ed his keen-edged
blade with a force which cut deep into Barozzo's wrist. The dagger
dropped from his palsied grasp, and, at the same instant, his sword
flew above his head. Colonna, having disarmed his treacherous enemy
while still kneeling, disdained to follow up his advantage, and coolly
said to him, "That trick was worthy of you, governor! but your
murderous game is nearly up. Resume your sword, and clutch the guard
more firmly, or in three passes more you will be food for vultures!"

[Footnote A: When a student in Germany, the writer had twelve months'
drill in fencing from a French emigrant, and saw a fencing-match _a
l'outrance_ between that equivocal personage the Chevalier d'Eon--then
an elderly man or woman--with a young and vigorous fencing-master, an
emigrant nobleman, who, like Colonna, by rapid involutions, so
entangled the foil of the Chevalier, that he was at length quite
exhausted, and unable to ward off the incessant attacks of his
adversary. He recollects, too, a curious fact, that the Chevalier,
when fencing, emitted, whenever he lunged out, a succession of sounds
from the throat, which he can only compare with the short grunts of a
frightened pig.--_April 1858._]

Barozzo, who had started from the ground, and now stood foaming at the
mouth like a chafed panther, said nothing in reply, but seized his
sword, and rushed upon his generous adversary with desperate but
unavailing ferocity. I could now perceive that Colonna pressed him
more hotly than before, and that his point no longer sought the
corselet, but the throat of Barozzo, where indeed alone he was
mortally vulnerable, and where, ere long, the death-stroke reached
him. A few passes had been exchanged without a hit, when suddenly
Barozzo's sword again flew from his grasp, and long before it reached
the ground, Colonna's point was buried in his throat. The thrust was
mortal. The steel had severed the duct of life; the hot blood bubbled
out in streams; and the huge Barozzo staggered, reeled, and fell upon
his back. A bloody froth now gathered round his lips, which worked
with agony and rage; the life-blood ebbed apace, and soon the trunk
and limbs of the colossal chieftain were stiffened in death. But even
in death the dominant passions of his soul were strongly written in
his livid features. His glazed and sunken eyes still glared with
fiend-like malice on his conqueror, and every lineament was inwrought
with reckless and insatiable ferocity.