"But is this really a prison?
Is this what I have so greatly dreaded?"
Instead of seeing at every turn discomforts and reasons for bitterness, our hero let himself be charmed by the attractions of his prison.
Suddenly his attention was forcibly recalled to reality by a terrifying din: his wooden cell, which was not unlike a cage and moreover was extremely resonant, was violently shaken; the barking of a dog and little shrill cries completed the strangest medley of sounds.
"What now!
Am I going to escape so soon?" thought Fabrizio.
A moment later he was laughing as perhaps no one has ever laughed in a prison.
By the General's orders, at the same time as the gaolers there had been sent up an English dog, extremely savage, which was set to guard officers of importance, and was to spend the night in the space so ingeniously contrived all round Fabrizio's cage.
The dog and the gaoler were to sleep in the interval of three feet left between the stone pavement of the original floor and the wooden planks on which the prisoner could not move a step without being heard.
Now, when Fabrizio arrived, the room of the Passive Obedience happened to be occupied by a hundred huge rats which took flight in every direction.
The dog, a sort of spaniel crossed with an English fox-terrier, was no beauty, but to make up for this shewed a great alertness.
He had been tied to the stone pavement beneath the planks of the wooden room; but when he heard the rats pass close by him, he made an effort so extraordinary that he succeeded in pulling his head out of his collar.
Then came this splendid battle the din of which aroused Fabrizio, plunged in the least melancholy of dreams.
The rats that had managed to escape the first assault of the dog's teeth took refuge in the wooden room, the dog came after them up the six steps which led from the stone floor to Fabrizio's cell.
Then began a really terrifying din: the cell was shaken to its foundations.
Fabrizio laughed like a madman until the tears ran down his cheeks: the gaoler Grillo, no less amused, had shut the door; the dog, in going after the rats, was not impeded by any furniture, for the room was completely bare; there was nothing to check the bounds of the hunting dog but an iron stove in one corner.
When the dog had triumphed over all his enemies, Fabrizio called him, patted him, succeeded in winning his affection.
"Should this fellow ever see me jumping over a wall," he said to himself, "he will not bark."
But this far-seeing policy was a boast on his part: in the state of mind in which he was, he found his happiness in playing with this dog.
By a paradox to which he gave no thought, a secret joy was reigning in the depths of his heart.
After he had made himself quite breathless by running about with the dog:
"What is your name?" Fabrizio asked the gaoler.
"Grillo, to serve Your Excellency in all that is allowed by the regulations."
"Very well, my dear Grillo, a certain Giletti tried to murder me on the broad highway, I defended myself, and killed him; I should kill him again if it had to be done, but I wish to lead a gay life for all that so long as I am your guest.
Ask for authority from your chiefs, and go and procure linen for me from the palazzo Sanseverina; also, buy me lots of nebiolo d'Asti.
This is quite a good sparkling wine which is made in Piedmont, in Alfieri's country, and is highly esteemed, especially by the class of wine-tasters to which gaolers belong.
Nine or ten of these gentlemen were engaged in transporting to Fabrizio's wooden room certain pieces of old furniture, highly gilded, which they took from the Prince's apartment on the first floor; all of them bore religiously in mind this recommendation of the wine of Asti.
In spite of all they might do, Fabrizio's establishment for this first night was lamentable; but he appeared shocked only by the absence of a bottle of good nebiolo.
"He seems a good lad," said the gaolers as they left him, "and there is only one thing to be hoped for, that our gentlemen will let him have plenty of money."
When he had recovered a little from all this din and confusion: "Is it possible that this is a prison?" Fabrizio asked himself, gazing at that vast horizon from Treviso to Monviso, the endless chain of the Alps, the peaks covered with snow, the stars, and everything, "and a first night in prison besides.
I can conceive that Clelia Conti enjoys this airy solitude; here one is a thousand leagues above the pettinesses and wickednesses which occupy us down there.
If those birds which are under my window there belong to her, I shall see her… . Will she blush when she catches sight of me?"
It was while debating this important question that our hero, at a late hour of the night, fell asleep.
On the day following this night, the first spent in prison, in the course of which he never once lost his patience, Fabrizio was reduced to making conversation with Fox, the English dog; Grillo the gaoler did indeed greet him always with the friendliest expression, but a new order made him dumb, and he brought neither linen nor nebiolo.
"Shall I see Clelia?" Fabrizio asked himself as he awoke. "But are those birds hers?"
The birds were beginning to utter little chirps and to sing, and at that height this was the only sound that was carried on the air.
It was a sensation full of novelty and pleasure for Fabrizio, the vast silence which reigned at this height; he listened with rapture to the little chirpings, broken and so shrill, with which his neighbours the birds were greeting the day.
"If they belong to her, she will appear for a moment in that room, there, beneath my window," and, while he examined the immense chains of the Alps, against the first foothills of which the citadel of Parma seemed to rise like an advanced redoubt, his eyes returned every moment to the sumptuous cages of lemon-wood and mahogany, which, adorned with gilt wires, filled the bright room which served as an aviary.
What Fabrizio did not learn until later was that this room was the only one on the second floor of the palazzo which had any shade, between eleven o'clock and four: it was sheltered by the Torre Farnese.
"What will be my dismay," thought Fabrizio, "if, instead of those modest and pensive features for which I am waiting, and which will blush slightly perhaps if she catches sight of me, I see appear the coarse face of some thoroughly common maid, charged with the duty of looking after the birds!
But if I do see Clelia, will she deign to notice me?
Upon my soul, I must commit some indiscretion so as to be noticed; my position should have some privileges; besides, we are both alone here, and so far from the world!
I am a prisoner, evidently what General Conti and the other wretches of his sort call one of their subordinates… . But she has so much intelligence, or, I should say, so much heart, so the Conte supposes, that possibly, by what he says, she despises her father's profession; which would account for her melancholy.
A noble cause of sadness!
But, after all, I am not exactly a stranger to her.
With what grace, full of modesty, she greeted me yesterday evening!
I remember quite well how, when we met near Como, I said to her: 'One day I shall come to see your beautiful pictures at Parma; will you remember this name: Fabrizio del Dongo?'
Will she have forgotten it?
She was so young then!
"But by the way," Fabrizio said to himself in astonishment, suddenly interrupting the current of his thoughts, "I am forgetting to be angry.