“Ah, sir! I am sorry, very sorry, that I have caused you to think again of your miseries. But your lot is now in prosperity. Ah, sir! we are all liable to calamity: it is sad to think of the many pains of life; but your sorrow, sir, is no doubt without reproach to yourself.”
The agitation of the old gentleman abated, and he replied: “I thank you for your kindness, sir, but my sorrow arises from self-reproach. I have inflicted injuries which can never be redressed.”
He hesitated, as if wishing, but dreading to say more. Then changing the tone of his voice, as if he were about to speak on some totally different subject, he continued addressing himself to Colonel Rivolta:
“I presume, sir, you are a native of Genoa, or you are very familiar with that city.”
“I was born,” replied the foreigner, “at Naples; but very early in life I was removed to Genoa, that I might be engaged in merchandise; for my patrimony was very small, and my relations would have despised me, had I endeavoured by any occupation to gain a livelihood in my native city.”
“Then you were not originally destined for the army.”
“I was not; but after I had been some few years in Genoa, I began to grow weary of the pursuits of merchandise, and indeed to feel some of that pride of which I had accused my relations, and I thought that I should be satisfied with very little if I might be free from the occupation of the merchant; and while I was so thinking, I met by chance an old acquaintance who persuaded me to undertake the profession of arms, to which I was indeed not reluctant. And so I left my merchandise, and did not see Genoa again for nearly two years. It was then that I was so much interested in that scene which the picture portrays; for in a very small house which is in the same street, and directly opposite to that palace, there lived an old woman, whose name was.…”
The attention of the old gentleman had been powerfully arrested by the commencement of the Italian’s narrative; and he listened very calmly till the narrator arrived at the point when he was about to mention the name of the old woman who lived opposite to the palace in question: then was Mr. Martindale again excited, and without waiting for the conclusion of the sentence, interrupted it by exclaiming:
“Ah! what! do you know that old woman? Is she living? Where is she?—Stop—no—let me see—impossible!—Why I must be nearly seventy—yes—Are you sure? Is not her name Bianchi?”
To this hurried and confused mass of interrogation, the Colonel replied that her name was Bianchi; but that she had died nearly twenty years ago, at a very advanced age, being at the time of her death nearly ninety years of age. Hearing this, the old gentleman assumed a great calmness and composure of manner, though he trembled as if in an ague; and turning to the astonished clergyman, who was pleasing himself with the anticipation of some catastrophe or anecdote which might form a fine subject for town-talk, he very deliberately said: