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Countess wept for joy and anxiety. “Good God! Whatever made you think of such a thing!” she exclaimed, seizing his hands. She stood up and took out of her linen-closet, where it was carefully hidden, a little pearl-embroidered purse; this was all she possessed in the world. “Take it,” she told Fabrizio, “but in the name of God, don’t get yourself killed. What will your unhappy mother and I do if something should happen to you? As for Napoléon’s success, my poor boy, it is impossible; our gentlemen will be sure to do away with him. Didn’t you hear, last week, in Milan, the story of twenty-three assassination plots, each more cunning than the next, from which he escaped only by a miracle? And at the time he was omnipotent! And you’ve seen that our enemies haven’t lacked the will to destroy him; France counted fornothing once he was gone.” It was with the accents of the deepest feeling that the Countess described Napoléon’s future destiny to Fabrizio. “By allowing you to join him, I am sacrificing what is dearest to me in the world,” she said. Fabrizio’s eyes filled with tears as he embraced the Countess, but his determination to leave was not shaken for a moment. He eagerly explained to this beloved friend the reasons which impelled him, and which we take the liberty of finding slightly absurd.
    “Yesterday evening, at seven minutes to six, we were strolling, as you know, down the avenue of plane-trees to the lake shore above Casa Sommariva, and heading south. That was when I first saw the boat coming from Como, bringing such great news. As I was watching the boat without a thought of the Emperor, and simply envying the lot of those permitted to travel, I was suddenly seized by a powerful emotion. The boat landed, the agent whispered to my father, who turned white and took us aside to announce the
terrible news
. I turned toward the lake with no purpose but to conceal the tears of joy that filled my eyes. Suddenly, high in the sky to my right, I glimpsed an eagle—Napoléon’s bird; it was soaring majestically toward Switzerland, and consequently toward Paris. And I too, I then resolved, would traverse Switzerland with the speed of an eagle, in order to offer that great man little enough but all I have: whatever strength resides in my weak right arm. He sought to give us a country, and he loved my uncle. While the eagle was still in sight, my tears suddenly dried; and as proof that this notion came from on high, without a moment’s hesitation, I made my decision and discerned the means of making this journey. In the twinkling of an eye, all the sorrows which as you know poison my life, especially on Sundays, were somehow conjured away by a divine impulsion. I saw that great figure of Italy rise out of the mire in which the Germans keep her immersed, spreading her bruised and still enchainèd arms toward her king and her liberator. And I, I mused, the still unknown son of this unhappy mother, I shall depart, either to conquer or to die with this man chosen by fate, who would cleanse us of the obloquy we suffer from the vilest slaves of Europe! *
    “As you know,” he added in a low voice as he came closer to the Countess, staring at her with flaming eyes, “the winter I was born my mother planted with her own hands a young chestnut-tree beside a stream in our forest, two leagues from here: before taking action I was determined to have a look it. Spring is not yet far advanced, I reasoned: if my tree has already put forth leaves, that will be a sign. I too must emerge from the state of torpor in which I languish here in this cold and melancholy castle. Don’t you see that these old and blackened walls, now the symbols and once the means of tyranny, are a true image of the melancholy winter? They are to me what winter is to my tree.
    “Would you believe it, Gina? At seven-thirty last night I reached my chestnut-tree: it had leaves, lovely young leaves, already quite large! I kissed them