Clelia had good reason to be sad; the serenade had been offered her by the Marchese Crescenzi. Such a public step was tantamount to a kind of official announcement of her marriage. Until that very day, and even until nine o’clock that evening, she had stood out nobly. But she had given in at last, on her father’s threat that he would instantly send her to the convent.
“Then I should never see him again,” she said to herself, weeping. In vain did her reason add: “I should never see him again—that man who will bring me every sort of sorrow, the lover of the duchess, the fickle being who is known to have had ten mistresses at Naples, and to have forsaken them all. I should never see him again—that ambitious youth, who, if he escapes the sentence now hanging over him, will immediately re-enter the service of the Church. It would be a crime if I were ever to look at him again, once he has left the citadel, and his natural inconstancy will spare me that temptation. For what am I to him? A mere pretext for lightening his boredom for a few hours of each of his days in prison.” Even while she thus reviled him the memory of his smile, as he looked at the gendarmes round him when he was leaving the jailer’s office on his way to the Farnese Tower, came back to Clelia’s memory. Her eyes overflowed with tears. “Dear friend, what would I not do for you! You will be my ruin, I know; that is my fate. I work my own destruction, and in the vilest way, when I listen to this terrible serenade to-night. But at noon to-morrow I shall look into your eyes again!”
It was on the very morrow of that day on which Clelia had sacrificed so much for the young prisoner whom she loved so passionately—it was on the morrow of the day on which, conscious though she was of all his faults, she had sacrificed her life to him, that her coldness almost drove Fabrizio to despair. If, even through the imperfect language of signs, he had done the least violence to Clelia’s feelings, she would probably not have been able to restrain her tears, and Fabrizio would have obtained her confession of all she felt for him. But he was not bold enough; he was too mortally afraid of displeasing Clelia. The punishment she had it in her power to inflict on him was too severe for him to face. In other words, Fabrizio had no experience of the nature of the emotion stirred in a man by the woman he really loves. It was a sensation he had never felt before, even to the very faintest extent. It took him a week from the night of the serenade to recover his accustomed terms of friendship with Clelia. The poor girl, terrified lest she should betray herself, took refuge in severity, and every day Fabrizio fancied his favour with her grew less.
One day—Fabrizio had then been in prison almost three months, without holding any communication with the outer world, yet without feeling unhappy—Grillo had remained in his room far into the morning. Fabrizio was in despair, not knowing how to get rid of him. Half-past twelve o’clock had struck before he was able to open the two little traps, a foot high, which he had cut in his hateful screen. Clelia was standing at the aviary window, her eyes fixed on Fabrizio’s room. The deepest despair hovered over her drawn features. Hardly had she caught sight of Fabrizio than she made him a sign that all was lost; then, hurrying to her piano and pretending to sing a recitative out of an opera then in vogue, she said, in sentences broken by her despair and the fear of being understood by the sentinels marching up and down under the window:
“Good God! you are still alive! How deeply I thank Heaven! Barbone, the jailer whose insolence you punished on the day of your arrival here, had disappeared, and left the citadel altogether. He returned the night before last, and since yesterday I have had reason to think he is trying to poison you. He comes and hangs about the private kitchen in the palace, where your meals are cooked. I know nothing for certain, but my waiting-woman believes that vile countenance only comes into the palace kitchens with the object of destroying your life. I was beside myself with anxiety when you did not appear; I thought you were dead! Do not eat any food that is brought you, until I give you leave. I will contrive some means of sending you a little chocolate. In any case, at nine o’clock to-night, if, by Heaven’s mercy, you happen to have a thread, or can make a line out of some of your linen, let it drop from your window on to the orange trees below. I will fasten a cord to it, which you will draw up, and by means of that cord I will send you bread and chocolate.”
Fabrizio had treasured up the scrap of charcoal he had found in the stove in his room. He made haste to take advantage of Clelia’s emotion, and to write on his hand a succession of letters which made up the following words:
“I love you, and the only reason my life is precious to me is because I see you. Above all things, send me paper and a pencil.”
As Fabrizio had hoped, the excessive terror he had read in Clelia’s face prevented the young girl from breaking off their conversation after his bold declaration that he loved her. All she did was to look very much displeased. Fabrizio was clever enough to add: “There is so much wind to-day that I can hardly make out the counsels you are good enough to give me as you sing; the noise of the piano drowns your voice. What is the poison of which you speak?”
At his words all the young girl’s alarm broke out afresh; she began hastily writing large letters in ink on pages which she tore out of a book, and Fabrizio was beside himself with delight at seeing the method of correspondence he had so vainly begged, established at last, after three months of effort. He carefully clung to the little deception which had served his purpose so well. What he wanted to do was to write letters, and he kept pretending he could not catch the sense of the words, the letters of which Clelia held up to his gaze one after the other.