ung men around the Irishman were
earnest with him during their drive to the ground not to take his
adversary's life, beseeching him to remember how heavy a load on his
mind would such a deed be during the whole future of his own. Not a
soul of the whole society of the Baths, who by this time knew what
was going on to a man, and almost to a woman (my mother, it may be
observed, had not been at the ball, and knew nothing about it),
doubted that Plowden was going out to be shot as certainly as a
bullock goes into the slaughter house to be killed.

The Irishman, in reply to all the exhortations of his companions,
jauntily told them not to distress themselves; he had no intention of
killing the fellow, but would content himself with "winging" him. He
would have his right arm off as surely as he now had it on!

In the midst of all this the men were put up. At the first shot the
Irishman's well-directed bullet whistled close to Plowden's head, but
the random shot of the latter struck his adversary full in the groin!

He was hastily carried to a little _osteria_, which stood (and still
stands) by the side of the road which runs up the valley of the
Serchio, at no great distance from the mouth of the Turrite Cava
gorge. There was a young medical man among those gathered there, who
shook his head over the victim, but did not, I thought, seem very well
up to dealing with the case.

One of my mother's earliest and most intimate friends at Florence
was a Lady Sevestre, who was then at the Baths with her husband, Sir
Thomas Sevestre, an old Indian army surgeon. He was a very old man,
and was not much known to the younger society of the place. But it
struck me that _he_ was the man for the occasion. So I rushed off to
the Baths in one of the _bagherini_ (as the little light gigs of the
country are called) which had conveyed the parties to the ground, and
knocked up Sir Thomas. Of course all the story came new to him, and
he was very much inclined to wash his hands of it. But on my
representations that a life was at stake, his old professional habits
prevailed, and he agreed to go back with me to Turrite Cava.

But no persuasions could induce him to trust himself to a _bagherino_.
And truly it would have shaken the old man well-nigh to pieces. There
was no other carriage to be had in a hurry. And at last he allowed me
to get an arm-chair rigged with a couple of poles for bearers, and
placed himself in it--not before he had taken t