The Conte was on the point of breaking out, or at least of betraying his anguish by the discomposure of his features. When in one of his circuits of the room he found himself near the door, he took his flight, calling out, in a genial, intimate tone: "Good-bye, you two!— One must avoid bloodshed," he said to himself.
The day following this horrible evening, after a night spent half in compiling a detailed sum of Fabrizio's advantages, half in the frightful transports of the most cruel jealousy, it occurred to the Conte that he might send for a young servant of his own; this man was keeping company with a girl named Cecchina, one of the Duchessa's personal maids, and her favourite. As good luck would have it, this young man was very sober in his habits, indeed miserly, and was anxious to find a place as porter in one of the public institutions of Parma. The Conte ordered the man to fetch Cecchina, his mistress, instantly. The man obeyed, and an hour later the Conte appeared suddenly in the room where the girl was waiting with her lover. The Conte frightened them both by the amount of gold that he gave them, then he addressed these few words to the trembling Cecchina, looking her straight in the face:
"Is the Duchessa in love with Monsignore?"
"No," said the girl, gaining courage to speak after a moment's silence. . . . "No, not yet, but he often kisses the Signora's hands, laughing, it is true, but with real feeling."
This evidence was completed by a hundred answers to as many furious questions from the Conte; his uneasy passion made the poor couple earn in full measure the money that he had flung them: he ended by believing what they told him, and was less unhappy. "If the Duchessa ever has the slightest suspicion of what we have been saying," he told Cecchina, "I shall send your lover to spend twenty years in the fortress, and when you see him again his hair will be quite white."
Some days elapsed, during which Fabrizio in turn lost all his gaiety.
"I assure you," he said to the Duchessa, "that Conte Mosca feels an antipathy for me."
"So much the worse for His Excellency," she replied with a trace of temper.
This was by no means the true cause of the uneasiness which had made Fabrizio's gaiety vanish. "The position in which chance has placed me is not tenable," he told himself. "I am quite sure that she will never say anything, she would be as much horrified by a too significant word as by an incestuous act. But if, one evening, after a rash and foolish day, she should come to examine her conscience, if she believes that I may have guessed the feeling that she seems to have formed for me, what part should I then play in her eyes? Nothing more nor less than the casto Giuseppe!" (An Italian expression alluding to the ridiculous part played by Joseph with the wife of the eunuch Potiphar.)