“The count says, my Lady Duchess, that he is pleased with me. As a matter of fact, I have faced a few musket shots beside him, and my horse was wounded. The fuss made over so small a thing has made me earnestly desire to be present at a real battle, so long as it be not against my own subjects. I owe everything to the count; all my generals, who know nothing of war, have behaved like hounds. I believe two or three of them have run away as far as Bologna. Since the day when a great and deplorable event called me to power, I have signed no decree which gives me so much pleasure as this, which appoints you my mother’s mistress of the robes. My mother and I have remembered that one day you admired the beautiful view from the Palazzetto San Giovanni, which once belonged to Petrarch—at least, so we are told. My mother desired to give you this little property, and I, not knowing what to give you, and not daring to offer you all that belongs to you already, have made you a duchess in my own country. I do not know whether you are so learned as to be aware that Sanseverina is a Roman title. I have just given the ribbon of my Order to our excellent archbishop, who has displayed a firmness very uncommon in a man of sixty-two. You will not be angry with me for having recalled all the banished ladies. I am told that in future I must never sign my name without having written the words ‘your affectionate.’ It vexes me that I should be thus made to squander an assurance which is not fully true, except when I write myself ‘your affectionate, Ranuzio-Ernest.’”
Who would not have thought, judging from this language, that the duchess was about to enjoy the highest favour? Nevertheless, she found something very odd in other letters from the count, which reached her two hours later. These advised her, without further explanation, to put off her return to Parma for a few days, and to write the princess word that she was exceedingly unwell. Notwithstanding, the duchess and Fabrizio started for Parma immediately after dinner; the duchess’s object, which, however, she did not admit to herself, was to hurry on the Marchese Crescenzi’s marriage. Fabrizio, for his part, performed the journey in a state of wild happiness, which seemed perfectly ridiculous to his aunt. He had hopes of seeing Clelia soon, and fully reckoned on carrying her off, in spite of herself, if that should be the only means of breaking off her marriage.
The journey of the duchess and her nephew was a very cheerful one. At the last posting station before Parma, Fabrizio stopped a moment to put on his churchman’s garb. As a rule he wore ordinary mourning dress. When he came back to the duchess’s room—
“There seems to me something very odd and inexplicable,” she said, “in the count’s letters. If you will be ruled by me you will stay here for a few hours. I’ll send you a messenger as soon as I have had a talk with the mighty minister.”
It was only very unwillingly that Fabrizio bowed to this sensible piece of advice. The count received the duchess with transports of joy worthy of a boy of fifteen, calling her “his wife.” It was long before he would talk of politics. When they came back, at last, to the dull realms of common sense—
“You did very wisely,” he said, “to prevent Fabrizio from arriving openly. There is a great reaction going on here. Just guess the name of the colleague the prince has imposed on me as Minister of Justice. Rassi, my dear soul, Rassi, whom I treated like the blackguard he is, on the day of our great excitements. By the way, I must warn you that everything that happened here has been suppressed. If you read our Gazette, you will perceive that a clerk at the citadel, of the name of Barbone, has been killed by a fall from a carriage. As for the sixty-odd rogues I had shot when they tried to wreck the prince’s statue in the gardens, they are all quite well, but they have gone on long journeys. Count Zurla, the Minister of the Interior, has personally visited each of these unlucky heroes’ homes, and has made over fifteen sequins to their family or friends, with strict orders to say that the dead man is travelling, and a very direct threat that any one who ventures to hint anybody has been killed will be forthwith shut up in prison. A man from my own office at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been sent to the journalists of Milan and Turin, to prevent any mention of the ‘unfortunate event’—that’s the correct term—and this man is to go as far as Paris and London, so as to give an almost official denial to any newspaper reference to our disturbances. Another agent has gone toward Bologna and Florence. I shrug my shoulders.
“But the comical thing, at my age, is that I felt a flash of real enthusiasm when I was addressing the soldiers of the guard, and when I tore the epaulettes off that contemptible fellow, P⸺. At that moment I would have given my life for the prince without the smallest hesitation. I confess, now, it would have been a very silly way of ending it. At this moment the prince, kind-hearted young fellow as he is, would give a thousand crowns if I would die of some sickness. He dares not ask me to resign, as yet, but we see each other as seldom as possible, and I send him a quantity of small written reports, just as I did with the late prince after Fabrizio was imprisoned. By the way, I have not turned his sentence into curl-papers, for the excellent reason that that villain Rassi never gave it to me. That is why you have done so wisely to prevent Fabrizio from arriving publicly. The sentence is still valid. However, I do not believe Rassi would dare to arrest our nephew to-day. Still, he may possibly dare to do it within a fortnight. If Fabrizio absolutely insists on coming into the city, let him come and live in my house.”
“But what is the reason of all this?” exclaimed the astonished duchess.
“The prince has been persuaded that I give myself the airs of a dictator, and of the saviour of the country; that I want to lead him like a child, and even that, in speaking of him, I used those fatal words ‘that child.’ This may be true; I was very much excited that day. But, indeed, I really looked on him as a thorough man, because he was not frightened in face of the first musketry firing he had ever heard in his life. He is by no means a fool. His tone, indeed, is much better than his father’s, and—I can not say it too often—at the bottom of his heart he is both good and upright. But his honest young soul is stung when the story of some piece of rascality is told him, and he thinks his own nature must be vile to perceive such things. Think what his education has been.”
“Your Excellency should have remembered that he was to be our master some day, and should have placed a clever man about his person.”