Two hours later, poor unlucky Fabrizio, securely handcuffed, and fastened by a long chain to his own sediola, into which he had been thrust, started for the citadel at Parma, under the guard of eight gendarmes. These men had been ordered to collect all the gendarmes stationed in the villages through which the procession might pass as they went along, and the podestà himself attended the important prisoner. Toward seven o’clock in the evening the sediola, escorted by all the little boys in Parma, and guarded by thirty gendarmes, was driven across the beautiful promenade, past the little palace in which the Fausta had lived a few months previously, and stopped before the outer gate of the citadel just as General Fabio Conti and his daughter were about to issue from it. The governor’s carriage stopped before reaching the drawbridge, to allow the sediola to which Fabrizio was bound to pass across it. The general at once shouted orders to close the citadel gate, and hastened down to the doorkeeper’s office to make inquiries. He was more than a little surprised when he recognised the prisoner, whose limbs had grown quite stiff from being bound to the sediola during the long journey. Four gendarmes had picked him up, and were carrying him to the jailer’s office. “It appears, then,” said the self-sufficient governor to himself, “that the celebrated Fabrizio del Dongo, the man to whom the best society in Parma has seemingly sworn to devote its whole thoughts for the past year, is in my power.”
The general had met him a score of times—at court, in the duchess’s house, and elsewhere—but he took good care to make no sign of recognition; he would have been afraid of compromising himself.
“Draw up a most circumstantial report of the prisoner’s delivery into my hands by the worthy podestà of Castelnovo,” he called out to the prison clerk.
Barbone, the clerk in question, a most alarming-looking person, with his huge beard and generally martial air, began to look even more self-important than usual; he might have been taken for a German jailer. Believing that it was the Duchess Sanseverina’s influence which had prevented his master, the governor, from becoming Minister of War, he was even more insolent than usual to this particular prisoner, addressing him in the second person plural, which, in Italy, is the tense used in speaking to servants. “I am a prelate of the Holy Roman Church,” said Fabrizio steadily, “and grand vicar of this diocese; my birth alone entitles me to respect.”
“I know nothing about that,” replied the clerk impudently. “Prove your assertions by producing the patents which give you a right to those highly respectable titles.” Fabrizio had no patents to show, and held his peace. General Fabio Conti, standing beside the clerk, watched him write without raising his own eyes to the prisoner’s face, so that he might not be obliged to say he really was Fabrizio del Dongo.
Suddenly Clelia Conti, who was waiting in the carriage, heard a terrible noise in the guard-room. Barbone, after writing an insolent and very lengthy description of the prisoner’s person, had ordered him to open his clothes, so that he might verify and note down the number and condition of the scratches he had received in his affair with Giletti.
“I can not,” said Fabrizio with a bitter smile. “I am not in a position to obey this gentleman’s orders; my handcuffs prevent it.”
“What!” cried the general; “the prisoner is handcuffed inside the fortress! That’s against the rules; there must be a distinct order. Take off the handcuffs!”
Fabrizio looked at him. “Here’s a pretty Jesuit,” thought he to himself; “for the last hour he has been looking at me in these handcuffs, which make me horribly uncomfortable, and now he pretends to be astonished.”