This testimony was borne out by a hundred answers to as many questions put by the distracted count. His passionate anxiety ensured the poor folks honest earning of the money he had given them. He ended by believing what they told him, and felt less wretched. “If ever the duchess suspects this conversation of ours,” he said to Cecchina, “I will send your lover to spend twenty years in the fortress, and you will never see him again till his hair is white.”
A few days went by, during which it became Fabrizio’s turn to lose all his cheerfulness.
“I assure you,” he kept saying to the duchess, “Count Mosca has an antipathy to me.”
“So much the worse for his Excellency!” she replied with a touch of peevishness.
This was not the real cause of the anxiety which had driven away Fabrizio’s gaiety. “The position,” he mused, “in which chance has placed me is untenable. I am quite sure she will never speak—a too significant word would be as horrifying to her as an act of incest. But supposing that one evening, after a day of imprudence and folly, she should examine her own conscience! What will my position be if she believes I have guessed at the inclination she seems to feel toward me? I shall simply be the casto Giuseppe” (an Italian proverb alluding to Joseph’s ridiculous position with regard to the wife of the eunuch Potiphar).
“Shall I make her understand by confiding to her frankly that I am quite incapable of any serious passion? My ideas are not sufficiently well ordered to enable me to express the fact so as to prevent its appearing a piece of deliberate impertinence. My only other resource is to simulate a great devotion for a lady left behind me in Naples, and in that case I must go back there for four-and-twenty hours. This plan is a wise one, but what a trouble it will be! I might try some obscure little love affair here at Parma. This might cause displeasure, but anything is preferable to the horrible position of the man who will not understand. This last expedient may, indeed, compromise my future. I must try to diminish that danger by my prudence, and by buying discretion.” The cruel thought, amid all these considerations, was that Fabrizio really cared for the duchess far more than he did for anybody else in the world. “I must be awkward indeed,” said he to himself angrily, “if I am so afraid of not being able to convince her of what is really true.”
He had not wit to extricate himself from the difficulty, and he soon grew gloomy and morose. “What would become of me, great heavens, if I were to quarrel with the only being on earth to whom I am passionately attached?”
On the other hand, Fabrizio could not make up his mind to disturb so delightful a condition of felicity by an imprudent word. His position was so full of enjoyment, his intimate relations with so charming and so pretty a woman were so delightful! As regarded the more trivial aspects of life, her protection insured him such an agreeable position at the court, the deep intrigues of which, thanks to the explanations she gave him, amused him like a stage play. “But at any moment,” he reflected, “I may be wakened as by a thunderclap. If one of these evenings, so cheerful and affectionate, spent alone with this fascinating woman, should lead to anything more fervent, she will expect to find a lover in me. She will look for raptures and wild transports, and all I can ever give her is the liveliest affection, without any love. Nature has bereft me of the capacity for that sort of sublime madness. What reproaches I have had to endure on that score already! I fancy I still hear the Duchess of A⸺, and I could laugh at the duchess! But she will think that I fail in love for her, whereas it is love which fails in me; and she never will understand me. Often, when she has told me some story about the court, with all the grace and frolicsomeness that she alone possesses—and a story, besides, which it is indispensable for me to know—I kiss her hands and sometimes her cheek as well. What should I do if her hand pressed mine in one particular way?”
Fabrizio showed himself daily in the most esteemed and dullest houses in Parma. Guided by his aunt’s wise counsels, he paid skilful court to the two princes, father and son, to the Princess Clara Paolina, and to the archbishop. Success came to him, but this did not console him for his mortal terror of a misunderstanding with the duchess.