tell nothing."

Francesca, recovering from her astonishment, helped Rodolphe to rise,
and said a few words to Gina, whose eyes filled with tears. The two
girls made him sit down on a bench and take off his coat, his waistcoat
and cravat. Then Gina opened his shirt and sucked the wound strongly.
Francesca, who had left them, returned with a large piece of
sticking-plaster, which she applied to the wound.

"You can now walk as far as your house," she said.

Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side gate, of which
the key was in Francesca's apron pocket.

"Does Gina speak French?" said Rodolphe to Francesca.

"No. But do not excite yourself," replied Francesca with some
impatience.

"Let me look at you," said Rodolphe pathetically, "for it may be long
before I am able to come again---"

He leaned against one of the gate-posts contemplating the beautiful
Italian, who allowed him to gaze at her for a moment under the sweetest
silence and the sweetest night which ever, perhaps, shone on this lake,
the king of Swiss lakes.

Francesca was quite of the Italian type, and such as imagination
supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams, that Italian women
are. What first struck Rodolphe was the grace and elegance of a figure
evidently powerful, though so slender as to appear fragile. An amber
paleness overspread her face, betraying sudden interest, but it did not
dim the voluptuous glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness.
A pair of hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the
polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness
gleamed against his black coat. The rash Frenchman could but just
discern the long, oval shape of her face, and a melancholy mouth showing
brilliant teeth between the parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly
red. The exquisite lines of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent
beauty; but what most struck Rodolphe was the adorable freedom, the
Italian frankness of this woman, wholly absorbed as she was in her pity
for him.

Francesca said a word to Gina, who gave Rodolphe her arm as far as the
Stopfers' door, and fled like a swallow as soon as she had rung.

"These patriots do not play at killing!" said Rodolphe to himself as
he felt his sufferings when he found himself in his bed. "'_Nel lago!'_
Gina would have pitched me into the lake with a stone tied to my neck."

Next day he sent to Lucerne for the best surgeon there, and when he
came, enj