“I am a prelate of the Holy Roman Church,” Fabrizio said to him firmly, “and Grand Vicar of this Diocese; my birth alone entitles me to respect.”
“I know nothing about that!” replied the clerk pertly; “prove your assertions by showing the brevets which give you a right to those highly respectable titles.”
Fabrizio had no such documents and did not answer. General Fabio Conti, standing by the side of his clerk, watched him write without raising his eyes to the prisoner, so as not to be obliged to admit that he was really Fabrizio del Dongo.
Suddenly Clelia Conti, who was waiting in the carriage, heard a tremendous racket in the guardroom. The clerk Barbone, in making an insolent and extremely long description of the prisoner’s person, ordered him to undo his clothing in order to verify and put on record the number and condition of the scars received by him in his fight with Giletti.
“I cannot,” said Fabrizio, smiling bitterly; “I am not in a position to obey the gentleman’s orders, these handcuffs make it impossible.”
“What!” cried the General with an innocent air, “the prisoner is handcuffed! Inside the fortress! That is against the rules, it requires an order ad hoc; take the handcuffs off him.”
Fabrizio looked at him: “There’s a nice Jesuit,” he thought; “for the last hour he has seen me with these handcuffs, which have been hurting me horribly, and he pretends to be surprised!”
The handcuffs were taken off by the constables; they had just learned that Fabrizio was the nephew of the Duchessa Sanseverina, and made haste to show him a honeyed politeness which formed a sharp contrast to the rudeness of the clerk; the latter seemed annoyed by this and said to Fabrizio, who stood there without moving:
“Come along, there! Hurry up, show us those scratches you got from poor Giletti, the time he was murdered.” With a bound, Fabrizio sprang upon the clerk, and dealt him such a blow that Barbone fell from his chair against the General’s legs. The constables seized hold of the arms of Fabrizio, who made no attempt to resist them; the General himself and two constables who were standing by him hastened to pick up the clerk, whose face was bleeding copiously. Two subordinates who stood farther off ran to shut the door of the office, in the idea that the prisoner was trying to escape. The brigadiere who was in command of them thought that young del Dongo could not make a serious attempt at flight, since after all he was in the interior of the citadel; at the same time, he went to the window to put a stop to any disorder, and by a professional instinct. Opposite this open window and within a few feet of it the General’s carriage was drawn up: Clelia had shrunk back inside it, so as not to be a witness of the painful scene that was being enacted in the office; when she heard all this noise, she looked out.
“What is happening?” she asked the brigadiere.
“Signorina, it is young Fabrizio del Dongo who has just given that insolent Barbone a proper smack!”
“What! It is Signor del Dongo that they are taking to prison?”
“Eh! No doubt about that,” said the brigadiere; “it is because of the poor young man’s high birth that they are making all this fuss; I thought the Signorina knew all about it.” Clelia remained at the window: when the constables who were standing round the table moved away a little she caught a glimpse of the prisoner. “Who would ever have said,” she thought, “that I should see him again for the first time in this sad plight, when I met him on the road from the Lake of Como? … He gave me his hand to help me into his mother’s carriage. … He had the Duchessa with him even then! Had they begun to love each other as long ago as that?”
It should be explained to the reader that the members of the Liberal Party swayed by the Marchesa Raversi and General Conti affected to entertain no doubt as to the tender intimacy that must exist between Fabrizio and the Duchessa. Conte Mosca, whom they abhorred, was the object of endless pleasantries for the way in which he was being deceived.
“So,” thought Clelia, “there he is a prisoner, and a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. For after all, Conte Mosca, angel as one would like to think him, will be delighted when he hears of this capture.”
A loud burst of laughter sounded from the guardroom.
“Jacopo,” she said to the brigadiere in a voice that quivered with emotion, “what in the world is happening?”
“The General asked the prisoner sharply why he had struck Barbone: Monsignor Fabrizio answered calmly: ‘He called me assassino; let him produce the titles and brevets which authorise him to give me that title’; and they all laughed.”
A gaoler who could write took Barbone’s place; Clelia saw the latter emerge mopping with his handkerchief the blood that streamed in abundance from his hideous face; he was swearing like a heathen: “That f⸺ Fabrizio,” he shouted at the top of his voice, “I’ll have his life, I will, if I have to steal the hangman’s rope.” He had stopped between the office window and the General’s carriage, and his oaths redoubled.
“Move along there,” the brigadiere told him; “you mustn’t swear in front of the Signorina.”
Barbone raised his head to look at the carriage, his eyes met those of Clelia who could not repress a cry of horror; never had she seen at such close range so atrocious an expression upon any human face. “He will kill Fabrizio!” she said to herself, “I shall have to warn Don Cesare.” This was
