Clelia was an eager little Liberal. In her first youth she had taken all the Liberal talk she had heard in her father’s society in the most serious earnest, while her father’s only view of it was to make a position for himself. This had given her a scorn and almost a horror of the pliability of courtiers; hence arose her dislike to marriage. Since Fabrizio’s arrival she had been harried by remorse. “Now,” said she to herself, “my unworthy heart is taking up the cause of those who would betray my father. He dares to make me signs, as if he would saw through a door.… But,” she went on, and her heart was wrung at the thought, “the whole city talks of his approaching death.… To-morrow may be the fatal day.… Under such monsters as those who govern us, what is there in the world that is not possible? How soft, how nobly calm, are those eyes, doomed, perhaps, soon to close forever! Heavens, what anguish the duchess must be enduring!… And, indeed, every one says she is in despair.… If it were I, I would go, like the heroic Charlotte Corday, and stab the prince.”
During the whole of his third day in prison, Fabrizio was beside himself with rage, simply and solely because Clelia had not returned. “If she was to be angry with me,” he exclaimed, “I should have done much better to tell her that I loved her,” for he had arrived at this discovery. “No, it is not my nobility of soul that prevents me from fretting in my prison, and makes me bring Father Blanès’s prophecy to naught. I do not deserve so much honour. In spite of myself, I dream of the gentle pitying look Clelia cast on me as the gendarmes were leading me out of the guard-room—that look has wiped out all my past life! Who would have told me I should have met such gentle eyes in such a place! and at the very moment when my own sight was polluted by the appearance of Barbone, and of the general who rules this fortress! Heaven opened, in the midst of those vile creatures. And how can I help loving beauty, and seeking to see it again? No, it is not my nobility of soul which makes me indifferent to all the petty annoyances with which imprisonment overwhelms me.” Fabrizio’s imagination, running rapidly over every possibility, reached that of being set at liberty. “No doubt the duchess’s affection will work miracles for me. Ah, well, I should thank her but very coldly for my liberty; there is not much coming back to such places as these. Once I was out of prison, living as we do in different societies, I should hardly ever see Clelia again. And, after all, what harm does the prison do me? If Clelia would only not crush me with her displeasure, what more need I ask of Heaven?”
On the evening of that day on which he had not seen his lovely neighbour, a great idea occurred to him. With the iron cross of the rosary given to each prisoner when he entered the fortress, he began, and successfully, to work a hole in the screen. “This is not very prudent, perhaps,” thought he, before he began. “The carpenters have said in my presence that they will be followed to-morrow by the painters. What will the painters say when they find a hole in the window screen? But if I do not commit this imprudence I shall not be able to see her to-morrow. What! shall I deliberately spend another day without seeing her, and after she has left me in anger?” Fabrizio’s imprudence had its reward; after fifteen hours’ labour he did see Clelia, and, by an excess of good fortune, as she thought he did not see her, she stood motionless for a long time, gazing at the great screen. He had ample time to read symptoms of the tenderest pity in her eyes. Toward the end of her visit it became evident that she was neglecting the care of her birds to spend whole minutes in contemplation of his window. Her soul was sorely troubled; she was thinking of the duchess, whose extreme misery had inspired her with so much pity, and yet she was beginning to hate her. She could not comprehend the profound melancholy which was taking possession of her whole nature, and she was angry with herself. Two or three times during the course of her visit Fabrizio’s eagerness led him to try to shake the screen; he felt as if he could not be happy unless he could make Clelia understand that he saw her. “Yet,” said he to himself, “shy and reserved as she is, no doubt if she knew I could see her so easily, she would hide herself from my sight.”
He was much more fortunate the next day (on what trifles does love build happiness!). While she was looking up sadly at the great screen, he managed to slip a small piece of wire through the hole he had made with his iron cross, and make signs to her which she evidently understood—at all events in so far as that they were intended to convey “I am here, and I see you.”
Bad luck followed Fabrizio on the following days. He was anxious to take a bit of wood the size of his hand out of the monster screen, which he would have replaced whenever he chose, and which would have allowed of his seeing and being seen, and thus of speaking, by signs at all events, of that which filled his heart. But the noise of the little and very imperfect saw which he had fashioned out of his watch-spring and notched with his cross gave the alarm to Grillo, who spent long hours in his room. He thought he observed, indeed, that Clelia’s severity seemed to diminish in proportion as the material difficulties, which prevented any correspondence between them, increased. Fabrizio noticed clearly that she no longer affected to drop her eyes or look at the birds whenever he attempted to make her aware of his presence with the help of his paltry bit of iron wire. He had the pleasure of seeing that she never failed to appear in her aviary exactly as the clock struck a quarter to noon, and he was almost presumptuous enough to believe that he himself was the cause of this exact punctuality. Why so? The idea does not appear reasonable, but love catches shades which are invisible to the careless eye, and deduces endless consequences from them. For instance, since Clelia could not see the prisoner she would raise her eyes toward his window almost as soon as she entered the aviary. These were the gloomy days when no one in Parma doubted that Fabrizio would soon be put to death. He was the only person unaware of the fact. But the horrible thought was never out of Clelia’s mind, and how could she reproach herself for the excessive interest she took in Fabrizio? He was about to perish, and for the cause of liberty, for it was too ridiculous to put a Del Dongo to death for giving a sword thrust to an actor. It was true, indeed, that the charming young man was attached to another woman. Clelia was profoundly miserable, though she did not clearly realize the nature of the interest she took in his fate. “If he is led out to death,” said she to herself, “I shall certainly take refuge in a convent, and never again will I reappear in this court society. It fills me with horror; they are polished murderers, every one of them!”
On the eighth day of Fabrizio’s imprisonment she endured a great humiliation. Absorbed in her sad thoughts, she was gazing fixedly at the prisoner’s window. He had given no sign of his presence that day. All at once he removed a small bit of his screen, a little larger than his hand. He looked at her cheerily, and she read greeting in his eyes. This unexpected experience was too much for her; she turned quickly to her birds, and began to attend to them; but she trembled so much that she spilled the water she was pouring out for them, and Fabrizio could see her emotion quite plainly. She could not face the situation, and at last, to escape it, she ran away.
That moment was, without any comparison, the happiest in the whole of Fabrizio’s life. If his liberty had been offered to him at that moment, how joyously would he have refused it!
The following day was that of the duchess’s deepest despair. Every one in the city was convinced that all was over with Fabrizio. Clelia had not the dreary courage to treat him with a harshness which found no echo in her heart. She spent an hour and a half in the aviary, looked at all his signs, and often replied to them by the liveliest and sincerest expression of interest, at all events. Every now and then she would slip away to conceal her tears. Her womanly instincts made her vividly conscious of the imperfection of the language they were employing. If they could have spoken, in how many different ways might she not have endeavoured to discover the real nature of Fabrizio’s feeling for the duchess? Clelia could hardly deceive herself now; she felt a hatred for the Duchess Sanseverina.
One night Fabrizio happened to think somewhat seriously about his aunt. He was astonished to find he hardly recognised his recollection of her. His memory of her had completely altered; at that moment she seemed fifty years old to him. “Good God!” he cried enthusiastically, “how right I was not to tell her that I loved her!” He went so far as hardly to be able to understand how he had ever thought her so pretty. In that respect the alteration in his impression of little Marietta was less remarkable. This was because he had never dreamed that his heart had anything to do with his love for Marietta, whereas he had frequently imagined that the whole of his heart was possessed by the duchess. The duchess of A⸺ and Marietta now appeared in his memory as two young turtle-doves, whose whole charm resided in their weakness and their innocence, whereas the noble image of Clelia Conti, which absorbed his whole soul, actually filled him with a kind of terror. He felt, only too clearly, that the happiness of his whole life would depend on the governor’s daughter, and that she had it in her power to make him the most miserable of men. Every day he was tortured by the mortal fear of seeing some inexorable caprice end the strange and delightful life he led in her vicinity. At all events, she had filled the first two months of his imprisonment with happiness. This was the period during which, twice every week, General Fabio Conti assured the prince: “I can give your Highness my word of honour that the prisoner Del Dongo never speaks to a human being, and spends his whole life either in a state of the deepest despair or else asleep.”
Clelia came every day, two or three times over, to see her birds. Sometimes she only stayed a few moments. If Fabrizio had not cared for her so much he would soon have found out that he was loved. But he was in deadly doubt upon that subject. Clelia had ordered a piano to be placed in the aviary. While her fingers wandered over the keys, so as to account for her presence in the room, and occupy the attention of the sentries who marched to and fro under her windows, her eyes answered Fabrizio’s questions. On one subject only she would make no response, and on certain great occasions she even took to flight, and thus would sometimes disappear for a whole day. This was when Fabrizio’s signs indicated feelings the nature of which it was impossible for her to misunderstand. On that point she was quite inexorable.