“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.”