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.”