“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.  Marietta gave him Giletti’s passport; obviously his first business was to get across the frontier.  And yet the Austrian frontier was no safe one for him to cross.  Were he recognised, he might expect ten years in an Imperial fortress.  But this was the less immediate danger, and he determined to risk it.

With considerable trepidation he walked across the bridge, and presented Giletti’s passport to the Austrian gendarme.

The gendarme looked at it, and rose, “You must wait, monsieur; there is a difficulty,” he said, and left the room.  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.  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.

The rest was very easy, thanks to Ludovico, an old servant of the Duchess, whom Fabrice met at an eating-house where he had turned in for some very necessary refreshment.  With the aid of this excellent fellow Fabrice had his wounds attended to, and was safely smuggled out of Austrian territory into Bologna.

III.—­The Citadel

The party opposed to Count Mosca hastened to take advantage of Fabrice’s offence.  He was represented as a murderer; the workmen in the trenches who had seen the affray, and knew that Fabrice had acted in self-defence, were either bribed or got out of the way.  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.

Just before the sentence was presented to the Prince for final confirmation, the Prince learnt that the Duchess of Sanseverina sought an audience with him.  He rubbed his hands; the greatest beauty of his court had come to beg mercy for her nephew; there would be tears and frantic appeals.  For a quarter of an hour the Prince gloated over the prospect; then he ordered that the Duchess be admitted.

She entered—­in travelling costume; never had she looked more charming, never more cheerful.  “I trust your Serene Highness will pardon my unorthodox costume,” she said, smiling archly; “but as I am about to leave Parma for a very long time, I have felt it my duty to come and thank you ere I go for all the kindnesses you have deigned to confer upon me.”