"Let me confess to you one thing, dear friend, this talk of love bores me, and seems to me indecent.
Come," she said, trying to smile, but in vain, "courage!
Be the man of spirit, the judicious man, the man of resource in all circumstances. Be with me what you really are in the eyes of strangers, the most able man and the greatest politician that Italy has produced for ages."
The Conte rose, and paced the room in silence for some moments.
"Impossible, dear friend," he said to her at length; "I am rent asunder by the most violent passion, and you ask me to consult my reason.
There is no longer any reason for me!"
"Let us not speak of passion, I beg of you," she said in a dry tone; and this was the first time, after two hours of talk, that her voice assumed any expression whatever.
The Conte, in despair himself, sought to console her.
"He has betrayed me," she cried without in any way considering the reasons for hope which the Conte was setting before her; "he has betrayed me in the most dastardly fashion!"
Her deadly pallor ceased for a moment; but, even in this moment of violent excitement, the Conte noticed that she had not the strength to raise her arms.
"Great God!
Can it be possible," he thought, "that she is only ill? In that case, though, it would be the beginning of some very serious illness."
Then, filled with uneasiness, he proposed to call in the famous Razori, the leading physician in the place and in the whole of Italy.
"So you wish to give a stranger the pleasure of learning the whole extent of my despair? … Is that the counsel of a traitor or of a friend?"
And she looked at him with strange eyes.
"It is all over," he said to himself with despair, "she has no longer any love for me! And worse still, she no longer includes me even among the common men of honour.
"I may tell you," the Conte went on, speaking with emphasis, "that I have been anxious above all things to obtain details of the arrest which has thrown us into despair, and the curious thing is that still I know nothing positive; I have had the constables at the nearest station questioned, they saw the prisoner arrive by the Castelnuovo road and received orders to follow his sediola.
I at once sent off Bruno, whose zeal is as well known to you as his devotion; he has orders to go on from station to station until he finds out where and how Fabrizio was arrested."
On hearing him utter Fabrizio's name, the Duchessa was seized by a slight convulsion.
"Forgive me, my friend," she said to the Conte as soon as she was able to speak; "these details interest me greatly, give me them all, let me have a clear understanding of the smallest circumstances."
"Well, Signora," the Conte went on, assuming a somewhat lighter air in the hope of distracting her a little, "I have a good mind to send a confidential messenger to Bruno and to order him to push on as far as Bologna; it was from there, perhaps, that our young friend was carried off.
What is the date of his last letter?"
"Tuesday, five days ago."
"Had it been opened in the post?"
"No trace of any opening.
I ought to tell you that it was written on horrible paper; the address is in a woman's hand, and that address bears the name of an old laundress who is related to my maid.
The laundress believes that it is something to do with a love affair, and Cecchina refunds her for the carriage of the letters without adding anything further."
The Conte, who had adopted quite the tone of a man of business, tried to discover, by questioning the Duchessa, which could have been the day of the abduction from Bologna.
He only then perceived, he who had ordinarily so much tact, that this was the right tone to adopt. These details interested the unhappy woman and seemed to distract her a little.
If the Conte had not been in love, this simple idea would have occurred to him as soon as he entered the room.
The Duchessa sent him away in order that he might without delay despatch fresh orders to the faithful Bruno.
As they were momentarily considering the question whether there had been a sentence passed before the moment at which the Prince signed the note addressed to the Duchessa, the latter with a certain determination seized the opportunity to say to the Conte:
"I shall not reproach you in the least for having omitted the words unjust proceedings in the letter which you wrote and he signed, it was the courtier's instinct that gripped you by the throat; unconsciously you preferred your master's interest to your friend's.
You have placed your actions under my orders, dear Conte, and that for a long time past, but it is not in your power to change your nature; you have great talents for the part of Minister, but you have also the instinct of their trade.
The suppression of the word unjust was my ruin; but far be it from me to reproach you for it in any way, it was the fault of your instinct and not of your will.
"Bear in mind," she went on, changing her tone, and with the most imperious air, "that I am by no means unduly afflicted by the abduction of Fabrizio, that I have never had the slightest intention of removing myself from this place, that I am full of respect for the Prince.
That is what you have to say, and this is what I, for my part, wish to say to you: 'As I intend to have the entire control of my own behaviour for the future, I wish to part from you a l'amiable, that is to say as a good and old friend.
Consider that I am sixty, the young woman is dead In me, I can no longer form an exaggerated idea of anything in the world, I can no longer love.'
But I should be even more wretched than I am were I to compromise your future.
It may enter into my plans to give myself the appearance of having a young lover, and I should not like to see you distressed.
I can swear to you by Fabrizio's happiness"—she stopped for half a minute after these words —"that never have I been guilty of any infidelity to you, and that in five, whole years.
It is a long time," she said; she tried to smile; her pallid cheeks were convulsed, but her lips were unable to part. "I swear to you even that I have never either planned or wished such a thing.
Now you understand that, leave me."
The Conte in despair left the palazzo Sanseverina: he could see in the Duchessa the deliberately formed intention to part from him, and never had he been so desperately in love.
This is one of the points to which I am obliged frequently to revert, because they are improbable outside Italy.
Returning home, he despatched as many as six different people along the road to Castelnuovo and Bologna, and gave them letters.
"But that is not all," the unhappy Conte told himself: "the Prince may take it into his head to have this wretched boy executed, and that in revenge for the tone which the Duchessa adopted with him on the day of that fatal note.
I felt that the Duchessa was exceeding a limit beyond which one ought never to go, and it was to compensate for this that I was so incredibly foolish as to suppress the words unjust proceedings, the only ones that bound the Sovereign… . But bah! Are those people bound by anything in the world?
That is no doubt the greatest mistake of my life, I have risked everything that can bring me life's reward: it now remains to compensate for my folly by dint of activity and cunning; but after all, if I can obtain nothing, even by sacrificing a little of my dignity, I leave the man stranded; with his dreams of high politics, with his ideas of making himself Constitutional King of Lombardy, we shall see how he will fill my place… .
Fabio Conti is nothing but a fool, Rassi's talent reduces itself to having a man legally hanged who is displeasing to Authority."