The expression of the young girl’s eyes had completely changed already, but, obedient to her father’s instructions, reiterated a hundred times over, she replied, with an air of ignorance which her eyes utterly belied:
“I have heard nothing, monsignore.”
“My chief grand vicar, poor Fabrizio del Dongo, who is no more guilty of the death of that ruffian Giletti than I am, has been carried off from Bologna, where he was living under the name of Giuseppe Bossi, and shut up in your citadel. He arrived there chained to the carriage which brought him. A kind of jailer of the name of Barbone, who was pardoned years ago, after having murdered one of his own brothers, tried to use personal violence to Fabrizio, but my young friend is not a man to endure an insult. He threw the vile fellow on the ground, and was immediately carried down to a dungeon, twenty feet below the earth, with handcuffs on his wrists.”
“Not handcuffs. No.”
“Ah, you know something,” exclaimed the archbishop, and the old man’s features lost their expression of deep despondency; “but before all things, since somebody might come near this balcony, and interrupt us, would you do me the charity of giving Don Cesare this pastoral ring of mine with your own hands?” The young girl had taken the ring and did not know where to bestow it so as to avoid the risk of losing it. “Put it on your thumb,” said the archbishop, and he slipped it on himself. “May I rely on your giving him this ring?”
“Yes, monsignore.”
“Will you promise me secrecy as to what I am going to add, even if you should not think it proper to grant my request?”
“Yes, indeed, monsignore,” replied the young girl, alarmed by the grave and gloomy aspect assumed by the old man. “Our honoured archbishop,” she added, “can give me no orders that are not worthy of himself and of me.”
“Tell Don Cesare that I recommend my adopted son to his care. I know that the police officers who carried him off did not even give him time to take his breviary; I beg Don Cesare to give him his own, and if your uncle will send to-morrow to the palace, I undertake to replace the book given by him to Fabrizio. I also beg Don Cesare to pass on the ring, now on your pretty hand, to Monsignore del Dongo.” The archbishop was here interrupted by General Fabio Conti, who came to fetch his daughter and take her to her carriage. A short conversation ensued, during which the prelate showed himself to be not devoid of cunning. Without referring in the smallest degree to the newly made prisoner, he contrived that the current of talk should lead up to his own enunciation of certain political and moral sentiments, as, for instance: “There are certain critical moments in court life which decide the existence of important personages for considerable periods. It would be eminently imprudent to transform a condition of political coolness, which is a frequent and very simple result of party opposition, into a personal hatred.” Then the archbishop, somewhat carried away by the great grief which this unexpected arrest had occasioned him, went so far as to say that while a man must certainly preserve the position he enjoyed, it would be wanton imprudence to bring down desperate hatreds on his own head by allowing himself to be drawn into certain things which never could be forgotten.
When the general was in his coach with his daughter—