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PESCHIERA. "Alas! what years of suffering and exile might have been saved your father, had he but been more just to his early friend and kinsman, nay, had he but less cruelly concealed the secret of his retreat. Fair child, I am that Giulio Franzini, that Count di Peschiera. I am the man you have been told to regard as your father's foe.
"Giulio Franzini," said the Duke of Serrano, for so we may now call the threadbare recluse of the Casino, "had this last villanous design of yours been allowed by Providence, think you that there is one spot on earth on which the ravisher could have been saved from a father's arm? But now, Heaven has been more kind.
Stand aside, my sister, stand aside." "Giulio Franzini, I stand between you and her; you shall strike me to the earth before you can touch even the hem of her robe!" "What, my sister! you turn against me?" "And unless you instantly retire and leave her free, I will unmask you to the emperor." "Too late, /mon enfant!/ You will sail with us.
He offers to you rank, wealth, your father's pardon and recall. If I could remove the objections which your father entertains, prove that the count has less wronged him than he deems, would you still reject the rank and the wealth and the hand of Giulio Franzini?" "Oh, yes, yes; were his hand a king's!"
In short, Alphonso regains all that he lost on the day in which his daughter gives her hand to Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera. Ah," continued the count, mournfully, "you shriek, you recoil. He thus submitted to your choice is indeed unworthy of you. You are scarce in the spring of life, he is in its waning autumn. Youth loves youth. He does not aspire to your love.
If not, I have procured you the occasion to render it yet more complete. Before you stands the kinsman you have wronged. He knows now, that though, for a while, you ruined his fortunes, you failed to sully his hearth. His heart can grant you pardon, and hereafter his hand may give you alms. Kneel then, Giulio Franzini, kneel at the feet of Alphonso, Duke of Serrano."
The count started. "That restoration," said the Austrian prince, who had advanced to Harley's side, "I already guarantee. Disgrace that you are, Giulio Franzini, to the nobles of the Empire, I will not leave my royal master till his hand strike your name from the roll.
But bring together two men unprincipled and perverted men who, if born in a cellar, would have been food for the hulks or gallows and they understand each other by instant sympathy. The eyes of Franzini, Count of Peschiera, and Randal Leslie no sooner met than a gleam of intelligence shot from both. They talked on indifferent subjects, weather, gossip, politics, what not.
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