"What a mistake you are making! You won't have any war, and you'll fall back into the caffè life, only without smartness, without music, without love affairs," replied the Duchessa. "Believe me, for you just as much as for myself, it would be a wretched existence there in America." She explained to him the cult of the god Dollar, and the respect that had to be shewn to the artisans in the street who by their votes decided everything. They came back to the idea of the Church.
"Before you fly into a passion," the Duchessa said to him, "just try to understand what the Conte is asking you to do; there is no question whatever of your being a poor priest of more or less exemplary and virtuous life, like Priore Blanès. Remember the example of your uncles, the Archbishops of Parma; read over again the accounts of their lives in the supplement to the Genealogy. First and foremost, a man with a name like yours has to be a great gentleman, noble, generous, an upholder of justice, destined from the first to find himself at the head of his order . . . and in the whole of his life doing only one dishonourable thing, and that a very useful one."
"So all my illusions are shattered," said Fabrizio, heaving a deep sigh; "it is a cruel sacrifice! I admit, I had not taken into account this horror of enthusiasm and spirit, even when wielded to their advantage, which from now onwards is going to prevail amongst absolute monarchs."
ITALIAN PRUDENCE
"Remember that a proclamation, a caprice of the heart flings the enthusiast into the bosom of the opposite party to the one he has served all his life!"
"I an enthusiast!" repeated Fabrizio; "a strange accusation! I cannot manage even to be in love!"
"What!" exclaimed the Duchessa.
"When I have the honour to pay my court to a beauty, even if she is of good birth and sound religious principles, I cannot think about her except when I see her."
This avowal made a strange impression upon the Duchessa.
"I ask for a month," Fabrizio went on, "in which to take leave of Signora C——, of Novara, and, what will be more difficult still, of all the castles I have been building in the air all my life. I shall write to my mother, who will be so good as to come and see me at Belgirate, on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore, and, in thirty-one days from now, I shall be in Parma incognito."