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.'"