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Updated: June 28, 2025
While there, they noticed the quantity of broken bread thrown under the tables by the reckless and quarrelsome set that frequented the place; and his friend remarked, that if all the bread so thrown about were collected, it would feed half the quartier. Fabrice said nothing; but he was in search of an idea, and he took up his friend's.
He deemed Fabrice, in short, a potential if not an actual liberal, and therefore dangerous. Nevertheless Count Mosca carried the day against his rivals a triumph due less to his own efforts than to those of the Duchess, to whose charms as the court's chief ornament the Prince was far from insusceptible.
He shunned society; he lived a life of religious retirement, and gained a reputation for piety that even inspired the jealousy of his good friend the Archbishop. At length Fabrice emerged from his solitude; he came forth as a preacher, and his success was unequalled. All Parma, gentle and simple, flocked to hear the famous devotee slender, ill-clad, so handsome and yet so profoundly melancholy.
He did not desire that she should remain a lovely recluse, feeding birds on the top of the citadel. Accordingly he had presented to her an ultimatum; either she must marry the Marquis Crescenzi, the wealthiest nobleman of Parma, who sought her hand, or she must retire to a convent. The signalled conversations with Fabrice, therefore, could not last long.
"If your highness were to write a gracious letter revoking the unjust sentence upon Fabrice del Dongo, I might re-consider my decision; and, let me add, if the Marchioness Raversi were advised by you to retire to the country early to-morrow morning for the benefit of her health " "Was there ever such a woman?" cried the Prince, stamping up and down the room. But he agreed.
Gradually he broke down the maiden's reserve. She discovered the secret of the peep-hole; she consented to communicate with him; finally the two conversed by a system of signals. Fabrice even dared to tell Clelia that he loved her and truly he was in love, for the first time in his life.
Consequently Fabrice, on his return, found himself exposed to the risk of ten years in an Austrian prison. By his own address and by the good offices of his aunt, the Countess Pietravera, Fabrice was able to escape from Milanese territory.
The welfare of her beloved nephew was the most cherished of all the Duchess's aims, and she succeeded in inspiring Count Mosca with an equal enthusiasm for the prosperity of that errant youth. But she hesitated over the project of making him an Archbishop. "You must understand," explained the Count, "that I do not intend to make Fabrice an exemplary priest of the conventional kind.
Rassi accused Fabrice of being a liberal; and since the Prince was ill-disposed towards the young man, not all the endeavours of Count Mosca could save him from a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment, should he be so impudent as to venture upon the territory of Parma.
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