“Well, my good Grillo, a fellow of the name of Giletti tried to murder me in the middle of the road. I defended my life, and killed him. I should kill him again, if it had to be done. But none the less I will live a cheery life as long as I am your guest. Ask leave from your chiefs, and then go fetch me some linen from the Palazzo Sanseverina, and bring me plenty of nébieu d’Asti.”
This is a fairly good effervescent wine, made in Piedmont, in the country of Alfieri, and which is highly esteemed, especially by that class to which jailers generally belong. Eight or ten of these gentry were engaged in moving various ancient and highly gilt pieces of furniture, taken from the prince’s apartments on the first floor, into Fabrizio’s wooden room, and they all carefully treasured up their prisoner’s remark in favour of Asti wine. In spite of all their efforts, the arrangements for Fabrizio’s first night were rather pitiful; but the only thing that seemed to distress him was the absence of a bottle of good nébieu. “He seems a good fellow,” said the jailers as they departed, “and we must only hope one thing—that our chiefs will let his friends pass money in to him.”
When he was left alone, and had settled down a little after all the noise, “Is it possible that this can be a prison?” said Fabrizio to himself, as he looked out over the mighty horizon stretching from Treviso to the Monte Viso, the huge chain of the Alps, the snow-covered peaks, and the stars above them. “And this my first night in a prison, too! I can imagine that Clelia Conti must delight in this aerial solitude. Here we are a thousand leagues above the meannesses and wickednesses which make up our life down there. If those birds there, under my window, belong to her, I shall see her.… Will she blush when she sees me?” When slumber overtook him, in the small hours of the morning, the prisoner was still debating this great question.
On the very morning after that first night in prison, during which Fabrizio had not once felt impatient, he was reduced to holding conversations with Fox, the English dog. Grillo, the jailer, still looked at him with the most kindly eyes, but a newly issued order had sealed his lips, and he brought his prisoner neither linen nor nébieu.
“Shall I see Clelia?” thought Fabrizio as he woke. “But do those birds really belong to her?” The birds in question were beginning to chirp and sing, and at that height, theirs was the only noise that fell upon the air. The deep silence which reigned at that altitude was a most novel and pleasurable sensation to Fabrizio. He listened with delight to the little fitful, lively warbling with which his neighbours the birds greeted the sun. “If they are hers, she will come for an instant into that room under my window.” And while he watched the huge ranges of the Alps, against the nearer tier of which the citadel of Parma seemed to project like an outwork, his eyes came back perpetually to the splendid satin-wood and mahogany cages, with their gilded wires, which stood in the middle of the bright room which had been transformed into an aviary. It was not till later that Fabrizio found out that this room was the only one on the second floor of the palace which had any shade between eleven o’clock and four; it was screened by the Farnese Tower.
“What will my grief be,” said Fabrizio to himself, “if, instead of that modest and thoughtful face which I expect, and which, perhaps, will blush a little at the sight of me, I behold the coarse countenance of some vulgar waiting-maid, who has been sent to supply the birds’ necessities? But if I do see Clelia, will she condescend to notice me? Faith, I must risk some indiscretion, so as to attract her attention. Some privileges must surely be allowed to a man in my position. And besides, we two are alone here, and far away from all the world. I am a prisoner, and what General Conti and wretches of his kind probably regard as their inferior, … but she has so much cleverness, or rather so much heart, as the count believes, that perhaps, even as he says, she despises her father’s trade. That would account for her melancholy. A noble reason, truly, for her sadness. But, after all, I am not a complete stranger to her.… What modest grace there was in her greeting to me yesterday evening! I remember very well that when I met her near Como I said to her, ‘Some day I shall go to see your beautiful pictures at Parma. Will you then remember this name—Fabrizio del Dongo?’ Has she forgotten it? She was so young!
“But now I think of it,” said Fabrizio in astonishment, and breaking off the thread of his thoughts, “I am forgetting to be angry! Can it be that I possess a mighty courage, like that of which the ancients gave a few instances to the world? Am I a hero, with no suspicion of the fact? What! I, who dreaded prison so bitterly, here am I in a dungeon, and I can not remember to be sad! How true it is that the dread of the evil is a hundred times worse than the evil itself! How is this? Must I argue myself into grief at finding myself in this prison, which, so Blanès said, may as likely last ten years as ten months? Can it be the strangeness of my new surroundings which diminishes the distress I ought to feel? Perhaps this unreasoning cheerfulness, which is quite independent of my own will, will come to a sudden end? Perhaps in another instant I shall fall into the black gloom which ought to overwhelm me?
“In any case, it is a very astonishing thing that I should be in prison, and that I should have to argue with myself before I can feel sad. Upon my word, I come back to my old inference; perhaps I am a great man, after all!”
Fabrizio’s musings were broken by the arrival of the carpenter of the fortress, who came to take measurements for a screen for his windows. This was the first occasion on which this room had been occupied as a prison, and its completion in this essential particular had been overlooked.
“Then,” said Fabrizio, “I shall be deprived of that splendid view?” and he tried to feel sad over the loss. “But what,” he cried suddenly, speaking to the carpenter, “I shall not be able to see those pretty birds!”