he precaution of
slinging a bottle of pale ale to either pole of his equipage. He wore
a very wide-brimmed straw hat, a suit of professional black, and
carried a large white sunshade. And thus accoutred, and accompanied
by four stalwart bearers, he started, while I ran by the side of the
chair, as queer-looking a party as can well be imagined. I can see it
all now; and should have been highly amused at the time had I not very
strongly suspected that I was taking him to the bedside of a dying
man.

And when he reached his patient, a very few minutes sufficed for the
old surgeon to pronounce the case an absolutely hopeless one. After a
few hours of agony, the bully, who had insisted on bringing this fate
on himself, died that same afternoon.

Then came the question who was to tell the Duke. Who it was that
undertook that disagreeable but necessary task, I forget. But the
Duke came out to the little _osteria_ immediately on hearing of the
catastrophe; also the English clergyman officiating at the Baths came
out. And the scene in that large, nearly bare, upper chamber of the
little inn was a strange one. The clergyman began praying by the dying
man's bedside, while the numerous assemblage in the room all kneeled,
and the Duke kneeled with them, interrupting the prayers with his sobs
after the uncontrolled fashion of the Italians.

He was very, very angry. But in unblushing defiance of all equity and
reason, his anger turned wholly against Plowden, who, of course, had
placed himself out of the small potentate's reach within a very
few minutes after the catastrophe. But the Duke strove by personal
application to induce the Grand Duke of Tuscany to banish Plowden
from his dominions, which, to the young banker, one branch of whose
business was at Florence and one at Rome, would have been a very
serious matter. But this, poor old _ciuco_, more just and reasonable
in this case than his brother potentate, the Protestant Don Giovanni
of Lucca, refused to do.

So our pleasant time at the Baths, for that season at least, ended
tragically enough; and whenever I have since visited that singularly
romantic glen of Turrite Cava, its deep rock-sheltered shadows have
been peopled for me by the actors in that day's bloody work.

CHAPTER IX.

It was, to the best of my recollection, much about the same time as
that visit of Charles Dickens which I have chronicled in the last
chapter but one, which turned out to be eventually s