Scarcely half an hour had elapsed after the intimation conveyed by Ludovico, when two municipal officers, arrayed in their tri-coloured scarfs of office, presented themselves, accompanied by the commandant, before the Count de Charney, and requested him to accompany them to his own chamber; on arriving in which, the commandant addressed his prisoner with considerable pomposity and deliberation.
The commandant was a man of dignified corpulency, having a round bald head, and gray and bushy whiskers. A deep scar, extending from his left eyebrow to the upper lip, seemed to divide his face in two. A long, blue, uniform coat, with prodigious skirts, buttoned closely to the chin, top-boots over his pantaloons, a slight tint of powder on his remnant of a braided pigtail, and scanty side-curls, spurs to his boots (by way of distinction, doubtless, for the rheumatism had long constituted him chief prisoner in his own citadel)—such were the outward and visible signs of the dignitary, whose only warlike weapon was the cane on which his gouty limbs leaned for support.
Appointed to the custody of prisoners of state alone, most of whom were members of families of distinction, the commandant piqued himself on his good breeding, in spite of frequent outbreaks of fury: and, in spite of certain infractions of prosody and syntax, on the chosen elegance of his language. He was upright, moreover, as a pikestaff; rejoiced in an emphatic and sonorous voice; flourished his hand when he attempted a bow, and scratched his head when he attempted a speech. Thus qualified and endowed, the brave Morand, captain and commandant of Fenestrella, passed for a fine soldierlike-looking man, and an efficient public functionary.
From the courteous tone assumed in his initiatory address, and the professional attitude of the two commissaries by whom he was accompanied, Charney fancied that their sole business was to deliver to him a reprieve for his unhappy Picciola. But the commandant’s next sentence consisted in an inquiry, whether, upon any specific occasion, the prisoner had to complain of his want of courtesy or abuse of authority. The Count, still flattering himself that such a preamble augured well for the accomplishment of his hopes, certified all, and more than all, that civility seemed to require in reply to this leading question.
“You cannot, I imagine, sir, have forgotten,” persisted the commandant, “the care and kindness lavished upon you during your illness? If it was not your pleasure to submit to the prescriptions of the physicians appointed to visit you, the fault was neither theirs nor mine, but your own. When it occurred to me that your convalescence might be accelerated by a greater facility for taking air and exercise, you were instantly allowed, at all times and seasons, access to the prison-court?”
Charney inclined his head in token of grateful affirmation. But impatience of the good man’s circumlocution already caused him to compress his lips.
“Nevertheless, sir,” resumed the commandant, in the tone of a man whose feelings have been wounded, and whose advances were repaid with ingratitude, “you have not scrupled to infringe the regulations of the fortress, of the tenor of which you could not have been ignorant; compromising me thereby in the eyes of General Menon, the governor of Piedmont; nay, perhaps, of his gracious majesty the Emperor himself. The memorial which you have contrived to place before him——”
“Place before him!” interrupted Charney; “has he then received it?”