As Violante thus sat, a stranger, passing stealthily through the trees,
stood between herself and the evening sun. She saw him not. He paused a
moment, and then spoke low, in her native tongue, addressing her by the
name which she had borne in Italy. He spoke as a relation, and excused
his intrusion: "For," said he, "I come to suggest to the daughter the
means by which she can restore to her father his country and his
honours."
At the word "father" Violante roused herself, and all her love for that
father rushed back upon her with double force. It does so ever,--we love
most our parents at the moment when some tie less holy is abruptly
broken; and when the conscience says, "There, at least, is a love that
has never deceived thee!"
She saw before her a man of mild aspect and princely form. Peschiera
(for it was he) had banished from his dress, as from his countenance, all
that betrayed the worldly levity of his character. He was acting a part,
and he dressed and looked it.
"My father!" she said, quickly, and in Italian. "What of him? And who
are you, signor? I know you not." Peschiera smiled benignly, and
replied in a tone in which great respect was softened by a kind of
parental tenderness,--"Suffer me to explain, and listen to me while I
speak." Then, quietly seating himself on the bench beside her, he looked
into her eyes, and resumed,--
"Doubtless you have heard of the Count di Peschiera?"
VIOLANTE.--"I heard that name, as a child, when in Italy. And when she
with whom I then dwelt (my father's aunt) fell ill and died, I was told
that my home in Italy was gone, that it had passed to the Count di
Peschiera,--my father's foe!"
PESCHTERA.--"And your father, since then, has taught you to hate this
fancied foe?"
VIOLANTE.--"Nay, my father did but forbid me ever to breathe his name."
PESCHIERA.--"Alas! what years of suffering and exile might have been
saved your father, had he but been more just to his early friend and
kinsman,--nay, had he but less cruelly concealed the secret of his
retreat. Fair child, I am that Giulio Franzini, that Count di Peschiera.
I am the man you have been told to regard as your father's foe. I am the
man on whom the Austrian Emperor bestowed his lands. And now judge if I
am, in truth, the foe. I have come hither to seek your father, in order
to dispossess myself of my sovereign's gift. I have come but with one
desire,--to restore Alphonso to his native land, and to surrender the
heritage that was forced upon me."
VIOLANTE.--"My father, my dear father! His grand heart will have room
once more. Oh, this is noble enmity, true revenge! I understand it,
signor, and so will my father, for such would have been his revenge on
you. You have seen him?"
PESCHIERA.--"No, not yet. I would not see him till I had seen yourself;
for you, in truth, are the arbiter of his destinies, as of mine."
VIOLANTE.--"I, Count? I--arbiter of my father's destinies? Is it
possible?"
PESCHIERA (with a look of compassionate admiration, and in a tone yet
more emphatically parental).--"How lovely is that innocent joy! But do
not indulge it yet. Perhaps it is a sacrifice which is asked from you,--
a sacrifice too hard to bear. Do not interrupt me. Listen still, and
you will see why I could not speak to your father until I had obtained an
interview with yourself. See why a word from you may continue still to
banish me from his presence. You know, doubtless, that your father was
one of the chiefs of a party that sought to free Northern Italy from the
Austrians. I myself was at the onset a warm participator in that scheme.
In a sudden moment I discovered that some of its more active projectors
had coupled with a patriotic enterprise plots of a dark nature, and that
the conspiracy itself was about to be betrayed to the government. I
wished to consult with your father; but he was at a distance. I learned
that his life was condemned. Not an hour was to be lost. I took a bold
resolve, that has exposed me to his suspicions and to my country's wrath.
But my main idea was to save him, my early friend, from death, and my
country from fruitless massacre.
"I withdrew from the intended revolt. I sought at once the head of the
Austrian government in Italy, and made terms for the lives of Alphonso
and of the other more illustrious chiefs, which otherwise would have been
forfeited. I obtained permission to undertake myself the charge of
securing my kinsman in order to place him in safety, and to conduct him
to a foreign land, in an exile that would cease when the danger was
dispelled. But unhappily he deemed that I only sought to destroy him.
He fled from my friendly pursuit. The soldiers with me were attacked by
an intermeddling Englishman; your father escaped from Italy, concealing
his retreat; and the character of his flight counteracted my efforts to
obtain his pardon. The government conferred on me half his revenues,
holding the other half at its pleasure. I accepted the offer in order to
save his whole heritage from confiscation. That I did not convey to him
what I pined to do,--namely, the information that I held but in trust
what was bestowed by the government, and the full explanation of what
seemed blamable in my conduct,--was necessarily owing to the secrecy he
maintained. I could not discover his refuge; but I never ceased to plead
for his recall. This year only I have partially succeeded. He can be
restored to his heritage and rank, on one proviso,--a guarantee for his
loyalty. That guarantee the government has named: it is the alliance of
his only child with one whom the government can trust. It was the
interest of all the Italian nobility that the representation of a House
so great falling to a female should not pass away wholly from the direct
line,--in a word, that you should ally yourself with a kinsman. But one
kinsman, and he the next in blood, presented himself. In short, Alphonso
regains all that he lost on the day in which his daughter gives her hand
to Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera. Ah," continued the count,
mournfully, "you shriek, you recoil. He thus submitted to your choice is
indeed unworthy of you. You are scarce in the spring of life, he is in
its waning autumn. Youth loves youth. He does not aspire to your love.
All that he can say is, love is not the only joy of the heart,--it is joy
to raise from ruin a beloved father; joy to restore, to a land poor in
all but memories, a chief in whom it reverences a line of heroes. These
are the joys I offer to you,--you, a daughter, and an Italian maid.
Still silent? Oh, speak to me!"
Certainly this Count Peschiera knew well how woman is to be wooed and
won; and never was woman more sensitive to those high appeals which most
move all true earnest womanhood than was the young Violante. Fortune
favoured him in the moment chosen. Harley was wrenched away from her
hopes, and love a word erased from her language. In the void of the
world, her father's image alone stood clear and visible. And she who
from infancy had so pined to serve that father, who at first learned to
dream of Harley as that father's friend! She could restore to him all
for which the exile sighed; and by a sacrifice of self,--self-sacrifice,
ever in itself such a temptation to the noble! Still, in the midst of
the confusion and disturbance of her mind, the idea of marriage with
another seemed so terrible and revolting, that she could not at once
conceive it; and still that instinct of openness and honour, which
pervaded all her character, warned even her inexperience that there was
something wrong in this clandestine appeal to herself.
Again the count besought her to speak, and with an effort she said,
irresolutely,
"If it be as you say, it is not for me to answer you; it is for my
father."
"Nay," replied Peschiera. "Pardon, if I contradict you. Do you know so
little of your father as to suppose that he will suffer his interest to
dictate to his pride? He would refuse, perhaps, even to receive my
visit, to hear my explanations; but certainly he would refuse to buy back
his inheritance by the sacrifice of his daughter to one whom he has
deemed his foe, and whom the mere disparity of years would incline the
world to say he had made the barter of his personal ambition. But if I
could go to him sanctioned by you; if I could say, 'Your daughter
overlooks what the father might deem an obstacle,--she has consented to
accept my hand of her own free choice, she unites her happiness, and
blends her prayers with mine,'--then, indeed, I could not fail of
success; and Italy would pardon my errors, and bless your name. Ah,
Signorina, do not think of me save as an instrument towards the
fulfilment of duties so high and sacred! think but of your ancestors,
your father, your native land, and reject not the proud occasion to prove
how you revere them all!"
Violante's heart was touched at the right chord. Her head rose, the
colour came back to her pale cheek, she turned the glorious beauty of her
countenance towards the wily tempter. She was about to answer and to
seal her fate, when at that instant Harley's voice was heard at a little
distance, and Nero came bounding towards her, and thrust himself, with
rough familiarity, between her and Peschiera. The count drew back, and
Violante, whose eyes were still fixed on his face, started at the change
that passed there. One quick gleam of rage sufficed in an instant to
light up the sinister secrets of his nature,--it was the face of the
baffled gladiator. He had time but for few words.
"I must not be seen here," he muttered; "but to-morrow, in these gardens,
about this hour. I implore you, for the sake of your father,--his hopes,
fortunes, his very life,--to guard the secret of this interview,--to meet
me again. Adieu!"
He vanished amidst the trees, and was gone,--noiselessly, mysteriously,
as he had come.