"In any case, it is indeed surprising to be in prison and to have to reason with oneself in order to be unhappy. Upon my soul, I come back to my theory, perhaps I have a great character."
Fabrizio's meditations were disturbed by the carpenter of the citadel, who came to take the measurements of a screen for his windows; it was the first time that this prison had been used, and they had forgotten to complete it in this essential detail.
THE FIRST STEP
"And so," thought Fabrizio, "I am going to be deprived of that sublime view." And he sought to derive sadness from this privation.
"But what's this?" he cried suddenly, addressing the carpenter. "Am I not to see those pretty birds any more?" "Ah, the Signorina's birds, that she's so fond of," said the man, with a good-natured air, "hidden, eclipsed, blotted out like everything else."
Conversation was forbidden the carpenter just as strictly as it was the gaolers, but the man felt pity for the prisoner's youth: he informed him that these enormous shutters, resting on the sills of the two windows, and slanting upwards and away from the wall, were intended to leave the inmates with no view save of the sky. "It is done for their morals," he told him, "to increase a wholesome sadness and the desire to amend their ways in the hearts of the prisoners; the General," the carpenter added, "has also had the idea of taking the glass out of their windows and putting oiled paper there instead."
Fabrizio greatly enjoyed the epigrammatic turn of this conversation, extremely rare in Italy.
"I should very much like to have a bird to cheer me, I am madly fond of them; buy me one from Signorina Clelia Conti's maid."
"What, do you know her," cried the carpenter, "that you say her name so easily?"
"Who has not heard tell of so famous a beauty? But I have had the honour of meeting her several times at court."