th very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and
projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer.

'Well, well--so it is to come off to-morrow, is it?'

Andrea could not repress his disgust, and let his arm hang loosely at
his side to show that he was in no mood for these familiarities. Seeing
the Baron di Santa Margherita enter the room, he disengaged himself
quickly.

'Excuse me, Count,' he said, 'I want to speak to Santa Margherita.'

The Baron met him with the assurance that all was in order. 'Very
good--at what hour?'

'Half-past ten at the Villa Sciarra. Rapiers and fencing-gloves, _a
outrance_.'

'Whom else have you got for seconds?'

'Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo de Souza. We settled everything as
quickly as possible, avoiding formalities. Giannetto had got his seconds
already. We arranged the proceedings at the Club without any fuss. Try
not to be too late in going to bed--you must be dead tired.'

But, heedless of this good advice, on leaving the Palazzo Giustiniani,
Andrea betook himself to the Club, where Santa Margherita came upon him
at two o'clock in the morning, and, forcing him to leave the
card-tables, bore him off on foot to the Palazzo Zuccari.

'My dear boy,' he said reproachfully as they walked along, 'you are
really foolhardy. In a case like this, the smallest imprudence might
lead to fatal results. To preserve his full strength and activity, a
good swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has
for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat--the
articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The
mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out
of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or
drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his
parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will
suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the
top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza
di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway bathed in silver,
and the Trinita de' Monti rising into the soft blue.

'Certainly,' continued the Baron, 'you have great advantages over your
adversary, amongst others, a cool head--also you have been out before. I
saw you in Paris in your affair with Gauvaudan--you remember? A grand
duel that! You fought like a god!'

Andrea laughed, much gratified. The praise of this unrivalled duellis