In the course of that day Fabrizio was assailed¹, several times over, by certain serious and disagreeable reflections. But as he heard the hours strike, each one of which brought him nearer to the moment of action, he felt himself grow brisk and cheerful. The duchess had written to him that the fresh air was sure to overcome him, and that he would hardly have got outside his prison before he would find it impossible to walk. In that case it would certainly be better to run the risk of being retaken than to throw himself from the top of a wall a hundred and eighty feet high. “If that misfortune overtakes me,” said Fabrizio to himself, “I will lie down close to the parapet; I will sleep for an hour, and I will start again. As I have sworn my oath to Clelia, I would rather fall from the top of a rampart, however high, than spend my life considering the taste of every bit of bread I eat. What horrible suffering there must be at the end when a man dies of poison! And Fabio Conti would make no bones about it; he would just give me the arsenic³ with which he kills the rats in his fortress⁴.”  
Toward midnight one of those thick white fogs which the Po sometimes casts over its banks rose over the town, and thence to the esplanade and the bastions, in the midst of which stands the great tower of the citadel⁵. Fabrizio thought he perceived that the little acacias round the soldiers’ gardens, at the foot of the great wall below, were no longer visible. “This is capital!” thought he to himself.
 
A little after the stroke of half-past twelve the tiny lamp appeared in the aviary⁶ window. Fabrizio was ready; he crossed himself, then he fastened the thin rope which was to carry him down the twenty-five feet between his room and the platform on which the palace stood to his bed. He reached the roof of the guard-room occupied, since the previous night, by the two hundred extra men of whom we have spoken, without any mishap⁷. Unluckily, at that hour—a quarter to one—the soldiers were not yet asleep, and while Fabrizio stepped stealthily over the great curved roof tiles he heard them saying that the devil was on their roof, and that they must try and shoot him with a musket⁸. Some voices declared this wish to be exceedingly impious; others said that if they fired a shot without killing¹⁰ anything the governor would put them all in prison for having alarmed the garrison¹¹ unnecessarily. All this fine discussion caused Fabrizio to hurry over the roof as quickly as he could, and thus make much more noise than he might have done. As a matter of fact, when he passed, clinging to his rope, in front of the windows, and fortunately for him, owing to the projection¹² of the roof, some four or five feet away from them, they were all bristling¹³ with bayonets. Some people have declared that Fabrizio, who was always a wild fellow, took it into his head to play the devil’s part, and threw a handful of sequins to the soldiers. He certainly did scatter¹⁴ sequins all over the floor of his room and across the platform, as he passed from the Farnese Tower to the parapet, on the chance of their distracting the attention of the soldiers who might try to pursue him.
 
Once he had reached the platform, surrounded by sentries¹⁵, who, as a rule, shouted a complete sentence, “All’s well round my post,” every quarter of an hour, he moved toward the western parapet, and looked about for the new stone.
 
What appears incredible, and might induce one to doubt the facts, if their consequences had not been witnessed by a whole city, is that the sentries along the parapet did not catch sight of Fabrizio and lay hands on him. It is true that the fog to which we have referred was beginning to rise, and Fabrizio has related that when he was on the platform the fog seemed to him to have reached half-way up the Farnese Tower. But it was not a thick fog, and he could clearly distinguish the sentries, some of whom were moving about. He used to add that, driven by some supernatural force, he placed himself boldly between two sentries, not very far from each other, and quietly unwound the long rope he was carrying slung¹⁶ round his body, and which got entangled¹⁷ twice over. It took him a long time to disentangle it, and lay it out upon the parapet. He could hear the soldiers talking all round him, and was quite resolved to stab the first who came near him. “I was not in the least agitated,” he used to add; “I seemed to myself to be performing some ceremony.”
 
At last he cleared his rope, and fastened it into an opening in the parapet, made for the rain-water to run through. Then he climbed on to the parapet, and prayed earnestly to God. Next, like a hero of the days of chivalry¹⁸, he thought for an instant of Clelia. “What a different man I am,” said he to himself, “from the careless and libertine¹⁹ Fabrizio who came into this place nine months ago!” At last he began to let himself down the tremendous height. He moved mechanically, he said, as he would have done if he had been coming down before friends, in broad daylight, to win a wager²⁰. About midway he suddenly felt the strength in his arms fail; he even thinks he lost his grip of the rope for a moment. But he soon grasped it again. Perhaps, he said afterward²¹, he held on to the brambles against which he was slipping and which tore him. Every now and then he felt a most agonizing²² pain between his shoulders, which almost took away his breath. The undulating motion was most trying; he was constantly being swung away from the rope against the brambles; he was touched by several birds of considerable size, which he disturbed, and which blundered against him as they flew away. He took the first of these for people in pursuit of him, who were descending²³ from the citadel in the same manner, and made ready to defend himself. At last he reached the base of the great tower, unhurt, except that his hands were bleeding. He related that over the lower half of the tower the outward slope of the wall was of great assistance to him. He rubbed against it as he went down, and the plants growing between the stones held him up. When he reached the bottom he fell on an acacia in the soldiers’gardens, which, looking at it from above, he had taken to be four or five feet high, but which really was fifteen or twenty. A drunken man who was sleeping under it took him for a robber. When Fabrizio fell out of this tree he almost put out his left arm. He began to hurry toward the rampart, but according to his own story his legs seemed made of wadding; he had no strength left. In spite of the danger he sat down, and drank a little brandy which still remained to him. For some minutes he slept, so soundly as not to remember where he was. When he woke up he thought he was in his room, and could not understand how it was he saw trees. At last the awful truth dawned on him. Instantly he moved toward the rampart, and reached it by a wide flight of steps. A sentry²⁴ was snoring in his box close by. He found a cannon²⁵ lying in the grass, and fastened his third rope to it. It was a little too short, and he fell into a muddy ditch, with about a foot of water in it. Just as he was getting up, and trying to make out where he was, he felt himself seized by two men; for a moment he was alarmed, but soon, close to his ear, and in a very low voice, he heard the words, “Ah, monsignore, monsignore!” He realized dimly that the men came from the duchess, and instantly he fainted dead away. A little while after he felt himself being carried by men who walked swiftly and silently. Then they stopped, which terrified him very much. But he had no strength either to speak or to open his eyes. He felt somebody embrace him, and suddenly he recognised the perfume of the duchess’s clothes. That perfume revived him; he was able to open his eyes and say “Ah, dearest friend!” and then he fainted again.
 
The faithful Bruno, with a squad²⁶ of police officers, all devoted²⁷ to the count, was waiting two hundred paces off. The count himself was hiding in a little house close to the spot where the duchess was waiting. He would not have hesitated, had it been necessary, to draw his sword, assisted by several half-pay officers, his own intimate friends. He considered himself bound to save Fabrizio’s life. He believed him to be in the most imminent²⁸ danger, and felt the prince would have signed his pardon if he (Mosca) had not committed the folly²⁹ of endeavouring to save his sovereign from writing another.
 
Ever since midnight the duchess, surrounded by men armed to the teeth, had been wandering up and down, in dead silence, close to the citadel ramparts. She could not stay quiet for an instant; she expected to have to fight to save Fabrizio from his pursuers. Her fervent³⁰ imagination had inspired her with a hundred precautions, too long to mention here, and all of them incredibly imprudent. More than eighty persons are calculated to have been on foot that night, expecting to fight on some extraordinary occasion. Fortunately Ferrante and Ludovico were at the head of the business, and the Minister of Police was not hostile. But the count himself remarked that nobody betrayed the duchess, and, in his ministerial capacity, he knew nothing at all.
 
The duchess utterly³¹ lost her head when she saw Fabrizio. First of all she clasped him in her arms, and then, when she saw he was covered with blood, she grew beside herself with alarm. The blood had flowed from Fabrizio’s hands, but she thought he was dangerously hurt. Helped by one of her servants, she was taking off his coat, to dress his wounds, when Ludovico, who fortunately was present, insisted on placing the duchess and Fabrizio in one of the little carriages, which had been kept hidden in a garden near the gate of the city, and they started full gallop³² to get across the Po at Sacca. Ferrante, with twenty well-armed men, formed the rear-guard, and had staked his own life that he would stop all pursuit. The count did not leave the vicinity of the citadel—and then alone and on foot—till two hours later, when he saw that nothing was stirring. “Now,” said he, “I am steeped in high treason,” and he was half wild with joy.
 
Ludovico hit upon the excellent idea of putting a young surgeon attached to the duchess’s household, and who was very much of Fabrizio’s build, into a carriage.
 
“Fly,” said he to him, “toward Bologna! Blunder as much as ever you can, try to get yourself arrested, then refuse to give clear answers, and end by owning that you are Fabrizio del Dongo. Above all things, gain time. Use all[411] your skill to be as stupid as you can. You will get off with a month’s imprisonment³³, and the duchess will give you fifty sequins.”
 
“Does anybody think of money when it’s a question of serving the duchess?”
 
Off he started, and was arrested some hours later, to the deep delight of General Fabio Conti and Rassi, who saw his barony take to itself wings and fly away together with Fabrizio’s peril³⁴.
 
It was not till six o’clock in the morning that the escape became known in the citadel, and it was ten before anybody dared tell the prince. So well had the duchess been served, that in spite of Fabrizio’s profound slumber³⁵, which she took for a dangerous fainting fit, and consequently stopped the carriage three times over, she was crossing the river in a boat as the clock struck four. Relays of horses awaited them on the farther bank; they drove two more leagues very swiftly, then they were stopped for more than an hour to verify their passports. The duchess had passports of every kind, both for herself and Fabrizio, but she was half mad that day; she took it into her head to give ten napoleons to the Austrian police official; she took his hand and burst into tears. The official, very much startled, did all his verification over again. They now took post-horses. The duchess paid so lavishly³⁶, that in a country, where every stranger is looked at doubtfully, she aroused universal suspicion. Once more Ludovico came to the rescue; he declared the duchess was mad with grief on account of the long-continued fever of young Count Mosca, the son of the Prime Minister of Parma, whom she was taking to Pavia, to consult the doctors there.
 
It was not till they were ten leagues beyond the Po that the prisoner thoroughly³⁸ woke up. One of his shoulders was dislocated, and he was covered with abrasions³⁹. The duchess was still behaving in such an extraordinary fashion that the host of the village inn in which they dined thought he had to do with one of the imperial princesses, and would have rendered her the honours he believed to be her due, when Ludovico warned him that the princess would certainly[412] have him thrown into prison if he ventured to have the bells rung.
 
At last, toward six o’clock in the evening, they reached Piedmontese soil. Not till then was Fabrizio in perfect safety. He was conveyed to a little village, standing⁴⁰ off the high-road, his hands were dressed; he slept for a few hours longer.
 
It was at this village that the duchess indulged in an action which was not only a hateful one from the moral point of view, but the effect of which on the tranquillity⁴¹ of the remainder of her life was grievous in the extreme. Some weeks before Fabrizio’s escape, on a day when the whole of Parma had betaken itself to the citadel gates to try and catch sight of the scaffold being erected⁴² in the courtyard for his benefit, the duchess had shown Ludovico, who had become her household factotum⁴³, the secret whereby one of the stones forming the bottom of the famous reservoir attached to the Palazzo Sanseverina, that work of the thirteenth century to which we have already referred, might be driven out of its skilfully⁴⁴ concealed⁴⁵ iron bed. While Fabrizio was sleeping soundly in the little village tavern⁴⁶, the duchess sent for Ludovico. So strange were the glances she cast at him that he thought she had lost her reason.
 
“No doubt you expect me to give you several thousand francs,” said she. “Well, I am not going to do that. You are a poet; you would soon have squandered⁴⁷ all the money. I shall give you the little property called the Ricciarda, a league from Casal Maggiore.” Beside himself with delight, Ludovico cast himself at her feet, protesting, in heartfelt accents, that it was not for the sake of earning money that he had helped to save Monsignore Fabrizio, and that he had always loved him with a special affection since the time when he had been third coachman to the duchess, and had had the honour of driving his carriage. When the man, who really was a faithful-hearted fellow, thought he had sufficiently⁴⁸ encroached on this great lady’s time, he would have taken his leave, but she, with flashing eyes, said to him, “Stay here!”
 
She was walking silently up and down the tavern room, from time to time casting the most extraordinary glances on Ludovico. At last the man, perceiving no apparent end to her strange march, ventured to address his mistress:
 
“The signora has granted me such an excessive gift, so far beyond anything a poor man like myself could have imagined, and above all so immensely superior to the poor services I have had the honour of doing her, that I think I can not, in all conscience, keep the lands of the Ricciarda. I have the honour to return the property to the signora, and to entreat⁴⁹ her to grant me a pension of four hundred francs a year.”
 
“How many times in your life,” said she to him, with the gloomiest air of pride, “how many times have you heard it said that I relinquished⁵⁰ a plan I had once mentioned?”
 
Having said these words, the duchess walked up and down again for some minutes, then, stopping suddenly short, she cried:
 
“It is by accident, and because he won that little girl’s favour, that Fabrizio’s life has been saved. If he had not made himself charming he would have died; can you deny me that?” she cried, sailing down upon Ludovico, her eyes flashing with the darkest rage. Ludovico stepped several paces backward, and concluded she was certainly mad, a fact which inspired him with serious alarm regarding his ownership of the Ricciarda.
 
“Well, well,” said the duchess, changing suddenly to the gentlest and most cheerful tone, “I desire my good people at Sacca shall have a delightful⁵¹ day—one they shall remember for ages. You shall go back to Sacca. Have you any objection? Do you think you will be in any danger?”
 
“Very little, signora. Nobody in Sacca will ever let out that I have been in attendance on Monsignore Fabrizio, and besides, if I may venture to say so to the signora, I am longing⁵² to see my property of the Ricciarda. It seems so comical to me to be a landowner.”
 
“Your pleasure delights me. I think the tenant⁵³ of the Ricciarda owes me some two or three years of his rent. I make him a present of one half of what he owes me; the other[414] half of all his arrears⁵⁴ I give to you, but on this condition: You will go to Sacca, you will say that the day after to-morrow is the fête day of one of my patron saints, and the night after your arrival you will have my house illuminated⁵⁵ in the most splendid manner. Spare neither money nor pains. Recollect⁵⁶ that this has to do with the greatest happiness of my life.
 
“I have been making ready for this illumination for a long time. For more than three months I have been collecting everything needful for this splendid festivity in the cellars of my house. I have deposited all the fireworks for a magnificent display in the gardener’s care. You will have them let off on the terrace facing the Po. There are eighty-nine great hogsheads of wine in my cellars. You will set up eighty-nine fountains running wine in my park. If a single bottle remains⁵⁷ undrunk on the following day, I shall say you do not love Fabrizio. When the fountains of wine are running, and the illumination and the fireworks are in full swing, you will slip away cautiously, for it is possible, and that is my hope, that in Parma all these fine doings will be taken as an insult.”
 
“That is not possible only; it is certain. And it is certain, too, that Chief-Justice Rassi, who signed monsignore’s sentence, will be bursting with rage. And,” added Ludovico somewhat timidly, “if the signora desired to give her poor servant even a greater pleasure than that of receiving half the arrears of the Ricciarda, she would give me leave to play a little joke upon that same Rassi.”
 
“You’re a good fellow,” exclaimed the duchess, delighted. “But I absolutely forbid you to do anything at all to Rassi. I intend to have him publicly hanged at some future time. As for yourself, try not to get yourself arrested at Sacca; everything would be spoiled if I lost you.”
 
“Me, signora! Once I have said I am keeping the feast of one of the Signora Duchessa’s patron saints, you may be sure that if the police sent thirty gendarmes⁵⁸ to interfere⁵⁹, not one of them would be on his horse by the time they reached the red cross in the middle of the village. They are not to be trifled with, those Sacca men—first-rate smugglers every one of them, and they worship the signora.”
 
“Well,” the duchess began again with a curiously⁶⁰ offhand⁶¹ air, “while I give wine to my good people at Sacca, I want to drench⁶² the people of Parma. On the very night when my castle is lighted up, take the best horse in my stables, hurry off to my palace in Parma, and open the reservoir.”
 
“Ah, that’s a fine idea of the signora’s,” cried Ludovico in fits of laughter, “wine for the good folks at Sacca, water for the Parmese townsmen, who had made so certain, the wretches⁶³, that monsignore was going to be poisoned like poor .”
 
Ludovico could not get over his delight. The duchess watched his ecstasies⁶⁴ with evident satisfaction. “Wine for the Sacca men,” he kept saying, “water for the Parmese! The signora doubtless knows, better than I do, that twenty years ago, when the reservoir was imprudently emptied, the water ran a foot deep in many of the streets of Parma.”
 
“And water for the Parmese,” answered the duchess, laughing. “The square before the citadel would have been crammed⁶⁵ with people if Fabrizio’s head had been cut off.… Everybody calls him the great culprit.… But above all things, do it cunningly! Let no living being ever know that the inundation⁶⁶ was your work, nor done by my order. Fabrizio, even the count himself, must remain in ignorance of this wild joke.… But I was forgetting my poor people at Sacca. Go you, and write a letter to my man of business, which I will sign. You will tell him he is to distribute a hundred sequins among the poor of Sacca, in honour of my patron saint, and that he is to take all your orders about the illumination, the fireworks, and the wine. Above all things, be sure there is not one full bottle in my cellars the next morning.”
 
“The signora’s steward⁶⁷ will only find one difficulty. The signora has owned the castle now for five years, and she has not left ten poor persons in Sac............