The moment the marchesa had departed Clelia beckoned Gonzo into the gallery.
“I have almost made up my mind,” she said, “to hear this much-admired preacher. When will he preach?”
“On Monday next—that is, three days hence; and one might almost fancy he had guessed your Excellency’s plan, for he is coming to preach in the Church of the Visitation.”
Further explanation was indispensable. But Clelia’s voice had quite failed her. She walked up and down the gallery five or six times without uttering a word. Meanwhile Gonzo was saying to himself: “Now revenge is working in her soul. How can any man have the insolence to escape out of prison, especially when he has the honour of being kept under watch and ward by such a hero as General Fabio Conti!”
“And, indeed,” he added, with skilful irony, “there is no time to be lost. His lungs are affected; I heard Dr. Rambo say he would not live a year. God is punishing him for having broken his arrest … by his treacherous escape from the citadel.”
The marchesa seated herself on the couch in the gallery, and signed to Gonzo to follow her example. After a few moments she gave him a little purse, into which she had put a few sequins. “Have four places kept for me.”
“Might your poor Gonzo be permitted to follow in your Excellency’s train?”
“Of course; tell them to keep five places.… I do not at all care,” she said, “to be near the pulpit, but I should like to see the Signorina Marini, whom every one tells me is so pretty.”
During the three days that were still to elapse before the Monday on which the sermon was to be preached, the marchesa was in an agony. Gonzo, who felt it the most excessive honour to be seen in public in the following of so great a lady, had put on his French coat and his sword. Nor was this all. Taking advantage of the close neighbourhood of the palace, he had a magnificent gilt arm-chair carried into the church for the marchesa’s use—a proceeding which was looked on as a piece of the greatest insolence by the middle-class portion of the audience. The feelings of the poor marchesa, when she beheld this arm-chair, which had been set immediately opposite the pulpit, may easily be imagined. Shrinking, with downcast eyes, into the corner of the huge chair, Clelia, in her confusion, had not even courage to look at Annetta Marini, whom Gonzo pointed out to her with a coolness which perfectly astounded her. In the eyes of the true courtier, people who are not of noble birth have no existence at all.