nevertheless, though she would not willingly have acknowledged it to
her confessor, she was glad that Trombin had driven the lady-killer from
the field, and she only wished that Stradella might have done it
himself. As for the Bravi's serenade, she did not resent it at all, nor
did her husband; it was a friendly entertainment, and nothing more, on
the part of the two wealthy Venetian gentlemen to whom the young couple
already owed an immense debt of gratitude. When the chorus was ended,
Stradella clapped his hands.

'Bravo!' cried Ortensia, and the word sounded clearly in the momentary
silence.

'At your ladyship's service!' answered Trombin in a laughing tone, for
the jest she unconsciously made in using the single word seemed to him
full of humour.

Gambardella's dark lantern sent its searching ray up to the window at
that moment, and showed the heads of the two young people close
together, for the shutters were now wide open; an instant later the
light went out and the music began again. It was a madrigal this time,
airy and changing, and sung by four men, one of whom had a beautiful
male contralto, which is a rarity even in Italy. Stradella recognised it
instantly, for he had often sung at the Lateran and knew the man.

'They are of the choir of Saint John's,' he whispered to Ortensia.

There was rivalry between the Lateran and the Vatican in the matter of
music then, as there has been in our own day, and it was no wonder that
the musicians themselves had joined in the fray when Don Alberto drew on
Trombin and Gambardella.

The serenade continued, and the two Bravi enjoyed it quite as much as
Ortensia herself; but it was not likely that Don Alberto would be
satisfied to go quietly to bed after being wounded under the very walls
of his father's palace by a professional cut-throat who had been
doubtless hired to protect a rival serenader. There was a guardhouse of
the watch not far away, at the foot of the Capitol Hill, and thither he
hastened, after twisting his silk scarf round his forearm as tightly as
he could to staunch the blood.

In less than a quarter of an hour he came back with a corporal's guard
of the night-watchmen, armed with clumsy broadswords, but each carrying
a serviceable iron-shod cudgel of cornel-wood which, according to old
Roman rhyme, breaks bones so easily that the blows do not even hurt:
'Corniale, rompe le ossa e non fa male.' The corporal himself carried an
elaborately wrought lante