“Filled with the bitterest remorse for what has been done—not, thank Heaven, by my consent, but in consequence of an idea of mine—I have made a vow to the Most Holy Virgin that if, by her blessed intercession, my father’s life is saved, I will never again refuse to obey an order of his. I shall marry the marchese as soon as he requires me to do it, and I shall never see you again.
“Nevertheless, I believe it to be my duty to carry through that which has been begun. On Sunday next, when you come back from mass, to which you will be taken at my request—forget not to prepare your soul for death; you may lose your life in your difficult undertaking—when you come back from mass, I say, do all you can to delay the moment when you re-enter your room. There you will find that which is indispensable for your intended enterprise. If you perish it will break my heart! Will you be able to accuse me of having had a hand in your death? Has not the duchess herself told me, over and over again, that the Raversi faction is winning the day? It is bent on binding the prince to it by an act of cruelty which will separate him forever from Count Mosca. The duchess has sworn to me, with tears, that no resource save this remains. If you make no attempt you will certainly perish. I can not look at you again; I have made my vow. But if, toward the evening on Sunday, you see me at the usual window, dressed entirely in black, it will be a sign that on the following night everything will be ready, as far as my feeble powers will permit. After eleven o’clock—perhaps at midnight, or one in the morning—a little lamp will stand in my window. That will be the decisive moment; commend your soul to your patron saint, put on the priestly habit with which you are provided, and depart.
“Farewell, Fabrizio! I shall be at my prayers, and shedding the bitterest tears, you may be sure of that, while you are running these terrible risks. If you perish I shall not survive you—great God, what have I said? But if you succeed, I shall never see your face again. On Sunday, after mass, you will find in your prison the money, the poisons, the ropes sent you by that terrible woman who loves you so passionately, and who has told me, three times over, that this thing must be done. May God and the blessed Madonna preserve you!”
Fabio Conti was a jailer whose soul was always anxious, miserable, wretched, constantly dreaming that some prisoner was escaping from his clutches. He was loathed by every soul in the citadel. But misfortune inspires all men with the same sentiments, and the unhappy prisoners, even those chained up in dungeons three feet high and wide, and eight feet long, in which they could neither stand nor sit upright—all the prisoners, even these, I say, joined in having a Te Deum sung at their expense, when they heard that the governor was out of danger. Two or three of the poor wretches even wrote sonnets in honour of Fabio Conti. Such is the effect of misery upon mankind. Let that man blame them whose fate has condemned him to spend a year in a dungeon three feet high, with eight ounces of bread a day, and fasting on Fridays!
Clelia, who never left her father’s room except to say her prayers in the chapel, announced that the governor had decided that the rejoicings were not to take place until the Sunday. On that Sunday morning, Fabrizio was present at the mass and the Te Deum. In the evening there were fireworks, and the soldiers in the lower halls of the castle received wine, four times as much as the quantity authorized by the governor. Some unknown person had even sent in several barrels of brandy, which the soldiers broached. The soldiers who were drinking themselves drunk were too good-natured to allow their five comrades, who were doing sentry duty on the palace, to suffer from that fact. As fast as they reached their sentry-boxes a trusty servant gave them wine. Further, some unknown hand provided those on duty from midnight onward with a glass of brandy, and (as was ultimately proved at the trial) at each glass the brandy bottle was forgotten in the sentry-box.
The merry-making lasted longer than Clelia had expected, and it was not till toward one o’clock that Fabrizio, who, more than a week previously, had sawn through the bars of the window which did not look toward the aviary, began to take down the wooden screen. He was working almost over the heads of the sentries on the governor’s palace, but they heard nothing. All he had done to the immensely long rope necessary for carrying him down the terrible descent of a hundred and eighty feet was to make a few fresh knots. He had slung this line over his shoulder; it was very much in his way, on account of its bulk; the knots prevented it from falling together, and it stood out more than eighteen inches from his body. “This will be my great difficulty,” said Fabrizio to himself.
Having arranged this rope as best he could, Fabrizio took the length which he intended should carry him down the thirty-five feet between his window and the terrace on which the governor’s palace stood. But seeing he could hardly, drunk though the sentinels were, come down on the very tops of their heads, he got out, as we have already said, by the second window of his room, which looked on to the roof of a sort of huge guard-room. Some sick whim of General Fabio Conti’s had filled this old guard-room, which had not been used for a century, with a couple of hundred soldiers, whom he ordered up as soon as he could speak. He declared that the people who had tried to poison him would murder him in his bed, and that these two hundred soldiers must protect him. The effect of this unexpected measure on Clelia’s feelings may be imagined. The pious-hearted girl was very deeply conscious of the extent to which she was deceiving her father, and a father who had just been very nearly poisoned in the interests of the prisoner whom she loved. The unexpected advent of these two hundred men almost struck her as a decree of Providence, forbidding her to go forward, and restore Fabrizio to liberty.
But the prisoner’s approaching death was the universal topic of conversation in Parma. Even at the festivities in honour of the marriage of Signorina Julia Crescenzi, the melancholy subject had been discussed. Since a man of Fabrizio’s birth, imprisoned for such a trifle as an unlucky sword thrust given to an actor, was not set at liberty after nine months’ detention, although he was favoured by the Prime Minister, there must be something political about his story. That being so, it was said, there was no use in thinking more about it. If it did not suit the authorities to put him to death in the public square, he would soon die of sickness.
A locksmith who had been sent for to do some work in General Fabio Conti’s palace referred to Fabrizio as a prisoner who had been put to death long since, and whose death was concealed for reasons of policy. When Clelia heard that man speak, she made up her mind.