"That is because I take good care not to feel so absurd a desire," was Fabrizio's answer; "once back in Parma, how should I see you again?
And life would become insupportable if I could not tell you all that is in my mind—no, not quite all that is in my mind, you take good care of that: but still, in spite of your hard-heartedness, to live without seeing you every day would be to me a far worse punishment than this prison! Never in my life have I been so happy! … Is it not pleasant to find that happiness was awaiting me in prison?"
"There is a great deal more to be said about that," replied Clelia with an air which became of a sudden unduly serious and almost sinister.
"What!" cried Fabrizio, greatly alarmed, "is there a risk of my losing the tiny place I have managed to win in your heart, which constitutes my sole joy in this world?"
"Yes," she told him; "I have good reason to believe that you are lacking in frankness towards me, although you may be regarded generally as a great gentleman; but I do not wish to speak of this to-day."
This singular opening caused great embarrassment in their conversation, and often tears started to the eyes of both.
The Fiscal General Rassi was still anxious to change his name; he was tired to death of the name he had made for himself, and wished to become Barone Riva.
Conte Mosca, for his part, was toiling, with all the skill of which he was capable, to strengthen in this venal judge his passion for the Barony, just as he was seeking to intensify in the Prince his mad hope of making himself Constitutional Monarch of Lombardy.
They were the only means that he could invent of postponing the death of Fabrizio.
The Prince said to Rassi:
"A fortnight of despair and a fortnight of hope, it is by patiently carrying out this system that we shall succeed in subduing that proud woman's nature; it is by these alternatives of mildness and harshness that one manages to break the wildest horses.
Apply the caustic firmly."
And indeed, every fortnight, one saw a fresh rumour come to birth in Parma announcing the death of Fabrizio in the near future.
This talk plunged the unhappy Duchessa in the utmost despair.
Faithful to her resolution not to involve the Conte in her downfall, she saw him but twice monthly; but she was punished for her cruelty towards that poor man by the continual alternations of dark despair in which she was passing her life.
In vain did Conte Mosca, overcoming the cruel jealousy inspired in him by the assiduities of Conte Baldi, that handsome man, write to the Duchessa when he could not see her, and acquaint her with all the intelligence that he owed to the zeal of the future Barone Riva; the Duchessa would have needed (for strength to resist the atrocious rumours that were incessantly going about with regard to Fabrizio), to spend her life with a man of intelligence and heart such as Mosca; the nullity of Baldi, leaving her to her own thoughts, gave her an appalling existence, and the Conte could not succeed in communicating to her his reasons for hope.
By means of various pretexts of considerable ingenuity the Minister had succeeded in making the Prince agree to his depositing in a friendly castle, in the very heart of Lombardy, the records of all the highly complicated intrigues by means of which Ranuccio-Ernesto IV nourished the utterly mad hope of making himself Constitutional Monarch of that smiling land.
More than a score of these extremely compromising documents were in the Prince's hand, or bore his signature, and in the event of Fabrizio's life being seriously threatened the Conte had decided to announce to His Highness that he was going to hand these documents over to a great power which with a word could crush him.
Conte Mosca believed that he could rely upon the future Barone Riva, he was afraid only of poison; Barbone's attempt had greatly alarmed him, and to such a point that he had determined to risk taking a step which, to all appearance, was an act of madness.
One morning he went to the gate of the citadel and sent for General Fabio Conti, who came down as far as the bastion above the gate; there, strolling with him in a friendly fashion, he had no hesitation in saying to him, after a short preamble, acidulated but polite:
"If Fabrizio dies in any suspicious manner, his death may be put down to me; I shall get a reputation for jealousy, which would be an absurd and abominable stigma and one that I am determined not to accept.
So, to clear myself in the matter, if he dies of illness, I shall kill you with my own hand; you may count on that."
General Fabio Conti made a magnificent reply and spoke of his bravery, but the look in the Conte's eyes remained present in his thoughts.
A few days later, as though he were working in concert with the Conte, the Fiscal Rassi took a liberty which was indeed singular in a man of his sort.
The public contempt attached to his name, which was proverbial among the rabble, had made him ill since he had acquired the hope of being able to change it.
He addressed to General Fabio Conti an official copy of the sentence which condemned Fabrizio to twelve years in the citadel.
According to the law, this was what should have been done on the very day after Fabrizio's admission to prison; but what was unheard-of at Parma, in that land of secret measures, was that Justice should allow itself to take such a step without an express order from the Sovereign.
How indeed could the Prince entertain the hope of doubling every fortnight the Duchessa's alarm, and of subduing that proud spirit, to quote his own words, once an officiai copy of the sentence had gone out from the Chancellory of Justice?
On the day before that on which General Fabio Conti received the official document from the Fiscal Rassi, he learned that the clerk Barbone had been beaten black and blue on returning rather late to the citadel; he concluded from this that there was no longer any question, in a certain quarter, of getting rid of Fabrizio; and, in a moment of prudence which saved Rassi from the immediate consequences of his folly, he said nothing to the Prince, at the next audience which he obtained of him, of the official copy of Fabrizio's sentence which had been transmitted to him.
The Conte had discovered, happily for the peace of mind of the unfortunate Duchessa, that Barbone's clumsy attempt had been only an act of personal revenge, and had caused the clerk to be given the warning of which we have spoken.
Fabrizio was very agreeably surprised when, after one hundred and thirty-five days of confinement in a distinctly narrow cell, the good chaplain Don Cesare came to him one Thursday to take him for an airing on the dungeon of the Torre Farnese: he had not been there ten minutes before, unaccustomed to the fresh air, he began to feel faint.
Don Cesare made this accident an excuse to allow him half an hour's exercise every day.
This was a mistake: these frequent airings soon restored to our hero a strength which he abused.
There were several serenades; the punctilious governor allowed them only because they created an engagement between the Marchese Crescenzi and his daughter Clelia, whose character alarmed him; he felt vaguely that there was no point of contact between her and himself, and was always afraid of some rash action on her part.
She might fly to the convent, and he would be left helpless.
At the same time, the General was afraid that all this music, the sound of which could penetrate into the deepest dungeons, reserved for the blackest Liberals, might contain signals.
The musicians themselves, too, made him suspicious; and so no sooner was the serenade at an end than they were locked into the big rooms below the governor's palazzo, which by day served as an office for the staff, and the door was not opened to let them out until the following morning, when it was broad daylight.
It was the governor himself who, stationed on the Slave's Bridge, had them searched in his presence and gave them their liberty, not without several times repeating that he would have hanged at once any of them who had the audacity to undertake the smallest commission for any prisoner.
And they knew that, in his fear of giving offence, he was a man of his word, so that the Marchese Crescenzi was obliged to pay his musicians at a triple rate, they being greatly upset at thus having to spend a night in prison.
All that the Duchessa could obtain, and that with great difficulty, from the pusillanimity of one of these men was that he should take with him a letter to be handed to the governor.
The letter was addressed to Fabrizio: the writer deplored the fatality which had brought it about that, after he had been more than five months in prison, his friends outside had not been able to establish any communication with him.
On entering the citadel, the bribed musician flung himself at the feet of General Fabio Conti, and confessed to him that a priest, unknown to him, had so insisted upon his taking a letter addressed to Signor del Dongo that he had not dared to refuse; but, faithful to his duty, he was hastening to place it in His Excellency's hands.
His Excellency was highly flattered: he knew the resources at the Duchessa's disposal, and was in great fear of being hoaxed.
In his joy, the General went to submit this letter to the Prince, who was delighted.
"So, the firmness of my administration has brought me my revenge!
That proud woman has been suffering for more than six months!
But one of these days we are going to have a scaffold erected, and her wild imagination will not fail to believe that it is intended for young del Dongo."
Chapter 7
One night, about one o'clock in the morning, Fabrizio, leaning upon his window-sill, had slipped his head through the door cut in his screen and was contemplating the stars and the immense horizon which one enjoyed from the summit of the Torre Farnese.
His eyes, roaming over the country in the direction of the lower Po and Ferrara, noticed quite by chance an extremely small but quite brilliant light which seemed to be shining from the top of a tower.