They dared not laugh when he was present, feeling that he was the spy of the marchese, his father, and that it was wise to keep on terms with the stern despot, who had never recovered his temper since his forced resignation.
Ascanio swore to be avenged on Fabrizio.
One day there was a storm, and the boat was in some danger. Though money was scarce enough, the two boatmen were liberally bribed to prevent their saying anything to the marchese, who was very angry already because his daughters had been taken out. Then came a second hurricane. On this beautiful lake storms are both terrible and unexpected. Violent squalls sweep suddenly down the mountain gorges on opposite sides of the shore, and battle over the water. This time, in the midst of the whirlwind and the thunderclaps, the countess insisted on landing; she declared that if she could stand on a lonely rock, as large as a small room, which lay in the middle of the lake, she would enjoy a strange spectacle, and see her stronghold lashed on every side by the furious waves. But, as she sprang from the boat, she fell into the water. Fabrizio plunged in after her, and they were both carried a considerable distance. Drowning is certainly not an attractive death, but boredom, at all events, fled astonished from the feudal castle. The countess had fallen in love with Father Blanès’s primitive qualities, and astrological studies. The little money remaining to her after the purchase of her boat had been spent on a small second-hand telescope, and almost every night she mounted, with Fabrizio and her nieces, to the top of one of the Gothic towers of the castle. Fabrizio was the learned member of the party, which would thus spend several very cheerful hours, far from prying eyes.
It must be acknowledged that there were days during which the countess never spoke to anybody, and might be seen walking up and down under the great chestnut trees, plunged in gloomy reverie. She was too clever a woman not to suffer, now and then, from the weariness of never being able to exchange an idea. But the next day she would be laughing again, as she had laughed the day before. It was the lamentations of her sister-in-law which occasionally cast a gloom over her naturally elastic nature. “Are we doomed to spend all the youth left to us in this dreary house?” the marchesa would cry. Before the arrival of the countess she had not even had courage to feel such repinings.
Thus the winter of 1814 to 1815 wore on. Twice, in spite of her poverty, did the countess spend a few days in Milan. She went to see a magnificent ballet by Vigano, produced at the Scala, and the marchese did not forbid his wife to accompany her sister-in-law. The quarterly payments of the little pension were drawn, and it was the poor widow of the Cisalpine general who lent a few sequins to the wealthy Marchesa del Dongo. These expeditions were delightful; the ladies invited their old friends to dinner, and consoled themselves by laughing at everything, like real children. Their light-hearted Italian gaiety helped them to forget the melancholy gloom which the marchese and his elder son shed over everything at Grianta. Fabrizio, then hardly sixteen years old, represented the head of the family in a very satisfactory manner.
On the 17th of March, 1815, the ladies, very lately returned from a delightful little trip to Milan, were walking up and down under the fine avenue of plane trees which had lately been extended down to the very edge of the lake. A boat appeared, coming from the direction of Como, and made some peculiar signals. One of the marchese’s agents sprang ashore. Napoleon had just landed in the Gulf of Juan! Europe in general was simple enough to be surprised at this event, which did not astonish the Marchese del Dongo. He wrote his sovereign a letter full of heartfelt expressions of devotion, placed his talents and several millions of money at his service, and reaffirmed that his ministers were all Jacobins, and in league with the Parisian leaders.
On the 8th of March, at six o’clock in the morning, the marchese, adorned with all his insignia, was writing the rough draft of a third political despatch from his son’s dictation. Solemnly he transcribed it in his large, careful handwriting, on paper the watermark of which bore his sovereign’s effigy. At that very moment Fabrizio was entering the presence of his aunt, the Countess Pietranera.
“I am off!” he cried. “I am going to join the Emperor! He is King of Italy as well! How he loved your husband! I shall go through Switzerland. Last night my friend Vasi, the barometer dealer at Menagio, gave me his passport. Now do you give me a few napoleons, for I have only two of my own. But if it comes to that, I’ll walk!”
The countess was weeping with terror and delight. “Good God!” she cried, as she seized Fabrizio’s hands, “how did such an idea come into your head?”
She rose from her seat, and from the linen chest, where it had been carefully concealed, took a little bead-embroidered purse, containing all her earthly wealth.
“Take it,” she said to her nephew, “but in God’s name do not get yourself killed! What would be left to your unhappy mother and to me if you were taken from us? As for Napoleon’s success, that, my poor child, is impossible. Did not you hear the story, a week ago, when we were at Milan, of the three-and-twenty well-laid plots for his assassination which he only escaped by a miracle? And in those days he was all powerful! And you have seen it is not the will to destroy him which our enemies lack. France has been nothing since he left her!”
The voice of the countess trembled with the liveliest emotion as she spoke to Fabrizio of Napoleon’s future fate. “When I consent to your going to join them,” she said, “I sacrifice, for his sake, what I hold dearest in this world!” Fabrizio’s eyes grew moist, and his tears fell as he embraced his aunt. But not for an instant did he waver in his determination to depart. He eagerly explained to this beloved friend the reasons which had decided him—reasons which we take the liberty of thinking somewhat comical.
“Yesterday evening, at seven minutes to six o’clock, we were walking, as you know, on the shores of the lake, under the plane trees, below the Casa Sommariva, and our faces were turned southward. Then, for the first time, I noticed, in the far distance, the boat from Como which was bearing the great news to us. As I watched it, without a thought of the Emperor, and simply envying the fate of those who had an opportunity of travelling, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of deep emotion. The boat had touched the shore, and the agent, after whispering something to my father, who had changed colour, had taken us aside to inform us of the terrible news. I turned toward the lake with the simple object of hiding the tears of joy with which my eyes were swimming. Suddenly, on my right, and at an immense height, I perceived an eagle, Napoleon’s own bird; it was winging its majestic way toward Switzerland, and consequently toward Paris. ‘And I, too,’ said I to myself instantly, ‘will cross Switzerland, swiftly as an eagle, and will offer that great man a very little thing indeed—but still all that I have to offer—the help of my feeble arm! He would fain have given us a fatherland, and he loved my uncle!’ That instant, while I yet watched the eagle, by some strange charm, my tears were dried, and the proof that my idea came from above is that at that very moment, and without hesitation, my resolve was taken, and the method of carrying out the journey became clear to me. In a flash all the melancholy which, as you know, poisons my life, especially on Sundays, was swept away as by some divine breath. I saw the great figure of Italy rising out of the mire into which the Germans have cast her, and stretching out her wounded arms, on which the chains still hung, towards her king and liberator. ‘And I too,’ I murmured, ‘the son, as yet unknown, of that unhappy mother, I will depart, and I will die or win victory beside that Man of Fate, who would have cleansed us from the scorn cast on us by the vilest and most enslaved of the inhabitants of Europe!’
“You know,” he added in a lower voice, drawing closer to the countess, and as he spoke he fixed great flashing eyes upon her, “you know the young chestnut tree which my mother planted with her own hands the winter I was born, beside the deep pool in our forest, two leagues off? Before I would do anything I went to see it. ‘The spring is not far advanced,’ said I to myself; ‘well, if there are leaves on my tree, that will be a sign for me, and I too must cast off the torpor in which I languish in this cold and dreary house. Are not these old blackened walls—the symbols now, and once the strongholds, of despotism—a true picture of winter and its dreariness? To me they are what winter is to my tree.’
“Would you believe it, Gina? At half-past seven yesterday evening I had reached my chestnut tree. There were leaves upon it—pretty little leaves of a fair size already! I kissed them,