"I will not," answered Lorenzo, "unless the king's orders especially require my service. Of course if they do, his orders must be obeyed." "Certainly, certainly," replied the other; "but those orders will not come. He shall hear how near death you have been, and of course will be considerate. But now farewell. I must go join Monsieur de Terrail. You shall hear from me, when I reach Bologna, concerning what was spoken of. Till then, I leave you in kind and tender hands." Thus saying, he bade him adieu and left him; and Antonio followed, judging perhaps that Lorenzo's two fair companions would afford attendance enough. CHAPTER X. "Who times gallops withal!" Alas! dear Rosalind, you might have found a sweeter illustration than that which you give. Doubtless "he gallops with a thief to the gallows," but I fear me, impatient joy and reluctant fear, like most opposites in the circle of all things, meet and blend into each other. Time gallops full as fast when he carries along two lovers, and between the hours of meeting and parting his pace is certainly of the quickest. Never, perhaps, did he travel so fast as with Leonora and Lorenzo. Their feelings were so new; they were so eager and so warm; they were so full of youth and youth's impetuous fire, that----smouldering as love had been for the last ten days, unseen even by their own eyes, and only lighted into a blaze by the events of the night before--we might pursue the image of a great conflagration, and say, both were confused and dazzled by the light, and hardly felt or knew the rapid passing of the quick-winged moments. Blanche Marie might perhaps have estimated the passage of time more justly; for the unhappy third person--however he may love the two others, and whatever interests he may feel in their happiness--has, after all, but a sorry and a tedious part to play; and although the fairer and the milder of the two girls was not yet more than fourteen, she might long--while she sat there, silent, and striving not to listen to the murmured words of the two lovers--she might long for the day when her happy hour would come, and when the whole heart's treasury would be opened for her to pick out its brightest gems. Nay, perhaps, I might go even a little farther, and remind the reader that life's earlier stage is shorter in Italy than in most other European countries; that the olive and the orange ripen fast; and that the fruits of the heart soon reach maturity in that land. Juliet--all Italian, impassioned Juliet--was not yet fourteen--not till "Lammas Eve"--when the consuming fire took possession of her heart, and Lady Capulet herself was a mother almost at the years of Blanche Marie.