“They only loved me to order,” said the young girl. “Besides, I did not wish to leave you; and they would have taken me away with them.”
“You do not wish to leave us alone,” said Piombo, “but if you marry you isolate us. I know you, my child, you will love us no more. Elisa,” he added, turning to his wife, who sat motionless and, as it were, stupefied; “we no longer have a daughter; she wants to be married.”
The old man sat down, after raising his hands in the air as though to invoke God; then he remained bent, crushed by his grief. Ginevra saw her father’s agitation, and the moderation of his wrath pierced her to the heart; she had expected a scene and furies; she had not steeled her soul against his gentleness.
“My dear father,” she said in an appealing voice, “no, you shall never be abandoned by your Ginevra. But love me too a little for myself. If only you knew how he loves me! Ah, he could never bear to cause me pain!”
“What, comparisons already!” cried Piombo in a terrible voice. “No,” he went on, “I cannot endure the idea. If he were to love you as you deserve, he would kill me; and if he were not to love you, I should stab him!”
Piombo’s hands were trembling, his lips trembled, his whole frame trembled, and his eyes flashed lightnings; Ginevra alone could meet his gaze; for then her eyes too flashed fire, and the daughter was worthy of the father.
“To love you! What man is worthy of such a life?” he went on. “To love you as a father even—is it not to live in Paradise? Who then could be worthy to be your husband?”
“He,” said Ginevra. “He of whom I feel myself unworthy.”
“He,” echoed Piombo mechanically. “Who? He?”
“The man I love.”
“Can he know you well enough already to adore you?”
“But, father,” said Ginevra, feeling a surge of impatience, “even if he did not love me, so long as I love him—”
“You do love him then?” cried Piombo. Ginevra gently bowed her head. “You love him more than you love me?”
“The two feelings cannot be compared” she replied.
“One is stronger than the other?” said Piombo.
“Yes, I think so,” said Ginevra.
“You shall not marry him!” cried the Corsican in a voice that made the windows rattle.
“I will marry him!” replied Ginevra calmly.
“Good God!” cried the mother, “how will this quarrel end? Santa Virginia, come between them!”
The Baron, who was striding up and down the room, came and seated himself. An icy sternness darkened his face; he looked steadfastly at his daughter, and said in a gentle and affectionate voice, “Nay, Ginevra—you will not marry him. Oh, do not say you will, this evening. Let me believe that you will not. Do you wish to see your father on his knees before you, and his white hairs humbled? I will beseech you—”
“Ginevra Piombo is not accustomed to promise and not to keep her word,” said she; “I am your child.”
“She is right,” said the Baroness, “we come into the world to marry.”
“And so you encourage her in disobedience,” said the Baron to his wife, who, stricken by the reproof, froze into a statue.
“It is not disobedience to refuse to yield to an unjust command,” replied Ginevra.
“It cannot be unjust when it emanates from your father’s lips, my child. Why do you rise in judgment on me? Is not the repugnance I feel a counsel from on High? I am perhaps saving you from some misfortune.”
“The misfortune would be that he should not love me.”
“Always he!”
“Yes, always,” she said. “He is my life, my joy, my thought. Even if I obeyed you, he would be always in my heart. If you forbid me to marry him, will it not make me hate you?”
“You love us no longer!” cried Piombo.
“Oh!” said Ginevra, shaking her head.
“Well, then, forget him. Be faithful to us. After us … you understand …”
“Father, would you make me wish that you were dead?” cried Ginevra.
“I shall outlive you; children who do not honor their parents die early,” cried her father at the utmost pitch of exasperation,
“All the more reason for marrying soon and being happy,” said she.
This coolness, this force of argument, brought Piombo’s agitation to a crisis; the blood rushed violently to his head, his face turned purple. Ginevra shuddered; she flew like a bird on to her father’s knees, threw her arms round his neck, stroked his hair, and exclaimed, quite overcome:
“Oh, yes, let me die first! I could not survive you, my dear, kind father.”
“Oh, my Ginevra, my foolish Ginevretta!” answered Piombo, whose rage melted under this caress as an icicle melts in the sunshine.
“It was time you should put an end to the matter,” said the Baroness in a broken voice.
“Poor mother!”
“Ah, Ginevretta, mia Ginevra bella!”
And the father played with his daughter as if she were a child of six; he amused himself with undoing the waving tresses of her hair and dancing her on his knee; there was dotage in his demonstrations of tenderness. Presently his daughter scolded him as she kissed him, and tried, half in jest, to get leave to bring Louis to the house; but, jesting too, her father refused. She sulked, and recovered herself, and sulked again; then, at the end of the evening, she was only too glad to have impressed on her father the ideas of her love for Louis and of a marriage ere long.
Next day she said no more about it; she went later to the studio and returned early; she was more affectionate to her father than she had ever been, and showed herself grateful, as if to thank him for the consent to her marriage he seemed to give by silence. In the evening she played and sang for a long time, and exclaimed now and then, “This nocturne requires a man’s voice!” She was an Italian, and that says everything.
A
