“You talk like an academician!” cried the count laughingly. “You have told the story of a splendid prank. But it is not once in ten years that the delightful opportunity for doing such startling things presents itself. A man who may be stupid at times, but is watchful and prudent always, may often enjoy the pleasure of outwitting men of imagination. It was a freak of the imagination that led Napoleon to put himself into the hands of the prudent John Bull, instead of trying to escape to America. John Bull sat in his counting-house, and laughed at the Emperor’s letter and his reference to Themistocles. The mean Sancho Panzas of this world will always triumph over the noble-hearted Don Quixotes. If you will consent not to do anything extraordinary, I don’t doubt you may be a highly respected, if not a highly respectable, bishop. Nevertheless, I hold to my previous observation. In this matter of the horse your Excellency behaved very foolishly. You have been within an ace of imprisonment for life.”
Fabrizio shuddered at the words. He sat on, plunged in a deep astonishment. “Was that the imprisonment which threatens me?” he mused. “Is that the crime I was not to commit?” Father Blanès’s predictions, the prophetic value of which he had despised, began to assume all the importance of real omens in his eyes.
“Well,” cried the duchess, quite surprised, “what is the matter with you? The count has cast you into a very gloomy reverie.”
“The light of a new truth has fallen upon my mind, and instead of rebelling against it, I am adopting it. It is quite true. I have been very near a prison that never would have opened its doors again. But the servant lad looked so handsome in his English livery it would have been a sin to kill him.”
The count was delighted with his air of youthful wisdom.
“He is satisfactory in every way,” he said, looking at the duchess. “I must tell you, my boy, that you have made a conquest, and perhaps the most desirable one you could possibly have made.”
“Ha!” thought Fabrizio, “now I shall hear some jest about little Marietta.” He was mistaken. The count went on: “Your evangelic simplicity has won the heart of our venerable archbishop, Father Landriani. One of these days you will be made a grand vicar, and the beauty of the joke is that the three present grand vicars, all of them men of parts and hard-working, and two of them, I believe, grand vicars before you were born, are about to send a fine letter to their archbishop, begging you may take rank above them all. These gentlemen base this request on your virtuous qualities, in the first place, and in the second, on the fact that you are great-nephew to the famous Archbishop Ascanio del Dongo. When I heard of the respect your virtues had inspired, I instantly promoted the senior grand vicar’s nephew to a captaincy. He had remained a lieutenant ever since he had served at the siege of Tarragona, under Marshal Suchet.”
“Go at once, just as you are, in your travelling dress, and pay an affectionate call on your archbishop,” exclaimed the duchess. “Tell him all about your sister’s marriage. When he knows she is going to be a duchess he will think you more apostolic than ever. Of course, you will forget everything the count has just confided to you about your approaching appointment.”
Fabrizio hurried off to the archiepiscopal palace. His behaviour there was both modest and simple. This was a tone he could assume only too easily. For him the effort was when he had to play the nobleman. While he was listening to Monsignore Landriani’s somewhat lengthy dissertations he kept saying to himself, “Ought I to have fired my pistol at the man-servant who was leading the lean horse?” His reason replied in the affirmative. But he could not reconcile his heart to the thought of that handsome young fellow dropping disfigured from his saddle.