Immediately afterwards the Countess wedded the aged and wealthy Duke of Sanseverina, and transferred her beauty and unbounded social talents from Milan to the court of Prince Ranuce Ernest IV., absolute ruler of Parma. The Duke had his ambitions gratified by an appointment as Ambassador to a distant country; the Duchess, left behind at Parma, was able to devote herself to the interests of Count Mosca, the Prince's chief Minister, and to counteract the intrigues of the celebrated Marchioness Raversi, head of the party that sought to overthrow him.
The welfare of her beloved nephew was the most cherished of all the Duchess's aims, and she succeeded in inspiring Count Mosca with an equal enthusiasm for the prosperity of that errant youth. But she hesitated over the project of making him an Archbishop.
"You must understand," explained the Count, "that I do not intend to make Fabrice an exemplary priest of the conventional kind. No, he will above all remain a great noble; he may continue to be absolutely ignorant if he so pleases, and will become a Bishop and an Archbishop just the same--provided, of course, that I succeed in retaining the Prince's confidence."
Ultimately the Duchess agreed, and undertook to persuade Fabrice to enter the Church. The persuasion was not easy; but at length Fabrice, having been convinced that the clerical yoke would bear but lightly upon him, consented to the step, and as a preliminary spent three years in a theological college at Naples.
When at the end of the three years Fabrice, now a Monsignore, returned 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.