For, if he escaped from the citadel, he certainly could not hope for permission to live in Parma.
And even so, when the Prince should change his mind sufficiently to set him at liberty (which was so highly improbable since he, Fabrizio, had become, for a powerful faction, one of the means of overthrowing Conte Mosca), what sort of life would he lead in Parma, separated from Clelia by all the hatred that divided the two parties?
Once or twice in a month, perhaps, chance would place them in the same drawing-room; but even then, what sort of conversation could he hold with her?
How could he recapture that perfect intimacy which, every day now, he enjoyed for several hours?
What would be the conversation of the drawing-room, compared with that which they made by alphabets?
"And, if I must purchase this life of enjoyment and this unique chance of happiness with a few little dangers, where is the harm in that?
And would it not be a further happiness to find thus a feeble opportunity of giving her a proof of my love?"
Fabrizio saw nothing in Clelia's letter but an excuse for asking her for a meeting; it was the sole and constant object of all his desires.
He had spoken to her of it once only, and then for an instant, at the moment of his entry into prison; and that was now more than two hundred days ago.
An easy way of meeting Clelia offered itself: the excellent Priore Don Cesare allowed Fabrizio half an hour's exercise on the terrace of the Torre Farnese every Thursday, during the day; but on the other days of the week this airing, which might be observed by all the inhabitants of Parma and the neighbouring villages, and might seriously compromise the governor, took place only at nightfall.
To climb to the terrace of the Torre Farnese there was no other stair but that of the little belfry belonging to the chapel so lugubriously decorated in black and white marble, which the reader may perhaps remember.
Grillo escorted Fabrizio to this chapel, and opened the little stair to the belfry for him: his duty would have been to accompany him; but, as the evenings were growing cold, the gaoler allowed him to go up by himself, locking him into this belfry which communicated with the terrace, and went back to keep warm in his cell.
Very well; one evening, could not Clelia contrive to appear, escorted by her maid, in the black marble chapel?
The whole of the long letter in which Fabrizio replied to Clelia's was calculated to obtain this meeting.
Otherwise, he confided to her, with perfect sincerity, and as though he were writing of someone else, all the reasons which made him decide not to leave the citadel.
"I would expose myself every day to the prospect of a thousand deaths to have the happiness of speaking to you with the help of our alphabets, which now never defeat us for a moment, and you wish me to be such a fool as to exile myself in Parma, or perhaps at Bologna, or even at Florence!
You wish me to walk out of here so as to be farther from you!
Understand that any such effort is impossible for me; it would be useless to give you my word, I could never keep it."
The result of this request for a meeting was an absence on the part of Clelia which lasted for no fewer then five days; for five days she came to the aviary only at times when she knew that Fabrizio could not make use of the little opening cut in the screen.
Fabrizio was in despair; he concluded from this absence that, despite certain glances which had made him conceive wild hopes, he had never inspired in Clelia any sentiments other than those of a simple friendship.
"In that case," he asked himself, "what good is life to me? Let the Prince take it from me, he will be welcome; another reason for not leaving the fortress."
And it was with a profound feeling of disgust that, every night, he replied to the signals of the little lamp.
The Duchessa thought him quite mad when she read, on the record of the messages which Lodovico brought to her every morning, these strange words:
"I do not wish to escape; 1 wish to die here!"
During these five days, so cruel for Fabrizio, Clelia was more unhappy than he; she had had the idea, so poignant for a generous nature:
"My duty is to take refuge in a convent, far from the citadel; when Fabrizio knows that I am no longer here, and I shall make Grillo and all the gaolers tell him, then he will decide upon an attempt at escape."
But to go to a convent was to abandon for ever all hope of seeing Fabrizio again; and how abandon that hope, when he was furnishing so clear a proof that the sentiments which might at one time have attached him to the Duchessa no longer existed?
What more touching proof of love could a young man give?
After seven long months in prison, which had seriously affected his health, he refused to regain his liberty.
A fickle creature, such as the talk of the courtiers had portrayed Fabrizio in Clelia's eyes as being, would have sacrificed a score of mistresses rather than remain another day in the citadel, and what would such a man not have done to escape from a prison in which, at any moment, poison might put an end to his life?
Clelia lacked courage; she made the signal mistake of not seeking refuge in a convent, a course which would at the same time have furnished her with a quite natural means of breaking with the Marchese Crescenzi.
Once this mistake was made, how was she to resist this young man—so lovable, so natural, so tender—who was exposing his life to frightful perils to gain the simple pleasure of looking at her from one window to another?
After five days of terrible struggles, interspersed with moments of self-contempt, Clelia made up her mind to reply to the letter in which Fabrizio begged for the pleasure of speaking to her in the black marble chapel.
To tell the truth, she refused, and in distinctly firm language; but from that moment all peace of mind was lost for her; at every instant her imagination portrayed to her Fabrizio succumbing to the attack of the poisoner; she came six or eight times in a day to her aviary, she felt the passionate need of assuring herself with her own eyes that Fabrizio was alive.
"If he is still in the fortress," she told herself, "if he is exposed to all the horrors which the Raversi faction are perhaps plotting against him with the object of getting rid of Conte Mosca, it is solely because I have had the cowardice not to fly to the convent!
What excuse could he have for remaining here once he was certain that I had gone for ever?"
This girl, at once so timid and so proud, brought herself to the point of running the risk of a refusal on the part of the gaoler Grillo; what was more, she exposed herself to all the comments which the man might allow himself to make on the singularity of her conduct.
She stooped to the degree of humiliation involved in sending for him, and telling him in a tremulous voice which betrayed her whole secret that within a few days Fabrizio was going to obtain his freedom, that the Duchessa Sanseverina, in the hope of this, was taking the most active measures, that often it was necessary to have without a moment's delay the prisoner's answer to certain proposals which might be made, and that she wished him, Grillo, to allow Fabrizio to make an opening in the screen which masked his window, so that she might communicate to him by signs the instructions which she received several times daily from Signora Sanseverina.
Grillo smiled and gave her an assurance of his respect and obedience.
Clelia felt a boundless gratitude to him because he said nothing; it was evident that he knew quite well all that had been going on for the last few months.
Scarcely had the gaoler left her presence when Clelia made the signal by which she had arranged to call Fabrizio upon important occasions; she confessed to him all that she had just been doing.
"You wish to perish by poison," she added: "I hope to have the courage, one of these days, to leave my father and escape to some remote convent.
I shall be indebted to you for that; then I hope that you will no longer oppose the plans that may be proposed to you for getting you away from here.
So long as you are in prison, I have frightful and unreasonable moments; never in my life have I contributed to anyone's hurt, and I feel that I am to be the cause of your death.
Such an idea in the case of a complete stranger would fill me with despair; judge of what I feel when I picture to myself that a friend, whose unreasonableness gives me serious cause for complaint, but whom, after all, I have been seeing every day for so long, is at this very moment a victim to the pangs of death.
At times I feel the need to know from your own lips that you are alive.
"It was to escape from this frightful grief that I have just lowered myself so far as to ask a favour of a subordinate who might have refused it me, and may yet betray me.
For that matter, I should perhaps be happy were he to come and denounce me to my father; at once I should leave for the convent, I should no longer be the most unwilling accomplice of your cruel folly.
But, believe me, this cannot go on for long, you will obey the Duchessa's orders.
Are you satisfied, cruel friend?