of the father? Look you," he resumed, with a very
slight compression of his lip, and a still slighter movement in his
chair,--"look you, this is no question of ifs and buts! it is a question
of must and shall,--a question of existence to you and to me. When
Danton was condemned to the guillotine, he said, flinging a pellet of
bread at the nose of his respectable judge, 'Mon individu sera bientot
dans le neant.' My patrimony is there already! I am loaded with debts.
I see before me, on the one side, ruin or suicide; on the other side,
wedlock and wealth."

"But from those vast possessions which you have been permitted to enjoy
so long, have you really saved nothing against the time when they might
be reclaimed at your hands?"

"My sister," replied the count, "do I look like a man who saved?
Besides, when the Austrian Emperor, unwilling to raze from his Lombard
domains a name and a House so illustrious as our kinsman's, and
desirous, while punishing that kinsman's rebellion, to reward my
adherence, forbore the peremptory confiscation of those vast possessions
at which my mouth waters while we speak, but, annexing them to the crown
during pleasure, allowed me, as the next of male kin, to retain the
revenues of one half for the same very indefinite period,--had I not
every reason to suppose that before long I could so influence his
Imperial Majesty, or his minister, as to obtain a decree that might
transfer the whole, unconditionally and absolutely, to myself? And
methinks I should have done so, but for this accursed, intermeddling
English Milord, who has never ceased to besiege the court or the
minister with alleged extenuations of our cousin's rebellion, and
proofless assertions that I shared it in order to entangle my kinsman,
and betrayed it in order to profit by his spoils. So that, at last, in
return for all my services, and in answer to all my claims, I received
from the minister himself this cold reply, Count of Peschiera, your aid
was important, and your reward has been large. That reward it would
not be for your honour to extend, and justify the ill opinion of your
Italian countrymen by formally appropriating to yourself all that was
forfeited by the treason you denounced. A name so noble as yours should
be dearer to you than fortune itself.'"

"Ah Giulio," cried Beatrice, her face lighting up, changed in its whole
character, "those were words that might make the demon that tempts to
avarice fly from your brea