said to himself; "one ought to make some concessions to a womar who is so unique, when there probably is not another like her in the whole of Italy.
Oh well, with a little policy it might not be impossible one day to make her my mistress: there is a wide gulf between a creature like this and that doll of a Marchesa Balbi, who moreover robs my poor subjects of at least three hundred thousand francs every year… . but did I hear aright?" he thought suddenly; "she said: 'condemned my nephew and so many others.' " Then his anger boiled over, and it was with a stiffness worthy of his supreme rank that the Prince said, after an interval of silence:
"And what would one have to do to make the Signora not leave us?"
"Something of which you are not capable," replied the Duchessa in an accent of the most bitter irony and the most unconcealed contempt.
The Prince was beside himself, but his professional training as an Absolute Sovereign gave him the strength to overcome his first impulse.
"I must have this woman," he said to himself; "so much I owe to myself, then she must be made to die of shame… . If she leaves this cabinet, I shall never see her again."
But, mad with rage and hatred as he was at this moment, where was he to find an answer that would at once satisfy the requirements of what he owed to himself and induce the Duchessa not to abandon his court immediately?
"She cannot," he said to himself, "repeat or turn to ridicule a gesture," and he placed himself between the Duchessa and the door of his cabinet.
Presently he heard a tap at this door.
"Who is the creature," he cried, shouting with the full force of his lungs, "who is the creature who comes here to thrust his fatuous presence upon me?"
Poor General Fontana shewed a pallid face, of complete discomfiture, and it was with the air of a man in his last agony that he stammered these inarticulate words:
"His Excellency the Conte Mosca solicits the honour of being introduced."
"Let him come in," said, or rather shouted, the Prince, and, as Mosca bowed :
"Well," he said to him, "here is the Signora Duchessa Sanseverina, who informs me that she is leaving Parma immediately to go and settle at Naples, and who, incidentally, is being most impertinent to me."
"What!" said Mosca turning pale.
"Oh! So you did not know of this plan of departure?"
"Not a word; I left the Signora at six o'clock, happy and content."
This statement had an incredible effect on the Prince.
First of all he looked at Mosca; his increasing pallor shewed the Prince that he was telling the truth and was in no way an accomplice of the Duchessa's desperate action.
"In that case," he said to himself, "I lose her for ever; pleasure and vengeance, all goes in a flash.
At Naples she will make epigrams with her nephew Fabrizio about the great fury of the little Prince of Parma."
He looked at the Duchessa: the most violent scorn and anger were disputing the possession of her heart; her eyes were fixed at that moment on Conte Mosca, and the exquisite curves of that lovely mouth expressed the bitterest disdain.
The whole face seemed to be saying:
"Vile courtier!"
"So," thought the Prince after he had examined her, "I lose this means of bringing her back ' :> my country.
At this moment again, if she leaves this cabinet, she is lost to me; God knows the things she will say about my judges at Naples… . And with that spirit, and that divine power of persuasion which heaven has bestowed on her, she will make everyone believe her.
I shall be obliged to her for the reputation of a ridiculous tyrant, who gets up in the middle of the night to look under his bed… ."
Then, by an adroit move and as though he were intending to walk up and down the room to reduce his agitation, the Prince took his stand once again in front of the door of the cabinet; the Conte was on his right, at a distance of three paces, pale, shattered, and trembling so that he was obliged to seek support from the back of the armchair in which the Duchessa had been sitting during the earlier part of the audience, and which the Prince in a moment of anger had pushed across the floor.
The Conte was in love.
"If the Duchessa goes, I follow her," he said to himself; "but will she want me in her train?
That is the question."
On the Prince's left, the Duchessa, erect, her arms folded and pressed to her bosom, was looking at him with an admirable impatience: a complete and intense pallor had taken the place of the vivid colours which a moment earlier animated that sublime face.
The Prince, in contrast to the other two occupants of the room, had a red face and a troubled air; his left hand played convulsively with the Cross attached to the Grand Cordon of his Order which he wore under his coat: with his right hand he caressed his chin.
"What is to be done?" he asked the Conte, without knowing quite what he himself was doing, and carried away by the habit of consulting this other in everything.
"I can think of nothing, truly, Serene Highness," replied the Conte with the air of a man yielding up his last breath.
It was all he could do to pronounce the words of his answer. The tone of his voice gave the Prince the first consolation that his wounded pride had received during this audience, and this grain of happiness furnished him with a speech that gratified his vanity.
"Very well," he said, "I am the most reasonable of the three; I choose to make a complete elimination of my position in the world. I am going to speak as a friend"; and he added, with a fine smile of condescension, beautifully copied from the brave days of Louis XIV, "like a friend speaking to friends.
Signora Duchessa," he went on, "what is to be done to make you forget an untimely resolution?"
"Truly, I can think of nothing," replied the Duchessa with a deep sigh, "truly, I can think of nothing, I have such a horror of Parma."
There was no epigrammatic intention in this speech; one could see that sincerity itself spoke through her lips.
The Conte turned sharply towards her; his courtier's soul was scandalised; then he addressed a suppliant gaze to the Prince.
With great dignity and coolness the Prince allowed a moment to pass; then, addressing the Conte:
"I see," he said, "that your charming friend is altogether beside herself; it is quite simple, she adores her nephew." And, turning towards the Duchessa, he went on with a glance of the utmost gallantry and at the same time with the air which one adopts when quoting a line from a play:
"What must one do to please those lovely eyes?"
The Duchessa had had time for reflexion; in a firm and measured tone, and as though she were dictating her ultimatum, she replied:
"His Highness might write me a gracious letter, as he knows so well how to do; he might say to me that, not being at all convinced of the guilt of Fabrizio del Dongo, First Grand Vicar of the Archbishop, he will not sign the sentence when it is laid before him, and that these unjust proceedings shall have no consequences in the future."
"What, unjust!" cried the Prince, colouring to the whites of his eyes, and recovering his anger.
"That is not all," replied the Duchessa, with a Roman pride, "this very evening, and,'' she added, looking at the clock, "it is already a quarter past eleven, this very evening His Serene Highness will send word to the Marchesa Raversi that he advises her to retire to the country to recover from the fatigue which must have been caused her by a certain prosecution of which she was speaking in her drawing-room in the early hours of the evening."