"I shall outlive you. Children who do not honor their parents die
early," said the father, driven to exasperation.

"All the more reason why I should marry and be happy," she replied.

This coolness and power of argument increased Piombo's trouble; the
blood rushed violently to his head, and his face turned purple.
Ginevra shuddered; she sprang like a bird on her father's knee, threw
her arms around his neck, and caressed his white hair, exclaiming,
tenderly:--

"Oh, yes, yes, let me die first! I could never survive you, my father,
my kind father!"

"Oh! my Ginevra, my own Ginevra!" replied Piombo, whose anger melted
under this caress like snow beneath the rays of the sun.

"It was time you ceased," said the baroness, in a trembling voice.

"Poor mother!"

"Ah! Ginevretta! mia bella Ginevra!"

And the father played with his daughter as though she were a child of
six. He amused himself by releasing the waving volume of her hair, by
dandling her on his knee; there was something of madness in these
expressions of his love. Presently his daughter scolded while kissing
him, and tried, by jesting, to obtain admission for Luigi; but her
father, also jesting, refused. She sulked, then returned to coax once
more, and sulked again, until, by the end of the evening, she was