There was a fresh discussion over this idea. The duchess closed it with these words: “Rassi owes his life to the fact that I love you better than I do Fabrizio. No; I will not poison every evening of the old age we are going to spend together.”
The duchess hurried to the fortress. General Fabio Conti was delighted to have to refuse her admittance, in obedience to the formal provisions of military law, whereby no one can enter a state prison without an order signed by the prince.
“But the Marchese Crescenzi and his musicians come into the citadel every day.”
“That is because I have obtained a special order for them from the prince.”
The poor duchess was unaware of the extent of her misfortune. General Fabio Conti had taken Fabrizio’s escape as a personal slight upon himself. He had no business to admit him when he saw him enter the citadel, for he had no orders to that effect.
“But,” thought he, “Heaven has sent him to me, to repair my honour, and save me from the ridicule which would have blighted my military career. I must not lose my chance. He will be acquitted—there is no doubt of that—and I have only a few days in which to wreak my vengeance.”
CHAPTER XXV
Our hero’s arrival threw Clelia into a condition of despair. The poor girl, earnestly pious and thoroughly honest with herself, could not blink the fact that she could never know happiness apart from Fabrizio. But when her father had been half poisoned, she had made a vow to the Madonna that she would sacrifice herself to him by marrying the marchese. She had also vowed she would never see Fabrizio again, and she was already torn by the most cruel remorse, on account of the admission into which she had slipped in her letter to Fabrizio the night before his flight. How shall I describe the feelings that swelled that shadowed heart when, as she sadly watched her birds fluttering hither and thither, she raised her eyes, instinctively, and lovingly, to the window whence Fabrizio had once gazed at her, and saw him stand there once again, and greet her with the tenderest respect.