a, 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.

"What is to be done?" he said to the Count, not altogether realizing
what he was doing himself, but yielding to his habit of consulting the
latter about everything.

"Indeed, Most Serene Highness, I know nothing about it," answered the
Count