To ignore this hint
would have been to risk not only her own safety but that of the
gentlemen who had befriended her; and Fulvia at once set out for
Pianura, the only place in Italy where she could count on friendship and
protection.
Andreoni and his wife would gladly have given her a home; but on
learning that the Holy Office was on her track, she had refused to
compromise them by remaining under their roof, and had insisted that
Andreoni should wait on the Duke and obtain a safe-conduct for her that
very night.
Odo listened to this story with an agitation compounded of strangely
contradictory sensations. To learn that Fulvia, at the very moment when
he had pictured her as separated from him by the happiness and security
of her life, was in reality a proscribed wanderer with none but himself
to turn to, filled him with a confused sense of happiness; but the
discovery that, in his own dominions, the political refugee was not safe
from the threats of the Holy Office, excited a different emotion. All
these considerations, however, were subordinate to the thought that he
must see Fulvia at once. It was impossible to summon her to the palace
at that hour, or even to secure her safety till morning, without
compromising Andreoni by calling attention to the fact that a suspected
person was under his roof; and for a moment Odo was at a loss how to
detain her in Pianura without seeming to go counter to her wishes.
Suddenly he remembered that Gamba was fertile in expedients, and calling
in the hunchback, asked what plan he could devise.
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