Your pardon, Dom Basilio: you have done your best, and, if I seem
ungrateful, let me make amends and thank you for giving me this last,
best hour. . . . Indeed, Dom Basilio, I am a dead man, but your
bandages are tying my soul here for a while, where it would stay.
Gervase"--he reached out a hand to my uncle, who was past hiding his
tears--"Gervase--brother--there needs no talk, no thanks, between
you and me. . . ."
I drew back and, touching Dom Basilio by the shoulder, led him to the
window. "He has no single wound that in itself would be fatal," the
Trappist whispered; "but a twenty that together have bled him to
death. He hacked his way up this stair through half a score of
Genoese; at the door here, there was none left to hinder him, and we,
having found and followed with the keys, climbed over bodies to find
him stretched before it."
"Emilia!" It was my father's voice lifted in triumph; and the Queen
rose at the sound of it, trembling, and stood by the bed. "Emilia!
Ah, love--ah, Queen, bend lower!--the love we loved--there, over the
Taravo--it was not lost. .
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