The Chief Justice had not been mistaken in his forecast; he had hardly been a week in his country house before one of the prince’s friends paid him a chance visit, and advised him to return to Parma without delay. The prince gave him a smiling reception, but presently he turned very grave, and made him swear on the Gospels that he would keep what he was about to confide to him secret. Rassi swore in the most solemn manner, and the prince, his eyes blazing with hatred, exclaimed that so long as Fabrizio del Dongo was alive he should never be master in his own house, adding:
“I can neither drive the duchess out, nor endure her presence. Her looks defy me, and half kill me.”
After Rassi had allowed the prince to explain himself at great length, he pretended to be greatly puzzled himself, and then—
“Your Highness shall be obeyed, no doubt,” cried he. “But it is a horribly difficult business. There are no grounds for condemning a Del Dongo to death for having killed a Giletti. It is an astonishing feat, already, to have given him twelve years in a fortress for it, and besides, I have reason to suspect the duchess has laid her hand on three of the peasants who were working at the Sanguigna excavations, and were outside the ditch when that villain Giletti attacked Del Dongo.”
“And where are these witnesses?” cried the prince angrily.
“Hidden in Piedmont, I suppose. Now, we should want a conspiracy against your Highness’s life.”
“That plan has its dangerous side,” said the prince. “It stirs up the idea.”
“Well, but,” said Rassi, with an air of innocence, “there you have the whole of my official arsenal.”
“We still have poison.”