The Kentucky Gazette

The operatic season was at its height in Paris, and the new prima donna was taking all hearts by storm. Her beauty, her wonderful genius and above all, her magnificent voice, had created a marked impression even on the gay capital of France, where that which is false either in science or art soon loses its glitter, and stands out in its true colors. But the Signora Fonti had genius and merit enough to stand a dozen such tests, and she went through the ordeal without suffering.

Of course she had many admirers, but among them all she had not a single lover. The men said she was cold and heartless, that she was incapable of loving; but one glance at her lovely face was sufficient to refute this slander, for one could read there the tokens of a warm and loving heart. But the signora's heart was a proud one, also; it had been steeled in a school of adversity, and she was cautious how she gave people a claim even to her friendship, a caution very necessary to a woman in her position. But that claim once given, she was a true and loyal friend through good and evil fortune.

She had just adopted her profession, and this was not only her first season in Paris, but also her first season on the stage. The director of the Grand Opera had engaged her merely as an experiment; but her success had been so marked, and she had taken such a firm hold upon the Parisians, that she had been retained as first prima donna; and a fortunate engagement it proved, for the receipts of the treasury were larger than they had been for years, and upon the nights when the signora appeared, there was no such thing as an empty seat in all the vast theatre.

Among the admirers of the signora was a certain Colonel Dufour, a gallant officer of the army, who had won his way in Algeria and the Crimea from the ranks to his colonelcy. He was a quiet man, and was not given to much talking: but he was one of those rare specimens of the Almighty's handiwork who make their way into our esteem and friendship as irresistibly as they overcome their way through life.

Colonel Dufour was thirty-six years old, and the signora twenty-seven. They were well suited in age, but entirely opposed to each other in personal appearance, for he was as homely as she was beautiful. This was unfortunate for the Colonel, as the signora was an ardent lover of manly beauty; but it was perhaps atoned for by the fact that she looked for something more than beauty in a man.

Towards the close of the signora's engagement, the energy of the metropolis was directed to the all-absorbing topic of the approaching war with Austria for Italian liberty. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and France was about to take it up. Colonel Dufour was, of course, keenly alive to the situation, for his regiment was one of the "First Corps," and was already under orders to march towards the Alps. He was a true soldier, and was resolved if the war came, to seek still higher promotion in it; but, for the first time in his life, the thought of being called into active service made him sad. The reason was that the Colonel was in love.

The signora, also, was sad at the thought of her friend being called away. She did not love him; but with a woman's tact she had discovered his secret, and she knew that he loved her better than he could ever love any woman again. She valued his friendship as one of her dearest treasures: and it pained her deeply that he should love her, when she could not return his passion.

The night before he left Paris was a holiday to the signora, and she refused to see any one but the Colonel, saying to him with a sad smile, that she would not permit the world to come between them at their parting.

"For you know, she said, gently, "we are very good friends to each other."

The Colonel's heart beat fitfully. It had never even so much as fluttered when the enemy's bullets whistled round his ears in battle, not even when his heroic regiment drove back the last Russian effort to retake the Malakoff, but it trembled now at the tender voice of this woman he loved so well, and who, alas! loved him only as she would have loved her brother. Almost before he knew it, he told her all his passion, and begged her to be his wife, if he came back safe from the war. The simple, manly offer of the brave soldier touched the signora deeply, and she was almost tempted to give him the promise he asked for; but her innate truthfulness rebelled at this. and she told him frankly the true state of her feelings for him.

"I do not love you as a wife should," she said, "and I will not wrong you by marrying you. I love you only as a sister might love a brother. You will some day learn to be satisfied with this; and then you will find another woman who can make you happy; and so I shall be your sister, and be happy in and proud of my noble brother."

The Colonel's face was very sad; but it was calm and tranquil, and as the signora spoke a smile passed over it.

"That day, signora, will never come," he said. "I must rest satisfied with your decision now, but I will not resign the hope that you will yet be my wife, for, I assure you, I shall never marry any other woman."

"I wish I did love you," she said, softly; "for I desire above all things to make you happy."

"That is a good beginning," Colonel Dufour exclaimed, brightening. "I love you too well to fail to win you."

The signora did not contradict him. Indeed, she did not think it unlikely that his prediction might be realized: and so she answered him only with a blush. As they parted the Colonel asked her for some token to carry with him.

"I shall not need it to remember you," he said; but when I am far away, marching and fighting, or perhaps dying, it will make me happy and contented with my lot to have with me something that has been yours."

And as he spoke the signora drew from her finger a plain gold ring and slipped it on his.

"Wear this," she said, "for my sake."

The next morning Colonel Dufour set out with his regiment for the frontier of Savoy, to join the army of the Alps. He reached his destination in due time, and in the course of a few weeks shared in the famous march across Mount Cenis to Lusa. Then came the concentration upon the line of the Po, when the army of France, led by the Emperor Napoleon the Third, confronted its enemy upon the classic soil of Italy.

At Magenta the fighting was hot and heavy, and the Seventeenth and Colonel Dufour rose high in the estimation of all in the army; and when the Emperor came to reward the brave deeds performed on that memorable 4th of June, it was found that Colonel Dufour had been given a general's epaulet. He wrote regularly to the signora, and it was with a proud heart that he sent her news of his promotion.

His letters were generally answered quickly; but this one received no reply. This surprised him; but as the time passed on and no word came from the signora, he began to fear that she was ill. But he had little time to think of this; for the army was advancing towards the Mincio, and every moment was taken up while attending to his duties. The roads were to be mended, and the bridges repaired, so thoroughly had they been destroyed by the retreating Austrians; and there was scarcely an instant to devote to his personal matters.

The morning of the 24th of June came at last, and in the dim midst of the morning the brigade of General Dufour was thrown forward to open the village and heights of Solferino. It was warm work, for the Austrians—who are no children in battle—resisted stubbornly. The battle soon became general along the whole line, and for fourteen hours the French struggled with heroic valor before the prize of victory was yielded to them. The brigade of General Dufour was conspicuous for its gallantry. Its leader was everywhere where danger called him. When the final charge which carried the cemetery and drove the Austrians into the village was made, five color bearers had been shot down in the general's old regiment and his whole brigade had suffered terribly. Seizing the colors, as the signal was given to move forward, he tore them from the staff, and wrapping them around his body placed himself at the head of his troops.

But it was won at a fearful price; and when the order was passed along the line to reform for a fresh advance upon the Austrian centre, it was found that General Dufour was missing. The battle swept on, and when night came the French bivouacked on the hard won field.

The next day the official gazette was made out, and it announced that the valiant General Dufour, whose brigade had rendered such good service, was among the severely wounded, and that the Emperor had promoted him to the grade of lieutenant general.

But the brave man himself was utterly unconscious of all the honors that were bestowed upon him. He had been conveyed to the hospital at Milan, and he now lay there hovering between life and death. He was not alone, however, for he had the best nurse in the whole establishment. She was a "Sister of Mercy"—one of that noble band whose tender ministrations to the wounded form one of the most touching features of the great struggle that gave Italy her freedom. The woman had been for some time on duty in the hospital; and when General Dufour was brought in she went to the surgeon in charge and begged to be allowed the privilege of nursing him. He was an old friend she said, and she would feel a more than ordinary interest in seeking to restore him to health again.

The surgeon looked at her sharply, as he granted the desired permission, and as she turned away, muttered, with a wise shake of his head, "An old lover doubtless, and this is the final drama. Well, well, it's the way of the world, women will love, and they must suffer the penalty."

For many weeks General Dufour hovered between life and death; but the Sister Therese nursed him faithfully. She would suffer no one to relieve her and bore the trying strain upon her strength with a firmness that was heroic. All through the long hours of the summer nights, she would sit by his bedside bathing his fevered brow, and soothing his delirium of pain with her soft touch, and her low, tender words. The surgeon who had been interested in her case, watched her closely.

"Ma foi," he would mutter, with a sigh, "what would I give for my wife to love me as that poor woman loves that man."

At last he had to interfere. The task of nursing one so dangerously wounded as the general was too severe for one woman, and the sister herself was growing pale and thin. The kind-hearted surgeon declared that she must have an assistant, and secure for herself more rest. If she went on in that way she would kill herself

"I care not, so I save him," she said softly.

The surgeon winked hard to hide the moisture in his eyes, and returning to the task to which he had set himself. finally conquered. Sister Therese consented to share her duties with an assistant; and, as if to reward her, the General himself at once began to grow better. Soon he recovered his consciousness, and, though he was very weak and feeble, he was on the way to health and strength again.

Sister Therese now relinquished her charge entirely to the assistant; and, as the war was over, and her services no longer needed, she announced her intention of going back to France. The surgeon urged her to stay and receive the General's thanks; but she refused, gently, but firmly. General Dufour no longer needed her, she said. He was doing very well, and the assistant was very faithful in attending to him. She had other work in France, and she must go to look after it. In vain the surgeon protested against this; Sister Therese was firm; and after the General recovered his consciousness she saw him no more.

One day, about a fortnight after Sister Therese's departure, General Dufour, who was now rapidly recovering, was lying in his cot thinking of the dear woman he had left behind him in France and wondering how she had passed the months that had elapsed since he had seen her. He had not thought of her parting gift since his convalescence began; but now he remembered it, and he raised his hand to look at the ring, when, to his surprise, he found that it was missing. The surgeon was passing through the ward at the time, and the General called him and stated his loss.

"Do you know whether it was on my finger the ring distinctly, for I at first thought of taking it off your hand, lest it should be troublesome while you were suffering from your wound; but I decided to let it remain."

"What can have become of it? I value it highly. It is the gift of a dear friend," said General Dufour.

"I can't imagine," the surgeon said, thoughtfully. "unless Sister Therese took it away with her."

"Sister Therese!" asked the General. "Who is she?"

Then the surgeon told him how the "Sister of Mercy" had asked permission to nurse him, and how nobly and devotedly she had battled with fate for his life. The General listened with surprise and seemed entirely at a loss to comprehend why Sister Therese should be so much interested in him, or who she could be; and the surgeon was still more perplexed and mystified by the affair.

"If you wish to recover the ring, General," he said, at length, "I will ascertain where Sister Therese can be found."

"No," was the reply, "let her keep it. If she took it she will doubtless return it to me, as I see no reason why she should wish to keep it; but if she cares to retain it, let her do so for what she has done for me."

This settled the matter so far as the surgeon was concerned; but it only raised his curiosity (and he had a fair share of that quality) to the highest pitch. He was not, however, more curious or more at a loss to penetrate the mystery which hung over the affair than General Dufour himself. The latter personage could not form any idea as to the identity of the Sister of Mercy who had manifested such an interest in him, and he racked his brain vainly to think of some definite reason for the affair. The surgeon had suggested that the woman might have been an old sweetheart; but this was negatived by the General most positively.

Pierre Dufour had never given his heart to but one woman, and he had never trifled with any. The woman beloved was far away, and did not love him sufficiently well to give up her comfort and ease, and voluntarily take upon herself the hardships and trials of a hospital nurse. It was useless to try to solve the riddle, and he gave it up in despair.

In three weeks more the surgeon told General Dufour he might return to France as soon as he pleased. The General had written to the signora several times during his convalescence; and her replies had come to him regularly. She rejoiced at his promotion and the fame he had won, and sympathized with him in his sufferings. She would visit him, could she follow her own inclination, but that was then an impossibility. She hoped he would soon be well enough to return to France. for she longed to see so true a friend as she believed him to be. But not a word of love did the letters contain. They were written quietly—the General almost thought coldly—and he would have suffered twice the danger. and the bodily torture he had passed through, to have gained from her one word of the tenderness his heart craved so fiercely.

But General Dufour was not a man to fail in matters upon which he set his heart. When he was pronounced well enough to travel, he lost no time in making his arrangements, and was soon en route for Genoa, from which place he proceeded to Marseilles, and thence to Paris, as he was not well enough to hazard the fatigue of the journey over the Alps.

In two hours after he reached Paris he was in the presence of Signora Fonti. She received him joyfully, and with a warmth that made his heart thrill with happiness. She was as beautiful as ever, but she was somewhat paler and thinner than usual. She had not been well, she said, and was now just getting back her strength. She made him tell her everything that concerned himself: and when he spoke of the mysterious Sister of Mercy, and her strange devotion to him, and the loss of the ring, the signora looked at him with a singular smile, and said "I wonder who she was? Some one who loves you very much, I suppose."

He started as she spoke. He held her hand in his, and his eyes were fixed upon it, while a happy smile stole over his face.

"Yes, I believe so now," he said. earnestly. "It was some one that I loved very dearly, and I believe now that she loved me then, and loves me still. Do I err, dear Sister Therese?"

There were tears in his eyes as he spoke; but she smiled happily, and pointed to the missing ring, which now glittered on the signora's hand. I do not know her exact answer to his question, but I do know that it satisfied him, and that she told him that she loved him enough to marry him.

"I loved you," she said, tenderly, "when you went away, only I did not know it. But when I thought of the danger to which you were daily exposed I saw how dear to me you were, and for your sake I determined to do my duty to my country. I disguised myself as a Sister of Mercy, aided by the superior of the order here, who is my friend, and went to Milan to nurse the wounded. I was happy in being there, as I was nearer to you. When you were wounded and brought to Milan, I asked permission to nurse you because I loved you. I would have given my life to save you, and Heaven blessed my efforts and restored you to health. When you recovered your consciousness, I went away, because I did not wish to be recognized by you. I wanted you to know that I loved you: and as I could not tell you, I took with me the ring I had given you, knowing that when we met again you would recognize it, and that would explain everything."

That night General Dufour wrote to the surgeon that he had solved the mystery of the ring, and found out the true name of the Sister of Mercy.

"Indeed," he added, "the discovery I have made is a very pleasant one; and if you can be spared from your duties, I shall be glad to have you visit me one month from to-day, to witness my marriage with the self-same Sister Therese."