I kissed them, carefully so as not to hurt them.
I turned the soil reverently round the dear tree.
At once filled with a fresh enthusiasm, I crossed the mountain; I came to Menaggio: I needed a passport to enter Switzerland.
The time had flown, it was already one o'clock in the morning when I found myself at Vasi's door.
I thought that I should have to knock for a long time to arouse him, but he was sitting up with three of his friends.
At the first word I uttered: 'You are going to join Napoleon,' he cried; and he fell on my neck.
The others too embraced me with rapture.
'Why am I married?' I heard one of them say."
Signora Pietranera had grown pensive. She felt that she must offer a few objections.
If Fabrizio had had the slightest experience of life, he would have seen quite well that the Contessa herself did not believe in the sound reasons which she hastened to urge on him.
But, failing experience, he had resolution; he did not condescend even to hear what those reasons were.
The Contessa presently came down to making him promise that at least he would inform his mother of his intention.
"She will tell my sisters, and those women will betray me without knowing it!" cried Fabrizio with a sort of heroic grandeur.
"You should speak more respectfully," said the Contessa, smiling through her tears, "of the sex that will make your fortune; for you will never appeal to men, you have too much fire for prosaic souls."
The Marchesa dissolved in tears on learning her son's strange plan; she could not feel its heroism, and did everything in her power to keep him at home.
When she was convinced that nothing in the world, except the walls of a prison, could prevent him from starting, she handed over to him the little money that she possessed; then she remembered that she had also, the day before, received nine or ten small diamonds, worth perhaps ten thousand francs, which the Marchese had entrusted to her to take to Milan to be set.
Fabrizio's sisters came ulto their mother's room while the Contessa was sewing these diamonds into our hero's travelling coat; he handed the poor women back their humble napoleons.
His sisters were so enthusiastic over his plan, they kissed him with so clamorous a joy that he took in his hand the diamonds that had still to be concealed and was for starting off there and then.
"You will betray me without knowing it," he said to his sisters. "Since I have all this money, there is no need to take clothes; one can get them anywhere."
He embraced these dear ones and set off at once without even going back to his own room.
He walked so fast, afraid of being followed by men on horseback, that before night he had entered Lugano.
He was now, thank heaven, in a Swiss town, and had no longer any fear of being waylaid on the lonely road by constables in his father's pay.
From this haven, he wrote him a fine letter, a boyish weakness which gave strength and substance to the Marchese's anger.
Fabrizio took the post, crossed the Saint-Gothard; his progress was rapid, and he entered France by Pontarlier.
The Emperor was in Paris.
There Fabrizio's troubles began; he had started out with the firm intention of speaking to the Emperor: it had never occurred to him that this might be a difficult matter.
At Milan, ten times daily he used to see Prince Eugene, and could have spoken to him had he wished.
In Paris, every morning he went to the courtyard of the Tuileries to watch the reviews held by Napoleon; but never was he able to come near the Emperor.
Our hero imagined all the French to be profoundly disturbed, as he himself was, by the extreme peril in which their country lay.
At table in the hotel in which he was staying, he made no mystery about his plans; he found several young men with charming manners, even more enthusiastic than himself, who, in a very few days, did not fail to rob him of all the money that he possessed.
Fortunately, out of pure modesty, he had said nothing of the diamonds given him by his mother.
On the morning when, after an orgy overnight, he found that he had been decidedly robbed, he bought a fine pair of horses, engaged as servant an old soldier, one of the dealer's grooms, and, filled with contempt for the young men of Paris with their fine speeches, set out to join the army.
He knew nothing except that it was concentrated near Maubeuge.
No sooner had he reached the frontier than he felt that it would be absurd for him to stay in a house, toasting himself before a good fire, when there were soldiers in bivouac outside.
In spite of the remonstrances of his servant, who was not lacking in common sense, he rashly made his way to the bivouacs on the extreme frontier, on the road into Belgium.
No sooner had he reached the first battalion that was resting by the side of the road than the soldiers began to stare at the sight of this young civilian in whose appearance there was nothing that suggested uniform.
Night was falling, a cold wind blew.
Fabrizio went up to a fire and offered to pay for hospitality.
The soldiers looked at one another amazed more than anything at the idea of payment, and willingly made room for him by the fire.
His servant constructed a shelter for him.
But, an hour later, the adjudant of the regiment happening to pass near the bivouac, the soldiers went to report to him the arrival of this stranger speaking bad French.
The adjudant questioned Fabrizio, who spoke to him of his enthusiasm for the Emperor in an accent which aroused grave suspicion; whereupon this under-officer requested our hero to go with him to the Colonel, whose headquarters were in a neighbouring farm.
Fabrizio's servant came up with the two horses.
The sight of them seemed to make so forcible an impression upon the adjudant that immediately he changed his mind and began to interrogate the servant also.
The latter, an old soldier, guessing his questioner's plan of campaign from the first, spoke of the powerful protection which his master enjoyed, adding that certainly they would not bone his fine horses.
At once a soldier called by the adjudant put his hand on the servant's collar; another soldier took charge of the horses, and, with an air of severity, the adjudant ordered Fabrizio to follow him and not to answer back.
After making him cover a good league on foot, in the darkness rendered apparently more intense by the fires of the bivouacs which lighted the horizon on every side, the adjutant handed Fabrizio over to an officer of gendarmerie who, with a grave air, asked for his papers.
Fabrizio showed his passport, which described him as a dealer in barometers travelling with his wares.
"What fools they are!" cried the officer; "this really is too much."
He put a number of questions to our hero, who spoke of the Emperor and of Liberty in terms of the keenest enthusiasm; whereupon the officer of gendarmerie went off in peals of laughter.