Clelia could not answer; she looked up at him, and burst into tears. If he could have spoken to her then at close quarters he might perhaps have induced her to confess feelings, his uncertainty concerning which often cast him into the deepest sadness. He was keenly conscious that for him life without Clelia’s love could only be a succession of bitter sorrows, or one long unbearable weariness. Life did not appear worth living if he was only to go back to those pleasures which had seemed to interest him before he had known what love really was, and although suicide has not yet become the fashion in Italy, he had thought of it as a final refuge, should fate part him from Clelia.
The next day he received a long letter from her.
“It is necessary, my friend, that you should know the truth. Very often, since you have been shut up here, the whole town of Parma has believed your last hour had come.
“It is true that you are only sentenced to twelve years in the fortress, but it is an undoubted fact, unhappily, that an all-powerful hate pursues you, and twenty times I have trembled at the thought that your days might be ended by poison. You must, therefore, snatch at every possible means of escape. You see that for your sake I fail in my most sacred duties. You may judge how imminent your danger is, by the things I dare to tell you, and which are so unfit for me to say. If it be absolutely necessary, if you can find no other means of safety, you must fly. Every instant you spend within this fortress may place your life in greater peril. Remember that there is a party at court which has never allowed its plans to be checked by any likelihood of crime. And do you not perceive that all the plans of that party are constantly foiled by Count Mosca’s superior cunning? Certain means have now been devised to insure his banishment from Parma. This throws the duchess into despair. And does not her despair become a certainty, if the young prisoner is put to death? This one fact, which is unanswerable, will enable you to gauge your own position. You say you feel affection for me. Think, in the first place, that insurmountable obstacles must prevent this feeling from ever becoming a solid one between us. We shall have met each other in our youth; we shall have held out friendly hands to one another, in a moment of misfortune. Fate will have sent me to this stern place to soften your suffering, but I should reproach myself eternally if fancies which have not, and never will have, any true foundation, led you to neglect any possible opportunity of saving your life from such a frightful peril. The cruel imprudence I committed when I exchanged some friendly signs with you, has cost me my peace of mind. If our childish games with alphabets have filled you with illusions so unjustifiable, and which may be so fatal to you, I shall never be able to justify myself in my own eyes, by recalling Barbone’s attempt upon you to my memory. I myself, even when I thought I was saving you from a momentary danger, shall have placed you in far more terrible and far more inevitable peril, and never, to all eternity, can my wrongdoing gain pardon, if it has inspired you with feelings which might lead you to neglect the counsels of the duchess. This, then, is what you force me to reiterate: Save yourself! I command you!”
The letter was a very long one. Some passages, such as that “I command you,” which we have just quoted, were full of an exquisite encouragement to Fabrizio’s love. The actual feeling of the letter struck him as being fairly tender, although its expression was remarkably prudent. At other moments he paid the penalty of his complete ignorance of this kind of warfare, and saw nothing but ordinary friendship, or even the most commonplace humanity, in Clelia’s letter. None of its contents, however, shook his resolve for a single instant. Supposing all the dangers she described to be very real, was it anything too much to purchase the daily joy of seeing her by facing some momentary risk? What would his life be if he were to find refuge, once more, at Bologna or Florence? For if he should escape from the citadel, he could never hope for leave to reside anywhere within the state of Parma. And if the prince altered his views so far as to set him at liberty—a very unlikely contingency, seeing he, Fabrizio, had become, to a powerful faction, a useful element for the overthrow of Count Mosca—what would life be, even at Parma, parted from Clelia by the bitter hatred of the two parties? Once or twice in a month, perhaps, chance might bring them both into the same drawing-room. But even then, what could the nature of their conversation be? How were they ever to recover the tone of absolute intimacy he now enjoyed for several hours every day? What would their drawing-room talk be like, compared with the intercourse they kept up through their alphabets? “What matter if I have to pay for this life of delights, this unique chance of happiness, by taking some trifling risks? And is it not happiness, again, to find this poor opportunity of proving my love to her?”
Fabrizio’s only view of Clelia’s letter, then, was that it gave him an excuse for craving an interview with her. This was the one and constant object of all his longing. He had never spoken to her but once, and only for an instant, just as he was being led to his prison. And that was more than two hundred days ago. There was a method by which a meeting with Clelia might be easily arranged. The worthy Don Cesare allowed Fabrizio to walk for half an hour every Thursday, in the daytime, on the terrace of the Farnese Tower. But on the other days his exercise, which might have been observed by all the dwellers in and around Parma, and thus seriously compromised the governor, was taken after nightfall. The only staircase by which the terrace of the Farnese Tower could be reached was that in the little bell tower of the chapel, with its gloomy black and white marble decorations, of which my reader may retain some recollection. Grillo was in the habit of taking Fabrizio into the chapel and opening the door leading to the little staircase in the tower for him to pass up it. He ought to have followed him, but the evenings were growing chilly, and the jailer allowed him to go up alone, turned the key upon the tower, which communicated with the terrace, and went back to sit in his warm room. Well, why should not Clelia and her waiting-woman meet him, some night, in the black marble chapel?
All Fabrizio’s long letter in answer to Clelia’s was written with the object of obtaining this interview. And further, with the most absolute sincerity, and as though he had been speaking of another person, he confided to her all the reasons which made him resolve not to leave the citadel.
“I would risk a thousand deaths, every day, for the happiness of talking to you with our alphabets, which do not now give us a moment’s difficulty. And you would have me commit the blunder of banishing myself to Parma, or perhaps to Bologna, or even to Florence! You expect me deliberately to remove myself farther away from you. Such an effort, let me tell you, is impossible to me. It would be vain for me to give you my word. I could not keep it.”
The result of this plea for a meeting was a disappearance on Clelia’s part, which lasted no less than five days. For five whole days she never came near the aviary, except when she knew Fabrizio would not be able to open the little shutter in his screen. Fabrizio was in despair. This absence convinced him that, in spite of some glances which had filled him with foolish hopes, he had never really inspired Clelia with any warmer feeling than one of friendship. “In that case,” thought he, “of what value is my life to me? Let the prince rid me of it. I shall be grateful to him. That is another reason for my staying in the fortress.” And it was with a sense of deep disgust that he replied to the signals flashed by the little lamp. The duchess was convinced he had gone quite crazy when, in the report of the signalled conversations which Ludovico presented to her every morning, she read the extraordinary assertion: “I do not desire to escape. I choose to die here.”
During those five days of Fabrizio’s misery, Clelia was even more wretched than he. The following idea, a very bitter one to a generous soul, had occurred to her: “It is my duty to flee to some convent far from the citadel. When Fabrizio knows I am not here—and I will take care he does know it, from Grillo and all the other jailers—he will make up his mind to attempt to escape.” But to go into a convent meant to give up all hope of ever seeing Fabrizio again. And how could she bear not to see him, now that he had given her so clear a proof that the feeling which might once have bound him to the duchess no longer existed? What more touching proof of devotion could any man have offered? After seven long months of an imprisonment which had seriously undermined his health, he refused to regain his liberty. A frivolous being, such as the courtiers had given Clelia cause to believe Fabrizio to be, would have sacrificed twenty mistresses to shorten his stay in the fortress by one day, and what would he not have done to escape from a prison where he might be poisoned at any moment!