"Father," said Ginevra, "I bring you a person you will no doubt be pleased to see,--a soldier who fought beside the Emperor at Mont-Saint-Jean."
The baron rose, cast a sidelong glance at Luigi, and said, in a sardonic tone:--"Monsieur is not decorated."
"I no longer wear the Legion of honor," replied Luigi, timidly, still standing.
Ginevra, mortified by her father's incivility, dragged forward a chair.The officer's answer seemed to satisfy the old servant of Napoleon.Madame Piombo, observing that her husband's eyebrows were resuming their natural position, said, by way of conversation:
"Monsieur's resemblance to a person we knew in Corsica, Nina Porta, is really surprising.""Nothing could be more natural," replied the young man, on whose face Piombo's flaming eyes now rested."Nina was my sister.""Are you Luigi Porta?" asked the old man.
"Yes."
Bartolomeo rose, tottered, was forced to lean against a chair and beckon to his wife.Elisa Piombo came to him.Then the two old people, silently, each supporting the other, left the room, abandoning their daughter with a sort of horror.
Luigi Porta, bewildered, looked at Ginevra, who had turned as white as a marble statue, and stood gazing at the door through which her father and mother had disappeared.This departure and this silence seemed to her so solemn that, for the first time, in her whole life, a feeling of fear entered her soul.She struck her hands together with great force, and said, in a voice so shaken that none but a lover could have heard the words:--"What misery in a word!"
"In the name of our love, what have I said?" asked Luigi Porta.
"My father," she replied, "never spoke to me of our deplorable history, and I was too young when we left Corsica to know anything about it.""Are we in vendetta?" asked Luigi, trembling.
"Yes.I have heard my mother say that the Portas killed my brother and burned our house.My father then massacred the whole family.How is it that you survived?--for you were tied to the posts of the bed before they set fire to the house.""I do not know," replied Luigi."I was taken to Genoa when six years old, and given in charge of an old man named Colonna.No detail about my family was told to me.I knew only that I was an orphan, and without property.Old Colonna was a father to me; and I bore his name until I entered the army.In order to do that, I had to show my certificate of birth in order to prove my identity.Colonna then told me, still a mere child, that I had enemies.And he advised me to take Luigi as my surname, and so evade them.""Go, go, Luigi!" cried Ginevra."No, stay; I must go with you.So long as you are in my father's house you have nothing to fear; but the moment you leave it, take care! you will go from danger to danger.My father has two Corsicans in his service, and if he does not lie in wait to kill you, they will.""Ginevra," he said, "this feud, does it exist between you and me?"The girl smiled sadly and bowed her head.Presently she raised it, and said, with a sort of pride:--"Oh, Luigi, our love must be pure and sincere, indeed, to give me strength to tread the path I am about to enter.But it involves a happiness that will last throughout our lives, will it not?"Luigi answered by a smile, and pressed her hand.
Ginevra comprehended that true love could despise all vulgar protestations at such a moment.This calm and restrained expression of his feelings foreshadowed, in some sense, their strength and their duration.
The destiny of the pair was then and there decided.Ginevra foresaw a cruel struggle, but the idea of abandoning Luigi--an idea which may have floated in her soul--vanished completely.His forever, she dragged him suddenly, with a desperate sort of energy, from her father's house, and did not leave him till she saw him reach the house where Servin had engaged a modest lodging.
By the time she reached home, Ginevra had attained to that serenity which is caused by a firm resolution; no sign in her manner betrayed uneasiness.She turned on her father and mother, whom she found in the act of sitting down to dinner, a glance of exceeding gentleness devoid of hardihood.She saw that her mother had been weeping; the redness of those withered eyelids shook her heart, but she hid her emotion.No one touched the dinner which was served to them.A horror of food is one of the chief symptoms which reveal a great crisis in life.All three rose from table without having addressed a single word to one another.
When Ginevra had placed herself between her father and mother in the great and gloomy salon, Piombo tried to speak, but his voice failed him; he tried to walk, but he had no strength in his legs.He returned to his seat and rang the bell.
"Pietro," he said, at last, to the footman, "light the fire; I am cold."Ginevra trembled, and looked at her father anxiously.The struggle within him must have been horrible, for his face was distorted.
Ginevra knew the extent of the peril before her, but she did not flinch.Bartolomeo, meanwhile, cast furtive glances at his daughter, as if he feared a character whose violence was the work of his own hands.
Between such natures all things must be extreme.The certainty of some impending change in the feelings of father and daughter gave to the worn and weary face of the baroness an expression of terror.
"Ginevra, you love the enemy of your family," said Piombo, at last, not daring to look at his daughter.
"That is true," she replied.
"You must choose between us.Our vendetta is a part of our being.
Whoso does not share my vengeance is not a member of my family.""My choice is made," replied Ginevra, calmly.
His daughter's tranquillity misled Bartolomeo.
"Oh! my dear child!" he cried, letting her see his eyes moistened with tears, the first and only tears he ever shed in life.
"I shall be his wife," said Ginevra, abruptly.
Bartolomeo seemed dazed for a moment, but he recovered his coolness instantly, and replied:--"The marriage will not take place in my lifetime; I will never consent to it."Ginevra kept silence.
