The Jew landlord of their lodgings¹ brought them a discreet² surgeon, who, soon coming to the conclusion that there was money to be made, informed Ludovico that his conscience obliged him to report the wounds of the young man, whom Ludovico called his brother, to the police.  
“The law is clear,” he added. “It is quite evident that your brother has not hurt himself, as he declares, by falling off a ladder with an open knife in his hand.”
 
Ludovico coldly answered the worthy³ surgeon to the effect that if he ventured to listen to the promptings of his conscience, he, Ludovico, would have the honour, before he left Ferrara, of falling upon him with an open knife in his hand. When he related the incident to Fabrizio he blamed him severely⁴. But there was not an instant to be lost about decamping. Ludovico told the Jew he was going to try what an airing would do for his brother. He fetched a carriage, and our friends left the house, never to return to it again. My readers doubtless find these descriptions of all the steps necessitated⁵ by the lack of a passport very lengthy⁶. But in Italy, and especially in the neighbourhood of the Po, everybody’s talk is about passports. As soon as they had slipped safely out of Ferrara, as if they were merely taking a drive, Ludovico dismissed the carriage, re-entered the town by a different gate, and then came back to fetch Fabrizio in a sediola, which he had hired to take them twelve leagues. When they were near Bologna, our friends had themselves driven across country, to the road leading into the city from Florence. They spent the night in the most wretched tavern⁸ they could discover, and the next morning, as Fabrizio felt strong enough to walk a little, they entered Bologna on foot. Giletti’s passport had been burned. The[214] actor’s death must now be known, and it was less dangerous to be arrested for having no passport, than for presenting one belonging to a man who had been killed.
 
Ludovico knew several servants in great houses at Bologna. It was agreed that he should go and collect intelligence from them. He told them he had come from Florence with his young brother, who, being overcome with sleep, had let him start alone an hour before sunrise. They were to have met in the village where Ludovico was to halt during the sultry midday hours, but when his brother did not arrive, Ludovico had resolved to retrace⁹ his steps. He had found him wounded by a blow from a stone and several knife thrusts, and robbed into the bargain, by people who had picked a quarrel with him. The brother was a good-looking young fellow; he could groom¹⁰ and manage horses, and would be glad to take service in some great house. Ludovico intended to add, if necessity should arise, that when Fabrizio had fallen down, the thieves had taken to flight, and had carried off a little bag containing their linen¹¹ and their passports.
 
When Fabrizio reached Bologna he felt very weary, and not daring to go into an inn without a passport, he turned into the large Church of San Petronio. It was deliciously cool within the building, and he soon felt quite recovered. “Ungrateful wretch⁷ that I am,” said he to himself suddenly; “I walk into a church, and just sit myself down as if I were in a café.” He threw himself on his knees, and thanked God fervently¹² for the protection He had so evidently extended to him since he had had the misfortune of killing¹³ Giletti. The danger which still made him shudder¹⁴ was that of being recognised in the police office at Casal-Maggiore. “How was it,” he thought, “that the clerk, whose eyes were so full of suspicion, and who read my passport three times over, did not perceive that I am not five foot ten tall, that I am not eight-and-thirty years old, and that I am not deeply pitted with the small-pox? What mercies do I owe thee, oh, my God! and I have waited until now to lay my nothingness at Thy feet. My pride would fain have believed it was to vain human prudence¹⁵ that I owed the happiness[215] of escaping the Spielberg, which was already yawning to engulf¹⁶ me.”
 
More than an hour did Fabrizio spend in the deepest emotion at the thought of the immense goodness of the Most High. He did not hear Ludovico approach him and stand in front of him. Fabrizio, who had hidden his face in his hands, raised his head, and his faithful servant saw the tears coursing down his cheeks.
 
“Come back in an hour,” said Fabrizio to him with some asperity¹⁷.
 
Ludovico forgave his tone in consideration of his piety¹⁸. Fabrizio recited the seven penitential psalms¹⁹, which he knew by heart, several times over, making long pauses over the verses applicable to his present position.
 
Fabrizio asked pardon of God for many things, but it is a remarkable²⁰ fact that it never occurred to him to reckon among his faults his plan of becoming an archbishop simply and solely²¹ because Count Mosca was a prime minister, and considered this dignity, and the great position it conferred, suitable for the duchess’s nephew. He had not indeed desired the thing at all passionately²², but still he had considered it exactly as he would have considered his appointment to a ministry²³ or a military command. The thought that his conscience might be involved in the duchess’s plan had never struck him. This is a remarkable feature of the teaching he owed to the Jesuits at Milan. This form of religion deprives men of courage to think of unaccustomed matters, and more especially forbids self-examination, as the greatest of all sins—a step toward Protestantism. To discover in what one is guilty, we must ask questions of one’s priest, or read the list of sins as printed in the book entitled Preparation for the Sacrament of Penitence²⁵. Fabrizio knew the Latin list of sins, which he had learned at the Ecclesiastical Academy at Naples, by heart, and when, as he repeated this list, he came to the word “Murder,” he had honestly accused himself before God of having killed a man, though in defence of his own life. He had run rapidly, and without the smallest attention, through the various clauses relating to the sin of simony (the purchase of[216] ecclesiastical dignities with money). If he had been invited to give a hundred louis to become grand vicar to the Archbishop of Parma, he would have shrunk from the idea with horror. But although he neither lacked intelligence nor, more especially, logic²⁶, it never once came into his head that the employment of Count Mosca’s credit in his favour constituted a simony. Herein lies the triumph of the Jesuits’ teaching; it instils²⁷ the habit of paying no attention to things which are as clear as day. A Frenchman brought up amid Parisian self-interest and scepticism might honestly have accused Fabrizio of hypocrisy²⁸ at the very moment when our hero was laying open his heart before his God with the utmost sincerity²⁹, and the deepest possible emotion.
 
Fabrizio did not leave the church until he had prepared the confession³⁰ which he had resolved to make the very next morning. He found Ludovico sitting on the steps of the huge stone peristyle which rises on the great square before the façade of San Petronio. Just as the air is purified by a great thunder-storm, so Fabrizio’s heart felt calmer, happier, and, so to speak, cooler. “I am much better. I hardly feel my wounds at all,” he said, as he joined Ludovico. “But, first of all, I must ask your forgiveness; I answered you crossly when you came to speak to me in the church. I was examining my conscience. Well, how does our business go?”
 
“It’s going right well. I’ve engaged a lodging—not at all worthy of your Excellency, indeed—kept by the wife of one of my friends, who is a very pretty woman, and in close intimacy³¹, besides, with one of the principal police agents. To-morrow I shall go and report that our passports have been stolen. This declaration will be well received, but I shall pay the postage of a letter which the police will send to Casal-Maggiore to inquire whether there is a man there of the name of San Micheli, who has a brother named Fabrizio in the service of the Duchess Sanseverina of Parma. It’s all done, siamo à cavallo” (an Italian proverb, meaning “we are saved”).
 
Fabrizio had suddenly become very grave. He asked[217] Ludovico to wait for him a moment, returned to the church almost at a run, and had hardly got inside when he cast himself once more upon his knees and humbly³² kissed the stone pavement. “This is a miracle,” he cried, with tears in his eyes. “Thou sawest my soul ready to return to the path of duty, and Thou hast saved me. O God, I may be killed some day in a scuffle. Remember, O Lord, when my dying moment comes, the condition of my heart at this moment.” In a passion of the liveliest joy, Fabrizio once more recited the seven penitential psalms. Before he left the church, he approached an old woman who sat in front of a great Madonna and beside an iron triangle set vertically³³ on a support of the same metal. The edges of this triangle bristled³⁴ with little spikes³⁵, destined³⁶ to support the small tapers³⁷ which the faithful burn before Cimabue’s famous Madonna.
 
Only seven tapers were burning when Fabrizio approached. He noted³⁸ the fact in his memory, so as to reflect on it when he should have time.
 
“How much do the tapers cost?” said he to the woman.
 
“Two baiocchi each.”
 
And, indeed, they were no thicker than a penholder, and not a foot high.
 
“How many tapers will your triangle hold?”
 
“Sixty-three, since there are seven already.”
 
“Ha!” said Fabrizio. “Sixty-three and seven make seventy; I must remember that, too.” He paid for the tapers, set up and lighted the first seven himself, and then knelt down to make his offering. As he rose from his knees he said to the old woman, “It is for a mercy bestowed³⁹.”
 
“I am dying of hunger,” said Fabrizio to Ludovico as he rejoined him.
 
“Don’t let us go into a tavern; let us go to the lodgings,” said his servant. “The mistress of the house will go out and buy you what you want for breakfast; she’ll cheat us out of a score of sous, and that will make her feel all the more kindly⁴⁰ to the new arrival.”
 
[218]
 
“That means that I shall have to go on starving for another hour,” said Fabrizio, laughing as merrily as a child, and he entered a tavern close to San Petronio. To his extreme astonishment⁴¹ he beheld⁴², sitting at a table close to his own his aunt’s principal man-servant, Pepe, the very man who had once been sent to meet him at Geneva. Fabrizio signed to him to keep silence; then, after a hasty repast, with a happy smile trembling on his lips, he rose to his feet. Pepe followed him, and for the third time our hero passed into San Petronio. Ludovico discreetly⁴³ held back, and walked up and down the square.
 
“Oh, monsignore, how are your wounds? The duchess is in dreadful anxiety. For one whole day she believed you were dead, and cast away on some island in the river. I must send a messenger to her instantly. I have been hunting for you for six days; I spent three of them at Ferrara, going to all the inns.”
 
“Have you a passport for me?”
 
“I have three. One with all your Excellency’s names and titles, one with nothing but your name, and the third with a false name, Giuseppe Bossi. Each of the passports will serve your Excellency’s purpose, whether you choose to arrive from Florence or from Modena. All you have to do is to walk out beyond the town. The count would be glad if you would lodge⁴⁴ at the Albergo del Pellegrino, which is kept by a friend of his.”
 
Fabrizio walked, as though by chance, up the right aisle⁴⁵ of the church to the spot where his tapers were burning. He fixed⁴⁶ his eyes on the Cimabue Madonna, then, kneeling down, he said to Pepe, “I must thank God for a moment.” Pepe followed his example. As they left the church Pepe noticed that Fabrizio gave a twenty-franc piece to the first beggar who asked charity of him. The beggar set up a shout of gratitude⁴⁷, which attracted the crowds of indigent⁴⁸ people of every sort who generally collect on the square of San Petronio all round the charitable donor⁴⁹. Everybody wanted his or her share of the napoleon. The women, despairing of getting through the press round the lucky mendicant⁵⁰, fell upon Fabrizio, shrieking⁵¹ to him to say it was[219] true he had given his gold piece to be divided among all the poor beggars. Pepe brandished⁵² his gold-headed cane⁵³, and ordered them to leave “his Excellency” alone.
 
“Oh, your Excellency,” screamed all the women at once, even louder than before, “give the poor women another gold piece.” Fabrizio quickened his pace; the women ran after him, calling aloud, and many male beggars ran up from side streets, so that quite a little disturbance⁵⁴ ensued. The whole of the filthy⁵⁵ and noisy crowd kept shouting “Your Excellency!” Fabrizio found it by no means easy to get out of the press. The scene recalled his imagination to earth. “I am only getting what I deserve,” thought he. “I have been rubbing shoulders with the common folk.”
 
Two of the women followed him as far as the Saragossa Gate, through which he passed out of the town. There Pepe stopped them by threatening them seriously with his cane and throwing them some small coins. Fabrizio climbed the pretty hill of San Michele in Bosco, walked partly round the town, outside the walls, turned into a foot-path, which, five hundred paces farther on, ran into the road from Florence, returned to Bologna, and gravely presented a passport containing a very accurate description of his person to the police commissary. This passport described him as Giuseppe Bossi, student of theology. Fabrizio noticed a little splash of red ink that seemed to have been dropped by accident on the lower right-hand corner of the paper. Two hours later he had a spy upon his heels, on account of the title “your Excellency” applied⁵⁶ to him by his companion in the presence of the beggars at San Petronio, although his passport detailed⁵⁷ none of those honours which entitle a man to be addressed as “Excellency” by his servants.
 
Fabrizio perceived the spy, and snapped his fingers at him. He gave not a thought, now, either to passports or police officers, and was as amused as a child with everything about him. When Pepe, who had been ordered to stay with him, saw how well pleased he was with Ludovico, he thought his own best course was to carry the good news to[220] the duchess himself. Fabrizio wrote two long letters to his dear ones. Then he bethought him of writing a third to the venerable Archbishop Landriani. This letter produced a most extraordinary effect. It contained the exact history of his fight with Giletti. The good archbishop, quite overcome by his emotion, did not fail to go and read the letter to the prince, whose curiosity to know how the young monsignore would set about excusing so terrible a murder made him willing to listen. Thanks to the Marchesa Raversi’s many friends, the prince, like the whole city of Parma, believed Fab............