The gendarmes at once removed the handcuffs. They had just found out that Fabrizio was the Duchess Sanseverina’s nephew, and lost no time in treating him with a honeyed politeness which contrasted strongly with the clerk’s rudeness. This seemed to annoy the clerk, and he said to Fabrizio, who had not moved:
“Now then, make haste. Show us those scratches poor Giletti gave you at the time of his murder.”
With a bound Fabrizio sprang upon the clerk, and gave him such a cuff that Barbone fell off his chair across the general’s legs. The gendarmes seized Fabrizio’s arms, but he did not move. The general himself, and the gendarmes who were close to him, hastily picked up the clerk, whose face was streaming with blood. Two others, who were standing a little farther off, ran to shut the office door, thinking the prisoner was trying to escape. The non-commissioned officer in command was convinced young Del Dongo could not make any very successful attempt at flight, seeing he was now actually within the citadel, but at any rate, with the instincts of his profession, and to prevent any scuffle, he moved over to the window. Opposite this open window, and about two paces from it, the general’s carriage was drawn up. Clelia had shrunk far back within it, so as to avoid witnessing the sad scene that was being enacted in the office. When she heard all the noise she looked out.
“What is happening?” said she to the officer.
“Signorina, it is young Fabrizio del Dongo, who has just cuffed that impudent rascal Barbone.”
“What! is it Signor del Dongo who is being taken to prison?”
“Why, there’s no doubt about that,” said the officer. “It’s on account of the poor fellow’s high birth that there is so much ceremony. I thought the signorina knew all about it.” Clelia continued to look out of the carriage window. Whenever the gendarmes round the table scattered a little she could see the prisoner.
“Who would have dreamed,” thought she, “when I met him on the road near the Lake of Como, that the very next time I saw him he would be in this sad position? He gave me his hand then, to help me into his mother’s coach. Even then he was with the duchess. Can their love story have begun at that time?”
My readers must be informed that the Liberal party, led by the Marchesa Raversi and General Conti, affected an absolute belief in the tender relations supposed to exist between Fabrizio and the duchess; and the gullibility of Count Mosca, whom it loathed, was a subject of never-ending pleasantry on its part.