“Ginevra!”

“No, you don’t love me for myself; your reproaches betray your intolerable egotism.”

“You dare to blame your father’s love!” exclaimed Piombo, his eyes flashing.

“Father, I don’t blame you,” replied Ginevra, with more gentleness than her trembling mother expected.  “You have grounds for your egotism, as I have for my love.  Heaven is my witness that no girl has ever fulfilled her duty to her parents better than I have done to you.  I have never felt anything but love and happiness where others often see obligation.  It is now fifteen years that I have never left your protecting wing, and it has been a most dear pleasure to me to charm your life.  But am I ungrateful for all this in giving myself up to the joy of loving; is it ingratitude to desire a husband who will protect me hereafter?”

“What! do you reckon benefits with your father, Ginevra?” said Piombo, in a dangerous tone.

A dreadful pause then followed, during which no one dared to speak.  Bartolomeo at last broke the silence by crying out in a heart-rending tone:—­

“Oh! stay with us! stay with your father, your old father!  I cannot have you love another man.  Ginevra, you will not have long to await your liberty.”

“But, father, remember that I need not leave you; we shall be two to love you; you will learn to know the man to whose care you bequeath me.  You will be doubly cherished by me and by him,—­by him who is my other self, by me who am all his.”

“Oh!  Ginevra, Ginevra!” cried the Corsican, clenching his fists; “why did you not marry when Napoleon brought me to accept the idea?  Why did you not take the counts and dukes he presented to you?”

“They loved me to order,” said the girl.  “Besides, they would have made me live with them, and I did not wish to leave you alone.”

“You don’t wish to leave me alone,” said Piombo, “and yet you marry! —­that is leaving me alone.  I know you, my daughter; in that case, you would cease to love us.  Elisa,” he added, looking at his wife, who remained motionless, and as if stupefied, “we have no longer a daughter; she wishes to marry.”

The old man sat down, after raising his hands to heaven with a gesture of invoking the Divine power; then he bowed himself over as if weighed down with sorrow.

Ginevra saw his agitation, and the restraint which he put upon his anger touched her to the heart; she expected some violent crisis, some ungovernable fury; she had not armed her soul against paternal gentleness.

“Father,” she said, in a tender voice, “no, you shall never be abandoned by your Ginevra.  But love her a little for her own sake.  If you know how he loves me!  Ah! He would never make me unhappy!”

“Comparisons already!” cried Piombo, in a terrible voice.  “No, I can never endure the idea of your marriage.  If he loved you as you deserve to be loved he would kill me; if he did not love you, I should put a dagger through him.”