t, while very
young, to Genoa, and as soon as I was old enough for military service I
enlisted."

The beauty of the young man, the mighty charm lent to him by his
attachment to the Emperor, his wound, his misfortunes, his danger,
all disappeared to Ginevra's mind, or, rather, all were blended in one
sentiment,--a new and delightful sentiment. This persecuted man was
a child of Corsica; he spoke its cherished language! She stood, for a
moment, motionless; held by a magical sensation; before her eyes was a
living picture, to which all human sentiments, united by chance, gave
vivid colors. By Servin's invitation, the officer had seated himself on
a divan, and the painter, after removing the sling which supported the
arm of his guest, was undoing the bandages in order to dress the wound.
Ginevra shuddered when she saw the long, broad gash made by the blade of
a sabre on the young man's forearm, and a moan escaped her. The stranger
raised his head and smiled to her. There was something touching which
went to the soul, in the care with which Servin lifted the lint and
touched the lacerated flesh, while the face of the wounded man, though
pale and sickly, expressed, as he looked at the girl, more pleasure than
suffering. An artist would have admired, involuntarily, this opposition
of sentiments, together with the contrasts produced by the whiteness of
the linen and the bared arm to the red and blue uniform of the officer.

At this moment a soft half-light pervaded the studio; but a parting ray
of the evening sunlight suddenly illuminated the spot where the soldier
sat, so that his noble, blanched face, his black hair, and his clothes
were bathed in its glow. The effect was simple enough, but to the girl's
Italian imagination it was a happy omen. The stranger seemed to her a
celestial messenger, speaking the language of her own country. He thus
unconsciously put her under the spell of childhood's memories, while
in her heart there dawned another feeling as fresh, as pure as her
own innocence. For a short, very short moment, she was motionless
and dreamy, as though she were plunged in boundless thought. Then she
blushed at having allowed her absorption to be noticed, exchanged one
soft and rapid glance with the wounded man, and fled with the vision of
him still before her eyes.

The next day was not a class-day, but Ginevra came to the studio, and
the prisoner was free to sit beside her easel. Servin, who had a sketch
to fini