"I was born in Corsica," he replied; "but I was brought, 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 finish, played the part of mentor to the two young people, who talked to each other chiefly in Corsican.The soldier related the sufferings of the retreat from Moscow; for, at nineteen years of age, he had made the passage of the Beresins, and was almost the last man left of his regiment.He described, in words of fire, the great disaster of Waterloo.His voice was music itself to the Italian girl.
Brought up as a Corsican, Ginevra was, in some sense, a child of Nature; falseness was a thing unknown to her; she gave herself up without reserve to her impressions; she acknowledged them, or, rather, allowed them to be seen without the affectations of petty and calculating coquetry, characteristic of Parisian girlhood.During this day she sat more than once with her palette in one hand, her brushes in another, without touching a color.With her eyes fastened on the officer, and her lips slightly apart, she listened, in the attitude of painting a stroke which was never painted.She was not surprised to see such softness in the eyes of the young man, for she felt that her own were soft in spite of her will to keep them stern and calm.After periods like this she painted diligently, without raising her head, for he was there, near her, watching her work.The first time he sat down beside her to contemplate her silently, she said, in a voice of some emotion, after a long pause:--"Does it amuse you to see me paint?"
That day she learned that his name was Luigi.Before separating, it was agreed between them that if, on class-days when they could not see each other, any important political event occurred, Ginevra was to inform him by singing certain Corsican melodies then agreed upon.
The following day Mademoiselle Thirion informed all the members of the class, under pledge of secrecy that Ginevra di Piombo had a lover, a young man who came during the hours for the lesson, and concealed himself in the garret beyond the studio.
"You, who take her part," she said to Mademoiselle Roguin, "watch her carefully, and you will see how she spends her time."Ginevra was, therefore, observed with diabolical attention.They listened to her songs, they watched her glances.At times, when she supposed that no one saw her, a dozen pairs of eyes were furtively upon her.Thus enlightened, the girls were able to interpret truly the emotions that crossed the features of the beautiful Italian,--her gestures, the peculiar tones in which she hummed a tune, and the attention with which they saw her listen to sounds which only she could hear through the partition.
By the end of a week, Laure was the only one of Servin's fifteen pupils who had resisted the temptation of looking at Luigi through the crevice of the partition; and she, through an instinct of weakness, still defended her beautiful friend.Mademoiselle Roguin endeavored to make her wait on the staircase after the class dispersed, that she might prove to her the intimacy of Ginevra and the young man by entering the studio and surprising them together.But Laure refused to condescend to an act of espial which no curiosity could justify, and she consequently became the object of much reprobation.
