The Prince was astonished and profoundly chagrined.  “Why are you going?” he asked, as calmly as he could.

“I have had the project for some time,” she replied, “and a little insult paid to Monsignor del Dongo has hastened it.”

The Prince was beside himself.  What would his court be without the Duchess?  At all costs he must check her flight.

At this moment Count Mosca, pale with anxiety, begged admittance.  He had just heard of the Duchess’s intention to leave Parma.

“Let me speak as a friend to friends,” said the Prince, collecting himself; “what can I do, Madame, to arrest your hasty resolution?”

“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.  At his orders Count Mosca sat down and wrote the letter required.  The Prince objected to the phrase “unjust sentence,” and Count Mosca, courtier-like, abstained from using it.  The Prince did not mind the banishment of the Marchioness Raversi; he liked exiling people.

At seven o’clock next morning the Prince summoned Rassi, and dictated to him another letter.  The sentence of twenty years, upon the criminal del Dongo was to be reduced by the Prince’s clemency, at the supplication of the Duchess Sanseverina, to twelve years; and the police were instructed to do their utmost to arrest the offender.

The only difficulty was that of tempting Fabrice into the territory of Parma.  A hint to the Marchioness Raversi and her associates removed the obstacle.  A forged letter, purporting to be from the Duchess, reached Fabrice at Bologna, telling him that there would be little danger in his meeting her at Castelnovo, within the frontier.  Fabrice repaired joyfully to Castelnovo.  That night he lay a prisoner in the citadel of Parma; while the Duchess, alone in her room with locked door, sobbed her heart out and raved helplessly against the treachery of princes.

“So long as her nephew is in the citadel,” said the Prince to himself, “the Duchess will be in Parma.”

The citadel of Parma is a colossal building with a flat roof 180 feet above the level of the ground.  On this roof are erected two structures:  one, the governor’s residence; the other, the Famese tower, a prison specially erected for a recalcitrant prince of earlier days.  In this tower Fabrice, as a prisoner of importance, was confined; and as he looked from the window on the evening of his arrival and beheld the superb panorama of the distant Alps, he reflected pleasantly that he might have found a worse dungeon.