e last trifling arrangements
connected with the ceremony, but doubtless it was in reality to enjoy
one more interview with his inamorata before the performance of those
holy rites which were to make her his for ever. The Count di Solzi was
absent when he arrived, and the young couple, anticipating no evil,
wandered away from the chateau, and at length in their preoccupation
entered a wood through which runs the road from Ajaccio across to the
eastern side of the island. They sauntered along this road for a
considerable distance, when they heard the tramp of a party of soldiers
behind them, and looking back found themselves in the presence of a
detachment of French infantry.

"There was a great deal of ill-feeling existing even then between the
Corsicans and the French, though it was not of course anything like what
it is at present; hostilities had not as yet broken out; the flame which
is so fiercely raging to-day throughout the island being then no more
than a smouldering spark.

"Still, the _rencontre_ was disagreeable, and to shorten it as much as
possible Isabel and her lover turned back with the intention of passing
the French in the opposite direction. But by the time that they had
resolved on this, the French were upon them, and instead of courteously
permitting them to pass, the officer in command ordered them to halt and
give an account of themselves.

"They had of course no option but to obey, which they did. The French
officer, however, either doubted, or affected to doubt, their story, and
announced his intention of taking them both as prisoners into Ajaccio.

"Isabel's lover remonstrated, entreated, and threatened by turns, in
vain; and at length the officers, turning from him, began to assail the
trembling Isabel with jests of the coarsest kind. This was more than
the hot Corsican blood could endure, and suddenly breaking from his
guard, the frantic lover rushed upon the commanding officer, who seemed
to be the chief offender, and with a single blow struck him senseless to
the ground. The next moment he would have been impaled upon the
bayonets of the soldiery, had the other officers not interfered; they
knew their chief, and knew too that they would never be forgiven, did
they not preserve their victim for a punishment to be inflicted by
himself.

"A halt was immediately called, they being at the time in perhaps the
most lonely part of the road. A strong guard was placed over the
prisoners,