to Parma, matters there were at a crisis; the Raversi party were gaining
ground, and Count Mosca was in danger. Nor did the Prince's interview
with the young cleric improve matters. Ranuce Ernest IV. had two ruling
passions--an ambition to become ruler of united Italy, and a fear of
revolution. Count Mosca, the diplomatist, was the only man who could
further his hopes in the one direction; his fears in the other were
carefully kept alive by Rassi, the fiscal-general--to such an extent
that each night the Prince looked under his bed to see if by chance a
liberal were lurking there. Rassi was a man of low origin, who kept his
place partly by submitting good-humouredly to the abuse and even the
kicks of his master, and partly by rousing that master's alarms and
afterwards allaying them by hanging or imprisoning liberals, with the
ready assistance of a carefully corrupted judicial bench.

Towards this nervous Prince, Fabrice bore himself with an aristocratic
assurance, and a promptness and coolness in conversation that made a bad
impression. His political notions were correct enough, according to the
Prince's standard; but plainly, he was a man of spirit, and the Prince
did not like men of spirit; they were all cousins-germane of Voltaire
and Rousseau. He deemed Fabrice, in short, a potential if not an actual
liberal, and therefore dangerous.

Nevertheless Count Mosca carried the day against his rivals--a triumph
due less to his own efforts than to those of the Duchess, to whose
charms as the court's chief ornament the Prince was far from
insusceptible. The Count's success was Fabrice's; that youth found
himself established as co-adjutor to the Archbishop of Parma, with a
reversion to the Archbishopric on the demise of its worthy occupant.

On Fabrice's return from Naples, the Duchess had found him developed