He appealed to his intimate friend, Count Mosca, who, hardened old minister as he was, was touched by this love story, of the greater part of which he had been quite unaware.
“I will have the marchese sent away for five or six days at least. When shall it be?”
Within a short time Fabrizio came to the count with the news that everything was prepared to take advantage of the marchese’s absence.
Two days later, while the marchese was riding home from one of his properties in the neighbourhood of Mantua, a band of ruffians, who appeared to be in the pay of a private individual, carried him off, without ill-treating him in any way, and put him into a boat which took three days to drop down the river Po—exactly the same journey Fabrizio had performed after his terrible business with Giletti. On the fourth day the ruffians landed the marchese on a lonely island in the river, having previously and carefully emptied his pockets, without leaving him any money or valuable of any kind. It was two whole days before the marchese could get back to his palace at Parma. When he arrived he found it all hung with black, and the whole household in the deepest grief.
The result of this abduction, skilfully as it had been carried out, was melancholy in the extreme. Sandrino, who had been secretly removed to a large and handsome house in which the marchesa came to see him almost every day, was dead before many months were out. Clelia fancied that a just punishment had come upon her, because she had been faithless to her vow to the Madonna—she had so often seen Fabrizio by candlelight, and twice even in broad daylight, and with the most passionate tenderness, during Sandrino’s illness! She only survived her much-loved child a few months. But she had the comfort of dying in her lover’s arms.
Fabrizio was too desperately in love, and too faithful a believer, to have recourse to suicide. He hoped to meet Clelia again in a better world, but he was too intelligent not to feel that there was much for which he must first atone.
A few days after Clelia’s death he signed several deeds, whereby he insured a pension of a thousand francs a year to each of his servants, and reserved a like income for himself. He made over lands, bringing in almost a hundred thousand francs a year, to the Countess Mosca, a like sum to the Marchesa del Dongo, his mother, and the residue of his patrimony to one of his sisters, who had made a poor marriage. The next day, having sent his resignation of his archbishopric, and of all the posts which had been showered upon him by the favour of Ernest V and the affection of his Prime Minister, to the proper quarter, he retired to the Chartreuse de Parme, which stands in the woods, close to the river Po, two leagues from Sacca.
The Countess Mosca had fully approved her husband’s reassumption of the ministry, when that had taken place, but nothing would ever induce her to set her foot within Ernest V’s dominions; and she held her court at Vignano, a quarter of a league from Casal Maggiore, on the left bank of the Po, and consequently within Austrian territory. In the magnificent palace which the count had built her at Vignano, she received the élite of Parmese society every Thursday, and saw her numerous friends on every other day. Fabrizio would never let a day pass without going to Vignano. In a word, the countess apparently possessed every ingredient of happiness. But she only lived a very short time longer than Fabrizio, whom she adored, and who spent only one year in his chartreuse.
The prisons of Parma stood empty. The count was immensely rich, and Ernest V was worshipped by his subjects, who compared his government with that of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
TO THE HAPPY FEW!