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battle over the waters. Despite the peals of thunder, the Countess wanted to disembark in the midst of the tempest; she claimed that, standing on a solitary crag about as high as a little room in the middle of the lake, she could witness a singular spectacle, assailed on all sides by the raging waves; but as she sprang out of the boat she fell into the water. Fabrizio instantly plunged in after her, and both were swept some distance away. Doubtless it is no pleasure to drown, yet for the time being boredom, taken by surprise, was banished from the feudal redoubt. The Countess was filled with enthusiasm for the Abbé Blanès, his primitive character and his astrological lore. What little money remained to her after the purchase of the boat had been used to buy a small second-hand telescope, and almost every evening, with her nieces and Fabrizio, she would climb up to the platform of one of the castle’s Gothic towers. Fabrizio was the most knowledgeable of the party, and many pleasant hours were spent on those heights, far from prying eyes.
    It must be confessed that there were days when the Countess spoke no word to a living soul; she was seen strolling under the tall chestnut-trees, absorbed in her gloomy reveries; she had too active a mind not to feel, occasionally, the tedium which comes from a failure to exchange ideas. But the following day she was as gay as she had been the day before: it was the grievances of her sister-in-law the Marchesa which produced such dark impressions on this naturally high-spirited creature. “Then must we waste what is left of our youth in this grim castle?” the Marchesa exclaimed.
    Before the Countess’s arrival, she had not had the courage to avow such regrets.
    This was how they lived through the winter of 1814. Twice, despite her impecuniosity, the Marchesa went to spend a few days in Milan; once to see a sublime ballet by Viganò, given at La Scala, and the Marchese made no objection to his wife’s being accompanied by his sister-in-law. The two women went together to cash the quarterly check of the Countess’s little pension, whereupon it was the French general’s poor widow who loaned a few sequins to the wealthy Marchesa del Dongo. These excursions were delightful; old friends were invited to dinner, and the company found consolation in laughing ateverything, like children. This Italian gaiety, filled with
brio
and impulse, conjured away the melancholy which the glares of the Marchese and the Marchesino had spread around themselves at Grianta. Fabrizio, just sixteen, admirably represented the head of the house.
    On March 7, 1815, the ladies had returned two days since from an agreeable little trip to Milan; they were strolling down the fine avenue of plane-trees recently extended to the water’s edge when a boat appeared from the direction of Como, making strange signals. One of the Marchese’s agents jumped out onto the embankment: Napoléon had just landed at the Gulf of Juan . Europe was sufficiently disingenuous to be surprised by this event, which failed to surprise the Marchese del Dongo; he wrote his sovereign a heartfelt letter, offering his talents and several millions, and informing him once again that his ministers were Jacobins in league with the ringleaders in Paris.
    On March 8, at six in the morning, the Marchese, wearing all his orders, was having his elder son dictate the draft of a third political dispatch and solemnly transcribing the text in his fine painstaking hand on paper watermarked with the sovereign’s effigy. At the same moment Fabrizio was shown into the Countess Pietranera’s apartment.
    “I’m leaving,” he told her. “I shall join the Emperor, who is the King of Italy as well, and such a good friend to your husband! I shall travel by way of Switzerland. Tonight, at Menaggio, my friend Vasi, who sells barometers, has given me his passport; now you must give me a few napoleons, for I have only two; if you cannot, I shall go on foot.”
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