“Fear nothing,” said he in French to the Italian girl, “I am not a spy.  You are refugees, I have guessed that.  I am a Frenchman whom one look from you has fixed at Gersau.”

Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel instrument piercing his side, fell like a log.

“Nel lago con pietra!” said the terrible dumb girl.

“Oh, Gina!” exclaimed the Italian.

“She has missed me,” said Rodolphe, pulling from his wound a stiletto, which had been turned by one of the false ribs.  “But a little higher up it would have been deep in my heart.—­I was wrong, Francesca,” he went on, remembering the name he had heard little Gina repeat several times; “I owe her no grudge, do not scold her.  The happiness of speaking to you is well worth the prick of a stiletto.  Only show me the way out; I must get back to the Stopfers’ house.  Be easy; I shall 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.