“Who and what was your father?” demanded Barozzo imperiously.
This inquiry and its peremptory tone exhausted the patience of Colonna. Dashing the paint out of his brush, he fixed a look of startling fierceness on Barozzo, and answered, with marked and bitter emphasis,—“He was a sword-cutler, and made excellent blades.”
At this critical moment Laura entered the room with her mother to observe the progress of Barozzo’s portrait. Casting a hasty glance at the imperfect sketch, she remarked that it did not at all realise her expectations. The painter replied, that he should have succeeded better if he had enjoyed the honour of a longer acquaintance with the governor. “It is immaterial,” exclaimed Barozzo, who had fully regained his self-possession. “We shall ere long become better known to each other, and you may finish my portrait at Venice in the course of the ensuing winter.”
“As your excellency pleases,” replied Colonna, and removed the canvass from the easel. The ladies now quitted the saloon with the governor; and, soon as the door was closed, the artist defaced the ill-fated portrait with a blow of his fist, packed up his drawing materials for removal, and accompanied me home.
Conceiving that the portentous agitation of Barozzo had grown out of some incipient feelings of jealousy and suspicion, I remonstrated with Colonna, during our walk, on the gratuitous imprudence of his deportment, and pointed out the personal danger he had incurred by thus taunting a man so powerful and irritable as the governor of Candia. I urged him to accelerate his flight, and, meanwhile, never to leave the villa unarmed.
In reply, however, he expressed his conviction that the sudden change of countenance and colour in Barozzo did not originate in jealousy, and that a man so imperious and overbearing would have betrayed this spirit-stirring passion in a manner widely different. “No, Pisani!” he continued, in a voice quivering with emotion; “my suspicions go farther. The springs of this man’s actions lie deep, and a prophetic spirit tells me that he is not innocent of my noble father’s murder. Until this morning, he deigned not to bestow more than a superficial glance upon the features of an obscure artist in homely apparel, but when our eyes met, in keen and unavoidable collision, the resemblance I bear to my deceased parent flashed upon his guilty soul; and from his sudden and uncontrollable emotion, I cannot but infer his participation in the crimes of Cosmo. Inference, you will say, is no proof; but it gives me a clue which I will track until I reach conviction. It is the intention of Laura, who cannot resolve to quit her mother, to retard for a considerable period the celebration of her marriage, by feigned paroxysms of indisposition. I will avail myself of this delay to bring home to Barozzo the evidence of his guilt, and defy him to mortal combat; or, should he shrink from it, I will treat him as a savage and noxious animal, and hunt him to death.”
I could not but admit that there was some ground for the suspicions of Colonna; but, from an apprehension of rousing his whirlwind passions into premature activity, I concealed from him my knowledge that, before the departure of Barozzo for Candia, he had passed some weeks at Florence, where his congenial disposition had powerfully recommended him to the good graces of Cosmo. They were in habits of daily intercourse, and Barozzo was not the man who would, from honourable feeling, decline to forward the murderous views of the implacable ruler of Tuscany.
From this eventful day Colonna was an altered man. Revenge became the ruling passion of his soul; and while he awaited with gnawing impatience the long-expected letters from his friends in Florence and Candia, he seemed to find no relief from the feverish rage which fired his blood, and wasted his fine form, but in the bodily fatigue of daily and nightly rambles in the mountains.
It was the design of Laura to assume the appearance of sudden and violent illness on the day before her intended marriage, and to sustain the deception, by occasional relapses, for months, or even years, should the governor’s patience endure so long. But the probability was, that a man, advancing towards the autumn of life, and determined to marry, would rather recede from his engagement and seek another mate, than run the risk of such indefinite delay. The spirit and address of Laura Foscari were fully equal to the deep game she had determined to play. She purposed to assist the deception by staining her fair face with an artificial and sickly hue; and she found an effective auxiliary in her mother, who thought the brutal Barozzo utterly unworthy to win and wear so bright a jewel as her angelic daughter. These expedients were, however, rendered unnecessary by the bloody catastrophes which were now at hand.
Three days before the appointed celebration of the marriage, I was reading, near midnight, in my chamber, when Colonna entered, with vehement and hasty strides. His large eyes glittered with terrific energy; his forehead streamed with perspiration; his dress and hair were in wild disorder, and his hands were dyed with blood. He said not a word, but paced the apartment for some time with rapidity. His deportment was that of a man whose rage had risen above his control, and overwhelmed all power of articulation. I awaited in silent and wondering sympathy the termination of emotions so tempestuous. At length, seating himself opposite to me, he struck the table vehemently with his clenched hand, and after some vain attempts to speak, exclaimed, in hoarse and hurried tones, which gave an appalling force to his expressions—“Pisani! all doubt is at an end—I have this night obtained conclusive evidence of Barozzo’s guilt. I have sworn to avenge my noble father’s wrongs in the traitor’s blood—and to-morrow he must face me in fair combat, or feel my dagger in his craven heart. The alternative will hinge upon your friendly agency—but of that hereafter.—About three hours since I reached the heights beyond the lake. Exhausted with a long and toilsome ramble, I threw myself beneath our favourite beech, and was soon lulled by the rippling waters into brief and agitated slumber. My sleep was haunted by a succession of fearful forms and painful incidents, which at length assumed a shape distinctly and horribly significant. Methought I lay upon the summit of a cliff, close to the sloping brink, and gazed into a gulf too deep and dark for human eye to fathom. Suddenly the immense void was illumined by sheets of vivid lightning—a monstrous peal of thunder broke upon my ear—and a colossal form, lengthened and scaly as a serpent, rose like the demon of the storm, approached the edge of the precipice, and brought his horrid visage to the level of mine. Again the lightning flashed, and I distinguished the assassin features of Barozzo, expanded into horrible and revolting magnitude. Eyes, lurid and menacing as meteors, glared upon me with a malignant scowl, and huge lips, parted in a fiendish grin, disclosed an array of fangs, pointed and glittering as poniards. He extended two gaunt and bony hands, stained, methought, with my father’s blood, and tried to seize and drag me into the gulf. While writhing to escape the monster’s grasp the thunder again rolled through the abyss; the cliff beneath me reeled from its foundations, the brink began to crumble, and my destruction appeared inevitable—when, suddenly, the strains of sweet and solemn music floated round me—the demon vanished, and I beheld the pale phantom of my murdered father, extending towards me his protecting arms. At this moment of intense excitement, the spell which bound me was dissolved—I awoke, and saw by the brilliant moonlight a tall figure, enveloped in a mantle, approaching me in stealthy silence. Gazing more intently, I discovered a dagger in his grasp. In an instant I was on my feet—the figure rushed forward, but ere he could reach me, I stood behind the tree, and thus gained time to level a pistol at his head. Seeing me thus prepared, the villain retreated hastily, but escaped not the bullet, which my unerring weapon buried in his back. He reeled and fell; and his life-blood was ebbing fast, when I stooped to examine his features. Raising the slouched hat which concealed his face, I immediately recognised a handsome Greek, attached to the retinue of Barozzo. I had occasionally seen this man in a tavern at Peschiera. His demeanour was fierce and repulsive, but my eagerness to learn some particulars of my father’s untimely death in Candia prompted me to cultivate his acquaintance, and I played with him the game of Morra, forgave his losses, and paid for his wine. Whether the remembrance of this kindness excited his compunction, or whether he wished to atone for his past offences, I know not, but he thus addressed me in broken accents: