Fabrizio's imprudence was rewarded; after fifteen hours of work he saw Clelia, and, to complete his happiness, as she had no idea that he was looking at her, she stood for a long time without moving, her gaze fixed on the huge screen; he had plenty of time to read in her eyes the signs of the most tender pity.
Towards the end of the visit, she was even quite evidently neglecting her duty to her birds, to stay for whole minutes gazing at the window.
Her heart was profoundly troubled; she was thinking of the Duchessa, whose extreme misfortune had inspired in her so much pity, and at the same time she was beginning to hate her.
She understood nothing of the profound melancholy which had taken hold of her character, she felt out of temper with herself.
Two or three times, in the course of this encounter, Fabrizio was impatient to try to shake the screen; he felt that he was not happy so long as he could not indicate to Clelia that he saw her.
"However," he told himself, "if she knew that I could see her so easily, timid and reserved as she is, she would probably slip away out of my sight."
He was far more happy next day (out of what miseries does love create its happiness!): while she was looking sadly at the huge screen, he succeeded in slipping a tiny piece of wire through the hole which the iron cross had bored, and made signs to her which she evidently understood, at least in the sense that they implied:
"I am here and I see you."
Fabrizio was unfortunate on the days that followed.
He was anxious to cut out of the colossal screen a piece of board the size of his hand, which could be replaced when he chose, and which would enable him to see and to be seen, that is to say to speak, by signs at least, of what was passing in his heart; but he found that the noise of the very imperfect little saw which he had made by notching the spring of his watch with the cross aroused Grillo, who came and spent long hours in his cell.
It is true that he thought he noticed that Clelia's severity seemed to diminish as the material difficulties in the way of any communication between them increased; Fabrizio was fully aware that she no longer pretended to lower her eyes or to look at the birds when he was trying to shew her a sign of his presence by means of his wretched little piece of wire; he had the pleasure of seeing that she never failed to appear in the aviary at the precise moment when the quarter before noon struck, and he almost presumed to imagine himself to be the cause of this remarkable punctuality.
Why?
Such an idea does not seem reasonable; but love detects shades invisible to the indifferent eye, and draws endless conclusions from them.
For instance, now that Clelia could no longer see the prisoner, almost immediately on entering the aviary she would raise her eyes to his window.
These were the funereal days on which no one in Parma had any doubt that Fabrizio would shortly be put to death: he alone knew nothing; but this terrible thought never left Clelia's mind for a moment, and how could she reproach herself for the excessive interest which she felt in Fabrizio?
He was about to perish—and for the cause of freedom!
For it was too absurd to put a del Dongo to death for running his sword into a mummer.
It was true that this attractive young man was attached to another woman!
Clelia was profoundly unhappy, and without admitting to herself at all precisely the kind of interest that she took in his fate:
"Certainly," she said to herself, "if they lead him out to die, I shall fly to a convent, and never in my life will I reappear in that society of the court; it horrifies me.
Kid-gloved assassins!"
On the eighth day of Fabrizio's imprisonment, she had good cause to blush: she was watching fixedly, absorbed in her sorrowful thoughts, the screen that hid the prisoner's window: suddenly a small piece of the screen, larger than a man's hand, was removed by him; he looked at her with an air of gaiety, and she could see his eyes which were greeting her.
She had not the strength to endure this unlooked-for trial, she turned swiftly towards her birds and began to attend to them; but she trembled so much that she spilled the water which she was pouring out for them, and Fabrizio could perfectly well see her emotion; she could not endure this situation, and took the prudent course of running from the room.
This was the best moment in Fabrizio's life, beyond all comparison.
With what transports would he have refused his freedom, had it been offered to him at that instant!
The following day was the day of the Duchessa's great despair.
Everyone in the town was certain that it was all over with Fabrizio.
Clelia had not the melancholy courage to show him a harshness that was not in her heart, she spent an hour and a half in the aviary, watched all his signals, and often answered him, at least by an expression of the keenest and sincerest interest; at certain moments she turned from him so as not to let him see her tears.
Her feminine coquetry felt very strongly the inadequacy of the language employed: if they could have spoken, in how many different ways could she not have sought to discover what precisely was the nature of the sentiments which Fabrizio felt for the Duchessa!
Clelia was now almost unable to delude herself any longer; her feeling for Signora Sanseverina was one of hatred.
One night Fabrizio began to think somewhat seriously of his aunt: he was amazed, he found a difficulty in recognising her image; the memory that he kept of her had totally changed; for him, at this moment, she was a woman of fifty.
"Great God!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm, "how well inspired I was not to tell her that I loved her!" He had reached the point of being barely able to understand how he had found her so good looking.
In this connexion little Marietta gave him the impression of a less perceptible change: this was because he had never imagined that his heart entered at all into his love for Marietta, while often he had believed that his whole heart belonged to the Duchessa.
The Duchessa d'A—— and Marietta now had the effect on him of two young doves whose whole charm would be in weakness and innocence, whereas the sublime image of Clelia Conti, taking entire possession of his heart, went so far as to inspire him with terror.
He felt only too well that the eternal happiness of his life was to force him to reckon with the governor's daughter, and that it lay in her power to make of him the unhappiest of men.
Every day he went in mortal fear of seeing brought to a sudden end, by a caprice of her will against which there was no appeal, this sort of singular and delicious life which he found in her presence; in any event she had already filled with joy the first two months of his imprisonment.
It was the time when, twice a week, General Fabio Conti was saying to the Prince:
"I can give Your Highness my word of honour that the prisoner del Dongo does not speak to a living soul, and is spending his life crushed by the most profound despair, or asleep."
Clelia came two or three times daily to visit her birds, sometimes for a few moments only; if Fabrizio had not loved her so well, he would have seen clearly that he was loved; but he had serious doubts on this head.
Clelia had had a piano put in her aviary.
As she struck the notes, that the sounds of the instrument might account for her presence there, and occupy the minds of the sentries who were patrolling beneath her windows, she replied with her eyes to Fabrizio's questions.
On one subject alone she never made any answer, and indeed, on serious occasions, took flight, and sometimes disappeared for a whole day; this was when Fabrizio's signals indicated sentiments the import of which it was too difficult not to understand: on this point she was inexorable.
Thus, albeit straitly confined in a small enough cage, Fabrizio led a fully occupied life; it was entirely devoted to seeking the solution of this important problem:
"Does she love me?"
The result of thousands of observations, incessantly repeated, but also incessantly subjected to doubt, was as follows:
"All her deliberate gestures say no, but what is involuntary in the movement of her eyes seems to admit that she is forming an affection for me."
Clelia hoped that she might never be brought to an avowal, and it was to avert this danger that she had repulsed, with an excessive show of anger, a prayer which Fabrizio had several times addressed to her.
The wretchedness of the resources employed by the poor prisoner ought, it might seem, to have inspired greater pity in Clelia.
He sought to correspond with her by means of letters which he traced on his hand with a piece of charcoal of which he had made the precious discovery in his stove; he would have formed the words letter by letter, in succession.
This invention would have doubled the means of conversation, inasmuch as it would have allowed him to say actual words.