"The head which falls to-morrow before a dozen muskets will save
yours," she went on. "Wait till the storm is over; you can then escape
and take service in foreign countries if you are not forgotten here;
or in the French army, if you are."

In the comfort that women give there is always a delicacy which has
something maternal, foreseeing, and complete about it. But when the
words of hope and peace are said with grace of gesture and that
eloquence of tone which comes from the heart, and when, above all, the
benefactress is beautiful, a young man does not resist. The prisoner
breathed in love through all his senses. A rosy tinge colored his
white cheeks; his eyes lost something of the sadness that dulled them,
and he said, in a peculiar tone of voice:--

"You are an angle of goodness-- But Labedoyere!" he added. "Oh,
Labedoyere!"

At this cry they all three looked at one another in silence, each
comprehending the others' thoughts. No longer friends of twenty
minutes only, they were friends of twenty years.

"Dear friend," said Servin, "can you save him?"

"I can avenge him."

Ginevra quivered. Though the stranger was handsome, his appearance had
not influenced her; the soft pity in a woman's heart for miseries that
are not ignoble had stifled in Ginevra all other emotions; but to hear
a cry of vengeance, to find in that proscribed being an Italian soul,
devotion to Napoleon, Corsican generosity!--ah! that was, indeed, too