Bitter laughter rang throughout Lombardy when, in spite of his efforts to save his daughter’s husband, Giacomo Piaveni suffered death.  No harder blow had ever befallen the count:  it was as good as a public proclamation that he possessed small influence.  To have bent the knee was not afflicting to this nobleman’s conscience:  but it was an anguish to think of having bent the knee for nothing.

Giacomo Piaveni was a noble Italian of the young blood, son of a General loved by Eugene.  In him the loss of Italy was deplorable.  He perished by treachery at the age of twenty-three years.  So splendid was this youth in appearance, of so sweet a manner with women, and altogether so-gentle and gallant, that it was a widowhood for women to have known him:  and at his death the hearts of two women who had loved him in rivalry became bound by a sacred tie of friendship.  He, though not of distinguished birth, had the choice of an almost royal alliance in the first blush of his manhood.  He refused his chance, pleading in excuse to Count Serabiglione, that he was in love with that nobleman’s daughter, Laura; which it flattered the count to hear, but he had ever after a contempt for the young man’s discretion, and was observed to shrug, with the smooth sorrowfulness of one who has been a prophet, on the day when Giacomo was shot.  The larger estates of the Piaveni family, then in Giacomo’s hands, were in a famous cheese-making district, producing a delicious cheese:—­’white as lambkins!’ the count would ejaculate most dolefully; and in a rapture of admiration, ’You would say, a marble quarry when you cut into it.’  The theme was afflicting, for all the estates of Giacomo were for the time forfeit, and the pleasant agitation produced among his senses by the mention of the cheese reminded him at the same instant that he had to support a widow with two children.  The Signora Piaveni lived in Milan, and the count her father visited her twice during the summer months, and wrote to her from his fitful Winter residences in various capital cities, to report progress in the settled scheme for the recovery of Giacomo’s property, as well for his widow as for the heirs of his body.  ‘It is a duty,’ Count Serabiglione said emphatically.  ’My daughter can entertain no proposal until her children are duly established; or would she, who is young and lovely and archly capricious, continue to decline the very best offers of the Milanese nobility, and live on one flat in an old quarter of the city, instead of in a bright and handsome street, musical with equipages, and full of the shows of life?’