ty defiance. "I am the person you have dared to defame.
I have never assumed to be a prince, and as little am I a rope-dancer.
I am an English gentleman, travelling for his pleasure, and I hurl back
every word you have said of me with contempt and defiance."

Before I had finished this insolent speech, some half-dozen swords were
drawn and brandished in the air, very eager, as it seemed, to cut me to
pieces, and the Count himself required all the united strength of the
party to save me from his hands. At last I was pushed, hustled, and
dragged out of the room to another smaller one on the same floor, and,
the key being turned on me, left to my very happy reflections.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DUEL WITH PRINCE MAX.

I had no writing-materials, but I had just composed a long letter to the
"Times" on "the outrageous treatment and false imprisonment of a British
subject in Austria," when my door was opened by a thin, lank-jawed,
fierce-eyed man in uniform, who announced himself as the Rittmeister von
Mahony, of the Keyser Hussars.

"A countryman--an Irishman," said I, eagerly, clasping his hand with
warmth.

"That is to say, two generations back," replied he; "my grandfather
Terence was a lieutenant in Trenck's Horse, but since that none of us
have ever been out of Austria."

If these tidings fell coldly on my heart, just beginning to glow with
the ardor of home and country, I soon saw that it takes more than two
generations to wash out the Irishman from a man's nature. The honest
Rittmeister, with scarcely a word of English in his vocabulary, was as
hearty a countryman as if he had never journeyed out of the land of Bog.

He had beard "all about it," he said, by way of arresting the eloquent
indignation that filled me; and he added, "And the more fool myself to
notice the matter;" asking me, quaintly, if I had never heard of our
native maxim that says, "One man ought never to fall upon forty."
"Well," said he, with a sigh, "what's done can't be undone; and let us
see what's to come next? I see you are a gentleman, and the worse luck
yours."

"What do you mean by that?" asked I.

"Just this: you'll have to fight; and if you were a 'Gemeiner'--a
plebeian--you'd get off."

I turned away to the window to wipe a tear out of my eye; it had come
there without my knowing it, and, as I did so, I devoted myself to the
death of a hero.

"Yes," said I, "_she_ is in this incident--she has her part in this
scene of my li