The artist smiled, and said, interrupting his pupil, “My repute? But in a few days my picture will be exhibited.”
“It is not your talent that is in question,” said the Italian girl; “but your morality. The young ladies have spread a report that Louis is shut up here, and that you—lent yourself to our lovemaking.”
“There is some truth in that, mademoiselle,” replied the professor. “The girls’ mothers are airified prudes,” he went on. “If they had but come to me, everything would have been explained. But what do I care for such things? Life is too short!”
And the painter snapped his fingers in the air.
Louis, who had heard part of the conversation, came out of his cupboard.
“You are losing all your pupils,” he cried, “and I shall have been your ruin!”
The artist took his hand and Ginevra’s, and joined them. “Will you marry each other, my children” he asked, with touching bluntness. They both looked down, and their silence was their first mutual confession of love. “Well,” said Servin, “and you will be happy, will you not? Can anything purchase such happiness as that of two beings like you?”
“I am rich,” said Ginevra, “if you will allow me to indemnify you—”
“Indemnify!” Servin broke in. “Why, as soon as it is known that I have been the victim of a few little fools, and that I have sheltered a fugitive, all the Liberals in Paris will send me their daughters! Perhaps I shall be in your debt then.”
Louis grasped his protector’s hand, unable to speak a word; but at last he said, in a broken voice, “To you I shall owe all my happiness.”
“Be happy; I unite you,” said the painter with comic unction, laying his hands on the heads of the lovers.
This pleasantry put an end to their emotional mood. They looked at each other, and all three laughed. The Italian girl wrung Louis’ hand with a passionate grasp, and with a simple impulse worthy of her Corsican traditions.
“Ah, but, my dear children,” said Servin, “you fancy that now everything will go on swimmingly? Well, you are mistaken.” They looked at him in amazement.
“Do not be alarmed; I am the only person inconvenienced by your giddy behavior. But Madame Servin is the pink of propriety, and I really do not know how we shall settle matters with her.”
“Heavens! I had forgotten. Tomorrow Madame Roguin and Laure’s mother are coming to you—”
“I understand!” said the painter, interrupting her.
“But you can justify yourself,” said the girl, with a toss of her head of emphatic pride. “Monsieur Louis,” and she turned to him with an arch look, “has surely no longer an antipathy for the King’s Government?”—“Well, then,” she went on, after seeing him smile, “tomorrow morning I shall address a petition to one of the most influential persons at the Ministry of War, a man who can refuse the Baron di Piombo’s daughter nothing. We will obtain a tacit pardon for Captain Louis—for they will not recognize your grade as Colonel. And you,” she added, speaking to Servin, “may annihilate the mammas of my charitable young companions by simply telling them the truth.”
“You are an angel!” said Servin.
While this scene was going on at the studio, Ginevra’s father and mother were impatiently expecting her return.
“It is six o’clock, and Ginevra is not yet home,” said Bartolomeo.
“She was never so late before,” replied his wife.
The old people looked at each other with all the signs of very unusual anxiety. Bartolomeo, too much excited to sit still, rose and paced the room twice, briskly enough for a man of seventy-seven. Thanks to a strong constitution, he had changed but little since the day of his arrival at Paris, and tall as he was, he was still upright. His hair, thin and white now, had left his head bald, a broad and bossy skull which gave token of great strength and firmness. His face, deeply furrowed, had grown full and wide, with the pale complexion that inspires veneration. The fire of a passionate nature still lurked in the unearthly glow of his eyes, and the brows, which were not quite white, preserved their terrible mobility. The aspect of the man was severe, but it could be seen that Bartolomeo had the right to be so. His kindness and gentleness were known only to his wife and daughter. In his official position, or before strangers, he never set aside the majesty which time had lent to his appearance; and his habit of knitting those thick brows, of setting every line in his face, and assuming a Napoleonic fixity of gaze, made him seem as cold as marble.
In the course of his political life he had been so generally feared that he was thought unsociable; but it is not difficult to find the causes of such a reputation. Piombo’s life, habits, and fidelity were a censure on most of the courtiers. Notwithstanding the secret missions entrusted to his discretion, which to any other man would have proved lucrative, he had not more than thirty thousand francs a year in Government securities. And when we consider the low price of stock under the Empire, and Napoleon’s liberality to those of his faithful adherents who knew how to ask, it is easy to perceive that the Baron di Piombo was a man of stern honesty; he owed his Baron’s plumage only to the necessity of bearing a title when sent by Napoleon to a foreign Court.
Bartolomeo had always professed implacable hatred of the traitors whom Napoleon had gathered about him, believing he could win them over by his victories. It was he—so it was said—who took three steps towards the door of the Emperor’s room, after advising him to get rid of three men then in France, on the day before he set out on his famous and brilliant campaign of 1814. Since the second return of the Bourbons, Bartolomeo had ceased to wear the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. No
