My readers will imagine Fabrizio’s answer, his joy, his astonishment. When the first transports had subsided, Clelia said: “I have vowed to the Madonna, as you know, that I will never see you. That is why I receive you now in the dark. I am very anxious you should know that if you ever oblige me to look at you in daylight everything will be over between us. But to begin with, I will not have you preach before Annetta Marini; and do not think it was I who committed the folly of having an arm-chair carried into the house of God.”
“My dearest angel! I shall never preach again before anybody. The only reason I preached was my hope that by so doing I might some day see you.”
“You must not speak to me like that! Remember that I am forbidden to see you.”
At this point I will ask my readers’ permission to pass in silence over a period of three years. When our story begins afresh, Count Mosca has long been back at Parma as Prime Minister, with greater power than ever.
After these three years of exquisite happiness, a whim of Fabrizio’s heart altered everything. The marchesa had a beautiful little boy two years old, Sandrino. He was always with her, or on the marchese’s knee. But Fabrizio hardly ever saw him. He did not choose that the boy should grow into the habit of loving another father, and conceived the idea of carrying off the child before his memories were very distinct.
During the long daylight hours, when the marchesa might not see her lover, Sandrino’s presence was her consolation. For we must here confess a fact which will seem strange to dwellers on the northern side of the Alps. In spite of her failings, she had remained faithful to her vow. She had promised the Madonna that she would never see Fabrizio; those had been her exact words. Consequently she had never received him except at night, and there was never any light in her chamber.
But every evening Fabrizio visited his mistress, and it was a very admirable thing that, in the midst of a court which was eaten up by curiosity and boredom, his precautions had been so skilfully taken that this amicizia, as people call it in Lombardy, had never even been suspected. Their love was too intense not to be disturbed by occasional quarrels. Clelia was very subject to jealousy. But their disagreements almost always arose from a different cause—Fabrizio having taken unfair advantage of some public ceremony to introduce himself near the marchesa and look at her; she would then seize some pretext for instant departure, and would banish her friend for many days.
Residents at the court of Parma were astonished at never being able to discover any intrigue on the part of a woman so remarkable for beauty and intelligence. She inspired several passions which led to many mad actions, and very often Fabrizio, too, was jealous.
The good Archbishop Landriani had long been dead. Fabrizio’s piety, his eloquence, and his exemplary life, had wiped out his predecessor’s memory. His elder brother was dead, and all the family wealth had devolved on him. From that time forward he divided the hundred and odd thousand francs which formed the income of the archbishopric of Parma between the priests and curates of his diocese.
It would have been difficult to conceive a more honoured, a more honourable and useful existence, than that Fabrizio had built up for himself when this unlucky fancy of his came to disturb it all.