This thought, sensible as it was, prevented her from sleeping, and at last—this proves that age and a weakening soul had overtaken her, simultaneously with her hope of a condign vengeance—she was a hundred times more wretched at Belgirate than she had been at Parma. As to the identity of the person who had cast Fabrizio into so strange a reverie, there was no possibility of any reasonable doubt. Clelia Conti, that pious maiden, had deceived her father, since she had consented to make the garrison drunk, and Fabrizio never mentioned Clelia’s name. “But,” the duchess added, beating her breast in her despair, “if the garrison had not been intoxicated, all my inventiveness and all my care would have come to naught. Therefore it is she who has saved him.”
It was only with the most extreme difficulty that the duchess could induce Fabrizio to give her any details of the events of that night, which, so the duchess said to herself, “would otherwise have been the subject of never-ending conversation between us. In those happy days he would have talked all day long, and with incessant spirit and gaiety, about the veriest trifle it came into my head to suggest.”
As it was necessary to provide for every contingency, the duchess had established Fabrizio at the port of Locarno, a Swiss town at the end of the Lago Maggiore. Every day she fetched him, in a boat, for long expeditions on the lake. One day she took it into her head to go up to his room, and found the walls covered with a quantity of views of the city of Parma, for which he had sent to Milan, or even to Parma itself—that country which he should have held in detestation. His little sitting-room had been transformed into a studio, fitted with all the impedimenta of a water-colour artist, and she found him just finishing a third sketch of the Farnese Tower and the governor’s palace.
“All you need do now,” said she, with a look of vexation, “is to draw the portrait of that delightful governor who wanted to poison you, from memory. But now I come to think of it,” continued the duchess, “you really should write him a letter of apology for having taken the liberty of escaping and bringing ridicule upon his citadel.”
The poor lady little thought how truly she was speaking.
Fabrizio’s first care, the moment he had reached a place of safety, had been to indite General Fabio Conti a perfectly polite and, in a sense, a very ridiculous letter, in which he begged him to forgive him for having escaped, alleging, as his excuse, that he had been given reason to believe that a person occupying a subaltern position in the prison had been ordered to poison him. Fabrizio cared little what he wrote. His one hope was that the letter might fall under Clelia’s eyes, and his own face was wet with tears as he traced the words. He closed his epistle with a very whimsical phrase: he ventured to say that now he was at liberty, he very often regretted his little chamber in the Farnese Tower. This was the ruling thought of his letter, and he hoped Clelia would understand it. Still in a writing humour, and still hoping that a certain person might read what he wrote, Fabrizio penned his thanks to Don Cesare, the good-natured chaplain who had lent him theological books. A few days later Fabrizio persuaded the small bookseller at Locarno to travel to Milan, where this worthy, who was a friend of the celebrated book-fancier, Reina, bought him the most splendid editions to be discovered of the works lent him by Don Cesare. The kind chaplain received these books, with a fine letter telling him that the poor prisoner, in moments of impatience which might perhaps be forgiven him, had covered the margins of his books with absurd notes. He therefore besought him to replace those volumes in his library by these now despatched to him, with a most lively sense of gratitude.
Fabrizio was not exactly correct when he described his endless scribblings on the margins of a folio copy of the works of St. Jerome as “notes.” Hoping he might be able to send the book back to the good chaplain and exchange it for another, he had written on its margins, from day to day, a most careful journal of everything that happened to him in prison. These great events amounted to nothing but the expression of his ecstasies of divine love (the word divine was used instead of another, which he dared not write). Sometimes this “divine love” cast the prisoner into the deepest despair; then, again, a voice heard in the air would give him some hope, and lift him into transports of happiness. All this was written, fortunately, in prison ink, composed of wine, chocolate, and soot, and Don Cesare, when he put the volume of St. Jerome back on his library shelves, had scarcely glanced at it. If he had looked closely over the margins he would have become aware that one day the prisoner, believing himself to have been poisoned, was rejoicing in the thought that he was to die within forty paces of that which he had loved best in this world. But other eyes besides those of the kind-hearted chaplain had perused the page since Fabrizio’s escape. The beautiful idea of dying near the object of one’s love, expressed in a hundred different forms, was followed by a sonnet, which set forth that the soul, parted after hideous torments from the weak body which it had inhabited for the past three-and-twenty years, and impelled by that instinctive desire for happiness natural to everything which has had life, would not, even if the great Judge granted pardon for all its sins, betake itself to heaven, to join the angelic choir, the moment it obtained its freedom; but that, more happy after death than it had been in life, it would join itself to its earthly love, within a few paces of the prison in which it groaned so long. “Thus,” ran the last line of the sonnet, “I shall have found my paradise on earth.”
Although within the citadel of Parma Fabrizio was never mentioned, except as a vile traitor who had violated the most sacred laws, the worthy priest was delighted at the sight of these beautiful books, sent him by an unknown hand—for Fabrizio had been careful not to write for a few days after their arrival, lest the sight of his name should induce the indignant return of the whole consignment. Don Cesare did not mention this attention to his brother, who flew into a fury whenever Fabrizio’s name was spoken. But since the prisoner’s escape he had fallen back into all his former intimacy with his charming niece, and as he had at one time taught her a little Latin, he showed her the beautiful books he had received. This had been the traveller’s hope. Clelia suddenly reddened deeply; she had recognised Fabrizio’s handwriting. Long narrow pieces of yellow paper had been placed, like markers, in different parts of the volume, and how true is it that amidst the sordid money interests, and the cold and colourless vulgarity of the considerations which fill our lives, the acts inspired by a genuine passion seldom fail to produce their due effect! On this occasion, as though some favouring goddess led her by the hand, Clelia, guided by instinct, and by one overmastering thought, begged her uncle to allow her to compare his old copy of St. Jerome with that he had just received. How shall I describe the joy that brightened the gloomy sadness into which Fabrizio’s absence had plunged her, when she found, on the margins of the old St. Jerome, the sonnet of which we have spoken, and the recital, day by day, of the love she had inspired!
That very first day she knew the lines by heart, and sang them to herself, leaning on her own window, opposite that lonely one at which she had so often seen the tiny opening appear in the wooden screen. The screen in question had been taken down, to be produced in court, and used as a proof in an absurd trial which Rassi was now instituting against Fabrizio, who was accused of having escaped, or, as the Chief Justice put it, laughing himself, of having snatched himself from the clemency of a magnanimous prince.