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Fabrice was profoundly uncomfortable; he was nearly for bolting, when he heard the gendarme say to another, "I am done up with the heat; just go and put your visa on a passport in there when you have finished your pipe; I'm going for some coffee." This gendarme, in fact, knew Giletti, and was quite well aware that the man before him was not the actor.
Giletti leapt to the conclusion that Fabrice had come there, gun in hand, to insult him, and possibly to carry off Marietta. He leapt out of the carriage. "Brigand!" he yelled, "we are only a league from the frontier now I can finish you!" Fabrice saw a pistol levelled at him at a distance of three feet; he knocked it aside with the butt of his gun, and it went off harmlessly.
She employed her whole influence to hasten forward the wedding of Clelia with the Marquis Crescenzi; she was jealous of the ascendancy the girl had gained over her beloved nephew. Fabrice, on reaching Parma, was well received by the young Prince. Witnesses, he was told, had been found who could prove that he had killed Giletti in self-defence.
Enraged at the idea, he thrust the hunting knife at Giletti's breast with all his force. Giletti fell and lay motionless. "He is dead!" said Fabrice to himself. Then, turning to the coach, he asked, "Have you a looking-glass?" His eyes and teeth were undamaged; he was not permanently disfigured. Hastily, then, he turned to thoughts of escape.
Fabrice picked it up, and was nearly stunned forthwith by a blow from the handle of the "property" sword. Happily Giletti was too near to use his sword-point. Pulling himself together, Fabrice gave his enemy a gash on the thigh. Giletti, swearing furiously, injured Fabrice on the cheek. Blood poured down our hero's face. The thought, "I am disfigured for life!" flashed through his mind.
But, for all he could tell, Giletti had lent the passport for reasons of his own. The easiest way out of the difficulty was to get another gendarme to see to the visa. This man affixed it as a matter of course, and Fabrice escaped danger number one.
She had no cause for jealousy, for Fabrice, although prone to flirtation, had no affairs of the heart. The word love, as yet, had no meaning for him. II. Giletti One of our hero's flirtations had consequences with a very pronounced bearing on his after career. During a surreptitious visit to the theatre he became captivated with the actress, Marietta Valserra.
Early one morning Fabrice, after surveying the work that was going on in the trenches, strolled away with a gun, intent upon lark-shooting. A wounded bird dropped on the road; and as Fabrice followed it he encountered a battered old carriage driving towards the frontier. In it were Giletti, Marietta and an old woman who passed as Marietta's mother.
Giletti was the low comedian of the company, and the ugliest member of it; he assumed proprietorship over Marietta, who, although she did not love him, was at any rate horribly afraid of him. Giletti several times threatened to kill Fabrice; whereby Fabrice was not disturbed.
Giletti then clutched the gun; the two men wrestled for it, and it exploded close to Giletti's ear. Staggered for an instant, he quickly recovered himself; drawing from its sheath a "property" sword, he fell once more upon Fabrice. "Look out! he will kill you," came an agitated whisper from Marietta; "take this!" A sort of hunting knife was flung out of the carriage door.
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