Sigismund is not of us, and none can see any trace of
either my own or of Marguerite's family in his person or features."
Balthazar paused that there might be an examination of this fact, and, in
truth, the most ingenious fancy could not have detected the least affinity
in looks, between either of those whom he had so long thought his parents
and the young soldier.
"Let the Doge of Genoa question his memory, and look farther than himself.
Can he find no sleeping smile, no color of the hair, nor any other common
point of appearance, between the youth and some of those whom he once knew
and loved?"
The anxious prince turned eagerly towards Sigismund, and a gleam of joy
lighted his face again, as he studied the young man's features.
"By San Francesco! Melchior, the honest Balthazar is right. My grandmother
was a Venetian, and she had the fair hair of the boy--the eye too, is
hers--and--oh!" bending his head aside and veiling his eyes with his hand,
"I see the anxious gaze that was so constant in the sainted and injured
Angiolina, after my greater wealth and power had tempted her kinsmen to
force her to yield an unwilling hand!--Wretch! thou art not Bartolo; thy
tale is a wicked deception, invented to shield thee from the punishment
due to thy crime!"
"Admitting that I am not Bartolo, eccellenza, does the Signer Sigismondo
claim to be he? Have you not assured yourself that a certain Bartolo
Contini, a man whose life is passed in open hostility to the laws, is your
child? Did you not employ your confidant and secretary to learn the facts?
Did he not hear from the dying lips of a holy priest, who knew all the
circumstances, that 'Bartolo Contini is the son of Gaetano Grimaldi'? Did
not the confederate of your implacable enemy, Cristofero Serrani, swear
the same to you? Have you not seen papers that were taken with your child
to confirm it all, and did you not send this signet as a gage that Bartolo
should not want your aid, in any strait that might occur in his wild
manner of living, when you learned that he resolutely preferred remaining
what he was, to becoming an image of sickly repentance and newly-assumed
nobility, in your gorgeous palace on the Strada Balbi?"
The Doge again bowed his head in dismay, for all this he knew to be true
beyond a shadow of hope.
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