"Oh! stay with us! stay with your father, your old father! I cannot
have you love another man. Ginevra, you will not have long to await
your liberty."

"But, father, remember that I need not leave you; we shall be two to
love you; you will learn to know the man to whose care you bequeath
me. You will be doubly cherished by me and by him,--by him who is my
other self, by me who am all his."

"Oh! Ginevra, Ginevra!" cried the Corsican, clenching his fists; "why
did you not marry when Napoleon brought me to accept the idea? Why did
you not take the counts and dukes he presented to you?"

"They loved me to order," said the girl. "Besides, they would have
made me live with them, and I did not wish to leave you alone."

"You don't wish to leave me alone," said Piombo, "and yet you marry!
--that is leaving me alone. I know you, my daughter; in that case, you
would cease to love us. Elisa," he added, looking at his wife, who
remained motionless, and as if stupefied, "we have no longer a
daughter; she wishes to marry."

The old man sat down, after raising his hands to heaven with a gesture
of invoking the Divine power; then he bowed himself over as if weighed
down with sorrow.

Ginevra saw his agitation, and the restraint which he put upon his
anger touched her to the heart; she expected some violent crisis, some
ungovernable fury; she had not armed her soul against paternal
gentleness.