“But who would give it? That idiot of a Conti?”
“Well, according to all we have heard, it would not be his first attempt.”
“He would have to be in a rage himself,” replied Rassi, “and besides, when he got rid of the captain, he was not thirty years old, and he was desperately in love and far less of a coward than he is now. Reasons of state must, no doubt, override every other, but, taken at a disadvantage, as I am now, and at the first glance, the only person I can think of to carry out the sovereign’s orders is a man of the name of Barbone, the jail clerk in the fortress, whom Del Dongo knocked down the first day he was there.”
Once the prince was set at his ease, the conversation was endless; he closed it by giving his chief justice a month’s law. Rassi had begged for two. The next morning he received a secret gratuity of a thousand sequins. He thought the matter over for three days. On the fourth he came back to his original argument, which seemed to him quite evident. “Count Mosca is the only person who will be inclined to keep his word to me, because in making me a baron he gives me something he does not value himself. Secondo, if I warn him, I probably save myself from committing a crime the full price of which I have pretty nearly received in advance. Tertio, I avenge myself for the first humiliating blows bestowed on the Cavaliere Rassi.” The following night, he acquainted Count Mosca with the whole of his conversation with the prince.
The count was still paying his court to the duchess in secret. It is true that he did not see her more than once or twice a month in her own house, but almost every week, and whenever he could contrive any opportunity for speaking to her about Fabrizio, the duchess, attended by Cecchina, came, late in the evening, and spent a few minutes in the count’s garden. She contrived to deceive even her coachman, who was devoted to her, and who believed her to be paying a visit in a neighbouring house.
My readers will easily imagine that the moment the count had received the Chief Justice’s hideous communication he made the signal agreed on with the duchess. Though it was midnight, she sent Cecchina to beg him to come to her at once. The count, as delighted as any young lover by this appearance of intimacy, hesitated to tell the duchess the whole story. He feared he might see her go wild with grief. Yet, after having cast about for equivocations which might mitigate the fatal announcement, he ended by revealing the whole truth. He was not capable of keeping back any secret she begged him to tell her. But nine months of excessive misfortune had greatly altered her passionate soul; her nature was strengthened, and the duchess did not break out into sobs or lamentations. The next evening she caused the signal of imminent danger to be made to Fabrizio:
“The castle is on fire.”
He answered quite clearly:
“Are my books burned?”
That same night, she had the happiness of sending him a letter inside a leaden ball. A week after that day came the wedding of the Marchese Crescenzi’s sister, at which the duchess was guilty of a desperate piece of imprudence, which shall be duly related in its place.