“Who is this jackanapes?” he cried, at the top of his lungs, “who is this jackanapes who comes here, thrusting his idiotic presence upon me?” Poor General Fontana showed his face, pale and in evident discomfiture, and with the air of a man at his last gasp, indistinctly pronounced these words:—­“His Excellency Count Mosca solicits the honor of being admitted.”

“Let him enter,” said the Prince in a loud voice; and as Mosca made his salutation, greeted him with:—­

“Well, sir, here is Madame the Duchess Sanseverina, who declares that she is on the point of leaving Parma to go and settle at Naples, and has made me saucy speeches into the bargain.”

“How is this?” said Mosca, turning pale.

“What, then you knew nothing of this project of departure?”

“Not the first word.  At six o’clock I left Madame joyous and contented.”

This speech produced an incredible effect upon the Prince.  First he glanced at Mosca, whose growing pallor proved that he spoke the truth and was in no way the accomplice of the Duchess’s sudden freak.  “In that case,” he said to himself, “I am losing her forever.  Pleasure and vengeance, everything is escaping me at once.  At Naples she will make epigrams with her nephew Fabrice, about the great wrath of the little Prince of Parma.”  He looked at the Duchess; anger and the most violent contempt were struggling in her heart; her eyes were fixed at that moment upon Count Mosca, and the fine lines of that lovely mouth expressed the most bitter disdain.  The entire expression of her face seemed to say, “Vile courtier!” “So,” thought the Prince, after having examined her, “I have lost even this means of calling her back to our country.  If she leaves the room at this moment, she is lost to me.  And the Lord only knows what she will say in Naples of my judges, and with that wit and divine power of persuasion with which heaven has endowed her, she will make the whole world believe her.  I shall owe her the reputation of being a ridiculous tyrant, who gets up in the middle of the night to look under his bed!”

Then, by an adroit movement, and as if striving to work off his agitation by striding up and down, the Prince placed himself anew before the door of his cabinet.  The count was on his right, pale, unnerved, and trembling so that he had to lean for support upon the back of the chair which the Duchess had occupied at the beginning of the audience, and which the Prince, in a moment of wrath, had hurled to a distance.  The Count was really in love.  “If the Duchess goes away, I shall follow her,” he told himself; “but will she tolerate my company? that is the question.”

On the left of the Prince stood the Duchess, her arms crossed and pressed against her breast, looking at him with superb intolerance; a complete and profound pallor had succeeded the glowing colors which just before had animated those exquisite features.

The Prince, in contrast with both the others, had a high color and an uneasy air; his left hand played in a nervous fashion with the cross attached to the grand cordon of his order, which he wore beneath his coat; with his right hand he caressed his chin.