(The words corresponding to our sovereign lord and simulates this belief were in Greek and Fabrice knew how infinitely grateful to the Archbishop for having dared to write. He cut with a knife that line of his letter and destroyed it on at once.)

Fabrice stopped twenty times while reading this letter, he was agitated transport the most lively gratitude: he replied at once with a letter of eight pages. Often he was obliged to raise its head so that his tears should not fall on his paper. The next day, at the time of sealing the letter, he found the tone too worldly. “I’ll write in Latin, he said, it will be more suitable to the worthy archbishop.” But in seeking to construct beautiful sentences Latin very long, much imitated Cicero, he remembered that one day the Archbishop, talking of Napoleon Buonaparte affected to call at the moment all the emotion that disappeared the day before touched to tears. “O King of Italy, he said the loyalty of many sworn thee of thy life, I will keep it after your death. He loves me, no doubt, but because I am a del Dongo and he the son of a bourgeois. “To his beautiful letter in Italian was not lost, Fabrice made a few necessary changes, and addressed to Count Mosca.