ping 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.

On the next morning his attention was absorbed by something nearer at
hand. His window overlooked one belonging to the governor's palace; in
this window were many bird cages, and at eleven o'clock a maiden came to
feed the birds. Fabrice recognised her as Celia Conti, the governor's
daughter. He succeeded in attracting her attention; she blushed and
withdrew. But next day she came again at the same hour. On the third
day, however, a heavy wooden shutter was clapped upon the window.
Nothing daunted, Fabrice proceeded patiently to cut a peep-hole in the
shutter by aid of the mainspring of his watch. When he had succeede