At the thought of this, all the Duchessa's anger was rekindled.
"The Prince has betrayed me," she said to herself, "and in how dastardly a way!
There is no excuse for the man: he has brains, discernment, he is capable of reasoning; there is nothing base in him but his passions.
The Conte and I have noticed it a score of times; his mind becomes vulgar only when he imagines that some one has tried to insult him.
Well, Fabrizio's crime has nothing to do with politics, it is a trifling homicide, just like a hundred others that are reported every day in his happy States, and the Conte has sworn to me that he has taken pains to procure the most accurate information, and that Fabrizio is innocent.
That Giletti was certainly not lacking in courage: finding himself within a few yards of the frontier, he suddenly felt the temptation to rid himself of an attractive rival."
The Duchessa paused for a long time to consider whether it were possible to believe in Fabrizio's guilt, not that she felt that it would have been a very grave sin in a gentleman of her nephew's rank to rid himself of the impertinence of a mummer; but, in her despair, she was beginning to feel vaguely that she would be obliged to fight to prove Fabrizio's innocence.
"No," she told herself finally, "here is a decisive proof: he is like poor Pietranera, he always has all his pockets stuffed with weapons, and that day he was carrying only a wretched singled-barrelled gun, and even that he had borrowed from one of the workmen.
"I hate the Prince because he has betrayed me, and betrayed me in the most dastardly fashion; after his written pardon, he had the poor boy seized at Bologna, and all that.
But I shall settle that account."
About five o'clock in the morning, the Duchessa, crushed by this prolonged fit of despair, rang for her women, who screamed. Seeing her on her bed, fully dressed, with her diamonds, pale as the sheet on which she lay and with closed eyes, it seemed to them as though they beheld her laid out in state after death.
They would have supposed that she had completely lost consciousness had they not remembered that she had just rung for them.
A few rare tears trickled from time to time down her insentient cheeks; her women gathered from a sign which she made that she wished to be put to bed.
Twice that evening after the party at the Minister Zurla's, the Conte had called on the Duchessa; being refused admittance, he wrote to her that he wished to ask her advice as to his conduct. Ought he to retain his post after the insult that they had dared to offer him?
The Conte went on to say:
"The young man is innocent; but, were he guilty, ought they to arrest him without first informing me, his acknowledged protector?"
The Duchessa did not see this letter until the following day.
The Conte had no virtue; one may indeed add that what the Liberals understand by virtue (seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number) seemed to him silly; he believed himself bound to seek first and foremost the happiness of Conte Mosca della Rovere; but he was entirely honourable, and perfectly sincere when he spoke of his resignation.
Never in his life had he told the Duchessa a lie; she, as it happened, did not pay the slightest attention to this letter; her attitude, and a very painful attitude it was, had been adopted: to pretend to forget Fabrizio; after that effort, nothing else mattered to her.
Next day, about noon, the Conte, who had called ten times at the palazzo Sanseverina, was at length admitted; he was appalled when he saw the Duchessa… .
"She looks forty!" he said to himself; "and yesterday she was so brilliant, so young! … Everyone tells me that, during her long conversation with Clelia Conti, she looked every bit as young and far more attractive."
The Duchessa's voice, her tone were as strange as her personal appearance.
This tone, divested of all passion, of all human interest, of all anger, turned the Conte pale; it reminded him of the manner of a friend of his who, a few months earlier, when on the point of death, and after receiving the Last Sacrament, had sent for him to talk to him.
After some minutes the Duchessa was able to speak to him.
She looked at him, and her eyes remained dead.
"Let us part, my dear Conte," she said to him in a faint but quite articulate voice which she tried to make sound friendly; "let us part, we must!
Heaven is my witness that, for five years, my behaviour towards you has been irreproachable. You have given me a brilliant existence, in place of the boredom which would have been my sad portion at the castle of Grianta; without you I should have reached old age several years sooner… .
For my part, my sole occupation has been to try to make you find happiness. It is because I love you that I propose to you this parting a l'amiable, as they say in France."
The Conte did not understand; she was obliged to repeat her statement several times.
He grew deadly pale, and, flinging himself on his knees by her bedside, said to her all the things that profound astonishment, followed by the keenest despair, can inspire in a man who is passionately in love.
At every moment he offered to hand in his resignation and to follow his mistress to some retreat a thousand leagues from Parma.
"You dare to speak to me of departure, and Fabrizio is here!" she at length exclaimed, half rising.
But seeing that the sound of Fabrizio's name made a painful impression, she added after a moment's quiet, gently pressing the Conte's hand:
"No, dear friend, I am not going to tell you that I have loved you with that passion and those transports which one no longer feels, it seems to me, after thirty, and I am already a long way past that age.
They will have told you that I was in love with Fabrizio, for I know that the rumour has gone round in this wicked court." (Her eyes sparkled for the first time in this conversation, as she uttered the word wicked.)
"I swear to you before God, and upon Fabrizio's life, that never has there passed between him and me the tiniest thing which could not have borne the eyes of a third person.
Nor shall I say to you that I love him exactly as a sister might; I love him instinctively, so to speak.
I love in him his courage, so simple and so perfect that, one may say, he is not aware of it himself; I remember that this sort of admiration began on his return from Waterloo.
He was still a boy then, for all his seventeen years; his great anxiety was to know whether he had really been present at the battle, and, if so, whether he could say that he had fought, when he had not marched to the attack of any enemy battery or column.
It was during the serious discussions which we used to have together on this important subject that I began to see in him a perfect charm.
His great soul revealed itself to me; what sophisticated falsehoods would a well-bred young man, in his place, have flaunted!
Well then, if he is not happy I cannot be happy.
There, that is a statement which well describes the state of my heart; if it is not the truth it is at any rate all of it that I see."
The Conte, encouraged by this tone of frankness and intimacy, tried to kiss her hand; she drew it back with a sort of horror.
"The time is past," she said to him; "I am a woman of thirty-seven, I find myself on the threshold of old age, I already feel all its discouragements, and perhaps I have even drawn near to the tomb.
That is a terrible moment, by all one hears, and yet it seems to me that I desire it.
I feel the worst symptom of old age; my heart is extinguished by this frightful misfortune, I can no longer love.
I see in you now, dear Conte, only the shade of someone who was dear to me.
I shall say more, it is gratitude, simply and solely, that makes me speak to you thus."
"What is to become of me," the Conte repeated, "of me who feel that I am attached to you more passionately than in the first days of our friendship, when I saw you at the Scala?"