Part 18

--Help this man, then, he cried to them; take off his clothes...

He was about to continue, but, raising his eyes, he saw five or six men three hundred paces off on the high road, advancing on foot and with measured step toward the scene of the event.

"Those are gendarmes," he thought, "and since a man has been killed, they will arrest me, and I shall have the honor of making a solemn entry into the city of Parma. What an anecdote for the courtiers, friends of the Raversi, who detest my aunt!"

Immediately, and with the rapidity of lightning, he flung all the money he had in his pockets to the bewildered workmen, sprang into the carriage.

--Prevent the gendarmes from pursuing me, he cried to his workmen, and I will make your fortune; tell them I am innocent, that this man attacked me and wanted to kill me.

--And you, he said to the veturino, put your horses to a gallop; you shall have four gold napoleons if you cross the Po before those people yonder can reach me.

--Very well! said the veturino; but don't be afraid, those men yonder are on foot, and the mere trot of my little horses is enough to leave them famously behind.

Saying these words he put them to a gallop.

Our hero was shocked at the word *fear* used by the coachman: the fact is he had been extremely frightened after the blow with the sword-pommel he had received in the face.

--We may meet horsemen coming toward us, said the prudent veturino, who was thinking of the four napoleons, and the men following us may cry out to have us stopped.

This was to say: Reload your weapons...

--Ah! how brave you are, my little abbé! cried Marietta, kissing Fabrice.

The old woman was looking out of the carriage through the door; after a while she drew her head in.

--No one is pursuing you, sir, she said to Fabrice with great coolness; and there is no one on the road before you. You know how formalistic the Austrian police officials are: if they see you arriving thus at a gallop, on the dike by the bank of the Po, they will stop you, of that have no doubt.

Fabrice looked out through the door.

--At a trot, he said to the coachman. What passport have you? he said to the old woman.

--Three instead of one, she answered, and each cost us four francs: is not that a horror for poor dramatic artists who travel all the year! Here is the passport of Mr. Giletti, dramatic artist; that will be you; here are our two passports, for the Mariettina and for me. But Giletti had all our money in his pocket; what are we to become?

--How much had he? said Fabrice.

--Forty fine crowns of five francs, said the old woman.

--That is to say six in small change, said Marietta laughing; I will not have my little abbé deceived.

--Is it not perfectly natural, sir, the old woman resumed with great coolness, that I should try to hook thirty-four crowns from you? What are thirty-four crowns to you? And we have lost our protector; who is to undertake to lodge us, to haggle prices with the veturini when we travel, and to frighten everybody? Giletti was not handsome, but he was very handy, and if this little one here were not a fool, who first fell in love with you, Giletti would never have noticed anything, and you would have given us fine crowns. I assure you we are very poor.

Fabrice was touched; he drew his purse and gave the old woman some napoleons.

--You see, he said to her, that I have only fifteen left, so it is useless henceforth to pull at my legs.

Little Marietta jumped on his neck, and the old woman kissed his hands. The carriage kept advancing at a slow trot. When the yellow barriers striped with black, which announce the Austrian possessions, were seen in the distance, the old woman said to Fabrice:

--You had better go in on foot with Giletti's passport in your pocket; we will stop a moment, on pretext of making a little toilet. Besides, the customs will search our effects. You, if you take my advice, cross Casal-Maggiore at a nonchalant pace; even go into the café and drink a glass of brandy; once out of the village, push on briskly. The police is devilish vigilant in Austrian territory: it will soon know that a man has been killed: you are traveling with a passport that is not yours, and that is enough to spend two years in prison. Make for the Po to the right on leaving the town, hire a boat and take refuge at Ravenna or at Ferrara; get out of the Austrian states as fast as possible. With two louis you can buy another passport from some customs officer; this one would be fatal to you; remember that you killed the man.

As he approached on foot the boat-bridge of Casal-Maggiore, Fabrice read Giletti's passport over attentively. Our hero was greatly afraid; he vividly recalled all that Count Mosca had said to him of the danger there was for him in re-entering the Austrian states; now he saw two hundred paces before him the terrible bridge which was to give him access to that country, whose capital in his eyes was the Spielberg. But how to do otherwise? The duchy of Modena, which bounds the state of Parma on the south, gave up fugitives by virtue of an express convention; the frontier of the state which extends into the mountains toward Genoa was too far off; his mishap would be known at Parma long before he could reach those mountains; there remained therefore only the Austrian states on the left bank of the Po. Before there would be time to write to the Austrian authorities to beg them to arrest him, perhaps thirty-six hours or two days would pass. All things considered, Fabrice burned his own passport with the fire of his cigar; it was better for him in Austrian territory to be a vagabond than to be Fabrice del Dongo, and it was possible he might be searched.

Independently of the very natural repugnance he had to entrust his life to the passport of the unhappy Giletti, this document presented material difficulties: Fabrice's height reached at most five feet five inches, and not five feet ten inches as the passport stated; he was near twenty-four years old and looked younger, Giletti was thirty-nine. We shall avow that our hero walked a good half-hour on a side-dike of the Po near the boat-bridge, before deciding to go down to it. "What should I advise another who found himself in my place?" he said to himself at last. "Evidently to cross: there is peril in staying in the state of Parma; a gendarme may be sent in pursuit of the man who killed another, were it even in self-defense." Fabrice reviewed his pockets, tore up all papers and kept exactly only his handkerchief and his cigar-case; it mattered to him to shorten the examination he was about to undergo. He thought of a terrible objection that might be made him, and to which he found only bad answers: he was about to say he was called Giletti and all his linen was marked F.D.

As may be seen, Fabrice was one of those unhappy beings tormented by their imagination; that is quite the failing of men of wit in Italy. A French soldier of equal or even inferior courage would have presented himself to cross the bridge at once, and without thinking beforehand of any difficulty; but also he would have carried thither all his coolness, and Fabrice was far from being cool, when at the end of the bridge a little man, dressed in gray, said to him:

--Go into the police office for your passport.

This office had dirty walls furnished with nails on which the pipes and dirty hats of the employees were hung. The large pine desk behind which they were entrenched was all stained with ink and wine; two or three big registers bound in green leather bore stains of all colors, and the edge of their pages was blackened by hands. On the registers placed in a pile one upon another there were three magnificent laurel crowns which had served the day before yesterday for one of the Emperor's festivals.

Fabrice was struck by all these details; they wrung his heart; he thus paid for the magnificent and fresh luxury which shone in his pretty apartment in the Sanseverina palace. He was obliged to enter this dirty office and to appear there as an inferior; he was about to undergo an interrogation.

The employee who held out a yellow hand to take his passport was small and dark, he wore a brass trinket at his cravat. "This is a bourgeois in a bad humor," Fabrice said to himself; the personage seemed excessively surprised on reading the passport, and this reading lasted a good five minutes.

--You have had an accident, he said to the stranger, indicating his cheek with a look.

--The veturino threw us down from the dike of the Po.

Then silence recommenced and the employee launched fierce glances at the traveler.

"I have it," Fabrice said to himself, "he is going to tell me he is sorry to have bad news to give me and that I am arrested." All sorts of mad ideas came into the head of our hero, who at this moment was not very logical. For example, he thought of escaping by the door of the office, which had been left open.

"I get rid of my coat; I throw myself into the Po, and no doubt I can swim across. Anything is better than the Spielberg." The police clerk was looking fixedly at him at the moment he was calculating the chances of success of this escapade; that made two fine faces. The presence of danger gives genius to the reasonable man, it puts him, so to speak, above himself; to the man of imagination it inspires romances, bold it is true, but often absurd.

One must have seen the indignant eye of our hero under the scrutinizing eye of this police clerk adorned with his copper trinkets. "If I were to kill him," Fabrice said to himself, "I shall be condemned for murder to twenty years' galley or to death, which is far less frightful than the Spielberg with a chain of a hundred and twenty pounds on each foot and eight ounces of bread for all nourishment, and that lasts twenty years; thus I should not get out till forty-four." Fabrice's logic forgot that, since he had burned his passport, nothing indicated to the police clerk that he was the rebel Fabrice del Dongo.

Our hero was sufficiently frightened, as may be seen; he would have been still more so had he known the thoughts agitating the police clerk. This man was a friend of Giletti; one may judge of his surprise when he saw his passport in the hands of another; his first impulse was to have this other arrested, then he reflected that Giletti might well have sold his passport to this handsome young man who apparently had just done some bad stroke at Parma. "If I arrest him," he said to himself, "Giletti will be compromised; it will easily be discovered that he sold his passport; on the other hand, what will my chiefs say if it comes to be verified that I, a friend of Giletti, have visaed his passport carried by another?" The employee rose yawning and said to Fabrice:

--Wait, sir.

Then, by a police habit, he added:

--A difficulty arises.

Fabrice said to himself: "My flight is about to arise."

In fact, the employee was leaving the office, which he left open, and the passport had remained on the pine table. "The danger is evident," thought Fabrice; "I am going to take my passport and recross the bridge at a slow pace; I will tell the gendarme, if he questions me, that I forgot to have my passport visaed by the police commissioner of the last village of the Parma states." Fabrice already had his passport in his hand, when, to his inexpressible astonishment, he heard the clerk with the copper trinkets say:

--Upon my word I can do no more; the heat stifles me; I am going to the café for a half-cup. Come into the office when you have finished your pipe, there is a passport to visa; the stranger is there.

Fabrice, who was leaving on tiptoe, found himself face to face with a handsome young man who was saying, humming:

"Well! let us visa this passport, I am going to give them my flourish."

--Where does monsieur wish to go?

--To Mantua, Venice and Ferrara.

--Ferrara be it, answered the employee, whistling; he took a stamp, impressed the visa in blue ink on the passport, rapidly wrote the words: Mantua, Venice and Ferrara in the space left blank by the stamp, then he made several turns in the air with his hand, signed and took more ink for his flourish which he executed slowly and with infinite care. Fabrice followed all the movements of this pen; the clerk looked at his flourish with complacency, added five or six dots to it, finally he returned the passport to Fabrice saying with a light air:

--Good journey, sir.

Fabrice moved away with a step whose rapidity he sought to disguise, when he felt himself stopped by the left arm: instinctively he put his hand on the handle of his dagger, and had he not seen himself surrounded by houses, he might perhaps have fallen into a rash act. The man who touched his left arm, seeing his bewildered air, said by way of excuse:

--But I called monsieur three times, without his answering; has monsieur anything to declare to the customs?

--I have only my handkerchief on me; I am going here close by to hunt at a relative's.

He would have been much embarrassed had he been asked to name this relative. With the great heat that prevailed and with these emotions Fabrice was wet as if he had fallen into the Po. "I am not lacking in courage among the comedians, but clerks adorned with copper trinkets put me beside myself; with this idea I shall make a comic sonnet for the duchess."

Scarcely entered into Casal-Maggiore, Fabrice took to the right a bad street which descends toward the Po. I have great need, he said to himself, of the succors of Bacchus and Ceres, and he entered a shop outside of which hung a gray rag attached to a stick; on the rag was written the word *Trattoria*. A poor bed-sheet sustained by two very thin wooden hoops, and hanging down to three feet from the ground, sheltered the door of the Trattoria from the direct rays of the sun. There, a half-naked and very pretty woman received our hero with respect, which gave him the liveliest pleasure; he hastened to tell her he was dying of hunger. While the woman prepared the breakfast, there came in a man of about thirty years; he had not saluted on entering; suddenly he rose from the bench on which he had thrown himself with a familiar air, and said to Fabrice:

--Eccellenza, la riverisco (I salute Your Excellency).

Fabrice was very gay at this moment, and instead of forming sinister plans, he answered laughing:

--And how the devil do you know my Excellency?

--What! Your Excellency does not recognize Ludovic, one of the coachmen of Madame the Duchess Sanseverina? At Sacca, the country house where we went every year, I always caught the fever; I asked Madame for a pension and retired. Here I am rich; instead of the pension of twelve crowns a year at most I could have a right to, Madame told me that to give me leisure to make sonnets, for I am a poet in the vulgar tongue, she granted me twenty-four crowns, and Mr. the Count told me that if ever I were unhappy, I had only to come speak to him. I had the honor to drive Monsignore for one relay when he went to make his retreat like a good Christian at the charterhouse of Velleja.

Fabrice looked at the man and recognized him a little. He was one of the most dandified coachmen of the Sanseverina house: now that he was rich, he said, he had for all clothing a coarse torn shirt and a linen breeches, formerly dyed black, which scarce reached his knees; a pair of shoes and a bad hat completed the outfit. Moreover, he had not shaved for fifteen days. While eating his omelet, Fabrice conversed with him absolutely as equal to equal; he thought he saw that Ludovic was the lover of the hostess. He finished his breakfast quickly, then said in a half-voice to Ludovic:

--I have a word for you.

--Your Excellency may speak freely before her, she is a truly good woman, said Ludovic with a tender air.

--Well, my friends, Fabrice resumed without hesitation, I am unhappy and have need of your help. First, there is nothing political in my affair; I have simply killed a man who wanted to assassinate me because I was speaking to his mistress.

--Poor young man! said the hostess.

--Let Your Excellency count on me! cried the coachman with eyes inflamed by the liveliest devotion; where does His Excellency wish to go?

--To Ferrara. I have a passport, but I should prefer not to speak to the gendarmes, who may have knowledge of the fact.

--When did you dispatch the other?

--This morning at six o'clock.

--Has not Your Excellency some blood on his clothes? said the hostess.

--I was thinking of it, the coachman resumed, and besides the cloth of these garments is too fine; one does not see much like it in our countryside, that would attract looks; I am going to buy clothes at the Jew's. Your Excellency is about my size, but slimmer.

--For mercy's sake, do not call me Excellency any more, that may attract attention.

--Yes, Excellency, answered the coachman, leaving the shop.

--Well! well! cried Fabrice, and the money! come back!

--What are you talking of money for! said the hostess, he has sixty-seven crowns which are very much at your service. I myself, she added lowering her voice, have some forty crowns which I offer you with all my heart; one does not always have money on one when such accidents happen.

Fabrice had taken off his coat because of the heat on entering the Trattoria.

--You have there a waistcoat which might cause us embarrassment if anyone came in: this fine English cloth would attract attention. She gave the fugitive a black-dyed linen waistcoat belonging to her husband. A tall young man entered the shop by an inner door; he was dressed with a certain elegance.

--That is my husband, said the hostess. Pierre-Antoine, she said to the husband, monsieur is a friend of Ludovic; he had an accident this morning on the other side of the river, he wishes to escape to Ferrara.

--Eh! we shall pass him over, said the husband with a very polite air, we have Charles-Joseph's boat.

By another weakness of our hero, which we shall avow as naturally as we have related his fear in the police office at the end of the bridge, he had tears in his eyes; he was profoundly touched by the perfect devotion he met with in these peasants: he also thought of the characteristic goodness of his aunt; he would have liked to be able to make the fortune of these people. Ludovic came back loaded with a parcel.

--Farewell to the other, said the husband with a friendly air.

--That is not the point, Ludovic resumed in a very alarmed tone, they are beginning to talk of you, it was noticed that you hesitated on entering our vicolo, and leaving the fine street like a man who would seek to hide.

--Go up quickly to the room, said the husband.

This room, very large and very fine, had gray cloth instead of panes at the two windows; one saw there four beds each six feet wide and five feet high.

--Quick, quick! said Ludovic; there is a foppish gendarme newly arrived who wanted to court the pretty woman below, and to whom I predicted that when he goes on the road on duty, he might well meet with a bullet; if that dog hears speak of Your Excellency, he will want to play us a trick, he will seek to arrest you here so as to get the Trattoria of the Theodelinde noted unfavorably.

"What!" continued Ludovic, seeing his shirt all stained with blood and wounds bound with handkerchiefs, "the pig defended himself then? That is a hundred times more than enough to get you arrested: I did not buy a shirt." He opened the husband's wardrobe without ceremony and gave one of his shirts to Fabrice who soon was dressed as a rich country bourgeois. Ludovic unhooked a net suspended to the wall, placed Fabrice's clothes in the basket where one puts fish, ran down and went rapidly out by a back door; Fabrice followed him.

--Theodelinde, he cried passing near the shop, hide what is up there, we are going to wait in the willows; and you, Pierre-Antoine, send us a boat very quickly, it pays well.

Ludovic made Fabrice cross more than twenty ditches. There were very long and very elastic planks which served as bridges on the widest of these ditches; Ludovic withdrew these planks after having crossed. Arrived at the last canal, he drew the plank with eagerness.

--Let us breathe now, he said; that gendarme dog would have more than two leagues to go to reach Your Excellency. You are all pale, he said to Fabrice, I did not forget the little bottle of brandy.

--It comes very apropos: the wound on the thigh begins to make itself felt; and besides I had a fierce fright in the police office at the end of the bridge.

--I believe it, said Ludovic; with a shirt full of blood as yours was, I do not conceive how you dared enter such a place. As to the wounds, I know about them: I am going to put you in a very cool spot where you can sleep an hour; the boat will come fetch us there if it is possible to obtain a boat; if not, when you are a little rested we shall make yet two small leagues, and I shall lead you to a mill where I shall take a boat myself. Your Excellency has far more knowledge than I: Madame will be in despair when she learns the accident; they will tell her you are wounded to death, perhaps even that you killed the other like a traitor. The Marquise Raversi will not fail to spread all the bad rumors that can vex Madame. Your Excellency might write.

--And how to get the letter through?

--The lads of the mill where we are going earn twelve sous a day; in a day and a half they are at Parma, thus four francs for the journey; two francs for wear of shoes: if the errand were done for a poor man such as I, it would be six francs; as it is for the service of a lord, I shall give twelve.

When they arrived at the resting-place in a wood of alders and willows, very thick and very fresh, Ludovic went more than an hour off to seek ink and paper.

--Great God, how well I am here! cried Fabrice. Fortune! farewell, I shall never be archbishop!

On his return, Ludovic found him profoundly asleep and would not wake him. The boat did not arrive until toward sunset; as soon as Ludovic saw it appear in the distance, he called Fabrice who wrote two letters.

--Your Excellency has far more knowledge than I, said Ludovic with a pained air, and I much fear to displease him at heart, whatever he may say, if I add a certain thing.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”