Chapter Chapter 5 · Chapter Five

The whole of this adventure had not lasted a minute. Fabrizio's wounds

were nothing; they tied up his arm with bandages torn from the colonel's

shirt. They wanted to make up a bed for him upstairs in the inn.

"But while I am tucked up here on the first floor," said Fabrizio to the

serjeant, "my horse, who is down in the stable, will get bored with

being left alone and will go off with another master."

"Not bad for a conscript!" said the serjeant. And they deposited

Fabrizio on a litter of clean straw in the same stall as his horse.

Then, as he was feeling very weak, the serjeant brought him a bowl of

mulled wine and talked to him for a little. Several compliments included

in this conversation carried our hero to the seventh heaven.

Fabrizio did not wake until dawn on the following day; the horses were

neighing continuously and making a frightful din; the stable was filled

with smoke. At first Fabrizio could make nothing of all this noise, and

did not even know where he was: finally, half-stifled by the smoke, it

occurred to him that the house was on fire; in the twinkling of an eye

he was out of the stable and in the saddle. He raised his head; smoke

was belching violently from the two windows over the stable; and the

roof was covered by a black smoke which rose curling into the air. A

hundred fugitives had arrived during the night at the White Horse; they

were all shouting and swearing. The five or six whom Fabrizio could see

close at hand seemed to him to be completely drunk; one of them tried to

stop him and called out to him: "Where are you taking my horse?"

_WAR_

When Fabrizio had gone a quarter of a league, he turned his head. There

was no one following him; the building was in flames. Fabrizio caught

sight of the bridge; he remembered his wound, and felt his arm

compressed by bandages and very hot. "And the old colonel, what has

become of him? He gave his shirt to tie up my arm." Our hero was this

morning the coolest man in the world; the amount of blood he had shed

had liberated him from all the romantic element in his character.

"To the right!" he said to himself, "and no time to lose." He began

quietly following the course of the river which, after passing under the

bridge, ran to the right of the road. He remembered the good

_cantinière's_ advice. "What friendship!" he said to himself, "what an

open nature!"

After riding for an hour he felt very weak. "Oho! Am I going to faint?"

he wondered. "If I faint, someone will steal my horse, and my clothes,

perhaps, and my money and jewels with them." He had no longer the

strength to hold the reins, and was trying to keep his balance in the

saddle when a peasant who was digging in a field by the side of the high

road noticed his pallor and came up to offer him a glass of beer and

some bread.

"When I saw you look so pale, I thought you must be one of the wounded

from the great battle," the peasant told him. Never did help come more

opportunely. As Fabrizio was munching the piece of bread his eyes began

to hurt him when he looked straight ahead. When he felt a little better

he thanked the man. "And where am I?" he asked. The peasant told him

that three quarters of a league farther on he would come to the township

of Zonders, where he would be very well looked after. Fabrizio reached

the town, not knowing quite what he was doing and thinking only at every

step of not falling off his horse. He saw a big door standing open; he

entered. It was the Woolcomb Inn. At once there ran out to him the good

lady of the house, an enormous woman; she called for help in a voice

that throbbed with pity. Two girls came and helped Fabrizio to dismount;

no sooner had his feet touched the ground than he fainted completely. A

surgeon was fetched, who bled him. For the rest of that day and the days

that followed Fabrizio scarcely knew what was being done to him; he

slept almost without interruption.

The sabre wound in his thigh threatened to form a serious abscess. When

his mind was clear again, he asked them to look after his horse, and

kept on repeating that he would pay them well, which shocked the good

hostess and her daughters. For a fortnight he was admirably looked after

and he was beginning to be himself again when he noticed one evening

that his hostesses seemed greatly upset. Presently a German officer came

into his room: in answering his questions they used a language which

Fabrizio did not understand, but he could see that they were speaking

about him; he pretended to be asleep. A little later, when he thought

that the officer must have gone, he called his hostesses.

"That officer came to put my name on a list, and make me a prisoner,

didn't he?" The landlady assented with tears in her eyes.

"Very well, there is money in my dolman!" he cried, sitting up in bed;

"buy me some civilian clothes and to-night I shall go away on my horse.

You have already saved my life once by taking me in just as I was going

to drop down dead in the street; save it again by giving me the means of

going back to my mother."

At this point the landlady's daughters began to dissolve in tears; they

trembled for Fabrizio; and, as they barely understood French, they came

to his bedside to question him. They talked with their mother in

Flemish; but at every moment pitying eyes were turned on our hero; he

thought he could make out that his escape might compromise them

seriously, but that they would gladly incur the risk. A Jew in the town

supplied a complete outfit, but when he brought it to the inn about ten

o'clock that night, the girls saw, on comparing it with Fabrizio's

dolman, that it would require an endless amount of alteration. At once

they set to work; there was no time to lose. Fabrizio showed them where

several napoleons were hidden in his uniform, and begged his hostesses

to stitch them into the new garments. With these had come a fine pair of

new boots. Fabrizio had no hesitation in asking these kind girls to slit

open the hussar's boots at the place which he shewed them, and they hid

the little diamonds in the lining of the new pair.

One curious result of his loss of blood and the weakness that followed

from it was that Fabrizio had almost completely forgotten his French; he

used Italian to address his hostesses, who themselves spoke a Flemish

dialect, so that their conversation had to be conducted almost entirely

in signs. When the girls, who for that matter were entirely

disinterested, saw the diamonds, their enthusiasm for Fabrizio knew no

bounds; they imagined him to be a prince in disguise. Aniken, the

younger and less sophisticated, kissed him without ceremony. Fabrizio,

for his part, found them charming, and towards midnight, when the

surgeon had allowed him a little wine in view of the journey he had to

take, he felt almost inclined not to go. "Where could I be better off

than here?" he asked himself. However, about two o'clock in the morning,

he rose and dressed. As he was leaving the room, his good hostess

informed him that his horse had been taken by the officer who had come

to search the house that afternoon.

"Ah! The swine!" cried Fabrizio with an oath, "robbing a wounded man!"

He was not enough of a philosopher, this young Italian, to bear in mind

the price at which he himself had acquired the horse.

Aniken told him with tears that they had hired a horse for him. She

would have liked him not to go. Their farewells were tender. Two big

lads, cousins of the good landlady, helped Fabrizio into the saddle:

during the journey they supported him on his horse, while a third, who

walked a few hundred yards in advance of the little convoy, searched the

roads for any suspicious patrol. After going for a couple of hours, they

stopped at the house of a cousin of the landlady of the Woolcomb. In

spite of anything that Fabrizio might say, the young men who accompanied

him refused absolutely to leave him; they claimed that they knew better

than anyone the hidden paths through the woods.

"But to-morrow morning, when my flight becomes known, and they don't see

you anywhere in the town, your absence will make things awkward for

you," said Fabrizio.

They proceeded on their way. Fortunately, when day broke at last, the

plain was covered by a thick fog. About eight o'clock in the morning

they came in sight of a little town. One of the young men went on ahead

to see if the post-horses there had been stolen. The postmaster had had

time to make them vanish and to raise a team of wretched screws with

which he had filled his stables. Grooms were sent to find a pair of

horses in the marshes where they were hidden, and three hours later

Fabrizio climbed into a little cabriolet which was quite dilapidated but

had harnessed to it a pair of good post-horses. He had regained his

strength. The moment of parting with the young men, his hostess's

cousins, was pathetic in the extreme; on no account, whatever friendly

pretext Fabrizio might find, would they consent to take any money.

"In your condition, sir, you need it more than we do," was the

invariable reply of these worthy young fellows. Finally they set off

with letters in which Fabrizio, somewhat emboldened by the agitation of

the journey, had tried to convey to his hostesses all that he felt for

them. Fabrizio wrote with tears in his eyes, and there was certainly

love in the letter addressed to little Aniken.

In the rest of the journey there was nothing out of the common. He

reached Amiens in great pain from the cut he had received in his thigh;

it had not occurred to the country doctor to lance the wound, and in

spite of the bleedings an abscess had formed. During the fortnight that

Fabrizio spent in the inn at Amiens, kept by an obsequious and

avaricious family, the Allies were invading France, and Fabrizio became

another man, so many and profound were his reflexions on the things that

had happened to him. He had remained a child upon one point only: what

he had seen, was it a battle; and, if so, was that battle Waterloo? For

the first time in his life he found pleasure in reading; he was always

hoping to find in the newspapers, or in the published accounts of the

battle, some description which would enable him to identify the ground

he had covered with Marshal Ney's escort, and afterwards with the other

general. During his stay at Amiens he wrote almost every day to his good

friends at the Woolcomb. As soon as his wound was healed, he came to

Paris. He found at his former hotel a score of letters from his mother

and aunt, who implored him to return home as soon as possible. The last

letter from Contessa Pietranera had a certain enigmatic tone which made

him extremely uneasy; this letter destroyed all his tender fancies. His

was a character to which a single word was enough to make him readily

anticipate the greatest misfortunes; his imagination then stepped in and

depicted these misfortunes to him with the most horrible details.

"Take care never to sign the letters you write to tell us what you are

doing," the Contessa warned him. "On your return you must on no account

come straight to the Lake of Como. Stop at Lugano, on Swiss soil." He

was to arrive in this little town under the name of Cavi; he would find

at the principal inn the Contessa's footman, who would tell him what to

do. His aunt ended her letter as follows: "Take every possible

precaution to keep your mad escapade secret, and above all do not carry

on you any printed or written document; in Switzerland you will be

surrounded by the friends of Santa Margherita.[8] If I have enough

money," the Contessa told him, "I shall send someone to Geneva, to the

Hôtel des Balances, and you shall have particulars which I cannot put

in writing but which you ought to know before coming here. But, in

heaven's name, not a day longer in Paris; you will be recognised there

by our spies." Fabrizio's imagination set to work to construct the

wildest hypotheses, and he was incapable of any other pleasure save that

of trying to guess what the strange information could be that his aunt

had to give him. Twice on his passage through France he was arrested,

but managed to get away; he was indebted, for these unpleasantnesses, to

his Italian passport and to that strange description of him as a dealer

in barometers, which hardly seemed to tally with his youthful face and

the arm which he carried in a sling.

Finally, at Geneva, he found a man in the Contessa's service, who gave

him a message from her to the effect that he, Fabrizio, had been

reported to the police at Milan as having gone abroad to convey to

Napoleon certain proposals drafted by a vast conspiracy organised in the

former Kingdom of Italy. If this had not been the object of his journey,

the report went on, why should he have gone under an assumed name? His

mother was endeavouring to establish the truth, as follows:

1st, that he had never gone beyond Switzerland.

2ndly, that he had left the castle suddenly after a quarrel with his

elder brother.

On hearing this story Fabrizio felt a thrill of pride. "I am supposed to

have been a sort of ambassador to Napoleon," he said to himself; "I

should have had the honour of speaking to that great man: would to God I

had!" He recalled that his ancestor seven generations back, a grandson

of him who came to Milan in the train of the Sforza, had had the honour

of having his head cut off by the Duke's enemies, who surprised him as

he was on his way to Switzerland to convey certain proposals to the Free

Cantons and to raise troops there. He saw in his mind's eye the print

that illustrated this exploit in the genealogy of the family. Fabrizio,

questioning the servant, found him shocked by a detail which finally he

allowed to escape him, despite the express order, several times repeated

to him by the Contessa, not to reveal it. It was Ascanio, his elder

brother, who had reported him to the Milan police. This cruel news

almost drove our hero out of his mind. From Geneva, in order to go to

Italy, one must pass through Lausanne; he insisted on setting off at

once on foot, and thus covering ten or twelve leagues, although the mail

from Geneva to Lausanne was starting in two hours' time. Before leaving

Geneva he picked a quarrel in one of the melancholy cafés of the place

with a young man who, he said, stared at him in a singular fashion.

Which was perfectly true: the young Genevan, phlegmatic, rational and

interested only in money, thought him mad; Fabrizio on coming in had

glared furiously in all directions, then had upset the cup of coffee

that was brought to him over his breeches. In this quarrel Fabrizio's

first movement was quite of the sixteenth century: instead of proposing

a duel to the young Genevan, he drew his dagger and rushed upon him to

stab him with it. In this moment of passion, Fabrizio forgot everything

he had ever learned of the laws of honour and reverted to instinct, or,

more properly speaking, to the memories of his earliest childhood.

The confidential agent whom he found at Lugano increased his fury by

furnishing him with fresh details. As Fabrizio was beloved at Grianta,

no one there had mentioned his name, and, but for his brother's kind

intervention, everyone would have pretended to believe that he was at

Milan, and the attention of the police in that city would not have been

drawn to his absence.

"I expect the _doganieri_ have a description of you," his aunt's envoy

hinted, "and if we keep to the main road, when you come to the frontier

of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, you will be arrested."

Fabrizio and his party were familiar with every footpath over the

mountain that divides Lugano from the Lake of Como; they disguised

themselves as hunters, that is to say as poachers, and as they were

three in number and had a fairly resolute bearing, the _doganieri_ whom

they passed gave them a greeting and nothing more. Fabrizio arranged

things so as not to arrive at the castle until nearly midnight; at that

hour his father and all the powdered footmen had long been in bed. He

climbed down without difficulty into the deep moat and entered the

castle by the window of a cellar: it was there that his mother and aunt

were waiting for him; presently his sisters came running in. Transports

of affection alternated with tears for some time, and they had scarcely

begun to talk reasonably when the first light of dawn came to warn these

people who thought themselves so unfortunate that time was flying.

_THE CONSTABLES_

"I hope your brother won't have any suspicion of your being here,"

Signora Pietranera said to him; "I have scarcely spoken to him since

that fine escapade of his, and his vanity has done me the honour of

taking offence. This evening, at supper, I condescended to say a few

words to him; I had to find some excuse to hide my frantic joy, which

might have made him suspicious. Then, when I noticed that he was quite

proud of this sham reconciliation, I took advantage of his happiness to

make him drink a great deal too much, and I am certain he will never

have thought of taking any steps to carry on his profession of spying."

"We shall have to hide our hussar in your room," said the Marchesa, "he

can't leave at once; we haven't sufficient command of ourselves at

present to make plans, and we shall have to think out the best way of

putting those terrible Milan police off the track."

This plan was adopted; but the Marchese and his elder son noticed, next

day, that the Marchesa was constantly in her sister-in-law's room. We

shall not stop to depict the transports of affection and joy which

continued, all that day, to convulse these happy creatures. Italian

hearts are, far more than ours in France, tormented by the suspicions

and wild ideas which a burning imagination presents to them, but on the

other hand their joys are far more intense and more lasting. On the day

in question the Contessa and Marchesa were literally out of their minds;

Fabrizio was obliged to begin all his stories over again; finally they

decided to go away and conceal their general joy at Milan, so difficult

did it appear to be to keep it hidden any longer from the scrutiny of

the Marchese and his son Ascanio.

They took the ordinary boat of the household to go to Como; to have

acted otherwise would have aroused endless suspicions. But on arriving

at the harbour of Como the Marchesa remembered that she had left behind

at Grianta papers of the greatest importance: she hastened to send the

boatmen back for them, and so these men could give no account of how the

two ladies were spending their time at Como. No sooner had they arrived

in the town than they selected haphazard one of the carriages that ply

for hire near that tall mediæval tower which rises above the Milan

gate. They started off at once, without giving the coachman time to

speak to anyone. A quarter of a league from the town they found a young

sportsman of their acquaintance who, out of courtesy to them as they had

no man with them, kindly consented to act as their escort as far as the

gates of Milan, whither he was bound for the shooting. All went well,

and the ladies were conversing in the most joyous way with the young

traveller when, at a bend which the road makes to pass the charming hill

and wood of San Giovanni, three constables in plain clothes sprang at

the horses' heads. "Ah! My husband has betrayed us," cried the Marchesa,

and fainted away. A serjeant who had remained a little way behind came

staggering up to the carriage and said, in a voice that reeked of the

_trattoria_:

"I am sorry, sir, but I must do my duty and arrest you, General Fabio

Conti."

Fabrizio thought that the serjeant was making a joke at his expense when

he addressed him as "General." "You shall pay for this!" he said to

himself. He examined the men in plain clothes and watched for a

favourable moment to jump down from the carriage and dash across the

fields.

The Contessa smiled--a smile of despair, I fancy--then said to the

serjeant:

"But, my dear serjeant, is it this boy of sixteen that you take for

General Conti?"

"Aren't you the General's daughter?" asked the serjeant.

"Look at my father," said the Contessa, pointing to Fabrizio. The

constables went into fits of laughter.

"Show me your passports and don't argue the point," said the serjeant,

stung by the general mirth.

"These ladies never take passports to go to Milan," said the coachman

with a calm and philosophical air: "they are coming from their castle of

Grianta. This lady is the Signora Contessa Pietranera; the other is the

Signora Marchesa del Dongo."

The serjeant, completely disconcerted, went forward to the horses' heads

and there took counsel with his men. The conference had lasted for fully

five minutes when the Contessa asked if the gentlemen would kindly allow

the carriage to be moved forward a few yards and stopped in the shade;

the heat was overpowering, though it was only eleven o'clock in the

morning. Fabrizio, who was looking out most attentively in all

directions, seeking a way of escape, saw coming out of a little path

through the fields and on to the high road a girl of fourteen or

fifteen, who was crying timidly into her handkerchief. She came forward

walking between two constables in uniform, and, three paces behind her,

also between constables, stalked a tall, lean man who assumed an air of

dignity, like a Prefect following a procession.

"Where did you find them?" asked the serjeant, for the moment completely

drunk.

"Running away across the fields, with not a sign of a passport about

them."

The serjeant appeared to lose his head altogether; he had before him

five prisoners, instead of the two that he was expected to have. He went

a little way off, leaving only one man to guard the male prisoner who

put on the air of majesty, and another to keep the horses from moving.

"Wait," said the Contessa to Fabrizio, who had already jumped out of the

carriage. "Everything will be settled in a minute."

They heard a constable exclaim: "What does it matter! If they have no

passports, they're fair game whoever they are." The serjeant seemed not

quite so certain; the name of Contessa Pietranera made him a little

uneasy: he had known the general, and had not heard of his death. "The

General is not the man to let it pass, if I arrest his wife without good

reason," he said to himself.

During this deliberation, which was prolonged, the Contessa had entered

into conversation with the girl, who was standing on the road, and in

the dust by the side of the carriage; she had been struck by her beauty.

"The sun will be bad for you, Signorina. This gallant soldier," she went

on, addressing the constable who was posted at the horses' heads, "will

surely allow you to get into the carriage."

Fabrizio, who was wandering round the vehicle, came up to help the girl

to get in. Her foot was already on the step, her arm supported by

Fabrizio, when the imposing man, who was six yards behind the carriage,

called out in a voice magnified by the desire to preserve his dignity:

"Stay in the road; don't get into a carriage that does not belong to

you!"

Fabrizio had not heard this order; the girl, instead of climbing into

the carriage, tried to get down again, and, as Fabrizio continued to

hold her up, fell into his arms. He smiled; she blushed a deep crimson;

they stood for a moment looking at one another after the girl had

disengaged herself from his arms.

"She would be a charming prison companion," Fabrizio said to himself.

"What profound thought lies behind that brow! She would know how to

love."

The serjeant came up to them with an air of authority: "Which of these

ladies is named Clelia Conti?"

"I am," said the girl.

"And I," cried the elderly man, "am General Fabio Conti, Chamberlain to

H.S.H. the Prince of Parma; I consider it most irregular that a man in

my position should be hunted down like a thief."

"The day before yesterday, when you embarked at the harbour of Como, did

you not tell the police inspector who asked for your passport to go

away? Very well, his orders to-day are that you are not to go away."

"I had already pushed off my boat, I was in a hurry, there was a storm

threatening, a man not in uniform shouted to me from the quay to put

back into harbour, I told him my name and went on."

"And this morning you escaped from Como."

"A man like myself does not take a passport when he goes from Milan to

visit the lake. This morning, at Como, I was told that I should be

arrested at the gate. I left the town on foot with my daughter; I hoped

to find on the road some carriage that would take me to Milan, where the

first thing I shall do will certainly be to call on the General

Commanding the Province and lodge a complaint."

A heavy weight seemed to have been lifted from the serjeant's mind.

"Very well, General, you are under arrest and I shall take you to Milan.

And you, who are you?" he said to Fabrizio.

"My son," replied the Contessa; "Ascanio, son of the Divisional General

Pietranera."

"Without a passport, Signora Contessa?" said the serjeant, in a much

gentler tone.

"At his age, he has never had one; he never travels alone, he is always

with me."

During this colloquy General Conti was standing more and more on his

dignity with the constables.

"Not so much talk," said one of them; "you are under arrest, that's

enough!"

"You will be glad to hear," said the serjeant, "that we allow you to

hire a horse from some _contadino_; otherwise, never mind all the dust

and the heat and the Chamberlain of Parma, you would have to put your

best foot foremost to keep pace with our horses."

The General began to swear.

"Will you kindly be quiet!" the constable repeated. "Where is your

general's uniform? Anybody can come along and say he's a general."

The General grew more and more angry. Meanwhile things were looking much

brighter in the carriage.

The Contessa kept the constables running about as if they had been her

servants. She had given a scudo to one of them to go and fetch wine,

and, what was better still, cold water from a cottage that was visible

two hundred yards away. She had found time to calm Fabrizio, who was

determined, at all costs, to make a dash for the wood that covered the

hill. "I have a good brace of pistols," he said. She obtained the

infuriated General's permission for his daughter to get into the

carriage. On this occasion the General, who loved to talk about himself

and his family, told the ladies that his daughter was only twelve years

old, having been born in 1803, on the 27th of October, but that, such

was her intelligence, everyone took her to be fourteen or fifteen.

"A thoroughly common man," the Contessa's eyes signalled to the

Marchesa. Thanks to the Contessa, everything was settled, after a

colloquy that lasted an hour. A constable, who discovered that he had

some business to do in the neighbouring village, lent his horse to

General Conti, after the Contessa had said to him: "You shall have ten

francs." The serjeant went off by himself with the General; the other

constables stayed behind under a tree, accompanied by four huge bottles

of wine, almost small demi-johns, which the one who had been sent to the

cottage had brought back, with the help of a _contadino_, Clelia Conti

was authorised by the proud Chamberlain to accept, for the return

journey to Milan, a seat in the ladies' carriage, and no one dreamed of

arresting the son of the gallant General Pietranera. After the first few

minutes had been devoted to an exchange of courtesies and to remarks on

the little incident that had just occurred, Clelia Conti observed the

note of enthusiasm with which so beautiful a lady as the Contessa spoke

to Fabrizio; certainly, she was not his mother. The girl's attention was

caught most of all by repeated allusions to something heroic, bold,

dangerous to the last degree, which he had recently done; but for all

her cleverness little Clelia could not discover what this was.

_THE POLICE_

She gazed with astonishment at this young hero whose eyes seemed to be

blazing still with all the fire of action. For his part, he was somewhat

embarrassed by the remarkable beauty of this girl of twelve, and her

steady gaze made him blush.

A league outside Milan Fabrizio announced that he was going to see his

uncle, and took leave of the ladies.

"If I ever get out of my difficulties," he said to Clelia, "I shall pay

a visit to the beautiful pictures at Parma, and then will you deign to

remember the name: Fabrizio del Dongo?"

"Good!" said the Contessa, "that is how you keep your identity secret.

Signorina, deign to remember that this scapegrace is my son, and is

called Pietranera, and not del Dongo."

That evening, at a late hour, Fabrizio entered Milan by the Porta Renza,

which leads to a fashionable gathering-place. The dispatch of their two

servants to Switzerland had exhausted the very modest savings of the

Marchesa and her sister-in-law; fortunately, Fabrizio had still some

napoleons left, and one of the diamonds, which they decided to sell.

The ladies were highly popular, and knew everyone in the town. The most

important personages in the Austrian and religious party went to speak

on behalf of Fabrizio to Barone Binder, the Chief of Police. These

gentlemen could not conceive, they said, how anyone could take seriously

the escapade of a boy of sixteen who left the paternal roof after a

dispute with an elder brother.

"My business is to take everything seriously," replied Barone Binder

gently; a wise and solemn man, he was then engaged in forming the Milan

police, and had undertaken to prevent a revolution like that of 1746,

which drove the Austrians from Genoa. This Milan police, since rendered

so famous by the adventures of Silvio Pellico and M. Andryane, was not

exactly cruel; it carried out, reasonably and without pity, harsh laws.

The Emperor Francis II wished these overbold Italian imaginations to be

struck by terror.

"Give me, day by day," repeated Barone Binder to Fabrizio's protectors,

"a _certified_ account of what the young Marchesino del Dongo has been

doing; let us follow him from the moment of his departure on the 8th of

March to his arrival last night in this city, where he is hidden in one

of the rooms of his mother's apartment, and I am prepared to treat him

as the most well-disposed and most frolicsome young man in town. If you

cannot furnish me with the young man's itinerary during all the days

following his departure from Grianta, however exalted his birth may be,

however great the respect I owe to the friends of his family, obviously

it is my duty to order his arrest. Am I not bound to keep him in prison

until he has furnished me with proofs that he did not go to convey a

message to Napoleon from such disaffected persons as may exist in

Lombardy among the subjects of His Imperial and Royal Majesty? Note

farther, gentlemen, that if young del Dongo succeeds in justifying

himself on this point, he will still be liable to be charged with having

gone abroad without a passport properly issued to himself, and also with

assuming a false name and deliberately making use of a passport issued

to a common workman, that is to say to a person of a class greatly

inferior to that to which he himself belongs."

This declaration, cruelly reasonable, was accompanied by all the marks

of deference and respect which the Chief of Police owed to the high

position of the Marchesa del Dongo and of the important personages who

were intervening on her behalf.

The Marchesa was in despair when Barone Binder's reply was communicated

to her.

"Fabrizio will be arrested," she sobbed, "and once he is in prison, God

knows when he will get out! His father will disown him!"

Signora Pietranera and her sister-in-law took counsel with two or three

intimate friends, and, in spite of anything these might say, the

Marchesa was absolutely determined to send her son away that very night.

"But you can see quite well," the Contessa pointed out to her, "that

Barone Binder knows that your son is here; he is not a bad man."

"No; but he is anxious to please the Emperor Francis."

"But, if he thought it would lead to his promotion to put Fabrizio in

prison, the boy would be there now; it is showing an insulting defiance

of the Barone to send him away."

"But his admission to us that he knows where Fabrizio is, is as much as

to say: 'Send him away!' No, I shan't feel alive until I can no longer

say to myself: 'In a quarter of an hour my son may be within prison

walls.' Whatever Barone Binder's ambition may be," the Marchesa went on,

"he thinks it useful to his personal standing in this country to make

certain concessions to oblige a man of my husband's rank, and I see a

proof of this in the singular frankness with which he admits that he

knows where to lay hands on my son. Besides, the Barone has been so kind

as to let us know the two offences with which Fabrizio is charged, at

the instigation of his unworthy brother; he explains that each of these

offences means prison: is not that as much as to say that if we prefer

exile it is for us to choose?"

"If you choose exile," the Contessa kept on repeating, "we shall never

set eyes on him again as long as we live." Fabrizio, who was present at

the whole conversation, with an old friend of the Marchesa, now a

counsellor on the tribunal set up by Austria, was strongly inclined to

take the key of the street and go; and, as a matter of fact, that same

evening he left the _palazzo_, hidden in the carriage that was taking

his mother and aunt to the Scala theatre. The coachman, whom they

distrusted, went as usual to wait in an _osteria_, and while the

footmen, on whom they could rely, were looking after the horses,

Fabrizio, disguised as a _contadino_, slipped out of the carriage and

escaped from the town. Next morning he crossed the frontier with equal

ease, and a few hours later had established himself on a property which

his mother owned in Piedmont, near Novara, to be precise, at Romagnano,

where Bayard was killed.

It may be imagined how much attention the ladies, on reaching their box

in the Scala, paid to the performance. They had gone there solely to be

able to consult certain of their friends who belonged to the Liberal

party and whose appearance at the _palazzo_ del Dongo might have been

misconstrued by the police. In the box it was decided to make a fresh

appeal to Barone Binder. There was no question of offering a sum of

money to this magistrate who was a perfectly honest man; moreover, the

ladies were extremely poor; they had forced Fabrizio to take with him

all the money that remained from the sale of the diamond.

_THE CANON_

It was of the utmost importance that they should be kept constantly

informed of the Barone's latest decisions. The Contessa's friends

reminded her of a certain Canon Borda, a most charming young man who at

one time had tried to make advances to her, in a somewhat violent

manner; finding himself unsuccessful he had reported her friendship for

Limercati to General Pietranera, whereupon he had been dismissed from

the house as a rascal. Now, at present this Canon was in the habit of

going every evening to play _tarocchi_ with Baronessa Binder, and was

naturally the intimate friend of her husband. The Contessa made up her

mind to take the horribly unpleasant step of going to see this Canon;

and the following morning, at an early hour, before he had left the

house, she sent in her name.

When the Canon's one and only servant announced: "Contessa Pietranera,"

his master was so overcome as to be incapable of speech; he made no

attempt to repair the disorder of a very scanty attire.

"Shew her in, and leave us," he said in faint accents. The Contessa

entered the room; Borda fell on his knees.

"It is in this position that an unhappy madman ought to receive your

orders," he said to the Contessa who that morning, in a plain costume

that was almost a disguise, was irresistibly attractive. Her intense

grief at Fabrizio's exile, the violence that she was doing to her own

feelings in coming to the house of a man who had behaved treacherously

towards her, all combined to give an incredible brilliance to her eyes.

"It is in this position that I wish to receive your orders," cried the

Canon, "for it is obvious that you have some service to ask of me,

otherwise you would not have honoured with your presence the poor

dwelling of an unhappy madman; once before, carried away by love and

jealousy, he behaved towards you like a scoundrel, as soon as he saw

that he could not win your favour."

These words were sincere, and all the more handsome in that the Canon

now enjoyed a position of great power; the Contessa was moved to tears

by them; humiliation and fear had frozen her spirit; now in a moment

affection and a gleam of hope took their place. From a most unhappy

state she passed in a flash almost to happiness.

"Kiss my hand," she said, as she held it out to the Canon, "and rise."

(She used the second person singular, which in Italy, it must be

remembered, indicates a sincere and open friendship just as much as a

more tender sentiment.) "I have come to ask your favour for my nephew

Fabrizio. This is the whole truth of the story without the slightest

concealment, as one tells it to an old friend. At the age of sixteen and

a half he has done an intensely stupid thing. We were at the castle of

Grianta on the Lake of Como. One evening at seven o'clock we learned by

a boat from Como of the Emperor's landing on the shore of the Gulf of

Juan. Next morning Fabrizio went off to France, after borrowing the

passport of one of his plebeian friends, a dealer in barometers, named

Vasi. As he does not exactly resemble a dealer in barometers, he had

hardly gone ten leagues into France when he was arrested on sight; his

outbursts of enthusiasm in bad French seemed suspicious. After a

time he escaped and managed to reach Geneva; we sent to meet him

at Lugano. . . ."

"That is to say, Geneva," put in the Canon with a smile.

The Contessa finished her story.

"I will do everything for you that is humanly possible," replied the

Canon effusively; "I place myself entirely at your disposal. I will even

do imprudent things," he added. "Tell me, what am I to do as soon as

this poor parlour is deprived of this heavenly apparition which marks an

epoch in the history of my life?"

"You must go to Barone Binder and tell him that you have loved Fabrizio

ever since he was born, that you saw him in his cradle when you used to

come to our house, and that accordingly, in the name of the friendship

he has shown for you, you beg him to employ all his spies to discover

whether, before his departure for Switzerland, Fabrizio was in any sort

of communication whatsoever with any of the Liberals whom he has under

supervision. If the Barone's information is of any value, he is bound to

see that there is nothing more in this than a piece of boyish folly. You

know that I used to have, in my beautiful apartment in the _palazzo_

Dugnani, prints of the battles won by Napoleon: it was by spelling out

the legends engraved beneath them that my nephew learned to read. When

he was five years old, my poor husband used to explain these battles to

him; we put my husband's helmet on his head, the boy strutted about

trailing his big sabre. Very well, one fine day he learns that my

husband's god, the Emperor, has returned to France, he starts out to

join him, like a fool, but does not succeed in reaching him. Ask your

Barone with what penalty he proposes to punish this moment of folly?"

"I was forgetting one thing," said the Canon, "you shall see that I am

not altogether unworthy of the pardon that you grant me. Here," he said,

looking on the table among his papers, "here is the accusation by that

infamous _collo-torto_" (that is, hypocrite), "see, signed Ascanio

Valserra del Dongo, which gave rise to the whole trouble; I found it

yesterday at the police headquarters, and went to the Scala in the hope

of finding someone who was in the habit of going to your box, through

whom I might be able to communicate it to you. A copy of this document

reached Vienna long ago. There is the enemy that we have to fight." The

Canon read the accusation through with the Contessa, and it was agreed

that in the course of the day he would let her have a copy by the hand

of some trustworthy person. It was with joy in her heart that the

Contessa returned to the _palazzo_ del Dongo.

"No one could possibly be more of a gentleman than that reformed rake,"

she told the Marchesa. "This evening at the Scala, at a quarter to

eleven by the theatre clock, we are to send everyone away from our box,

put out the candles, and shut our door, and at eleven the Canon himself

will come and tell us what he has managed to do. We decided that this

would be the least compromising course for him."

This Canon was a man of spirit; he was careful to keep the appointment;

he shewed when he came a complete good nature and an unreserved openness

of heart such as are scarcely to be found except in countries where

vanity does not predominate over every other sentiment. His denunciation

of the Contessa to her husband, General Pietranera, was one of the great

sorrows of his life, and he had now found a means of getting rid of that

remorse.

That morning, when the Contessa had left his room, "So she's in love

with her nephew, is she," he had said to himself bitterly, for he was by

no means cured. "With her pride, to have come to me! . . . After that

poor Pietranera died, she repulsed with horror my offers of service,

though they were most polite and admirably presented by Colonel Scotti,

her old lover. The beautiful Pietranera reduced to living on fifteen

hundred francs!" the Canon went on, striding vigorously up and down the

room. "And then to go and live in the castle of Grianta, with an

abominable _seccatore_ like that Marchese del Dongo! . . . I can see it

all now! After all, that young Fabrizio is full of charm, tall, well

built, always with a smile on his face . . . and, better still, a

deliciously voluptuous expression in his eye . . . a Correggio face,"

the Canon added bitterly.

"The difference in age . . . not too great . . . Fabrizio born after the

French came, about '98, I fancy; the Contessa might be twenty-seven or

twenty-eight: no one could be better looking, more adorable. In this

country rich in beauties, she defeats them all, the Marini, the

Gherardi, the Ruga, the Aresi, the Pietragrua, she is far and away above

any of them. They were living happily together, hidden away by that

beautiful Lake of Como, when the young man took it into his head to join

Napoleon. . . . There are still souls in Italy! In spite of everything!

Dear country! No," went on this heart inflamed by jealousy, "impossible

to explain in any other way her resigning herself to vegetating in the

country, with the disgusting spectacle, day after day, at every meal, of

that horrible face of the Marchese del Dongo, as well as that

unspeakable pasty physiognomy of the Marchesino Ascanio, who is going to

be worse than his father! Well, I shall serve her faithfully. At least I

shall have the pleasure of seeing her otherwise than through an

opera-glass."

Canon Borda explained the whole case very clearly to the ladies. At

heart, Binder was as well-disposed as they could wish; he was delighted

that Fabrizio should have taken the key of the street before any orders

could arrive from Vienna; for Barone Binder had no power to make any

decision, he awaited orders in this case as in every other. He sent

every day to Vienna an exact copy of all the information that reached

him; then he waited.

It was necessary that, in his exile at Romagnano, Fabrizio

(1) Should hear mass daily without fail, take as his confessor a man of

spirit, devoted to the cause of the Monarchy, and should confess to him,

at the tribunal of penitence, only the most irreproachable sentiments.

(2) Should consort with no one who bore any reputation for intelligence,

and, were the need to arise, must speak of rebellion with horror as a

thing that no circumstances could justify.

(3) Must never let himself be seen in the _caffè_, must never read any

newspaper other than the official _Gazette_ of Turin and Milan; in

general he should shew a distaste for reading, and never open any book

printed later than 1720, with the possible exception of the novels of

Walter Scott.

(4) "Finally" (the Canon added with a touch of malice), "it is most

important that he should pay court openly to one of the pretty women of

the district, of the noble class, of course; this will shew that he has

not the dark and dissatisfied mind of an embryo conspirator."

Before going to bed, the Contessa and the Marchesa each wrote Fabrizio

an endless letter, in which they explained to him with a charming

anxiety all the advice that had been given them by Borda.

_THE POLICE_

Fabrizio had no wish to be a conspirator: he loved Napoleon, and, in his

capacity as a young noble, believed that he had been created to be

happier than his neighbour, and thought the middle classes absurd. Never

had he opened a book since leaving school, where he had read only texts

arranged by the Jesuits. He established himself at some distance from

Romagnano, in a magnificent _palazzo_, one of the masterpieces of the

famous architect Sanmicheli; but for thirty years it had been

uninhabited, so that the rain came into every room and not one of the

windows would shut. He took possession of the agent's horses, which he

rode without ceremony at all hours of the day; he never spoke, and he

thought about things. The recommendation to take a mistress from an

_ultra_ family appealed to him, and he obeyed it to the letter. He chose

as his confessor a young priest given to intrigue who wished to become a

bishop (like the confessor of the Spielberg[9]); but he went three

leagues on foot and wrapped himself in a mystery which he imagined to be

impenetrable, in order to read the _Constitutionnel_, which he thought

sublime. "It is as fine as Alfieri and Dante!" he used often to exclaim.

Fabrizio had this in common with the young men of France, that he was

far more seriously taken up with his horse and his newspaper than with

his politically _sound_ mistress. But there was no room as yet for

_imitation of others_ in this simple and sturdy nature, and he made no

friends in the society of the large country town of Romagnano; his

simplicity passed as arrogance: no one knew what to make of his

character. "_He is a younger son who feels himself wronged because he is

not the eldest_" was the _parroco's_ comment.

[Footnote 8: Silvio Pellico has given this name a European notoriety:

it is that of the street in Milan in which the police headquarters

and prisons are situated.]

[Footnote 9: See the curious Memoirs of M. Andryane, as entertaining

as a novel, and as lasting as Tacitus.]