the soldiers, previously quite civil, cursed him for having got the better of their fallen comrade, and went off discussing how be had done the trick, leaving him to lie there.  A peasant carried him to a small suburban inn, where he remained several days oppressed horribly by a sense that he had forgotten something.  When he recollected what it was, he entrusted the captain’s letter to his landlady;—­a good woman, but she chanced to have a scamp of a husband, who snatched it from her and took it to his market.  Beppo supposed the letter to be on its Way to Pallauza, when it was in General Schoneck’s official desk; and soon after the breath of a scandalous rumour began to circulate.

Captain Weisspriess had gone down to Camerlata, accompanied by a Colonel Volpo, of an Austro-Italian regiment, and by Lieutenant Jenna.  At Camerlata a spectacled officer, Major Nagen, joined them.  Weisspriess was the less pleased with his company on hearing that he had come to witness the meeting, in obedience to an express command of a person who was interested in it.  Jenna was the captain’s friend:  Volpo was seconding him for the purpose of getting Count Ammiani to listen to reason from the mouth of a countryman.  There could be no doubt in the captain’s mind that this Major Nagen was Countess Anna’s spy as well as his rival, and he tried to be rid of him; but in addition to the shortness of sight which was Nagen’s plea for pushing his thin transparent nose into every corner, he enjoyed at will an intermittent deafness, and could hear anything without knowing of it.  Brother officers said of Major Nagen that he was occasionally equally senseless in the nose, which had been tweaked without disturbing the repose of his features.  He waited half-an-hour on the ground after the appointed time, and then hurried to Milan.  Weisspriess waited an hour.  Satisfied that Count Ammiani was not coming, he exacted from Volpo and from Jenna their word of honour as Austrian officers that they would forbear-to cast any slur on the courage of his adversary, and would be so discreet on the subject as to imply that the duel was a drawn affair.  They pledged themselves accordingly.  “There’s Nagen, it’s true,” said Weisspriess, as a man will say and feel that he has done his best to prevent a thing inevitable.

Milan, and some of the journals of Milan, soon had Carlo Ammiani’s name up for challenging Weisspriess and failing to keep his appointment.  It grew to be discussed as a tremendous event.  The captain received fifteen challenges within two days; among these a second one from Luciano Romara, whom he was beginning to have a strong desire to encounter.  He repressed it, as quondam drunkards fight off the whisper of their lips for liquor.  “No more blood,” was his constant inward cry.  He wanted peace; but as he also wanted Countess Anna of Lenkenstein and her estates, it may possibly be remarked of him that what he wanted he did not want to pay for.