. So I have no
objection to a pistol, if it be your choice. No man, I'll venture to
say, has a steadier hand or eye than I have.

They may both be of use to you, Sir, at the sword, as well as at the
pistol: the sword, therefore, be the thing, if you please.

With all my heart.

We parted with a solemn sort of ceremonious civility: and this day I
called upon him; and we rode out together to fix upon the place: and
both being of one mind, and hating to put off for the morrow what could
be done to-day, would have decided it then: but De la Tour, and the
Colonel's valet, who attended us, being unavoidably let into the secret,
joined to beg we would have with us a surgeon from Brixen, whom La Tour
had fallen in with there, and who had told him he was to ride next
morning to bleed a person in a fever, at a lone cottage, which, by the
surgeon's description, was not far from the place where we then were, if
it were not that very cottage within sight of us.

They overtook so to manage it, that the surgeon should know nothing of
the matter till his assistance was called in. And La Tour, being, as I
assured the Colonel, a ready contriving fellow, [whom I ordered to obey
him as myself, were the chance to be in his favour,] we both agreed to
defer the decision till to-morrow, and to leave the whole about the
surgeon to the management of our two valets; enjoining them absolute
secrecy: and so rode back again by different ways.

We fixed upon a little lone valley for the spot--ten to-morrow morning
the time--and single rapier the word. Yet I repeatedly told him, that I
valued myself so much upon my skill in that weapon, that I would wish him
to choose any other.

He said it was a gentleman's weapon; and he who understood it not, wanted
a qualification that he ought to suffer for not having: but that, as to
him, one weapon was as good as another, throughout all the instruments of
offence.

So, Jack, you see I take no advantage of him: but my devil must deceive
me, if he take not his life or his death at my hands before eleven
to-morrow morning.

His valet and mine are to be present; but both strictly enjoined to be
impartial and inactive: and, in return for my civility of the like
nature, he commanded his to be assisting me, if he fell.

We are to ride thither, and to dismount when at the place; and his
footman and mine are to wait at an appointed distance, with a chaise to
carry off to the borders of the Venetian territ