“If you have any intention of consummating your designs on my daughter’s virtue—a thing which I regard as a mere misnomer—you must do so immediately. The advance-money hitherto received from you, I consider fairly my own; and if you think proper to neglect the chance I now give you of achieving your wishes, I am sure it is your own fault.
“Be so good as to let me have a definite answer, when it suits your convenience; and believe me,
It afforded me much gratification to anticipate the wrath and indignation Ruzzina should evince on reading this. To gloat over the dark traits of men’s characters, has ever been my choicest amusement; and I well knew that he would either make a desperate attempt to retrieve his imprudence by recovering the money, or desist altogether and keep silent to avoid the shafts of satire and ridicule.
I suffered much uneasiness, and had much to fear on account of the ardent and fiery temperament of Valeria. The passion she had betrayed for Marco Da Vinci was no childish fancy; but a deep-rooted, irrevocable love, which nothing could eradicate or assuage. Her pure Italian blood permitted no medium between passion and indifference. She loved him once, and was destined to love, or hate him forever after. Of this I quickly had a most satisfactory proof.
Enraged one day at the obstinate manner in which she rejected the advances of every suitor I thought proper to introduce into my house, I bitterly reproached her for her disobedience; and in the excess of my anger, struck her a violent blow. Her proud spirit was instantly up.
“Father,” said she, “you have struck me for the first, and for the last time. In defiance of your cruel and unnatural machinations for the disposal of my honor, you shall never reproach me with their success. I have hitherto mildly resisted your iniquitous designs; and I now boldly put myself out of your power. This roof shall never more shelter your daughter!”
In scarcely any gradation of human depravity is man totally callous to the qualms of conscience. I have before remarked that I anticipated with joy the hour of death; but this was merely a fiendish delirium, wrought by the recollection of past iniquities: a kind of bravo, which, in the hour of cool contemplation, would be regarded with fear and horror.