“Oh, mother! you make me very happy.”
So that afternoon, Ginevra had the joy of coming home to her father’s house leaning on Louis’ arm. The poor officer came out of his hiding-place for the second time. Ginevra’s active intervention addressed to the Due de Feltre, then Minister of War, had been crowned with perfect success. Louis had just been reinstated as an officer on the reserve list. This was a very long step towards a prosperous future.
Informed by Ginevra of all the difficulties he would meet with in the Baron, the young officer dared not confess his dread of failing to please him. This man, so brave in adversity, so bold on the field of battle, quaked as he thought of entering the Piombos’ drawing-room. Ginevra felt him tremble, and this emotion, of which their happiness was the first cause, was to her a fresh proof of his love.
“How pale you are!” said she, as they reached the gate of the hotel.
“Oh, Ginevra! If my life alone were at stake—”
Though Bartolomeo had been informed by his wife of this official introduction of his daughter’s lover, he did not rise to meet him, but remained in the armchair he usually occupied, and the severity of his countenance was icy.
“Father,” said Ginevra, “I have brought you a gentleman whom you will no doubt be pleased to see. Monsieur Louis, a soldier who fought quite close to the Emperor at Mont-Saint-Jean—”
The Baron rose, cast a furtive glance at Louis, and said in a sardonic tone:
“Monsieur wears no orders?”
“I no longer wear the Legion of Honor,” replied Louis bashfully, and he humbly remained standing.
Ginevra, hurt by her father’s rudeness, brought forward a chair. The officer’s reply satisfied the old Republican. Madame Piombo, seeing that her husband’s brows were recovering their natural shape, said, to revive the conversation, “Monsieur is wonderfully like Nina Porta. Do not you think that he has quite the face of a Porta?”
“Nothing can be more natural,” replied the young man, on whom Piombo’s flaming eyes were fixed. “Nina was my sister.”
“You are Luigi Porta?” asked the old man.
“Yes.”
Bartolomeo di Piombo rose, tottered, was obliged to lean on a chair, and looked at his wife. Elisa Piombo came up to him; then the two old folks silently left the room, arm in arm, with a look of horror at their daughter. Luigi Porta, quite bewildered, gazed at Ginevra, who turned as white as a marble statue, and remained with her eyes fixed on the door where her father and mother had disappeared. There was something so solemn in her silence and their retreat, that, for the first time in his life perhaps, a feeling of fear came over him. She clasped her hands tightly together, and said in a voice so choked that it would have been inaudible to anyone but a lover, “How much woe in one word!”
“In the name of our love, what have I said?” asked Luigi Porta.
“My father has never told me our deplorable history,” she replied. “And when we left Corsica I was too young to know anything about it.”
“Is it a Vendetta?” asked Luigi, trembling.
“Yes. By questioning my mother I learned that the Porta had killed my brothers and burned down our house. My father then massacred all your family. How did you survive, you whom he thought he had tied to the posts of a bed before setting fire to the house?”
“I do not know,” replied Luigi. “When I was six I was taken to Genoa, to an old man named Colonna. No account of my family was ever given to me; I only knew that I was an orphan, and penniless. Colonna was like a father to me; I bore his name till I entered the army; then, as I needed papers to prove my identity, old Colonna told me that, helpless as I was, and hardly more than a child, I had enemies. He made me promise to take the name of Luigi only, to evade them.”
“Fly, fly, Luigi,” cried Ginevra. “Yet, stay; I must go with you. So long as you are in my father’s house you are safe. As soon as you quit it, take care of yourself. You will go from one danger to another. My father has two Corsicans in his service, and if he does not threaten your life they will.”
“Ginevra,” he said, “and must this hatred exist between us?”
She smiled sadly and bowed her head. But she soon raised it again with a sort of pride, and said, “Oh, Luigi, our feelings must be very pure and true that I should have the strength to walk in the path I am entering on. But it is for the sake of happiness which will last as long as life, is it not?”
Luigi answered only with a smile, and pressed her hand. The girl understood that only a great love could at such a moment scorn mere protestations. This calm and conscientious expression of Luigi’s feelings seemed to speak for their strength and permanence. The fate of the couple was thus sealed. Ginevra foresaw many painful contests to be fought out, but the idea of deserting Louis—an idea which had perhaps floated before her mind—at once vanished. His, henceforth and forever, she suddenly dragged him away and out of the house with a sort of violence, and did not quit him till they reached the house where Servin had taken a humble lodging for him.
When she returned to her father’s house she had assumed the serenity which comes of a strong resolve. No change of manner revealed any uneasiness. She found her parents ready to sit down to dinner, and she looked at them with eyes devoid of defiance, and full of sweetness. She saw that her old mother had been weeping; at the sight of her red eyelids for a moment her heart failed her,
