The count had no virtue; we may even add that what Liberals understand by virtue (to seek the happiness of the greatest number) seemed to him folly. He believed his first duty to be to seek the happiness of Count Mosca della Rovere; but when he spoke of resigning, he was thoroughly honourable and perfectly sincere. Never in all his life had he spoken an untruth to the duchess. She, however, paid not the slightest attention to his letter. Her course, and a very painful one, was settled: she was to pretend to forget Fabrizio. After that effort, everything else was quite indifferent to her.
Toward noon next morning the count, who had called quite ten times at the Palazzo Sanseverina, was at last admitted. He was thunder-struck when he saw the duchess. “She looks forty,” said he to himself, “and yesterday she was so brilliant, so young; every one tells me that during her long conversation with Clelia Conti she looked quite as young as she, and far more bewitching.”
The duchess’s voice and manner of speaking were just as strange as her appearance. Her tone—passionless, devoid of all human interest, of any touch of anger—drove the colour from the count’s face. It reminded him of one of his friends who, a few months previously, when on the point of death, and after having received the sacrament, had desired to speak with him. After a few minutes, the duchess was able to speak to him. She looked at him, but her eyes were still dim.
“Let us part, my dear count,” she said, in a voice that was weak, but quite articulate, and which she did her best to render kind. “Let us part! It must be done. Heaven is my witness that for the last five years my conduct toward you has been above reproach. You have given me a brilliant life in place of the boredom which would have been my dreary lot at Grianta. But for you, old age and I would have met together some years earlier.… On my part, my one care has been to endeavour to make you happy. It is because I care for you that I propose this separation, ‘à l’amiable,’ as they say in France.”
The count did not understand her. She was obliged to repeat herself several times over. Then he grew deadly pale, and, casting himself on his knees beside her bed, he poured out all that the deepest astonishment, followed by the liveliest despair, could inspire in the heart of a clever man who was desperately in love. Over and over again he offered to send in his resignation, and follow his friend to some safe retreat a thousand leagues from Parma.
“You dare to speak to me of departure,” she cried at last, “and Fabrizio is here!” But seeing that the name of Fabrizio pained the count, she added, after a moment’s rest, and with a slight pressure of his hand: “No, dear friend, I will not tell you that I have loved you with those passionate transports which nobody, it appears to me, can feel after thirty, and I am long past that age. You will have been told that I love Fabrizio, for I know that story has been rife at this wicked court.” For the first time during this conversation, her eyes flashed as she spoke the word wicked. “I swear to you, before God, and on Fabrizio’s life, that not the smallest thing has ever happened between him and me, which a third person might not have seen. Neither will I tell you that I love him exactly as a sister would love him. I love him, so to speak, by instinct. I love his courage, so simple and so perfect that he may be said to be unaware of it himself. I remember that this admiration began when he returned from Waterloo. He was still a child, in spite of his seventeen years. His great anxiety was to know whether he really had been present at the battle; and if that were so, whether he could say he had fought, seeing he had not shared in the attack on any battery or any column of the enemy’s forces. It was during our serious discussion of this important subject that I began to notice his perfect charm. His great soul was revealed to me. What skilful lies a well-brought-up young man would have put forward in his place! Well, if he is not happy, I can not be happy. There; that sentence exactly describes the condition of my heart. If it is not the truth, it is, at all events, as much of the truth as I can see.” Encouraged by her tone of frankness and friendliness, the count tried to kiss her hand. She drew it away with a sort of horror. “Those days are over,” she said. “I am a woman of seven-and-thirty; I am on the threshold of old age. I feel all its despondency already; perhaps, indeed, I am very near my grave. That moment is a terrible one, so I have heard, and yet I think I long for it. I have the worst symptom of old age. This horrible misfortune has killed my heart; there is no love left in me. When I look at you, dear count, I only seem to see the shadow of some one who was once dear to me! I will say more. It is only my gratitude which makes me speak to you thus.”
“What is to become of me?” reiterated the count; “of me, who feel I love you more passionately than when I first saw you at the Scala?”
“Shall I tell you something, dear friend? Your talk of love wearies me, and strikes me as indecent. Come,” she said, and she tried to smile, but failed, “take courage; act like a clever man, a judicious man, full of resource to meet events. Be with me that which you really are in the eyes of the outside world—the cleverest man and the greatest politician whom Italy has produced for centuries.”
The count rose to his feet and walked up and down for some moments in silence.
“Impossible, dear friend,” said he at last. “I am torn in pieces by the most violent passion, and you ask me to appeal to my own reason. There is no reason for me at present.”