“Oh! Ginevra, if it concerned my life only!—”
Though Bartolomeo had been notified by his wife of the formal presentation Ginevra was to make of her lover, he would not advance to meet him, but remained seated in his usual arm-chair, and the sternness of his brow was awful.
“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.