University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER 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 can not 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
neighborhood, 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. Malaspina 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 slanderer!” cried Amieri, and
striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a blow
at Malaspina, which by a backward movement, was
received 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!”