All sorts of wild notions crowded on to our hero’s brain. His logic at that moment was of the weakest description. He thought, for instance, of bolting through the office door, which was standing open. “I would get rid of my coat, I would jump into the Po, and I have no doubt I could swim across. Anything is better than the Spielberg.”
While he weighed his chances of succeeding in this prank, the police officer was looking hard at him; their two faces were a study. The presence of danger inspires a sensible man with genius, raising him, so to speak, above himself. In the case of the man of imagination, it inspires him with romances, which may indeed be bold, but which are frequently absurd.
Our hero’s look of indignation under the scrutinizing glance of this police officer with the brass jewellery was something worth seeing. “If I were to kill him,” said Fabrizio to himself, “I should be sentenced to twenty years at the galleys or to death. That would be far less awful than the Spielberg, with a chain weighing a hundred and twenty pounds on each foot, and eight ounces of bread for my daily food. And it would last twenty years, so that I should be forty-four before I came out.” Fabrizio’s logical mind overlooked the fact that as he had burned his own passport, there was nothing to acquaint the police officer with the detail of his being the rebel Fabrizio del Dongo.
Our hero was tolerably frightened, as my readers perceive. His alarm would have been far greater if he had been aware of the thoughts passing in the official’s mind. The man was a friend of Giletti’s; his surprise at seeing his passport in the hands of another person may therefore be imagined. His first impulse had been to arrest the stranger. Then he reflected that very likely Giletti had sold the passport to the good-looking young fellow, who had probably just got into some scrape at Parma. “If I arrest him,” said he to himself, “Giletti will get into trouble. It will easily be discovered that he has sold his passport. But, on the other hand, what will my superiors say if they find out that I, who am a friend of Giletti’s, have countersigned his passport when presented by another person!” The officer stood up with a yawn, and said to Fabrizio, “Wait here, sir!” Then, as was natural to a policeman, he added, “There is a difficulty.” Fabrizio said within himself, “What there is going to be, is my flight.”
The official, indeed, had left the office, leaving the door open, and the passport was still lying on the deal table. “There’s no doubt about my danger,” thought Fabrizio to himself. “I will take up my passport, and walk quietly back across the bridge. If the gendarme questions me I will tell him I have forgotten to get it countersigned by the police officer at the last village in the dominion of Parma.” The passport was actually in Fabrizio’s hand when, to his inexpressible astonishment, he heard the clerk with the brass jewellery say:
“Upon my soul! I am done up; I’m choking with heat; I am going to get a cup of coffee at the café. When you’ve finished your pipe just go into the office; there’s a passport to be signed. The traveller is waiting.”
Fabrizio, who was just stepping out on tiptoe, found himself face to face with a good-looking young fellow, who was humming a tune, and heard him say, “Very good. We’ll see to their passport. I’ll oblige them with my flourish.”
“Where do you wish to go, sir?”
“To Mantua, Venice, and Ferrara.”