She could not resist winding up her evening by yielding to the temptation of writing a tormenting letter to the poor count. She announced to him, officially, and for his guidance, so she expressed it, in his intercourse with crowned heads, that she did not feel herself equal to the task of entertaining a disgraced minister. “You are afraid of the prince,” she wrote. “When you can no longer see him, shall you expect me to frighten you?” She despatched the letter instantly.
The prince, on his side, sent, at seven o’clock the next morning, for Count Zurla, Minister of the Interior, and said: “Give fresh and most stringent orders to every podestà to arrest Fabrizio del Dongo. I hear there is some chance that he may venture to reappear in my dominions. The fugitive is at Bologna, where he seems to brave the action of our law courts. You will therefore place police officers who are personally acquainted with his appearance: 1. In the villages on the road from Bologna to Parma. 2. In the neighbourhood of the Duchess Sanseverina’s house at Sacca and her villa at Castelnovo. 3. All round Count Mosca’s country-house. I venture, Count, to rely on your great wisdom to conceal all knowledge of your sovereign’s orders from discovery by Count Mosca. Understand clearly that I will have Fabrizio del Dongo arrested.”
As soon as this minister had departed, Rassi, the chief justice, entered the prince’s study by a secret door, and came forward, bent well-nigh double, and bowing at every step. The rascal’s face was a study for a painter, worthy of all the vileness of the part he played, and while the swift and disturbed glance of his eye betrayed his consciousness of his own value, the grinning expression of arrogant self-confidence upon his lips showed that he knew how to struggle against scorn.
As this individual is destined to exert great influence over Fabrizio’s fate, I may say a word of him here. He was tall, with fine and very intelligent eyes, but his face was seamed by small-pox. As for intelligence, he had plenty of it, and of the sharpest. His thorough knowledge of legal matters was uncontested, but his strongest point was his resourcefulness. Whatever might be the aspect of a matter, he always, with the greatest ease and in the shortest space of time, discovered the most logical and well-founded means of obtaining a sentence or an acquittal. He was, above all things, a past master in attorney’s tricks.
This man, whose services mighty monarchs would have envied the Prince of Parma, had only one great passion—to talk familiarly with exalted personages, and entertain them with buffooneries. Little did he care whether the great man laughed at what he said, or at his own person, or even made disgusting jokes about his wife. So long as he saw him laugh, and was himself treated with familiarity, he was content. Sometimes, when the prince had exhausted all possible means of belittling his chief justice’s dignity, he would kick him heartily. If the kicks hurt him, the chief justice would cry. But the instinct of buffoonery was so strong in him that he continued to prefer the drawing-room of a minister who scoffed at him, to his own, where he held despotic sway over the whole legal profession. Rassi had made himself quite a peculiar position, owing to the fact that not the most insolent noble in the country could humiliate him. His vengeance for the insults showered on him all the day long consisted in retailing them to the prince, to whom he had acquired the privilege of saying everything. It is true that the prince’s answer frequently consisted in a hearty box on the ear, which hurt him horribly, but to that he never took exception. The presence of the chief justice distracted the prince’s thoughts in his hours of bad temper, and he would then amuse himself by ill treating him. My readers will perceive that Rassi was almost the perfect man for a court. He had no honour and no humour.
“Secrecy, above all things!” exclaimed the prince, without any recognition of his salutation. The most courteous of men, as a rule, he treated Rassi like the merest varlet. “What is the date of your sentence?”
“Yesterday morning, your Most Serene Highness.”
“How many of the judges signed it?”
“All five.”