“My lady duchess, my horse is saddled; I am thought a good rider; I will gallop as hard as I can go, and I shall be at the citadel eight minutes before you.”
The aide-de-camp vanished. He was a man whose one merit was that he knew how to ride.
Before he had well closed the door the young prince, who apparently knew his own mind now, seized the duchess’s hand. “Madam,” he said, and there was passion in his tone, “deign to come with me to the chapel.” Taken aback for the first time in her life, the duchess followed him without a word. She and the prince ran down the whole length of the great gallery of the palace, at the far end of which the chapel was situated. When they were inside the chapel the prince cast himself on his knees, as much before the duchess as before the altar.
“Repeat your oath!” he exclaimed passionately. “If you had been just, if the misfortune of my being a prince had not injured my cause, you would have granted me, out of pity for my love, that which you owe me now, because you have sworn it.”
“If I see Fabrizio again, and he has not been poisoned—if he is alive within a week from now—if your Highness appoints him coadjutor to Archbishop Landriani, and his ultimate successor—I will trample everything, my honour, my womanly dignity, beneath my feet, and I will give myself to your Highness.”
“But, dearest friend,” said the prince, with a comical mixture of nervous anxiety and tenderness, “I am afraid of some pitfall I do not understand, and which may destroy all my happiness; that would kill me. If the archbishop makes some ecclesiastical difficulty which will drag the business out for years, what is to become of me? I am acting, you see, in perfect good faith; are you going to treat me like a Jesuit?”
“No, in all good faith. If Fabrizio is saved, and if you do all in your power to make him coadjutor and future archbishop, I will dishonour myself, and give myself to you. Your Highness will undertake to write ‘approved’ on the margin of a request which the archbishop will present within the week?”
“I will sign you a blank sheet of paper! You shall rule me and my dominions!” Reddening with happiness, and thoroughly beside himself, he insisted on a second oath. So great was his emotion that it made him forget his natural timidity, and in that palace chapel where they were alone together, he whispered things which, if he had said them three days previously, would have altered the duchess’s opinion of him. But in her heart, despair concerning Fabrizio’s danger had now been replaced by horror at the promise which had been torn from her.
The duchess was overwhelmed by the thought of what she had done. If she was not yet conscious of the frightful bitterness of what she had said, it was because her attention was still strained by anxiety as to whether General Fontana would reach the citadel in time.
To stem the boy’s wild love talk, and turn the conversation, she praised a famous picture by Parmegiano, which adorned the high altar in the chapel.