“You would do well to pass on foot with Giletti’s passport in your pocket. We will stop a few minutes, on the pretext of making ourselves look tidy. And besides, the customs officers will open our baggage. If you will take my advice, you had better walk lazily through Casal-Maggiore; even turn into the café and drink a glass of brandy. Once you are out of the village make off. The police on Austrian territory are devilishly sharp; they will soon find out that a man has been killed. You are travelling with a passport which does not belong to you; for less than that you might get two years in prison. When you leave the town turn to the right, and get to the banks of the Po. Hire a boat, and take refuge at Ravenna or Ferrara. Get out of the Austrian states as quickly as ever you can. Two louis will buy you another passport from some custom-house officer; this one would be the ruin of you. Remember you’ve killed the man!”
Fabrizio carefully reread Giletti’s passport as he walked toward the bridge of boats at Casal-Maggiore. Our hero was seriously alarmed; he had a vivid recollection of all Count Mosca had told him concerning the risk he would run if he re-entered Austrian territory, and only two paces in front of him he saw the fateful bridge which was to admit him to those dominions, the capital of which, in his eyes, was the Spielberg. But what else was he to do? By an express convention between the two states the duchy of Modena, which bounds the dominion of Parma on the south, returned all fugitives who passed over its borders. The Parmese frontier running up into the mountain country near Genoa was too distant; his misadventure would be known at Parma before he could reach those mountains. Nothing remained to him, therefore, except the Austrian states on the left bank of the Po. Thirty-six hours or two days would probably elapse before there could be time to write to the Austrian authorities and request his arrest. On the whole, Fabrizio thought it wiser to burn his own passport, which he lighted at the end of his cigar. He would be safer on Austrian ground as a vagabond than as Fabrizio del Dongo, and there was the possibility of his being searched.
Apart from his very natural repugnance to the idea of staking his life on the unhappy Giletti’s passport, the document itself presented some material difficulties. Fabrizio’s stature did not, at the most, exceed five foot five, instead of the five foot ten described in the passport. He was nearly twenty-four, and looked younger. Giletti was thirty-nine. We will confess that our hero spent a full half-hour walking up and down an embankment on the river, close by the bridge of boats, before he could make up his mind to go down upon it. “What advice should I give to another man in my place?” said he to himself at last. “Clearly, to go across. It is dangerous to stay in Parma. A gendarme may be sent in pursuit of the man who has killed another, even against his own will.” Fabrizio turned out his pockets, tore up all his papers, and kept literally nothing except his handkerchief and his cigar case. It was important to shorten, by every possible means, the examination he would have to undergo. He thought of a terrible difficulty which might be made, and to which he could find no good answer. He was going to call himself Giletti, and all his linen was marked F. D.
Fabrizio, as will be observed, was one of those unhappy beings who are tortured by their own imaginations, a somewhat common weakness among intelligent people in Italy. A French soldier of equal or even inferior courage would have set about crossing the bridge at once, without thinking of any difficulty beforehand, and he would have done it with perfect composure, whereas Fabrizio was very far from being composed when, at the far end of the bridge, a little man dressed in gray said to him, “Go into the police office and show your passport.”
The office had dirty walls, studded with nails on which the officials’ pipes and greasy hats were hung. The big deal writing-table at which they sat was covered with ink stains and wine stains. Two or three big green leather registers also showed stains of every shade of colour, and the edges of the pages were blackened by dirty hands. On these registers, which were piled one upon the other, lay three splendid laurel wreaths, which had been used the night before, in honour of one of the Emperor’s fête days.
Fabrizio was struck by all these details; they sent a pang through his heart. This was the price he paid for the splendid luxury and freshness of his beautiful rooms in the Palazzo Sanseverina. He was obliged to enter the dirty office and stand there like an inferior. He was soon to be cross-questioned.
The official who stretched out a yellow hand to receive his passport was a short, dark man, with a brass jewel in his neckcloth. “Here’s a common man, in a bad temper,” said Fabrizio to himself. He seemed very much surprised when he read the passport, and the perusal lasted quite five minutes.
“You’ve had an accident,” said he to the stranger, looking at his cheek.
“The vetturino upset us over the river embankment.” Then silence fell again, and the official cast strange glances at the traveller.
“I have it,” said Fabrizio to himself; “he’s going to tell me that he’s sorry to have to give me an unpleasant piece of news, and that I am arrested.”