“O, I would prove my love, no more than that--even to this last renunciation! Do you fear? Then, I say, it is not too late yet to draw back.” She gave a little gasp, and would have withdrawn from him; but he caught at her hands and held them fast. “Isabel!” “O!” she said despairingly, “after all that has been between us.” “Listen to me. It is only to free you if you will, so that free you can choose.” “How can you hurt me so, when you say you love me? I would not be so cruel to my love.” “O, child, child! cannot you understand?” She gazed at him a moment with impassioned eyes; then let herself slip once more into his arms. “I cannot lose you, Bonbec. No, not for all the world.” “Now,” he said deeply, “the last is said; and we are one and inseparable to eternity.” “Yes, to eternity!” “That I could have doubted you! O, my soul, forgive me!” Presently she stirred, and, the starlight shining on her wet lashes, yielded herself to one last long kiss; then gently put him from her. “Good-bye, beloved--O, good-bye, good-bye!” “It is like death to leave you, Isabel.” “Then do not go. Come back--here, into my room--only till the day breaks. There is something fearful in the night. I feel as if, once we were parted, it will never give you to me again.” He laughed, whispering away her terrors. “The dark is my true friend. How but for it could I creep back into hiding?” “The long, long way! O, go warily, for fear of hateful things!” “Be comforted. I hold my life too dear. Send Fanchette to the little door. Remember--at midnight. The horses will be waiting.” “Bonbec?” “Yes, dearest?” “Call me your slave.” “My gentle, pretty slave, good-night: kiss the basil for us both.” “O, yes, yes!” CHAPTER XXVI. WITHIN THE PRESBYTERY The northernmost of the five gates of Parma discharged direct upon the highway that led to Colorno. At intervals from this _embouchure_ came shooting as it were the _disjecta membra_ of a disrupted State. Bodies of high functionaries, coach-loads of subsidiary officials, staffs civil and military, clerks, grooms, secretaries--mounted, perched in dancing carrioles, or drawn heavily behind teams of ponderous Flanders mares, these and their like appeared issuing intermittingly all day from the open culvert, whence they rolled leisurely on their way towards that crystal oasis in the plains ten miles distant. The duke, in short, was changing house, and this anticipatory exodus, which looked like the decimation of his capital, represented no more after all than the adequate personnel of a great lord retiring upon a favoured sylvan retreat. So do our needs enlarge with our state, until, so far as self-help goes, we reach the condition of the paralytic. To Don Philip a fifth and sixth _valet de chambre_ would have appeared more indispensable than a single knife and boot boy might appear to us.