Partly to avoid meeting his parents, partly because he recoiled almost as much from the ennui of meeting the other visitors at her apartments--the Paris ladies associated with her in the ambulance, Raoul de Vandeniar, whom he especially hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had recently come into intimate friendship with both the Italian ladies--his visits to Isaura had become exceedingly rare. He made his incessant military duties the pretext for absenting himself; and now, on this evening, there were gathered round Isaura's hearth--on which burned almost the last of the hoarded fuel--the Venosta, the two Rameaus, the Abbe Vertpre, who was attached as confessor to the society of which Isaura was so zealous a member. The old priest and the young poetess had become dear friends. There is in the nature of a woman (and especially of a woman at once so gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always suggesting query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that "bridal of the earth and sky" which we call religion. And hence, to natures like Isaura's, that link between the woman and the priest, which the philosophy of France has never been able to dissever. "It is growing late," said Madame Rameau; "I am beginning to feel uneasy. Our dear Isaura is not yet returned." "You need be under no apprehension," said the Abby. The ladies attached to the ambulance of which she is so tender and zealous a sister incur no risk. There are always brave men related to the sick and wounded who see to the safe return of the women. My poor Raoul visits that ambulance daily. His kinsman, M. de Rochebriant, is there among the wounded." "Not seriously hurt, I hope," said the Venosta; "not disfigured? He was so handsome; it is only the ugly warrior whom a scar on the face improves." "Don't be alarmed, Signora; the Prussian guns spared his face. His wounds in themselves were not dangerous, but he lost a good deal of blood. Raoul and the Christian brothers found him insensible among a heap of the slain." "M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon recovered the shock of his poor brother's death," said Madame Rameau. "There is very little heart in an aristocrat."