This inquiry and its peremptory tone exhausted the patience of Colonna. Dashing the paint out of his brush, he fixed a look of startling fierceness on Barozzo, and answered, with marked and bitter emphasis,--"He was a sword-cutler, and made excellent blades."
At this critical moment Laura entered the room with her mother to observe the progress of Barozzo's portrait. Casting a hasty glance at the imperfect sketch, she remarked that it did not at all realise her expectations. The painter replied, that he should have succeeded better if he had enjoyed the honour of a longer acquaintance with the governor. "It is immaterial," exclaimed Barozzo, who had fully regained his self-possession. "We shall ere long become better known to each other, and you may finish my portrait at Venice in the course of the ensuing winter."
"As your excellency pleases," replied Colonna, and removed the canvass from the easel. The ladies now quitted the saloon with the governor; and, soon as the door was closed, the artist defaced the ill-fated portrait with a blow of his fist, packed up his drawing materials for removal, and accompanied me home.
Conceiving that the portentous agitation of Barozzo had grown out of some incipient feelings of jealousy and suspicion, I remonstrated with Colonna, during our walk, on the gratuitous imprudence of his deportment, and pointed out the personal danger he had incurred by thus taunting a man so powerful and irritable as the governor of Candia. I urged him to accelerate his flight, and, meanwhile, never to leave the villa unarmed.
In reply, however, he expressed his conviction that the sudden change of countenance and colour in Barozzo did not originate in jealousy, and that a man so imperious and overbearing would have betrayed this spirit-stirring passion in a manner widely different. "No, Pisani!" he continued, in a voice quivering with emotion; "my suspicions go farther. The springs of this man's actions lie deep, and a prophetic spirit tells me that he is not innocent of my noble father's murder. Until this morning, he deigned not to bestow more than a superficial glance upon the features of an obscure artist in homely apparel, but when our eyes met, in keen and unavoidable collision, the resemblance I bear to my deceased parent flashed upon his guilty soul; and from his sudden and uncontrollable emotion, I cannot but infer his participation in the crimes of Cosmo. Inference, you will say, is no proof; but it gives me a clue which I will track until I reach conviction. It is the intention of Laura, who cannot resolve to quit her mother, to retard for a considerable period the celebration of her marriage, by feigned paroxysms of indisposition. I will avail myself of this delay to bring home to Barozzo the evidence of his guilt, and defy him to mortal combat; or, should he shrink from it, I will treat him as a savage and noxious animal, and hunt him to death."