Rassi requested an extraordinary audience and said to the Prince:
“Would Your Highness be willing to give a hundred thousand francs to know definitely in what manner his august father met his death? With that sum, the authorities would be in a position to arrest the guilty parties, if such exist.”
The Prince’s reply left no room for doubt.
A little while later, Cecchina informed the Duchessa that she had been offered a large sum to allow her mistress’s diamonds to be examined by a jeweller; she had indignantly refused. The Duchessa scolded her for having refused; and, a week later, Cecchina had the diamonds to show. On the day appointed for this exhibition of the diamonds, the Conte posted a couple of trustworthy men at every jeweller’s in Parma, and towards midnight he came to tell the Duchessa that the inquisitive jeweller was none other than Rassi’s brother. The Duchessa, who was very gay that evening (they were playing at the Palace a commedia dell’arte, that is to say one in which each character invents the dialogue as he goes on, only the plot of the play being posted up in the greenroom), the Duchessa, who was playing a part, had as her lover in the piece Conte Baldi, the former friend of the Marchesa Raversi, who was present. The Prince, the shyest man in his States, but an extremely good looking youth and one endowed with the tenderest of hearts, was studying Conte Baldi’s part, which he intended to take at the second performance.
“I have very little time,” the Duchessa told the Conte; “I am appearing in the first scene of the second act: let us go into the guardroom.”
There, surrounded by a score of the bodyguard, all wide awake and closely attentive to the conversation between the Prime Minister and the Grand Mistress, the Duchessa said with a laugh to her friend:
“You always scold me when I tell you unnecessary secrets. It was I who summoned Ernesto V to the throne; it was a question of avenging Fabrizio, whom I loved then far more than I do today, although always quite innocently. I know very well that you have little belief in my innocence, but that does not matter, since you love me in spite of my crimes. Very well, here is a real crime: I gave all my diamonds to a sort of lunatic, a most interesting man, named Ferrante Palla, I even kissed him so that he should destroy the man who wished to have Fabrizio poisoned. Where is the harm in that?”
“Ah! So that is where Ferrante had found money for his rising!” said the Conte, slightly taken aback; “and you tell me all this in the guardroom!”
“It is because I am in a hurry, and now Rassi is on the track of the crime. It is quite true that I never mentioned an insurrection, for I abhor Jacobins. Think it over, and let me have your advice after the play.”
“I will tell you at once that you must make the Prince fall in love with you. But perfectly honourably, please.”
The Duchessa was called to return to the stage. She fled.
Some days later the Duchessa received by post a long and ridiculous letter, signed with the name of a former maid of her own; the woman asked to be employed at the court, but the Duchessa had seen from the first glance that the letter was neither in her handwriting nor in her style. On opening the sheet to read the second page, she saw fall at her feet a little miraculous image of the Madonna, folded in a printed leaf from an old book. After glancing at the image, the Duchessa read a few lines of the printed page. Her eyes shone, she found on it these words:
“The Tribune has taken one hundred francs monthly, not more; with the rest it was decided to rekindle the sacred fire in souls which had become frozen by selfishness. The fox is upon my track, that is why I have not sought to see for the last time the adored being. I said to myself, she does not love the Republic, she who is superior to me in mind as well as by her graces and her beauty. Besides, how is one to create a Republic without Republicans? Can I be mistaken? In six months I shall visit, microscope in hand, and on foot, the small towns of America, I shall see whether I ought still to love the sole rival that you have in my heart. If you receive this letter, Signora Baronessa, and no profane eye has read it before yours, tell them to break one of the young ash trees planted twenty paces from the spot where I dared to speak to you for the first time. I shall then have buried, under the great box tree in the garden to which you called attention once in my happy days, a box in which will be found some of those things which lead to the slandering of people of my way of thinking. You may be sure that I should have taken care not to write if the fox were not on my track, and there were not a risk of his reaching that heavenly being; examine the box tree in a fortnight’s time.”
“Since he has a printing press at his command,” the Duchessa said to herself, “we shall
