"Are my books burned?"
The same night she was fortunate enough to have a letter conveyed to him in a leaden ball. It was a week after this that the marriage of the Marchese Crescenzi's sister was celebrated, when the Duchessa was guilty of an enormously rash action of which we shall give an account in its proper place.
[CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE]
Almost a year before the time of these calamities the Duchessa had made a singular acquaintance: one day when she had the luna, as they say in those parts, she had gone suddenly, towards evening, to her villa of Sacca, situated on the farther side of Colorno, on the hill commanding the Po. She was amusing herself in improving this property; she loved the vast forest which crowned the hill and reached to the house; she spent her time laying out paths in picturesque directions.
"You will have yourself carried off by brigands, fair Duchessa," the Prince said to her one day; "it is impossible that a forest in which it is known that you take the air should remain deserted." The Prince threw a glance at the Conte, whose jealousy he hoped to quicken.
"I have no fear, Serene Highness," replied the Duchessa with an innocent air, "when I go walking in my woods; I reassure myself with this thought: I have done no harm to anyone, who is there that could hate me?" This speech was considered daring, it recalled the insults offered by the Liberals of the country, who were most insolent people.
On the day of the walk in question, the Prince's words came back to the mind of the Duchessa as she observed a very ill dressed man who was following her at a distance through the woods. At a sudden turn which she took in the course of her walk, this person came so near her that she felt alarmed. Her first impulse was to call her game-keeper whom she had left half a mile away, in the flower-garden close to the house. The stranger had time to overtake her and fling himself at her feet. He was young, extremely good-looking, but horribly badly dressed; his clothes had rents in them a foot long, but his eyes burned with the fire of an ardent soul.
FERRANTE
"I am under sentence of death, I am the physician, Ferrante Palla, I am dying of hunger, I and my five children."
The Duchessa had noticed that he was terribly thin; but his eyes were so fine, and filled with so tender an exaltation that they took from him any suggestion of crime. "Pallagi," she thought, "might well have given eyes like those to the Saint John in the Desert he has just placed in the Cathedral." The idea of Saint John was suggested to her by the incredible thinness of the vagabond. The Duchessa gave him three sequins which she had in her purse, with an apology for offering him so little, because she had just paid her gardener's account. Ferrante thanked her effusively. "Alas!" he said to her, "once I lived in towns, I used to see beautiful women; now that in fulfilment of my duties as a citizen I have had myself sentenced to death, I live in the woods, and I was following you, not to demand alms of you nor to rob you, but like a savage fascinated by an angelic beauty. It is so long since I last saw a pair of lovely white hands."