Tears and sobs prevented Ferrante from reading it to the end; he fell on his knees.
“Give me back the paper,” said the Duchessa, and, in his presence, burned it in the flame of a candle.
“My name,” she explained, “must not appear if you are taken and executed, for your life will be at stake.”
“My joy is to die in harming the tyrant: a far greater joy is to die for you. Once this is stated and clearly understood, be so kind as to make no further mention of this detail of money. I might see in it a suspicion that would be injurious to me.”
“If you are compromised, I may be also,” replied the Duchessa, “and Fabrizio as well as myself: it is for that reason, and not because I have any doubt of your bravery, that I require that the man who is lacerating my heart shall be poisoned and not stabbed. For the same reason which is so important to me, I order you to do everything in the world to save your own life.”
“I shall execute the task faithfully, punctiliously and prudently. I foresee, Signora Duchessa, that my revenge will be combined with your own: were it not so, I should still obey you faithfully, punctiliously and prudently. I may not succeed, but I shall employ all my human strength.”
“It is a question of poisoning Fabrizio’s murderer.”
“So I had guessed, and, during the twenty-seven months in which I have been leading this vagabond and abominable life, I have often thought of a similar action on my own account.”
“If I am discovered and condemned as an accomplice,” went on the Duchessa in a tone of pride, “I do not wish the charge to be imputed to me of having corrupted you. I order you to make no further attempt to see me until the time comes for our revenge: he must on no account be put to death before I have given you the signal. His death at the present moment, for instance, would be lamentable to me instead of being useful. Probably his death will occur only in several months’ time, but it shall occur. I insist on his dying by poison, and I should prefer to leave him alive rather than see him shot. For considerations which I do not wish to explain to you, I insist upon your life’s being saved.”
Ferrante was delighted with the tone of authority which the Duchessa adopted with him: his eyes gleamed with a profound joy. As we have said, he was horribly thin; but one could see that he had been very handsome in his youth, and he imagined himself to be still what he had once been. “Am I mad?” he asked himself; “or will the Duchessa indeed one day, when I have given her this proof of my devotion, make me the happiest of men? And, when it comes to that, why not? Am I not worth as much as that doll of a Conte Mosca, who when the time came, could do nothing for her, not even enable Monsignor Fabrizio to escape?”
“I may wish his death tomorrow,” the Duchessa continued, still with the same air of authority. “You know that immense reservoir of water which is at the corner of the palazzo, not far from the hiding-place which you have sometimes occupied; there is a secret way of letting all that water run out into the street: very well, that will be the signal for my revenge. You will see, if you are in Parma, or you will hear it said, if you are living in the woods, that the great reservoir of the palazzo Sanseverina has burst. Act at once but by poison, and above all risk your own life as little as possible. No one must ever know that I have had a hand in this affair.”
“Words are useless,” replied Ferrante, with an enthusiasm which he could ill conceal: “I have already fixed on the means which I shall employ. The life of that man has become more odious to me than it was before, since I shall not dare to see you again so long as he is alive. I shall await the signal of the reservoir flooding the street.” He bowed abruptly and left the room. The Duchessa watched him go.
When he was in the next room, she recalled him.
“Ferrante!” she cried; “sublime man!”
He returned, as though impatient at being detained: his face at that moment was superb.
“And your children?”
“Signora, they will be richer than I; you will perhaps allow them some small pension.”
“Wait,” said the Duchessa as she handed him a sort of large case of olive wood, “here are all the diamonds that I have left: they are worth 50,000 francs.”
“Ah! Signora, you humiliate me!” said Ferrante with a gesture of horror; and his face completely altered.
“I shall not see you again before the deed: take them, I wish it,” added the Duchessa with an air of pride which struck Ferrante dumb; he put the case in his pocket and left her.
The door had closed behind him. The Duchessa called him back once again; he returned with an uneasy air: the Duchessa was standing in the middle of the room; she threw herself into his arms. A moment later, Ferrante had almost fainted with happiness; the Duchessa released herself from his embrace, and with her eyes showed him the door.
“There goes the one man who has understood me,” she said to herself; “that is how Fabrizio would have acted, if he could have realised.”
There were two salient points in the Duchessa’s character: she always wished what she had once wished; she never gave any further consideration to what had once been decided. She used to quote in this connection a saying of her first husband, the charming General Pietranera. “What insolence to myself!” he used to say; “Why should I suppose that I have more sense today than when I made up my
