"Bah!" said Latour-Maubourg, shutting up his telescope. "I daresay he'll get away with it. But now, my friend, suppose you tell me where you've been all this time and how I come to have the pleasure of finding you at the top of my tower?"
But the poor ambassador's question was fated to go unanswered because Jolival, with a brief bow and a muttered: "Forgive me, my dear sir," was already clattering down the stairs again at breakneck speed. Latour-Maubourg dashed to the stone balustrade and, leaning over so far that he all but lost his balance, called out: "Hey there! Where are you off to? Wait for me, can't you? I'm coming down!"
He might as well have held his peace, for Jolival did not hear him. He raced full tilt through the cloister, brushing past Conan as that worthy was coming forward to express the hope that his prayers had been satisfactory, tore open the heavy door, shot out into the steeply sloping street and pelted downhill to the clump of planes. As he untied one of the tethered horses, he called out to a passing street porter: "These two horses! Take them to the French embassy and say they belong to Monsieur de Jolival. Here's something for you, and you'll get as much again for your trouble."
A heavy silver coin spun through the air and landed in the man's grubby fist. He hurried to carry out the command, eager to double the unexpected windfall. Meanwhile, Jolival had set spurs to his mount and was riding as fast as the animal could carry him up the steep hill leading to the Buyukdere road. He was in a hurry to get back to Humayunabad. He had to know how Jason fared with the guns of Rumeli Hissar and, above all, he had to warn Marianne. If she happened to catch sight of Jason's brig sailing up the Bosporus instead of down, it might well be enough to throw her into a high fever.
When he reached Bebek after a frantic ride, much of it across country because of the state of the roads, he was surprised to find the place unnaturally quiet. Ordinarily the gatehouse of Turhan Bey's residence was a scene of bustling activity, with messengers arriving, bringing news from the harbor, and servants hurrying about their business, but this morning all was still.
The kapiji was smoking his pipe in the center of a crowd of grooms and stable boys who looked as if they all had been talking at once. However, they turned to greet Jolival and one of the grooms bestirred himself sufficiently to take the vicomte's horse when he dismounted and flung the reins to him.
Within the palace it was just the same. The servants stood about in little groups, chatting among themselves, and in the gardens the bostanjis, the gardeners, were also sitting on their barrows or leaning on their spades, apparently engaged in discussions of equal interest. Of Osman, the chief steward of Humayunabad, there was nothing to be seen at all.
"Perhaps they've gone on strike," Jolival thought irritably. Yet it seemed unlikely that an institution infrequent even in the West should turn up in such an implacably feudal setting as the Ottoman Empire. But if strike it was, it was Turhan Bey's concern and he, Jolival, had other fish to fry.
He went in search of Donna Lavinia, to find out if Marianne was awake and ready to receive visitors. But knocking on her door produced no answer.
The fact that Donna Lavinia was not in her room was not in itself particular cause for alarm. She was most probably with her mistress or busy caring for the baby. So it must have been some kind of premonition that prompted Jolival to open the door softly and risk a look inside.
What he saw brought a frown to his eyes. Not only did the room present that appearance of perfect impersonal tidiness which is the mark of places that are unlived in, with not a single personal object left lying about, no sign of a human presence, but even the bed was not made up. Worst of all, the baby's cradle was gone.
Feeling increasingly worried, Jolival did not waste time going around by way of the covered gallery. Instead, he made directly for the passage linking Donna Lavinia's rooms with those belonging to her mistress and burst unceremoniously in on Marianne.
She was standing in the middle of the room, barefoot and with her hair tumbling about her shoulders, dressed in a long white nightgown that fell to her toes and gave her the look of a creature out of some Celtic legend. She was clutching what looked like a sheet of paper. Her eyes were wide open and set in a strange fixed stare and tears were streaming down her cheeks onto her breast, but no sobs contracted her throat. She was weeping like a fountain, with a kind of desperation that wrung her old friend's heart. And on the floor beneath her bare toes lay something green and sparkling like a slim exotic snake.
She was so much the image of the mater dolorosa that Jolival knew at once that something catastrophic had occurred. Very softly, hardly daring to breathe, he went up to the trembling girl.
"Marianne," he whispered gently, as if he feared that the sound of his voice might exacerbate her pain. "My child, what is it?"
Without answering, she held out the paper she was clutching in her hand with the stiff movement of an automaton.
"Read it," she said simply, while the tears continued to flow uninterruptedly.
Jolival smoothed the paper mechanically and, glancing down, saw that it was a letter.
"Madame," Prince Sant'Anna had written, "as I was on the point of telling you this evening when we were interrupted, it is with the deepest gratitude that I acknowledge the magnificent way in which you have fulfilled your part in the contract between us. Never shall I be able adequately to express my indebtedness to you. Now it is my turn to keep my promise to you.
"As I have said already, you are free—perfectly free—and you will be altogether so whenever it may please you to travel to Florence, where my legal representatives, Messers Lombardi and Fosco Grazelli, will be provided with the necessary instructions for all to be settled in accordance with your wishes.
"I am removing my son this very evening rather than continue to inflict upon you a presence which, as I have been told, is even more painful to you than I had feared. When he and I are far removed you will recover more speedily and, I can only trust, will soon forget what with the passing of time will become no more than a disagreeable incident, the memory of which will gradually fade into insignificance.
"Should it be otherwise, however, and should you one day feel a wish to see the person to whom you have given birth, be sure that nothing can ever take away the fact that you are his mother, a mother whose memory he will be taught to cherish. Even when you bear another name, you will still remain Princess Sant'Anna to your child, as you are to one who will ever remain your friend, your husband in the sight of God and your most faithful servant, Corrado Sant'Anna."
Jolival finished reading and glanced up at Marianne. She was still standing where she had been, still with the same grief-stricken, somnambulistic air. Seeing her fixed in such stony misery, he had thought at first that Jason's departure was the cause of her grief, and now, behold, the thing he had hoped for and feared at once had come to pass and mother-love had wakened in her and was demanding its rights. It was not her lover's absence which was the cause of those tears but the removal of the child whom only yesterday she had hated, yet who, in the space of a few seconds, had carved for himself the lion's share in his mother's heart.
As ill luck would have it, no one could have told the prince of what had taken place in that room and in the heart of Marianne and, believing her still irrevocably set against the infant, he had done what he must always have intended and taken the child away to some unknown destination, unconscious of the despair he left behind him.