Vendetta by Honoré de Balzac (story reading txt) 📖

of an old man named Colonna. No detail about my family was told to me. I knew only that I was an orphan, and without property. Old Colonna was a father to me; and I bore his name until I entered the army. In order to do that, I had to show my certificate of birth in order to prove my identity. Colonna then told me, still a mere child, that I had enemies. And he advised me to take Luigi as my surname, and so evade them."

"Go, go, Luigi!" cried Ginevra. "No, stay; I must go with you. So long as you are in my father's house you have nothing to fear; but the moment you leave it, take care! you will go from danger to danger. My father has two Corsicans in his service, and if he does not lie in wait to kill you, they will."

"Ginevra," he said, "this feud, does it exist between you and me?"

The girl smiled sadly and bowed her head. Presently she raised it, and said, with a sort of pride:--

"Oh, Luigi, our love must be pure and sincere, indeed, to give me strength to tread the path I am about to enter. But it involves a happiness that will last throughout our lives, will it not?"

Luigi answered by a smile, and pressed her hand.

Ginevra comprehended that true love could despise all vulgar protestations at such a moment. This calm and restrained expression of his feelings foreshadowed, in some sense, their strength and their duration.

The destiny of the pair was then and there decided. Ginevra foresaw a cruel struggle, but the idea of abandoning Luigi--an idea which may have floated in her soul--vanished completely. His forever, she dragged him suddenly, with a desperate sort of energy, from her father's house, and did not leave him till she saw him reach the house where Servin had engaged a modest lodging.

By the time she reached home, Ginevra had attained to that serenity which is caused by a firm resolution; no sign in her manner betrayed uneasiness. She turned on her father and mother, whom she found in the act of sitting down to dinner, a glance of exceeding gentleness devoid of hardihood. She saw that her mother had been weeping; the redness of those withered eyelids shook her heart, but she hid her emotion. No one touched the dinner which was served to them. A horror of food is one of the chief symptoms which reveal a great crisis in life. All three rose from table without having addressed a single word to one another.

When Ginevra had placed herself between her father and mother in the great and gloomy salon, Piombo tried to speak, but his voice failed him; he tried to walk, but he had no strength in his legs. He returned to his seat and rang the bell.

"Pietro," he said, at last, to the footman, "light the fire; I am cold."

Ginevra trembled, and looked at her father anxiously. The struggle within him must have been horrible, for his face was distorted. Ginevra knew the extent of the peril before her, but she did not flinch. Bartolomeo, meanwhile, cast furtive glances at his daughter, as if he feared a character whose violence was the work of his own hands.

Between such natures all things must be extreme. The certainty of some impending change in the feelings of father and daughter gave to the worn and weary face of the baroness an expression of terror.

"Ginevra, you love the enemy of your family," said Piombo, at last, not daring to look at his daughter.

"That is true," she replied.

"You must choose between us. Our vendetta is a part of our being. Whoso does not share my vengeance is not a member of my family."

"My choice is made," replied Ginevra, calmly.

His daughter's tranquillity misled Bartolomeo.

"Oh! my dear child!" he cried, letting her see his eyes moistened with tears, the first and only tears he ever shed in life.

"I shall be his wife," said Ginevra, abruptly.

Bartolomeo seemed dazed for a moment, but he recovered his coolness instantly, and replied:--

"The marriage will not take place in my lifetime; I will never consent to it."

Ginevra kept silence.

"Ginevra," continued the baron, "have you reflected that Luigi is the son of the man who killed your brother?"

"He was six years old when that crime was committed; he was, therefore, not guilty of it," she replied.

"He is a Porta!" cried Bartolomeo.

"I have never shared that hatred," said Ginevra, eagerly. "You did not bring me up to think a Porta must be a monster. How could I know that one of those whom you thought you had killed survived? Is it not natural that you should now yield your vendetta to my feelings?"

"A Porta!" repeated Piombo. "If his father had found you in your bed you would not be living now; he would have taken your life a hundred times."

"It may be so," she answered; "but his son has given me life, and more than life. To see Luigi is a happiness without which I cannot live. Luigi has revealed to me the world of sentiments. I may, perhaps, have seen faces more beautiful than his, but none has ever charmed me thus; I may have heard voices--no, no, never any so melodious! Luigi loves me; he will be my husband."

"Never," said Piombo. "I would rather see you in your coffin, Ginevra."

The old Corsican rose and began to stride up and down the salon, dropping the following sentences, one by one, after pauses which betrayed his agitation.

"You think you can bend my will. Undeceive yourself. A Porta shall never be my son; that is my decree. Let there be no further question of this between us. I am Bartolomeo di Piombo; do you hear me, Ginevra?"

"Do you attach some mysterious meaning to those words?" she asked, coldly.

"They mean that I have a dagger, and that I do not fear man's justice. Corsicans explain themselves to God."

"And I," said the daughter, rising, "am Ginevra Piombo, and I declare that within six months I shall be the wife of Luigi Porta. You are a tyrant, my father," she added, after a terrifying pause.

Bartolomeo clenched his fists and struck them on the marble of the chimneypiece.

"Ah! we are in Paris!" he muttered.

Then he was silent, crossed his arms, bowed his head on his breast, and said not another word during the whole evening.

After once giving utterance to her will, Ginevra affected inconceivable coolness. She opened the piano and sang, played charming nocturnes and scherzos with a grace and sentiment which displayed a perfect freedom of mind, thus triumphing over her father, whose darkling face showed no softening. The old man was cruelly hurt by this tacit insult; he gathered in this one moment the bitter fruits of the training he had given to his daughter. Respect is a barrier which protects parents as it does children, sparing grief to the former, remorse to the latter.

The next day, when Ginevra sought to leave the house at the hour when she usually went to the studio, she found the gates of the mansion closed to her. She said nothing, but soon found means to inform Luigi Porta of her father's severity. A chambermaid, who could neither read nor write, was able to carry letters between the lovers. For five days they corresponded thus, thanks to the inventive shrewdness of the youth.

The father and daughter seldom spoke to each other. Both were nursing in the depths of their heart a sentiment of hatred; they suffered, but they suffered proudly, and in silence. Recognizing how strong were the ties of love which bound them to each other, they each tried to break them, but without success. No gentle thought came, as formerly, to brighten the stern features of Piombo when he contemplated his Ginevra. The girl had something savage in her eye when she looked at her father; reproach sat enthroned on that innocent brow; she gave herself up, it is true, to happy thoughts, and yet, at times, remorse seemed to dull her eyes. It was not difficult to believe that she could never enjoy, peacefully, any happiness which caused sorrow to her parents.

With Bartolomeo, as with his daughter, the hesitations of this period caused by the native goodness of their souls were, nevertheless, compelled to give way before their pride and the rancor of their Corsican nature. They encouraged each other in their anger, and closed their eyes to the future. Perhaps they mutually flattered themselves that the one would yield to the other.

At last, on Ginevra's birthday, her mother, in despair at the estrangement which, day by day, assumed a more serious character, meditated an attempt to reconcile the father and daughter, by help of the memories of this family anniversary. They were all three sitting in Bartolomeo's study. Ginevra guessed her mother's intention by the timid hesitation on her face, and she smiled sadly.

At this moment a servant announced two notaries, accompanied by witnesses. Bartolomeo looked fixedly at these persons, whose cold and formal faces were grating to souls so passionately strained as those of the three chief actors in this scene. The old man turned to his daughter and looked at her uneasily. He saw upon her face a smile of triumph which made him expect some shock; but, after the manner of savages, he affected to maintain a deceitful indifference as he gazed at the notaries with an assumed air of calm curiosity. The strangers sat down, after being invited to do so by a gesture of the old man.

"Monsieur is, no doubt, M. le Baron di Piombo?" began the oldest of the notaries.

Bartolomeo bowed. The notary made a slight inclination of the head, looked at Ginevra with a sly expression, took out his snuff-box, opened it, and slowly inhaled a pinch, as if seeking for the words with which to open his errand; then, while uttering them, he made continual pauses (an oratorical manoeuvre very imperfectly represented by the printer's dash--).

"Monsieur," he said, "I am Monsieur Roguin, your daughter's notary, and we have come--my colleague and I--to fulfil the intentions of the law and--put an end to the divisions which--appear--to exist--between yourself and Mademoiselle, your daughter,--on the subject--of--her--marriage with Monsieur Luigi Porta."

This speech, pedantically delivered, probably seemed to Monsieur Roguin so fine that his hearer could not at once understand it. He paused, and looked at Bartolomeo with that peculiar expression of the mere business lawyer, a mixture of servility with familiarity. Accustomed to feign much interest in the persons with whom they deal, notaries have at last produced upon their features a grimace of their own, which they take on and off as an official "pallium." This mask of benevolence, the mechanism of which is so easy to perceive, irritated Bartolomeo to such an extent that he was forced to collect all the powers of his reason to prevent him from throwing Monsieur Roguin through the window. An expression of anger ran through his wrinkles, which caused the notary to think to himself: "I've produced an effect."

"But," he continued, in a honeyed tone, "Monsieur le baron, on such occasions our duties are preceded by--efforts at--conciliation--Deign, therefore, to have the goodness to listen to me--It is in evidence that Mademoiselle Ginevra di Piombo--attains this very day--the age at which the law allows a respectful summons before proceeding to the celebration of a marriage--in spite of the non-consent of the parents.