University of Virginia Library

3. CHAP. III.

Biondo had readily found a second in the first
artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk
they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the
Palatine, to look back on the ruins of the Forum.—
At a fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to
find his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business
of the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the
ruins that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke,
for an instant, all of the painter in his soul.

“Is it not glorious, Lenzoni?” he said, pointing with
his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried
their capitals among the stars.

“We have not come out to sketch, Amieri!” was
the reply.

“True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil
was in them, and I forget revenge while I see what I
shall never sketch again!”

Lenzoni struck his hand heavily on Amieri's
shoulder, as if to wake him from a dream, and looked
close into his face.

“If you fight in this spirit, Biondo—”

“I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni; fear
me not! But when I saw, just now, the bel'effetto
of the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constantine,
and felt instinctively for my pencil, something
told me, at my heart's ear—you will never
trace line again, Amieri!”

“Take heart, caro amico!”

My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast!—
What were my blood, I cannot but reflect, added to
the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an
empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Lenzoni!
Come on to the fountain!”

The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of
the neglected fountain that once sparkled through
the “gold palace” of Nero. The white edges of
half buried marble peeped here and there from the

grass, and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and
tottering arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant
possessor of life amid the forgotten ashes of the
Cæsars. Amieri listened to his song.

“You are prompt, signor!” said a gay-voiced
gentleman, turning the corner of the ruined wall, as
Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart
with the last sweet words of Violanta.

“`Sempre pronto,' is a good device,” answered
Lenzoni, springing to his feet. “Will you fight, side
to the moon, signors, or shall we pull straws for the
choice of light?”

Amieri's antagonist was a strongly made man of
thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features
eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing.—
The origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation,
coupled with the name of the young Countess
Cesarini, which Biondo, who was standing in the
shadow of a wall, watching her window from the
Corso,accidentally overheard. A blow on the mouth
was the first warning the stranger received of a
listener's neighbourhood, and after a momentary
struggle they exchanged cards, and separated to
meet in an hour, with swords. at the fountain, on the
Palatine.

Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers
of Rome, but his antagonist, the Count Lamba
Malaspina, had just returned from a long residence

in France, and had the reputation of an accomplished
swordsman. Amieri was slighter in person, but well
made, and agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni
looked into the cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and
fire which he would have relied upon to ensure his
friend success in an ordinary contest, made him
tremble now.

Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords.
Amieri had read his antagonist's character, like his
friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he
broke down his guard with the quickness of lightning,
and wounded him in the face. Malapina smiled as
he crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment
Amieri's sword flew high above his head, and the
count's was at his breast.

“Ask for your life, mio bravo!” he said, as calmly
as if they had met by chance in the Corso.

“A'morte! villain and slandered!” cried Amieri,
and striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a
a blow at Malaspina, which by a backward movement,
was recieved on the point of the blade. Transfixed
through the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain
against the superior strength and coolness of his
antagonist, and falling on his knee, waited in silence
for his death-blow. Malaspina drew his sword
gently as possible from the wound, and recommending
a tourniquet to Lenzoni till a surgeon could be
procured, washed the blood from his face in the

fountain,and descended into the Forum, humming the
air of a new song.

Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm
around Lenzoni's neck, Biondo arrived at the surgeon's
door.

“Can you save his hand?” was the first eager
question.

Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty,
and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the helpless
fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely parted.

“I may save the hand,” he said, “but he will never
use it more!”

Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and
fell back insensible.

“Poor Biondo!” said Lenzoni, as he raised his
pallid head from the surgeon's pillow. “Death were
less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine.—
The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never
wouldst use pencil more!”