Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp; or, A Campaign in Calabria, Volume 2 (of 3)

Produced by Al Haines.

*Adventures*

*Of*

*An Aide-De-Camp:*

*Or,*

*A Campaign In Calabria.*

By

James Grant, Esq.

Author Of "The Romance Of War."

_Claud._ I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye, That liked, but had a rougher task in hand Than to drive liking to the name of love: But now I am returned, and that war thoughts Have left their places vacant; in their rooms Come thronging soft and delicate desires, All prompting me how fair young Hero is, Saying how I liked her ere I went to war. SHAKSPEARE.

In Three Volumes. Vol. II.

London: Smith, Elder, And Co., Cornhill. 1848.

London: Printed by STEWART and MURRAY, Old Bailey.

dedication info

*Contents.*

Chapter

I.--Italian Intrigues in Country Quarters II.--Francatripa, the Brigand III.--A Snake in the Grass IV.--The Horn Sounds V.--A Duel and a Discovery VI.--Arrival of the Philistines VII.--Adventure at "The Centaur" VIII.--Love and War IX.--Poor Luisa! X.--The Siege of Scylla XI.--The Forlorn-Hope XII.--A Rencontre! XIII.--Reggio.--An Improvisatore XIV.--Navarro--Revenge! XV.--The Cavallo Marino XVI.--A Race.--Galley-Slaves XVII.--The Revolt of the Galley Slaves XVIII.--The Three Candle-Ends XIX.--Who Is He? XX.--The Cardinal XXI.--The First Penitent.--The Nun XXII.--A Chance Of Escape Lost XXIII.--The Second Penitent.--The Cavalier

*Adventures*

*Of An*

*Aide-De-Camp.*

*Chapter I.*

*Italian Intrigues In Country Quarters.*

On arriving at the base of those lofty rocks which were crowned by the Villa Belcastro, a sound like the baying and growling of dogs, caused Marco's horse to snort, and mine to plunge and curvet furiously. On advancing a little further we discovered by the light of the moon a sight which filled us with disgust. Two enormous lynxes had been contending for the shattered corse of the Cavaliere Galdino, which had already suffered considerable mutilation under their fangs. They retired on our approach, but one dragged the remains nearly a hundred yards, nor dropped them until we fired our pistols and wounded it, when they both fled over the mountains, howling: one with agony, and the other with fear. We had considerable trouble in getting our horses past the body, which lay fairly in the centre of our narrow path; and, notwithstanding that Cartouche was a trained military charger, he plunged, reared, and perspired with rage and fear, until, by dint of spur, I forced him right over the ghastly remains of our late entertainer.

Soon after, the moon went down: the sky changed from deep blue to dusky grey, and gloomy clouds hurried in flitting masses across it; at times a solitary star shot forth, and then was lost. The tinkling rivulet winding through the valley, and the silver haze which floated from it through pine and orange groves, faded away, and we could no longer see the track before us. Castelermo now proposed that we should bivouac for the night in the first eligible place, that our nags might have better bottom for continuing our journey by daybreak.

After a brief reconnoisance we chose a sheltered spot where there was a little fountain; the water bubbled away from a fissure in one of those masses of grey sandstone so common in Calabria, and of which the rocks of the Apennines are chiefly composed. We picqueted our horses within a circle of little maple trees, which formed a pleasant border round the rocky alcove, and rolling our cloaks about us, were in five minutes alike oblivious of the terrors of wolves, banditti, and the malaria.

When I awoke, the morning sun was rising like a globe of fire above the mountains, and pouring between their craggy summits a flood of yellow lustre into the misty valley where we lay. Afar off, the villa of Belcastro, its casements gleaming in the dancing sunbeams like plates of polished gold, towered on the cliff that rose above the waving woodlands bathed in purple and white. A solitary fig-tree threw its shadow across the fountain; the rude bason of which had been built by the shepherds with the richly sculptured fragments of some ancient building: a relic, perhaps, of the days of Magna Graecia. On the moss-grown pieces were initials and inscriptions which I had neither time nor lore to decipher; and close by me lay, half sunk in the flowery turf, a mossy Corinthian capital, with a winged horse, exquisitely carved, springing from the acanthus leaves at each corner, and supporting on its outspread pinions the acute angles of the abacus. A glittering snake was twining around it; and the contiguity of such a reptile recalling the adventure with the gypsies, I sprang up, shook my ample cloak, and prepared for the saddle again.

A gallop in the pure air of a breezy morning is delightful exercise; it refreshes the body and enlivens the spirits, bracing the frame and lightening the heart. The place where we had reposed was swampy, and a pestilential vapour hovered about it, oppressing us with an inclination to doze, which we had some trouble in combating; but our gallop along the sunny mountain-side soon shook off the drowsiness which weighed down our eyelids, and the numbness that stiffened our limbs. The sensation I mean, must have been experienced by all who have bivouacked by night in low marshy places in a warm atmosphere.

We passed the little town of Belcastro, the streets of which, according to ancient use and wont, were so encumbered with herds of wild pigs, the common stock of the inhabitants, that we could scarcely get our startled horses through, and were every moment in danger of being thrown by the snorting porkers running between their legs. We had a hasty repast at a miserable albergo; but it was the best in the place, and, as the host averred, the identical house in which Thomas Aquinas was born.

The roads were so winding: and intricate that as yet we were only twenty miles distant from Crotona, and we pushed rapidly forward, resolving to make up for the previous day's delay.

Castelermo, upon whom the adventures of the past night had made a gloomy impression, rode beside me for many miles in silence. His mind was, doubtless, reverting to a thousand long-forgotten dreams and cherished thoughts, which his interview with the fickle Despina and the sound of her voice had summoned before him; while I, on the contrary, felt light-hearted as the distance diminished between us and the villa D'Alfieri, which it was my intention to visit on our way to head-quarters. I thought more of Bianca's bright eyes and glossy ringlets, than the oblong despatches, returns of killed, wounded, prisoners and missing, lists of captured cannon, stores, &c. &c., with which Macleod had stuffed my sabre-tache, for the perusal of Sir John Stuart.

After a time, the wonted serenity of the cavalier returned, and as the country into which we penetrated became more mountainous and romantic, he related to me many a wild legend and tradition of blood and sorcery--of Gothic chiefs, Norman knights, and Saracen emirs, and many a sad story of Italian love; all of which have long since passed away from my remembrance. Every rood of ground was rich in memories of the past, and covered with the moss-grown relics of bygone nations and ages.

A ride of twelve miles or so brought us to Catanzaro, in the principality of Squillaci, one of the finest towns in Calabria Ultra, situated about two miles from the Adriatic. Catanzaro then bore many traces of that terrible earthquake which in 1783 devastated those provinces and the Isle of Sicily; and it has been almost wholly destroyed by a similar visitation in 1832. Its ladies were esteemed the most beautiful in southern Italy; but I had little opportunity of judging for myself: we had the pleasure of seeing only one handsome girl, who, during the hour or two we halted, displayed a formidable sample of the worst traits in the Calabrian character. A small party of Italian troops, sent over from Palermo, were quartered in the town. Their uniform was white, with scarlet facings and epaulettes, black cross-belts and heavy bear-skin caps; altogether they were very soldier-like fellows, and their commanding officer, a gay young Neapolitan, whom we met at the table d'hote, was not less so. As we had been acquainted at Palermo, in the course of ten minutes we became intimate as old friends; and Captain Valerio Piozzi, of Caroline's Italian Guard, soon made us aware that he was the most reckless and dissipated cavalier in Ferdinand's service, and that he thought it no small honour to be deemed so. But we knew all that before: his pranks and gallantries had long furnished laughter and conversation for every mess and coterie in Sicily.

Castelermo changed colour when we met him.

"Valerio Piozzi!" he whispered to me; "our friend is the identical officer of whom our late acquaintance the Signor Galdino was so jealous. Basta! there was good reason to be on the alert, and keep Despina close while he was so near as Catanzaro!"

"I have news for you, Signor Capitano," said Marco, as we lounged from the table d'hote towards a cantina.

"My friend, I am glad of that," said the captain, with a half yawn, "'tis so deuced dull here, that one seems quite out of the world--entombed--bedevilled!"

"Il Cavaliere di Belcastro--"

"Ha!" exclaimed the captain, changing countenance, and turning briskly to Marco, whom he keenly scrutinized through his glass, which never left his eye.

"My gay Valerio, I have a tale to tell which will harrow up your heart, if you have one."

"The deuce!"

"The husband of Despina is dead--"

"The devil! is that all?" exclaimed the captain, with an almost uncontrollable burst of laughter. "That makes me merry," he added, stroking his mustachios, which were well perfumed and pointed with pomatum. "The particulars, Caro Signor: slain by the brigands, I presume?"

"No, by his own evil passions."

"Faith, they nearly slew even me in Venice," replied Piozzi, who, on hearing of our visit to the villa, tossed his cap into the air.

"Che gioja, what happiness!" he exclaimed; "I must to horse, and away to Despina (I saw poor Marco's brow cloud). Ola, my horse! Annibale Porko, seek my servant," he cried to a sergeant who passed, "and order my horses in an hour." The soldier saluted, and withdrew. "Per Baccho! 'tis joyous news: old Galdino gone to the Styx. Amen! Devil go with him. What a merry bout we shall have.--And his property--all settled on the Cavalieressa--bravo, Valerio! luckiest of dogs! Here, Signor Cantiniero, wine--wine! What shall we have, Marco--say Signor Dundas--you are a judge: Muscatelle?"

"Basta! no--we have had enough of that," said Castelermo shrugging his shoulders.

"Ha--ha! I forgot," replied Valerio with a reckless laugh--"ruddy Burgogna then--golden Andaluzia--sparkling champagne, gleaming like diamonds in sunbeams?'

"As you please, I am no connoisseur," said I, and two large crystal jars of the last were speedily summoned.

"Corpo di Baccho! it is a punishment for a Carthusian to reside here in this dull place on the Adriatic shore," said the captain, as we lounged on the rustic sofas, beneath the vine covered verandah of the cantina, and pushed the wine jars about the well polished table; "positively I am ennuied to death, and would give a year's pay to find myself once more at Naples, or even at Reggio--there are some sprightly girls there."

"And yet the women of Catanzaro are considered the fairest in Italy," observed a smart young fellow, with whom we had been conversing on various topics for some time past: he had followed us uninvited from the table d'hote, where his very handsome features and long fair locks had won him our favour.

"Handsome they may be; but I would not give a lively sewing-girl of Naples for the fairest lady in the Calabrias. Ah! had you heard Italian whispered by the dulcet tongues of Venetian girls, you would turn with disgust from the guttural Greek of these poor provincials."

"'Tis a matter of taste," replied our boyish friend, sipping his wine to conceal the rising colour which glowed on his beardless face. "I am a stranger here and pretend not to judge of the beauty or vivacity of the ladies: so I presume is this British Officer; and the Cavaliere di Malta cannot be expected to venture an opinion on such topics."

"Now by all the gods of accursed heathendom!" cried the Italian officer, showing all his white teeth as he laughed boisterously. "Heaven help thine ignorance, most gentle signor of this barbarous land. I have seen at the windows of the Maltese knights fairer faces than all the towns of these wild provinces could produce. These cavaliers are greater connoisseurs than a Turkish dealer in such commodities; for the portentous cross on their breasts does not in any way freeze the heart below, or render it insensible to such impressions. By grey dawn, many a pretty damsel shrouded in a loose domino have I seen stealing away from the portal of the knights' palace at Naples: though these cavaliers deport themselves demurely enough by day, the stars do not look on merrier revellers or more joyous companions; and the Cavaliere Marco knows well the truth of what I affirm. All Italy knows the famous military _dis_-order of Saint John."

"The Cavaliere Marco would advise your lively valour to speak more gently of his order. Some irregularities are doubtless committed by my brethren of the sword and mantle; but you must bear in memory, the saying of the cunning Lucchesi--'There are good and bad people every where.' Signor, speak not against my order! When I remember what it was but a few years ago--when the church of St. John was hung with the shields of four thousand Knights; its marble floors covered with the achievements of those who were gone; and its dome filled with the captured trophies of the Infidels--when the unsullied banner of the order waved from the ramparts of Sant'. Elmo, and we had gallies at sea and soldiers on the land, my mind is filled with sorrow and regret. When I look back to the glorious days of our illustrious grand master, old Villiers de L'Isle Adam, to those days when six hundred knights shut up in the island of Rhodes defended it for six months against two hundred thousand Turks, my soul is filled with exultation and chivalry! So beware, Signor Valerio! The Knights of Malta have suffered so much of late from the usurpation of Buonaparte and the unfulfilled and often reiterated promises of Britain, that they have grown somewhat petulant and hasty."

"Enough, signor--I sit rebuked, and submit quietly, knowing that I may be a little in error," answered the frank officer. "But to change the subject: if I am not soon recalled to head quarters, I shall have to quit this Catanzaro without beat of drum. The air of the place is getting quite too hot for me: I have been here only three weeks, and in that time contracted debts to the amount of some thousand ducats. I tried the rouge et noir--abomination! they only made matters worse, and the villanous shop-people, the Podesta, the Eletti and the tipstaves, are all ready to pounce upon me en masse: worse than all, the women of the place are at drawn daggers about me."

"You are quite to be envied!" said the young Calabrian with an air of impatient scorn.

"You shall hear whether it be so," replied the captain. "Ah! the uniform of the Queen's Italian Guard is something new here; and in truth we have been rather free with our favours: myself in particular. Three narrow escapes have been the consequence (these Calabrians are wondrously prone to assassination): once from the knife of a rascal hired by some frail fair one unknown, and once from a dose of bella donna, with which an angry damsel contrived to drug my chocolate the other morning: when I was just about to drink it, she threw herself at my feet in an agony of sorrow and horror, imploring my pity and forgiveness; so, after abundance of tears, threats, upbraiding, and all that sort of thing, I quietly put her outside the door"--

"And the third, signor; the third?" said the young Calabrian impatiently.

"Was from the poisoned weapon of a furious brother, whose sister I had jilted and grown weary of. Ah! the cowardly dog! he called it honour, I think: rather amusing in this rustic land of fauns and satyrs. But the adventure would have gone otherwise with me, had not my trusty serjeant, Annibale Porko, sucked the wound, and bathed it with brandy. Behold! 't is yet far from well," he added, pulling up the richly laced sleeve of his white uniform, and showing a long scar above the wrist.

"Faith!" said I, "if you have many such scrapes, Captain Piozzi, you are likely to be cut off, and suddenly: an Italian seldom brooks a wrong."

"But I cannot comprehend the nature of these unpolished Calabrians," replied this heedless harum-scarum gallant, into whose empty head the wine was rapidly mounting. "Per Baccho! they are mere savages--hottentots! Will you believe it? if I venture to pay a compliment to the mistress of my billet, or to kiss her daughter (which I am often disposed to do, the said daughter being rather fresh and pretty), the Maestro di Casa jerks up his Messina sash, twirls his whiskers, and plays so ominously with the haft of his knife, that I am compelled to keep my gallantry within very narrow bounds. I must even refrain from those little acts of cavalier-like politeness, by which some obliging citizens of Naples would consider themselves duly honoured: more especially if it were a noble gentiluomo of the Queen's Guard that deigned to salute one of his family. O! for joyous Venice, and its money-making mothers, who for sixty sequins--"

"Basta!" interrupted Marco, "you let every one hear you, Valerio, by speaking in such a key. By St. Antony--!"

"Hush Marco, 't is quite unfashionable to swear by these old saints: the newest canonizations are always most in vogue. St. Antony, indeed! The ancient fool; I would rather swear by his gridiron, which the monks show at Rimini. But to resume. Here, in this cursed province, if one but looks at a woman, cold iron is thought of instantly, and one may be dead as Brutus in less time than one can utter a credo.--What the deuce can delay my rogue of a groom?"

"You labour under so many annoyances, that I am astonished you have survived them," observed the young provincial contemptuously.

"By the jovial San Cupido! you know not half of them. As my soldiers are apt to imitate their accomplished commander in many things, the king's service has lost several smart fellows in these domestic brawls. But courage, Valerio! It is quite a godsend, this sudden death of that bear, old Belcastro; and as the charming Despina is so near I shall hope to pay her many a visit of condolence. Nay, frown not, Marco, my love for her is of the most pure and Platonic description. Besides, I have sent a most heart-rending memorial to the queen, and it is so well seconded and flanked by the Duchessa di Bagnara, and other fair ladies who are impatient for my return, that I have no doubt my party will soon be ordered to rejoin at Palermo, without my troubling our gruff commander-in-chief, Giambattista Fardella. Then adieu to Catanzaro, its wickedness, and its women."

"And Signora Teresa with the rest?" asked the Calabrian, with a low voice and a flushing cheek.

"Ha! know you Teresa Navona?" asked the captain, scanning the fine features of the youth with a keen glance. "Do you belong to Catanzaro?'

"Yes, signor,--no. That is, not now," stammered the boy, with angry confusion. "But I once resided here, and have only just returned after a long absence. You know Teresa?"

"As well as man can know such a compound of fascination and subtlety as an Italian woman," laughed the handsome guardsman. "You are to learn, gentlemen, that this is the escapade I spoke of: the duel with the devil of a brother. There was a judge of the grand civil court of Cosenza, who died here lately, after living in retirement since our friends the French crossed the Alps. This learned old fellow had two daughters, Pompeia and Teresa; the first I have never seen, but the last, who resides with her mother here, has been for some time past the happy means of cheering my dreary detachment duty in the towns hereabout: and truly the girl is a magnificent creature for a Calabrian! Her bright eyes and ruby lips are Italian; her white skin, full bosom, and long flowing hair have come with the Greek blood; and her vivacity is quite oriental."

"_Was_, you should say," muttered the young man. "Alas! signor, her vivacity has fled since you knew her."

"In short, Captain Piozzi, you have had an intrigue," said I.

"Right, signor," he replied, composedly; "but one fraught with the due proportion of mystery and cold steel which usually accompany an Italian intrigue. It being discovered that I had carried the fortress by a _coup de main_, the girl Teresa was consigned to that convent yonder, the campanile of which you now see shining in the sun; and the mother solaced herself with strong hysterics and strong waters until the arrival of her son, a fiery young subaltern of the Sicilian volunteers, who galloped across from the camp of St. Eufemio, with the express purpose of parading me.

"Three days ago, when returning from this wine-house, and just under the Madonna at the street corner yonder, this young spark assaulted me sword in hand; flinging his hat on the ground and his cloak round his left arm, in the most approved duellist fashion. So furious was his onset that I had scarcely time to stand on my guard, but we thrust and cut at each other like any two bravos on the boards of the San Carlo; my superior skill soon overcame the Herculean strength of the Calabrese officer, and the fifth passado laid him dead at my feet."

"Madonnia mia!" exclaimed the Calabrian, smiting his breast with horror.

"The devil!" I exclaimed; "poor fellow, and you really killed him?"

"Not quite, signor; but old Porko, I believe, brained him with his halberd," was the cool reply.

"The villain, Porko, shall answer dearly for this mutiny and murder!" exclaimed Castelermo, with an aspect of severity. "And so, Signor Piozzi, you have gone from bad to worse; first outraged the confiding sister, and then destroyed the spirited brother!"

"Cospetto!" muttered Piozzi, "I know these things will sound ill at the court, and in old Fardella's office at Palermo, whatever they may be thought of at our mess-house on the Cassero."

"But how will they appear in the court of Heaven, on that dread day, when all men will be judged by their deeds?" asked the Maltese commander, with a stern expression: which, however, did not abash our volatile friend.

"Admirable!" he replied, waving his cigar; "you act the military monk to the life. That sort of air did very well in L'Isle Adam's days, but it won't pass now, Marco; so pray lay it aside, or assume it only in the convent at Malta, or the palace at Naples, and for the present be the frank cavalier of the last hour. A proud spirit cannot brook an admonitory tone. Ah! here comes my rascally groom at last: while he loiters with that girl yonder, let us drink to la Signora Teresa. Her family, if they be wise, will hush the matter up, and she may yet marry some honest artisan; who will deem her none the worse for having a few ducats from Valerio Piozzi, captain of the Royal Italian Guard, knight grand cross of San Marco, and Heaven knows what more."

The eyes of the young Calabrese flashed fire.

"And think you, base ruffian," he exclaimed, in a voice shrill and tremulous with rage, "that old Albanian Greeks, though now sunk to the grade of mere Italian citizens, will forget that their blood has descended to them from the long line of the princes of Epirus, and permit these foul wrongs to pass without retribution?"

"Insolent brat, I neither know nor care!" replied the captain, grasping his riding switch, and regarding the bold youth sternly; "and but that your chin is smooth as an apple--poh! I can bandy word and blow with any blusterer in Italy, and shall not shrink from a peasant or woodcutter of this rustic land: but now, since the days of chivalry have passed away, tell me, my pretty Messerino, who will become the champion of this fallen star? and, save myself, to whom can she look for redress?"

"To the right hand of her sister, since death has left none other to avenge her," cried the youth, in a voice rising almost to a shriek; and the bright barrel of a pistol glittered in the sunlight which streamed between the vine-leaves of the trellis. Levelling it full at Valerio, she fired, just as I struck up her weapon. From the tone of the voice, and the despair that glared in the eye, there flashed upon me a suspicion of the sex and purpose of this youth.

The ball dashed to pieces the head of the large waxen Madonna, which occupied a lofty niche at the corner of the street. A cry of "sacrilege, and murder!" arose, and the people rushed towards us from all quarters. As the smoke cleared, we discovered the imperturbable captain stroking his moustache, and smiling grimly, but with an air of exquisite nonchalance.

"Thrice my heart failed me; but he is destroyed at last!" cried Pompeia, in terrible accents, as she cast away the pistol (which she had fired with both her eyes closed), and sinking back on the rustic sofa, burst into a passion of tears.

"Holy St. John of Jerusalem, and of Rhodes, look here!" exclaimed Castelermo, while I seized her that she might not escape.

"Wretch!" muttered Marco.

"I am wretched, indeed!" she replied bitterly, still keeping her eyes closed; "yet I do not deem myself so abject as to be grasped thus with impunity. Unhand me, signor: I have only slain the destroyer of my sister's peace, my brother's life (perhaps my mother's too), and the fame of our family. Guiltless of wanton wickedness, I have only destroyed a ribald and reckless libertine, in the midst of his sinful boasting."

"Here is a devil of a damsel!" said Valerio, with a laugh. "Per Baccho! a pestilent narrow escape it was. But for you, Signor Claude, I might have been chaffering with Charon for a passage across the Styx, and squabbling, perhaps, with old Belcastro on the voyage. To your care I commend this amiable sample of her sex, while I canter off to the villa of Despina."

His servant at that moment rode up with a led horse, and he leaped into the saddle.

"Wretch!" shrieked Pompeia, "hast thou escaped that death so richly merited?"

"Safe and sound, my pretty termagant--aim better next time," replied the officer, caracoling his horse, to push back the clamorous crowd. "Adieu, Caro Marco! adieu, Signor Claude! your most humble servant, my pretty Pompeia. Ola! keep out of my horse's way, signori, the rabble: and so, buona sera, good-evening to everybody;" and, with a reckless laugh, he dashed off at a gallop through the street, which was darkening fast, as the sun had set. He was followed by a volley of execrations from the crowd, some of whom he tumbled into the kennel, as he pushed headlong through.

"Unhand me, signor," said the damsel, with an assumption of dignity. "I am a Calabrese woman, and all Calabria will applaud the deed!"

A shout arose from the admiring populace; yet the girl trembled with shame, sorrow, and anger.

"But not so will He into whose awful presence you were about to hurl a fellow-being, with many grievous sins and follies accumulated on his head. You would have destroyed him, body and soul: he would have passed away unbidden, unconfessed, and unforgiven! Heaven judge between him and thee, woman! but in this matter you have acted unwisely. Madonna grant forgiveness to you both!" added Marco, signing the cross.

"Madonna grant it!" muttered the rabble round us, bowing their heads.

"I am not a child to be preached to, either by canon regular or church militant!" retorted this fiery damsel. She was a noble-looking beauty, about twenty, with long dark lashes, silken hair, and ripe pouting lips, which consorted oddly with her broad hat and black surtout of the newest Neapolitan cut. The colour was fast returning to her pallid cheek, and the fire of her eyes had never dimmed. "Lead me to the Podesta of Catanzaro! by him will I be judged; but not by a knight of the Maltese cross."

"No, signora," replied Castelermo, "I am not prosecutor in this matter: to your own sorrows and conscience I leave you--adieu!" and she was led away by the people, her face buried in her mantle, and utterly deserted by that stern confidence which had sustained her throughout this wild affair.

Sergeant Annibale Porko we reported to the officer next in command, who promised to send him to St. Eufemio for trial by court-martial: a pledge which he never redeemed.

About an hour after Ave-Maria rang, we quitted the mountain town of Catanzaro, and struck directly across the country, with the intention of visiting the villa D'Alfieri.

Not long after this affair I remember Castelermo handing me, with a cold and grim smile, a copy of the "Gazzetta Britannica," in which there was a paragraph, announcing that our wild friend the captain had been married to the widow of Belcastro, with great splendour, at the archiepiscopal residence of the Bishop of Cosenza.

From that hour I never again heard him utter the name of Despina.

*Chapter II.*

*Francatripa, The Brigand.*

I was aware that, according to strict orders, I ought to have proceeded forthwith, without deviation or delay, to Scylla; but a detour of twenty miles, to visit my gentle Bianca, could not in any way injure the service: and how seldom is it when campaigning that the impulse of one's own heart can be obeyed. Too often does duty interfere with the best and tenderest affections of the soldier; sending him forth with a heart seared and almost broken, to fight the battles of his country; or, still worse, to close a long life of expatriation, by perishing amid the pestilent swamps of the West, or the wars and diseases of the East Indies.

We were now getting within the vicinity of the redoubtable brigand Francatripa, and his terrible handiwork became manifest at every mile of the way, as we neared his stronghold in the forest of St. Eufemio. In a solitary pass we found a carriage, apparently from Naples, a wreck by the way-side, with its springs broken, and one of the mules lying shot between the traces. The trunks, which had been strapped before and behind, were rifled; the morocco lining had been ripped and torn down in search of concealed valuables, and the gilt panels were riddled by musket-balls.

The unfortunate traveller, scarcely alive, lay half out of the vehicle, his head on the ground, covered with wounds, and bleeding profusely: he seemed to have offered a desperate resistance, for one hand grasped a discharged pistol, while the other yet clenched a poniard. We raised him gently, and laid him on the slope of a grassy bank, where his clammy white face and glazing eyes glimmered horribly in the cold moonlight.

"Signor," said Castelermo, as he knelt down and held his crucifix before the eyes of the dying sufferer, "tell us who committed this detestable outrage?"

"Francatripa!" muttered the quivering lips of the dying man, who immediately expired. We then placed the body within the carriage, and after fastening the doors to protect it from the wolves, rode towards a village which lay about a league off, to rouse the peasantry.

A little farther on we passed a poor country girl, weeping over the body of an aged shepherd, whose dog sat whining at his feet. The old man had been slain by a blow from the butt of a musket. His daughter supported his head in her lap, bedewing it with tears, and wiping the blood from his pale lifeless face and silver hairs with her linen head-dress, while she mingled with her prayers many an anathema on the name of "Francatripa!" Around lay the ruins of their hut: the old man had perished in defence of his flock; and the extreme youth of the girl had alone saved her from being carried off to the stronghold of the brigands.

As we approached the village, the white cottages of which shone in the moonlight on the dark-green mountain side, a lurid flame shot across the sky: they were in flames! Then the reports of musketry were heard: a skirmish had ensued between the brigands and the armed peasantry; the latter had been defeated, and the unrelenting lieutenant of Francatripa, after laying their dwellings in ashes, leisurely retreated up the hills with his band.

"Satan seems abroad to-night!" said I, as the wailing of women and children was borne past us on the night-breeze.

"Since the days of Marco Sciarra, such outrages as these have been matters of daily occurrence in our mountain provinces," replied the cavalier. "These villains have probably been foraging in the valley; and desolation and death invariably attend resistance. But, perhaps, the villagers may have been guilty of some disloyalty to our cause, and have thus brought upon them the vengeance of Francatripa; who is one of Carolina's robber-knights, and by her authority bears the rank of colonel. Alas! signor, you see how war calls forth all the worst traits of the Calabrian character. When I look on these things, I blush that I am an Italian."

"Truly," said I, "we have seen some things which make me suppose that there is more of truth than malice in the old Italian proverb applied to the Neapolitan people."

"_Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils!_" replied Marco. "Ha! I fought a Tuscan on the ramparts of Valetta one morning, for uttering that impertinent saying."

On reaching the hamlet we found the greater number of the cottages burned down; and the only answers our inquiries received were, "the king of the forest, Francatripa--the hunchback--the devil!"

A man warned us not to proceed, for the banditti were still hovering about; but as only one pass of the mountains lay between us and Maida, we determined to push forward at all risks. After examining our girths and pistol-locks, we dashed at a gallop into a gorge of the hills, which seemed doubly dark after leaving the blaze of the burning hamlet; being also deprived of the moon, whose light was intercepted by a gigantic peak of the Apennines.

The hoofs of our galloping horses alone broke the stillness around us, until we had reached the centre of the pass, or chasm, where the frowning cliffs arose on each side like sable walls; their summits, in some places, overhanging the base: when, hark! the shrill blast of a Calabrian horn, waking the echoes of that dismal hollow, caused us to rein suddenly up and prepare for action. As the reverberations of the horn died away, a glare of crimson light burst through the gloom: it burned steadily, increasing in radiance and splendour, tinging hill and rock, the forms of ourselves and horses, with the hue of blood, and shedding over the whole landscape, woodland, hill and hollow, the same sanguine tint. This effect, at any other time, or under other circumstances, we should have admired; as it was, our lives were in jeopardy, and delight gave place to apprehension.

An enormous red light, blazing on a pinnacle of rock, distinctly revealed our position and appearance to a horde of banditti, in conical hats or long blue caps and gay parti-coloured garments, who swarmed on the cliffs above and around us, barring advance or retreat, with their levelled rifles.

"Basta!" exclaimed Castelermo, his voice faltering with shame and chagrin. "O! for thirty cavaliers of John de Valette, or old L'Isle Adam! Must we yield--and to wretches such as these?"

"Surrender or die!" I replied, considerably excited: "the path is open before us; but we should assuredly be blown to pieces before we had moved a horse's length."

We were immediately surrounded, and peremptorily commanded to dismount. I saw how the fierce spirit of my companion blazed up within him as he obeyed the order; and my own indignation was not less. Our swords were next demanded; and, knowing the futility of resistance, I submitted to be deprived of my sabre and despatches.

"My good fellows," said I, "remember I am a British officer!"

"Base vagabonds!" thundered Castelermo, while his pale lips quivered with rage, "at least respect the garb _I_ wear! You may keep my sword now, for to me it is useless, after being sullied by such dishonourable hands; but bear in mind that this night you have committed a most horrid sacrilege!"

"We will bear the weight of that easily, cavaliere," said one fellow, "and pay our blessed Mother Church a moiety out of your ransom. We must obey our orders; and if Ferdinand IV., or even the grand bailiff of the province passed this way, they would be required to yield both cloak-bag and sword to the king of St. Eufemio."

"Take the matter quietly, signor," said another, striking me on the shoulder with insolent familiarity; "remember you might have fallen into rougher hands than Francatripa's free companions."

"Bring a horse-halter, ho! ho! and bind them!" cried a shrill voice, which I immediately recognised. I turned towards the speaker, who had just dropped down from the rocks; but could not distinguish his figure: the blaze of the red light having now expired.

"By Heaven! I would not have surrendered without fighting to the last, could I have suspected this foul indignity!" exclaimed Marco bitterly, while I bit my lips in silence; and Gaspare Truffi, by whose orders we were bound, rolled on the turf yelling and grinning like a fiend with malicious delight and exultation.

"Forward!" he commanded. "Where did you say we were to meet the capitano?"

"Where the Maida road intersects the ancient way to the town of Cosenza," replied one of the band. "He awaits us among the old ruins of those pagan Greeks."

"On then," replied the little man of authority. "On: but, povero voi! keep well together when crossing the hills, or I will blow to the night wind the brains of the first man who straggles!"

I was surprised to find these fierce desperadoes submitting to the incessant hectoring of a pitiful hunchback: but after a time I observed that his commands, although strictly obeyed, were a source of secret merriment to the band. I also discovered amongst them many young men of superior birth, address, and education; who had been reduced to such ignoble fellowship by their own excesses, or by preferring a state of free brigandage on their native mountains, to bowing beneath the yoke of France, and submitting to its military conscription.

Some of them still retained in their manners traces of good Neapolitan society, but the majority were a crew of the most hardened ruffians that ever were congregated together. I fully expected on being presented to the leader, to experience the most brutal treatment; having been always led to suppose that Francatripa was a very demon incarnate, and save Mammone, the worst of all the outlaws of lawless Calabria.

"Now then, gentlemen, remember that with my own hand I will shoot the first who attempts to escape. Hear me! you in particular?" said Gaspare Truffi, giving his threat additional force by bestowing on my shoulder a smart stroke with a pistol butt (one of my own silver-mounted pops with rifled barrels, a present from the General.) At that moment, my heart swelled almost to bursting! I turned fiercely towards Truffi; but, on beholding him astride my gallant grey, with his short crooked legs scarcely reaching below the saddle flaps, his prodigious hump, his overgrown head and amply bearded visage surmounted by a straw hat of the largest size, his grotesque figure viewed by the moonlight was so ludicrous that I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Even the grave Castelermo laughed aloud, and the whole band joined in a hearty roar of merriment. This, though it put us all in tolerable humour, roused the wrath of the hunchback; who glared from one to another without knowing on whom to wreak his passion.

"It is quite a riddle to me how this odd fellow was ever permitted beneath the roof of the St. Agata palace: you remember, we first met him there," said I to my companion.

"The cursed reptile played well and deeply: but I doubt much if he would again dare to approach----"

"Silenzio!" thundered the hunchback, as he forced Cartouche (whom he could scarcely manage) toward me, sideways, and twice endeavoured to ride over me: but the brave charger knew me too well, and always swerved aside when approaching too close. Failing thus in his object, Gaspare dealt me a blow on the mouth with the pistol butt, which covered my face with blood, and nearly demolished my front teeth. The band murmured at this cowardly outrage; and perhaps nothing but fear of Francatripa prevented his incensed lieutenant from pistolling me on the spot.

We had now arrived at the place appointed; the ruins of a majestic fane, which had once echoed the precepts of Pythagoras and the triumphs of Milo: its massive doric columns, the ponderous abacus, and carved entablature, with the most exquisite specimens of sculpture, were all hurled together in chaotic heaps, just as the temple had been left by some tremendous convulsion, which had levied its glories to the dust. The stones were mossy and green; the vine and ivy, the scarlet fuschia and the wild rose, and a thousand odorous plants flourished luxuriantly and entwined the ruins with wreaths of blossom. But there was something melancholy in the aspect of the place when viewed by the brilliant moon: the same orb which had beheld the first stone of their foundations laid, amid all the religious solemnities of pagan Greece.

A horn was sounded; but the echoes died away, and no answering blast awoke them again: the ruins were minutely searched, but there was no appearance of Francatripa.

"Maladetto!" said one fellow, shrugging his shoulders, "the capitano stays somewhat long with his dear love to-night!"

"Colonello, you should say, Gaetano," replied another. "Does he not bear the king's commission; ay, and a sweet letter, they say, Carolina sent him, written with her own hand?"

"Yes, and we are to become soldiers like the men of Marco Sciarra. Madonna bless the day! I am tired of this life."

"Gaetano is as bad as his master, who seems to love a throw of the dice at the gaming-table better than a rifle-shot on the green mountainside in the merry moonlight."

Gaetano only answered by a sigh.

"The smiles must have been sweeter to-night than usual," growled Gaspare Truffi; "he stays so long at the villa D'Alfieri."

"No good will come of his going there; where a woman is, there will always be treachery and mischief," said Gaetano. "May Cupid put it in his heart to bring his girl up the mountains!"

"Welcome to the capitanessa!" said another of the band, drinking from a leathern bottle, which he held aloft at the full stretch of his arm, permitting the sparkling wine to stream down his throat--a famous feat with the Italian vulgar.

"Ho! ho!" chuckled the hunchback, "it would be bearding the grand bailiff with a vengeance, to follow Gaetano's advice. But, Sfarmato! wind the horn again!"

Once more its blast was poured to the hollow wind: but there was no reply, save from the echoing woods of Maida; and the banditti, as they seated themselves on the verdant grass and marble blocks, cursed the delay of their leader in no gentle terms.

The villa D'Alfieri! How my pulses quickened at the sound. Francatripa was then the lover of Annina, or some of the waiting women. I resolved to speak with the viscontessa about the dangerous friends with whom her household corresponded. How little I then knew of the ambition and presumption of that accomplished robber!

"Here, good fellow," said I, to the one whom they named Gaetano, "take the handkerchief from my breast, and give my moustachios a wipe. You see how freely the blood is flowing from my mouth."

"Certainly, Signor Cavalier," said the man, good-naturedly, raising his hand to his hat.

"Ha!" said I, "you have been a soldier?"

"Yes, signor," said he, turning pale, "I enlisted in the Corsican Rangers, under the British: but I knew not their fashions; I quarrelled with a sergeant, and they flogged me like a dog; I ran away, and so I am here."

Before he could do me the simple act of kindness requested, Gaspare snatched the handkerchief from his hand, and threw it away; dealing Gaetano at the same time a sound box on the ear, and muttering a remark, which, when translated, meant that I might "bleed to death, and be----"

I was extremely exasperated; and feeling at that moment the cords which bound me becoming a little slackened, I snapped them asunder, and rushing upon Truffi unhorsed him like lightning; then snatching from him his pistols and poniard, I threw them to a distance. He swore a terrible oath, and grappled with me. I was amazed by the strength he displayed: although barely the height of a well-grown boy, he appeared to possess the strength of two ordinary men, and his arms and hands were of great size and muscular power. My breast burned with shame to find myself more than matched in the grasp of a creature so despicable: I would rather have died than have been defeated. The brigands; aware of their little lieutenant's great strength, confidently expected he would overcome me; so, without interfering, they leant upon their rifles, and with shouts of laughter crowded round to witness a contest which Castelermo beheld with equal indignation and astonishment: he, of course, supposed I should toss my adversary into the air like a cricket-ball.

At any other time, or under different circumstances, I would have scorned to encounter in any manner such an adversary: but, alas! I found myself almost mastered by this miraculous dwarf.

Firm as Hercules, he stood planted on his curved legs, which appeared to possess all the unyielding principle of the arch; while his huge head, round and hard as a cannon-ball, was thrust like a battering-ram into my breast, and his ample hands grasped me like a vice: he had all the aspect of some powerful gnome, or dwarf, of German romance; but dwarf or devil, I was determined not to yield while bone and muscle remained firm.

While quartered at Truro, I had been taught a few of the tricks of wrestling by a corporal of the Cornish Miners, and I now put all these in practice against this crooked Italian; who, being quite unprepared for any display of science, was suddenly thrown off his feet, and hurled backwards with such force that he fell on the sward about ten yards off, and nearly fractured his capacious skull, which was instantly buried in the deep recesses of his conical hat.

"Ghieu!" cried he, scrambling up. "Ho, ho! woe betide you, povero voi!"

He was rushing forward, like a mad bull, to renew the conflict, when a figure stepped from behind a fragment of the ruins, and interposed between us.

"Francatripa!" he exclaimed, recoiling with a growl of surprise.

"Most excellent captain!" cried the thieves, with one voice. "Viva Francatripa!"

"Silence all, comrades," said Francatripa; "and you, signor," he added, addressing himself to me, "I thank you for giving my lieutenant this rough lesson to treat my prisoners better. But inform me, circumstantially, on your honour, who you are, whence you have come, where you are bound, and what is your business among these mountains?"

"I am an officer on the Sicilian staff, bearing despatches from the commanding officer at Crotona to General Sir John Stuart at Scylla. I trust my papers will be restored me; as they can be of no use to you, sir, and the service of King Ferdinand may suffer by their detention."

"Madonna keep his most sacred majesty!" said the robber chief, uncovering: "your horse and baggage shall be restored to you, and all letters addressed to the good Cavaliere Stuardo, the friend of Naples. Signor, we war not with the soldier, unless in arms against us: like our own, his profession is a poor one, and shame fall on the hand that would pilfer his hard-earned ducats--the wages of sweat, toil, and blood. But the gentleman who accompanies you? By the star of heaven! a knight of Malta! This is sacrilege! Pardon, Signor Cavaliere, this outrage by my people: one for which, believe me, on my word of honour, as a free Calabrian, I am in no way to blame. Gaetano! restore to these gentlemen their swords."

Unbinding Castelermo himself, he ordered our horses to be instantly led up to us.

"Gaspare!" he exclaimed, while grasping a pistol, "thou accursed, deformed Judas, thou piece of an ass! I would this instant send a bullet through your brain, had I another to supply your place: for, truly, there is not in all Italy another such subtle serpent and compound of mischief, to whom I could delegate my troublesome command when absent. But keep out of my sight till morning, Messerino Esop! Signori, he has the eyes of Argus, and is worth his hump in gold to me, so that I could ill spare him. Meanwhile, to make all the amends in my power, this night you shall sup with me, and to-morrow pursue your journey. Please to step this way, gentlemen, and we shall see what my cook has in preparation for us."

He led us behind a lofty mass of the ruins, where heavy green laurels and clusters of ivy and vine overhung the marble blocks and fragments of fluted columns, which yet remained in their original position. A whole roebuck was roasting and sputtering before a wood fire, which cast its red and varying glare on the shattered temple, the waving foliage, the glancing arms, and fierce swart visages of our captors; whose well-known bandit costume completed the striking effect of the scene.

A beetle-browed and bare-legged rogue, clad only in yellow breeches and a blue shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up, superintended the cooking; while the contents of a hamper (taken probably from the carriage we had seen some hours before) were spread upon the turf: light pastries, fruit, and a few flasks of continental wine. After posting a few well-accoutred scouts on the neighbouring roads and eminences, Francatripa sent away his band to join the main body in the forest, where several hundred wild spirits served under him. After seeing them off, in a manner which was a burlesque on military order, this formidable chief--who afterwards fought so many severe battles with the French, and whose name was soon to become like that of Marco Sciarra in Italy--rejoined us. I had then an opportunity of recognising in him one of the mutilators of the poor tanner (mentioned in volume first), and I also remembered his face as one I had often seen in the fashionable gaming-houses of Messina.

He was an eminently handsome man, between thirty and forty years of age; and being closely shaved he had rather a more civilized aspect than his rough, whiskered, and bearded associates. Though to us polite and courteous in the extreme, to his band he acted the furious and swaggering bandit: stern firmness and sullen ferocity alone seemed to keep their mutinous spirits in check, and they quailed beneath his sparkling eye whenever it turned on them.

He was habited in one of those richly-laced scarlet uniforms, which Queen Caroline sent from Palermo to Benincasa, the miller of Sora, and all the brigand chiefs of those provinces; and on his breast shone the star and enamelled cross of St. Constantine: the gift of the same politic princess, who endeavoured to prop the tottering throne of her husband by the support of the brave banditti of southern Naples; just as the Venetians, in 1590, courted the aid of the chivalric Sciarra and his followers against the Grand Duke of Tuscany. A plume of white ostrich feathers, clasped by a golden band and diamond madonna, drooped from his broad hat over his right shoulder, imparting a peculiar grace to his figure. His belt sustained a very handsome sword, poniard, and pistols; which, with a short rifle, completed the arms and accoutrements of this gallant robber: his air and aspect were very different from those of the desperado who, under his name, usually figured in the accounts published in the Neapolitan and Sicilian cities.

We supped heartily. The wine was excellent: and if Francatripa came by it lightly, he did not spare it on his guests. The flasks of red and white capri were numerous and potent enough; but when I remembered the unhappy proprietor, whom we had found weltering in blood by the wayside, it was not without considerable compunction that I regaled on the contents of his plundered hamper. However, the affair lay between Francatripa and his conscience. Castelermo and I soon fell asleep, under a sheltered part of the ruins which had witnessed the midnight carousal.

When we awoke, the morning sun had risen far above the hills of Maida; our horses with our arms and valises, all in perfect order, stood picqueted beside us: but our late host and his followers had departed, leaving no trace behind them, save the well-picked venison bones, and the ashes of the fire which had cooked it. My mouth was still painful, and a little swollen by the blow from the hunchback: whom I hoped to repay at a future time; but I sprang gaily up to rub down Cartouche with a tuft of dried grass, and shook off the dreams and odd fancies which had floated through my brain: caused, doubtless, by the Capri wine, and the stories related by Francatripa of his mountain friends. My ears yet rang with the exploits of the Abbot Proni, who drove the French from Abruzzi; of Fra Diavolo, the cruel and vindictive bandit of Itri; of the miller of Sora, and Benedetto Mangone, who was so savagely executed at Naples by being beaten to death with hammers.

Mammone of Sora was no ordinary bandit, but a fiend in human shape, out-Heroding in cruelty all the monsters of romance: he could boast of having slain with his own hand four hundred fellow-beings; he never dined without having "a bleeding human head placed on the table," and in his mildest mood is said to have drunk human blood "gushing from his victims."

These, and such as these, were the brigand leaders of Italy, and the terror of France, before the merciless General Manhes--"the man of iron"--brought the Calabrian war of extermination to a close, by almost depopulating the country.

*Chapter III.*

*A Snake In The Grass.*

Passing through Maida--a large and substantial town, built on an eminence equidistant from the Tyrhene Sea and the Adriatic, at the narrowest part of the peninsula, and situated among those pine-clad mountains which overlook the scene of our victory and the vale of the Amato--we visited the battle-ground; but nothing remained to mark that glorious day, save the burnt cartridge-paper fluttering about among the graves of those who fell: the mould was yet fresh, and the new grass just beginning to sprout above the great burial-mounds; the sight of which at that moment filled us with sad thoughts. The sun shone brightly, pouring his noon-day glory from above the wooded Apennines across the warm and misty plain; bees were humming, birds chirping, and wild flowers blooming, above those "scattered heaps" where so many brave men were mouldering into dust.

This melancholy train of thought, and the deep solitude around us, were broken by a most unexpected shout of "Hark forward! tally-ho!" coming from a distance; and presently two noble English greyhounds, in full chase after a spotted lynx, bounded from the banks of the Amato, and swept across the plain towards the hills.

"There they go, neck and neck,--Bravo, Springer!" cried a well-known voice; and, crashing headlong through the vine-trellis of some poor peasant, Oliver Lascelles, the general's extra aide, dashed up to us, breathless with a long ride. Oliver was the most determined sportsman in the regiment, and contrived to take his horses and dogs wherever he went, in spite of barrack, ordnance, and transport regulations.

"There go the gallant dogs, and I have no horn to recall them," he cried. "See how the spotted devil doubles!--the water now! Ha! the scent's lost, and Springer's at fault.--What on earth are you doing here, Dundas? Moralizing, eh?--Buon giorno, Signor Marco; happy to see you. By the Lord! had I got that lynx's brush, I would have stuck it in my cocked hat, and ridden with it so to old Regnier at Cassano. Ha! Dundas, at home you never roused such game as that, by the Muirfute Hills, or in Arniston woods;" and the light-hearted Englishman, laughing at his own conceit, hallooed on his dogs till the blue welkin rang.

He congratulated me on my promotion to a company in the Regiment de Rolle, from which I was re-gazetted to my old corps: a double favour, which I had no doubt was to be attributed to the general's favourable mention of me in his despatches, and my good fortune in capturing the eagle. This trophy, by-the-bye, may now be seen in the hall of Chelsea Hospital, in company with thirteen others.

Poor Oliver! he found his grave beneath the towers of the Castello d'Ischia; where the waves roll over the bones of many a bold Calabrian and Ross-shire Highlander. He was barely twenty when he was shot at the head of his stormers.

After a hurried ride over the well-known positions of the third of July, we separated; Castelermo and I to pursue our journey to St. Eufemio, and Lascelles to continue his to General Regnier's camp: he was the bearer of a copy of Sir John Stuart's third proclamation, dated 18th July, and issued in consequence of the barbarous cruelties exercised by the French troops on those Italian royalists who unhappily fell into their hands. In that official document, after a long statement of appalling facts, Sir John reminded the French general that three thousand of their soldiers were prisoners to the British arms, together with many of Buonaparte's well-known partisans. "If, therefore," concluded the manifesto, "such violence is not put an end to, for the future, I shall not only deem myself justified, but compelled by my duty, to have recourse to the severe but indispensable law of REPRISALS!" This determined threat had some effect on the iron-hearted Regnier, and for a time we heard less of slaughtered peasantry and priests shot before their altars; of nuns and poor country girls torn from their homes and hiding-places, to become worse than slaves in the camps and bivouacs of the French: who were yet entrenched at Cassano, awaiting the advance of Massena's division.

Not choosing to be seen so far out of our proper road by any of our troops cantoned in St. Eufemio, or encamped around it, we took a solitary path across the plain towards the villa; and, as there was no ford, we had to swim our horses across the Amato, in a part where the stream was both deep and rapid. We then sought the shelter of an orange-grove, where, having poured the water out of our boots, we passed the noon-time until the intense heat passed away. It was a still and solitary place, where the silence was broken by no ruder sounds than the hum of the bee, the flap of the plover's wing, the murmur of the Amato, the notes of a shepherd's zampogna, and the faint tinkling bells of his flock afar off on the green and verdant mountains. We remained nearly two hours in that delightful grove, through the thick foliage of which the hot rays of the sun never penetrated: the shining river swept slowly past us to the sea, with its smooth surface glittering in the sunlight, and the whole air was fragrant with the perfume of the wild flowers blooming among its sedges, and the orange-trees which shaded its rocky banks. The ruddy fruit hung in rich golden clusters above us; and though, from the appearance of some of the trees, the winds of a hundred years had swept their branches, they were yet, in a "green old age," bending beneath their load of produce. The Calabrian knows well that the oldest trees bear the sweetest oranges: those that are soft and juicy, with thin skins: the thickly rinded are always the fruit of young saplings, and are seldom cared for by the orange-gatherer.

Cavaliere Marco--who had not such reasons as I for visiting the villa, and whose knowledge of the world led him to suppose that his presence could, perhaps, be dispensed with--suddenly recollected that he had a gambling affair with Ser Villani, the lawyer (there was only one in the province), and rode on to St. Eufemio, promising to rejoin me in a few hours. Meanwhile I pursued my way to the villa alone; and passing through its luxuriant orchards, reached the terraces unperceived by any of the inhabitants.

Leaving my horse under the portico, I passed through a white marble corridor into the lofty and superb saloon; where, through a cupola of stained glass covered with heraldic blazonry, the sun poured down a flood of variegated light upon three rows of gilded galleries, and a bronze fountain: the Neapolitan emblem, a winged horse, vomited forth a jet of sparkling water. Save the ceaseless plash of the fountain, the place was silent: no sounds of life were heard.

After a time, however, the laugh of the giddy Annina rang merrily in one of the vast corridors, where she was flirting with the old Greek chasseur, Andronicus; but only to drive away ennui in the absence of her cavalier Giacomo, whom with his party the visconte had sent back to Crotona.

"There can be nothing amiss, when Annina laughs so joyously," thought I; "and yet this great Italian villa, so gloomy and so silent, looks like a vast catacomb by the evening light. Ola! Annina!"

"Ecco, signor," cried the damsel, as she danced into the saloon: she evidently expected a stranger, and could not conceal her astonishment on beholding me; but assuming a prim air, she placed a little finger on her ripe pouting lips, and, with a glance full of archness and mystery, imposed silence.

"My pretty Annina, I am not inclined to flirt just now," said I, kissing her cheek with jocose gallantry, in proof of my assertion: though, indeed, the girl of Capri was attractive enough to tempt one to be gallant in good earnest. "Where is your lady?"

"My lady, the viscontessa, has gone to confession at the Sylvestrian monastery; old Fra Adriano surfeited himself with choke-priest, and was unable to officiate this evening."

"Tush!" said I, drawing her into a deep alcove, "I mean, la Signora Bianca."

"She is in the garden with the colonel."

"What colonel? Is Luigi here?"

"Signor Claude, you are so impatient!" she replied slowly, while her black eyes twinkled provokingly, and raising their arched brows with affected surprise, she added, "Have you never heard of the colonel?"

"Colonel again! no, no! Who the devil is he?" I muttered impatiently, jerking up my sword-belt, while I ran over in my memory all those I knew who were likely to rival me. "Who the mischief?--it cannot be De Watteville, he is too old; Oswald, he is at Scylla; or Kempt--Annina, tell me, and you shall give me a kiss in exchange for as many ducats as will buy a magnificent embroidered panno to set off these jetty locks of yours."

"A girl of Capri would rather give the kiss without the ducats: it would look so like selling the secrets of the signorina, otherwise;" and while a blush suffused her face she began to sing, with a coquettish air, "O sweet isle of Capri," &c.

"You shall have both: the kiss now, and the ducats hereafter," said I, saluting the Madonna-like cheek of the pretty Italian; and then it blushed red as the ruby wine of her own rocky isle, while her eyes sparkled like the waves that roll around it in the sunshine.

"Signor," she whispered, "truly I wish you well; but beware of the Colonel Almario, who is daily at the villa, and is even now with my young lady in the garden--in the walk; you know it, shaded by the great laburnums."

"Almario! I never heard such a name before--sounds well enough, though: but how the deuce came he here?"

"On horseback, signor: he rides a beautiful black Barbary horse, which Signora Bianca seems to admire more than your dashing grey."

"The mischief she does! Who introduced this colonel to the family?"

"He is a great friend of Father Petronio, the bishop of Cosenza; and all the world allows that _he_ is a saint."

"Your world, Annina, is this little corner of Italy. Well, and the viscontessa met him at a _conversazione_ at Nicastro?"

"Exactly so, and won from him a hundred pieces of gold: he lost them with so good a grace that my lady was quite enchanted with him; for the more the colonel lost, the more merry he became. San Gennaro! I think he is a sorcerer, who can coin ducats from vine-leaves. He scatters a handful of gold among the servants every time he comes here! so you may easily imagine how much they are devoted to him. He is either Satan or a rich man, and has a way with him that makes all the men his slaves, and the girls his worshippers: that is, all save myself, signor. And then, such pretty things he says to the signorina, when they play together on their guitars! You would imagine he sat with the Lady Venus herself: but he says the very same things to the old viscontessa, when at cards after supper. O, that Giacomo was returned! I am sure he would not value his ducats or dread his dagger (I know he wears one) a rush. No, he would trim him well with a stout pole for presuming to make so free at the villa."

"I comprehend the hint. But one word more," said I, in a husky voice, while my heart palpitated with anxiety at this relation. "Have you heard aught of the visconte?"

"Only what you must surely know, that he has fled to the mountains: to Francatripa, they say, for abducting a nun. Madonna mia! what can tempt handsome young men to run off with these pale and melancholy frights, when so many plump and pretty women, with good flesh on their bones, are dying for husbands both in town and country."

"Annina, your tongue is again at full gallop. The visconte, then, is not here?"

"No; and yet I could have sworn that I heard him singing a barcarole in the wolf's chamber. God's grace! 'tis a place of gloom and mystery. Poor, dear young man! I hope he may come to no harm in these perilous times, when the hills and woods are swarming with Frenchmen and wolves, idle sbirri, starving peasantry, and desperate robbers."

Stepping hastily and cautiously, I passed through the beautiful garden, which extended from the terraces to the southward.

There was now a rival in the way, whose superior military rank, and apparent wealth, besides his being Bianca's countryman, made him sufficiently formidable to me: but as I remembered her artlessness, her trembling confusion when we exchanged our rings, and her burst of tenderness when we parted, and how she buried her face in the bosom of Luisa Gismondo, could I believe that she would so very soon prove false? Yet I had heard so much of the volatility of Italian girls, their faithlessness and coquetry, that the words of the waiting-woman fell like molten lead upon my heart.

Before advancing, like a prudent general I made a complete reconnoissance, and discovered Bianca walking with this redoubtable colonel, conversing and flirting through the folds of her black lace veil. She opened it only at times, when I obtained a glimpse of her pure and happy face: her bright eyes sparkling, her cheek glowing, and her pretty teeth shining like pearls in the sun, as its rays flashed between the waving branches and pendent golden flowers of the old laburnums. The long shady walk echoed with their voices, though they conversed in a low tone; and at that moment the sharpening of a handsaw would not have grated on my ears so painfully as did Bianca's merry laughter at the jests of this confounded colonel.

He was a tall and handsome man, apparently in the prime of life: I had a dim recollection of having seen him before, but when or where I endeavoured in vain to remember. He was dark-complexioned, and so much sunburned that I thought he must have seen considerable service. From beneath a scarlet velvet foraging cap, his dark hair descended in curling ringlets; his nose was aquiline, and a pair of appalling moustaches, black, bushy, and fierce, curled under it. He wore a sky-blue military undress frock, laced with silver, and open at the neck, showing a scarlet waistcoat, which was also richly laced; on his breast glittered a medal and the star of St. Constantine; military boots with gilt spurs, completed his costume. A gold belt encircled his waist, and sustained a small poniard of exquisite workmanship; his sabre rested on his left arm, and on his right the jewelled hand of Bianca.

Notwithstanding the noble contour of this colonel's features, and a certain lofty dignity in his carriage, there was something so peculiar in his uniform (which I failed to recognise) and in the expression of his eye (which I did not like) that, altogether, I did not consider him a very dangerous rival; though he whispered to Bianca in a way that was anything but agreeable to me, and she maintained the conversation with true Italian vivacity and spirit of raillery. I was not under the unpleasant necessity of acting eavesdropper long; for, piqued at something he had said, Bianca suddenly quitted his arm and withdrew a few paces; her eyes sparkled with unusual brilliancy, and her brow, wont to be so pale, now flushed with indignation. The Colonel Almario sank upon his knee, and held in his her right hand, which tightly grasped a rose she had plucked but a moment before.

"Beautiful Bianca!" I heard him exclaim, while his voice rose and fell with true theatrical cadence, "be not offended if my treacherous tongue has too suddenly revealed the long-cherished sentiments of my heart. O, most gentle signora! how faintly can I express the deep love, the sincere admiration, which at this moment glow within me!"

"I would give ten guineas to have a good long-shanked hunting-whip here just now," I muttered, exasperated by this sudden declaration of passion; at which the poor girl seemed the image of confusion: though its pomposity evidently excited more amusement than pleasure.

"Signor Colonello, unhand me, if you please. I cannot--I _will not_ be spoken to thus. Ola! Zaccheo! Annina!--here! You have all been bribed! Oh! the treacherous----"

"For the love of all that is gracious! summon no one." (I really think the fellow loved her; so touching was his tone, so earnest his manner.) "Hear me, lady! I am an unfortunate and most unhappy man. I love you passionately----"

"And noisily----"

"Cruel! No man can love a woman more. Will you not vouchsafe me an answer? Bel l' idolo! will you not even hear me?"

"No, I will hear nothing while you continue to grasp me thus. Annina! Am I a prisoner in my own house?"

"Give me but this rose: it is a small favour, Signora d'Alfieri, but you have placed it once to your beautiful lips, and their touch has enhanced its value. Bestow it on me, Bianca, as a token that I may yet hope--that, even though withered I may look upon it and say----"

"Fico! hope you never shall!" exclaimed the spirited girl, as she pulled the rose to pieces, and scattered the leaves upon the upturned face of her admirer; from whom she broke away, and moved toward the villa with all the sweeping hauteur of an offended Juno.

Almario uttered a very audible oath, and sprang forward rudely to seize her; when, stepping from out the shrubbery, I suddenly interposed between them.

"Dearest Claude!" exclaimed Bianca, in a tone of joy, as she passed her arm through mine; while he of the sky-blue frock and star grew pale with anger: he laid his hand on the hilt of his sabre, and, retiring back a few paces, we surveyed each other from top to toe, with all the stern composure of two melodramatic heroes.

"How now, sir?" I exclaimed. "Would you dare to follow the young lady, and continue this ridiculous scene?"

"I am noble--an Italian gentleman, and my purposes are not to be questioned by any foreigner, especially one of subaltern rank," he replied through his clenched teeth. "Signor, learn that I am a colonel of cavalry in the Neapolitan service, and shall not permit this insolent interference to pass unpunished."

"It may be so: but I do not recognise your uniform." His face grew scarlet, and his eyes sparkled with rage at my insinuation. "You must be aware," I continued, "that I have merely done my duty as a gentleman and soldier in rescuing the signora from your impertinent importunity; and it is well for you," I added, considerably ruffled, "that I have neither a whip nor cane wherewith to chastise you as you deserve."

"And well it is for you likewise, signor. By Heavens! were such an indignity as a blow put upon me, I would destroy you on the spot; and if you escaped that vengeance which my hand must shortly take for this insulting threat, a thousand stilettoes would be on your track! Not in the caverns of Scylla, or the wilds of La Syla--not amid all the guards and gates of Malta and Messina, would you be safe from my revenge."

"O signori!" implored the trembling Bianca.

"Sir, I have very great doubts that you are an officer, but none that you are both a knave and fool to rant in this manner," I replied, with provoking coolness, while pressing the arm of the agitated girl to my side. "I comprehend nothing about those thousand knives of which you speak so pompously, but here is my card, Signor Colonello: I will be at the villa until near noon to-morrow, and any communication with which you honour me will reach me there. I am not to be terrified by the blustering of any man; therefore, sir, it is quite unnecessary to 'get up in your stirrups' when addressing me."

"Good!" said he, haughtily; "I have not my card-case with me, but I can understand this, signor. By noon to-morrow, I must be on the march to join the chiefs of the Masse in the Upper Province."

"Your regiment is, then, in the neighbourhood?"

"My regiment!" he stammered, while again the flush crossed his olive cheek and haughty brow. "Yes, yes--undoubtedly; and one it is that will be heard of ere long. Signor, you have treated me somewhat cavalierly; which, considering the difference of our rank and years, I deem considerable presumption on your part: but you British behave so to all foreigners. Ha! that _I_ should colour at the taunts of a mere boy!--I, who have heard more bullets whistle in a week than he has done since he first girt on a sword! Behold this medal!--on the ramparts of Andria, I tore it from the breast of the traitorous Count of Ruvo, whose savage followers, giving all to fire and sword, made an earthly hell of beautiful Apulia. Ha! boy, you never witnessed such a leaguer as that."

He jerked his sabre under his arm, bowed profoundly to Bianca, and was swaggering haughtily away, when I followed him.

"Sir, then you will not grant me a meeting?" He wheeled sharply round, and muttered, in a fierce and rapid whisper,

"When a horn sounds over the lawn this evening, I will be awaiting you on the road which leads to the ruined hospital of the Maltese knights. Fail not to come; as a recourse to arms can alone decide now, whether you or I shall possess this girl and her ducats."

"Enough!" said I, scornfully, and we separated.

*Chapter IV.*

*The Horn Sounds.*

I led Bianca into the villa, where she flung herself upon a sofa, and, overcome with excitement, gave way to a passion of tears. I very naturally seated myself close by, to console and pacify her.

"Dear Bianca, this is quite foolish, now!" said I, putting an arm gently round her: "why are you weeping?"

"This colonel--this Almario----"

"Upon my honour! Bianca, I shall send expressly to the camp for Bob Brown, my groom, to horsewhip him, for making you weep thus. He is unworthy my own----"

"O no, no!" she exclaimed, weeping very bitterly; "I do not wish Signor Bob Brown to be killed on my account. But promise me? dear Claude, that you will never seek or meet him in a hostile manner," she added, looking up, and smiling so imploringly, that I quite forgot what I meant to say, and so kissed her in my confusion.

"Claude," she continued, taking both my hands in hers, and looking me full in the face, with her clear and brilliant eyes,--"Claude, promise me that you never will. Ah! my heart would break--it would--it would, indeed, if blood were shed on my account."

"Well, then, dear one! I will never seek the presence of the colonel. But the service, you must be aware--my character--O, the devil!--let him beware how he summons me!"

"Swear it on this Agnus-dei!" said she, taking a little bag of perfumed satin from her bosom. To please her, I kissed the amulet which reposed in so adorable a place, and the innocent girl was satisfied.

"When we are married, I will cure her of all this nonsense," I thought, and ratified the treaty of peace on her flushed and dimpled cheek.

"And now, caro," said she, in a soft, low voice, "I have a great secret to entrust you with. Of course you know all about poor Luigi's wild adventure?"

"My bones ache at the recollection thereof; I narrowly escaped hanging, shooting, and drowning: all of which were proposed in turns by a little hunchbacked fellow, a follower of Francatripa, who chose to make himself very active on the occasion. And do you know, Bianca, that I was immured in the thieves' cage at the end of the town prison: a good joke, is it not?"

"I heard it all from Annina, whose last love-letter from Giacomo (written, of course, by an itinerant scrivano) was filled with a history of the affair. O, the madness of my dear and foolish sister! How bitterly I wept for and deplored it! Believe me, Claude, had an Italian cavalier been put into that horrid cage, his soldiers would have set the town on fire: but you, British! oh, you take some things very quietly. Yesterday a mounted sbirro brought me a letter from my sweet little friend Luisa Gismondo, who is with her father in the camp at Cassano. O, what dreadful things she tells me of! And Massena, that very bad Italian, he is gathering together an army, who boast that they will soon clear Calabria of the British."

"But where is Luigi now?"

"Just behind you, signor, and most happy to congratulate you on your promotion, I saw it in the _Messina Gazette_," said the visconte, coming from the recess of a window, where, unseen he had been a smiling spectator. Grasping my hand, he continued, "How I rejoice that you escaped from the villanous Crotonians. On my honour! Dundas, nothing but fear for my poor Francesca restrained me from putting back to save or avenge you: and we all imagined those base paesani would have respected your uniform and character----"

"No more apologies: but say, how does the Signora Francesca?'

"Indifferently, indeed. She bemoans her degraded situation incessantly (here Bianca reclined her head on my epaulette, and sobbed audibly). Torn from her convent, to which she dare return no more, she is still a nun; and, until her vows are dispensed with at Rome, I cannot make her my wife. I now see that her position is deplorable, and hourly wish that I had been less rash: but what will not a wild spirit dare, when love leads, and the fiend prompts? I have, perhaps, blighted her prospects for ever, and placed myself in most deadly jeopardy: every hour increases our peril! The Bishop of Cosenza (so famous for his pretended piety) has taken up the matter hotly, and placed us under the ban of the church; while, armed with warrants, procured from the Grand Criminal Court at Palermo, his sbirri, aided by those of that old blockhead the Barone di Bivona (who owes me a thousand sequins, lost at Faro), are searching all Lower Calabria for us: I expect them here every hour. King Ferdinand, anxious to flatter our priesthood and please his bigoted subjects, has declared himself my enemy, and we dare not venture to Sicily, even could we reach its shores: the commissaries of the townships are everywhere on the alert, and we could never, unless escorted by some armed followers, embark on the Calabrian seas.

"To pass into the Upper Province would only redouble the danger: Francesca would become the prey of the bishop, or the brutal Massena; who would, undoubtedly, order me to be shot. Ha! the French have not forgotten certain exploits of mine, when I first unsheathed my sword beneath the walls of Altamurra, on that great day when, on the eve of battle, Ruffo performed high mass before the whole Calabrian line.

"I never dreamt that the toils of my adversaries would close so tightly round me! But the villa is well provided with lurking-holes, and I have little doubt of being able to baffle completely any band that may come in pursuit of us here. Were my old sbirri under its roof-tree--were Benedetto del Castagno, Marco of Castelermo, and my trusty Giacomo by my side, I would yet shew them that the Visconte of Santugo was not to be hunted like a wild boar. No, by the gods! I would make good the house against the bishop's rascals, though backed by the papal guard. San Gennaro! rather than surrender, I would blow it into the air, and flying to the Grecian isles, there hoist the red banner of piracy, as many a reckless Italian noble has done before." His eyes glared, as black eyes only do: he laughed bitterly, showing his white teeth beneath the sable moustache, and he panted rather than breathed, as he continued, "Our king, Monsignore Macheroni, should remember the feeble tenure on which he holds his tottering throne, and be wary of raising enemies in this last stronghold of Italian independence. Palermo will not always have a British fleet to protect its walls from the cannon of France: withdraw your frigates from the straits of the Faro, your red coats from the ramparts of Messina, Milazzo, and Syracuse, and the power and throne of the lazzaroni king will fall prone to the earth, like a house of cards!"

"Hush! dearest Luigi," exclaimed his timid and terrified cousin, when a pause in this long tirade permitted her to speak. "This is all treason, every word; and you know not who may be within hearing."

"If there are any within hearing who would prove false to the race of Santugo, I would crop their ears like base Jacobins, and then bore their tongues with a hot bodkin, that they may the more glibly tell their story at Palermo. Corpo di Baccho! I defy and scorn them all!" and snatching a large cup of wine from a marble cooler, he drained it to the bottom; then casting himself upon an ottoman, he tossed the cup to the other end of the apartment with such force, that it dashed to pieces a rich Etruscan vase.

"Dundas, my good friend," he continued, "hot and high words are but a poor welcome to you, after coming so far out of your way to visit us: yet I am so exasperated about this matter--this elopement with my cousin! Queen Caroline, she too has become an enemy. I had the ill fortune to please her eye once, and she could forgive me for any scrape in which a woman is not concerned: you comprehend? In fact, I was quite a rival to Master Acton--your half countryman--the ci-devant apothecary, whom all the world knows about."

"O Luigi, Luigi!" exclaimed Bianca.

"Tush! I tell you, Bianca, that once when I was waiting on the king--per Baccho! what am I going to say?"--he paused and coloured. At that moment the blast of a horn came, in varying cadence, on the evening breeze: I started at the expected signal.

"Ola! what may that portend?" said the visconte, whom it relieved from his embarrassment. "I shall be glad to learn who dares to sound a horn within the bounds of my jurisdiction?" he added, taking up his sword.

"I will accompany you."

"Good: then let us go!"

Glad to have a decent pretext for quitting her presence, I pressed Bianca's hand to my lips with trembling anxiety, while there stole over me a dismal foreboding that we might meet no more. My promise to her was forgotten: could I keep it? Impossible!

"Luigi, beware of a quarrel; and, dear Claude, for the love of Heaven! curb his rashness. I can depend on you" said she, as we hurried down the staircase; and her words sank deeply into my heart. Too well I knew the deadly mission on which we were bound; and the shrill mountain-horn poured another warning blast, which, as it seemed more faint and distant, made us quicken our steps. The visconte's horses stood in their stalls, saddled and bridled ready for any emergency; and, summoning Zacheo Andronicus to bring forth a couple of nags, we mounted, and, accompanied by him, galloped in the direction of the signal, with the purport of which I acquainted my friend, as we rode on.

"Cospetto!" he exclaimed; "then this quarrel is mine. I cannot permit you to jeopard life or limb for any member of my family; of whose honour I, as chief and head, am the defender and guardian. I will in person meet this Colonel, of whom more has been said at the villa than I cared to listen to. He is one of my mother's gambling friends, picked up at that select resort, Father Petronio's palace; and is, perhaps, some barefaced charlatan, who assumes the name of Almario and the rank of colonel."

"But there are many officers of the Masse and other irregular corps, whose uniforms are so motley and fanciful, and whose names are not borne on any authorized list, that it is impossible to say what he is."

"True; but time shall prove all: and I----"

"Santugo! it was to me, and with me alone, that defiances were exchanged: I cannot permit another to fight in my quarrel."

"But the quarrel is my pretty Bianca's, and I am her only kinsman."

"And I her betrothed husband: behold this ring!"

"Buono! but I am an unfortunate dog, who would more willingly be shot to-night than live longer."

"And leave Francesca alone--alone in her misery and helplessness?"

"O Madonna! Yet I will meet the Colonel."

"On my honour you shall _not_," I continued, with equal pertinacity. "I must fight or horsewhip him. But if I am winged, or knocked on the head, you can take up my ground, and parade him in turn.--By-the-by, have you not been somewhat rash in venturing forth with me this evening before dusk, when so many enemies are hovering round and ready to pounce on you?"

"I am aware of it: but you have need of a friend; and when I heard this horn blown within the boundaries of my estate, the thought that the base banditti, the ungrateful shepherds, or the carbonari, presuming on my outlawry, were poaching or plundering under the very eaves of the villa, aroused my anger----"

"Excellenza," said Zacheo the chasseur, riding up with alarm in his countenance, "a party of horsemen are now entering the Valley of Amato."

"Armed, too," I added, as, following the eye of the venerable retainer, I saw about thirty mounted men riding, three deep, at an easy pace across the broad and level valley, through which the river wound like a gilded snake; "well horsed and armed. See how their appointments flash in the sun!"

"They are about a cannon-shot distant," replied the visconte; "and should they prove to be authorities from Cosenza, we can still baffle them, even if they come up with us."

"Three to thirty?" said I, inquiringly.

"And what of that? We have good Calabrian cattle under us; the free mountains, the deep rivers, the dense forests, and a bright moonlight night before us: all glorious for a flying skirmish; and we may empty a dozen of their saddles yet before the stars go down."

"And what if they search the villa?"

"I trust to Madonna that the same secret place in the round tower which saved my ancestor from the followers of Carlo of Anjou, will avail my Francesca now: save by terror or treachery, it cannot be discovered.--I hope, Master Zacheo, that the contents of the holsters are in service order?"

"Most carefully flinted and loaded, excellency," replied the Greek from the rear.

"But these may be neither the sbirri of the bishop nor his meddling friend the barone; and, as they do not pursue a way leading either to the villa or to us, let us avoid them, in God's name! We have business enough of our own to settle before the night closes."

At a hand-gallop we passed the redoubts, garrisoned by part of the Regiment de Watteville, and which they had erected on the day of our disembarkation. On the turf bastions the sentries were pacing briskly to and fro; and as we left the fort behind, the evening gun was fired, its echoes rolling along the hills with a thousand reverberations, and dying away in the distance. The gaudy union descended slowly from the flag-staff; while the fifes playing, and the drums beating, in that peculiar time which is called "the sunset, or evening retreat," awoke the gentler responses of the woods and winding shore, when the hollow boom of the cannon had pealed away on the passing wind: it was "Lochaber no more," a plaintive northern air, often played by our bands when the sun is setting, announcing that another day has rolled into eternity.

Its slow-measured beat, and melancholy notes, are among the domestic or home-sounds of the barrack-square: then the captain of the day, sulky at being obliged to leave his wine, lounges forth with a cigar in his mouth, and leaves the mess-room to parade the inlying piquet, who are mustered in their dark great coats by the indefatigable sergeant-major: the gates are shut, the drawbridges lowered, and the canteen cleared of its noisiest revellers: the last flush of the sun has died away over the distant hill, and a stillness settles over the whole community, only broken by a laugh now and then from the mess, or by the tread of feet and clash of arms, as the sentinels are relieved at their posts.

I listened sadly as the music faded away in the distance; and truly my deadly mission began to press more heavily upon me than before. Never again might I hear those well-known sounds, and when the same drums were beating the merry reveille and the lark was soaring aloft to greet the rising sun, where might I be? I strove to divert the current of my thoughts, and not to think of it; but the same obstinate and gloomy idea ever thrust itself before me. The affection of Bianca d'Alfieri, my recent promotion, and the chances of still further advancement, now made life seem of some value. I never experienced these depressing thoughts on the eve of a battle, or assault: but the cold-blooded and deliberate preparations for a duel give one time to _reflect_, and reflection may damp the courage of a man who otherwise would hear, without wincing, a salvo of cannon-balls whistling about his ears.

I thought of my old familiar friends at the regiment, who were, doubtless, at that moment, enjoying their iced Sicilian wines, with the mess-room windows open, while our matchless band played to the ladies and cavaliers promenading on the Marina; and I wished myself amongst them. I thought of my home--my happy boyhood's home--where the Esk flowing down from the heath-clad hills, sweeps onward to the ocean, and I wished the colonel where Empedocles went. But enough of this, or the reader will be supposing I felt inclined to "show the white feather."

*Chapter V.*

*A Duel And A Discovery.*

All those depressing thoughts evaporated the moment I obtained a glimpse of my adversary; he was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigar, and stroking the nose of his boasted black horse, whose bridle reins were thrown negligently over his arm. Remembering only his taunts and defiance, his presumption and rivalry, I was ready to rush into hostilities with him, and wage life against life.

He awaited us near the ruinous Preceptory House of the Maltese knights, through whose ivy-clad arches, rent walls, and windows choked up with grass, the last flush of sunset was poured in strong columns of light; around us flourished gigantic green laurels, and many a glittering ilex, which completely screened us from the eyes of any stray passenger, and from the sentinels on Sir Louis de Watteville's field-work.

"I trust, sir," said I, saluting him, "that we have not detained you long?"

"Not very," was the cold reply; "but we must be quick, or this affair will scarcely be settled before dusk."

"You have no friend with you?"

"None, save my usual weapons; but you have come pretty well attended. Two gentlemen well horsed and armed to the teeth!"

"His excellency the grand bailiff, and one of his servants," said I.

"My lord, the visconte, rarely rides abroad at present, and I think his presence here is somewhat unwise," said Almario, bowing to Santugo; who was piqued at the observation, and, nodding coldly, replied,

"I cannot permit your coming to blows with this officer, in the quarrel of my cousin. By-the-by, to what branch of the service do you belong?--the cavalry?"

"The irregular troops of the Masse," replied he, with a dark frown.

Luigi bowed and said, "I am the guardian, the only protector and defender of Bianca d'Alfieri; and I claim this quarrel as mine."

"I never meant to insult the Signora Bianca, or quarrel with her family--nothing would be further from my thoughts; but if my respectful declaration of a sincere passion offended, I am most heartily sorry, and will make any amends to which an Italian gentleman may stoop without dishonour."

Luigi bowed again, in reply to this apology, and reined his horse back a few paces.

"But with you, Signor Capitano," continued the colonel, addressing me, "the quarrel is too serious to be satisfied so easily. We have mutually defied each other, and my honour demands redress. Am I to understand that you are the challenger, and that by receiving your card it is at your request I am here?"

"Assuredly, sir!" I answered haughtily.

"Good!" said he, throwing his snaffle rein over the branch of a tree; "then with me lies the choice of weapons. Is it not so, visconte?"

Santugo merely bowed again, but with evident hesitation; and dismounting, we gave our horses to Andronicus, who immediately drew off a little way.

By so frankly avowing myself challenger, I had fallen into a regular scrape: an Italian would, perhaps, have prevaricated; yet I could hardly believe that the Colonel would make so cowardly a choice as to select the national weapon--the poniard. But it was so: after rolling his cloak round the left arm, with the utmost care and deliberation, he drew off his gloves, turned up his right sleeve to leave the hand and wrist perfectly free; buttoned his light blue military frock lip to the throat, threw aside his sabre, and offered me a pair of poniards, saying, briefly, "Choose."

They were daggers of Campo-forte, with elaborately carved ivory hilts, and blades about nine inches long, triangular, and fluted on two sides like bayonets.

"Colonel," said I, "although in acknowledging myself challenger, I may have placed at your disposal the choice of weapons, if you suppose that a British officer will condescend to fight with knives or poniards like a drunken lazzarone, a hired bravo, or any brawling coward of Naples, you labour under an unhappy mistake. I have pistols in my holsters, and with these will meet you on equal terms."

"By heaven! you greatly over-rate my good nature, if you imagine I will engage you with any weapons save those of my own choosing. Any other Neapolitan would have dispatched this business, by bestowing three carlini on some bold lad of the knife to tickle your ribs in the dark."

"Your language is not that of an officer."

"We fight with poniards, or not at all!"

"Must this be?" I asked Santugo.

"Formal duels are seldom fought in Italy: secretly or openly, the knife generally ends all disputes," replied the visconte; "but the challenged usually has the choice of weapons in all countries. Castelermo, a great authority in these matters, has--but I am astonished that Colonel Almario, as a soldier and a gentleman, should resort to this vulgar and antiquated mode of settling disputes."

My friend seemed under considerable anxiety on finding that I had fallen into such a dilemma--about to fight with a murderous weapon in the management of which I was totally unskilled.

"Captain Dundas, you had better make up your mind," said Almario, with a sneering aspect; "or our meeting may be ended in the dark like those of the bravos you so greatly despise."

"Sir!" I replied sternly, "I am not ashamed to acknowledge my ignorance of the management of this pig-butcher's weapon, and so--"

"So decline the contest?"

"No!--far from it; but I will meet you with my sabre or pistols."

"I will accept of neither; being determined to slay you: so if you stand not on the defensive, I will rush on and end the matter by a single blow."

This threat put an end to all further negotiation, and I felt the devil stirred up within me.

"For God's sake be wary!" whispered the visconte, as Zacheo bound a horse-cloak round my left arm; "keep the guard well up to protect your face and breast, and watch his eyes with the acuteness of a lynx."

"Remember this ring," I muttered hurriedly (assassination now seemed certain); "it is our poor Bianca's--and if anything happens--you understand me?"

"No--no--not I--if aught untoward happens, by the blood of San Gennaro! the colonel shall cross his blade with mine:" and he left me.

Standing now about twelve yards distant from my enemy, I felt not unlike a recruit when a loaded firelock is first placed in his hands: I knew not what position to assume, and was only restrained from protesting against the combat, by dread of the triumph such a course would afford to Almario. He saw my confusion: his dark eyes glittered with malice and joy; while my heart burned only with hatred and rage at the prospect of becoming a victim to an uncompromising guerilla, who deemed himself sure of easy victory over my inexperience.

With his hat drawn over his eyes, and his arms folded on his breast, Santugo stood apart, regarding us with a flushed cheek, and a stern, yet troubled eye; while Andronicus had placed his crucifix against a tree, and was praying on his knees before it for my success, with all the energy and devotion of a monk of La Trappe.

The position I assumed, with my hands clenched, my left foot advanced, and my head well thrown back, was rather that of a boxer, than of a combatant in such a contest as that in which I figured. My antagonist bent forward on his left instep, keeping the arm muffled with his cloak before him as a buckler, while the right hand grasped the upraised poniard, ready to plunge it, to the hilt, in the first unprotected place.

After regarding me for a moment with eyes to which bitter animosity lent unusual vivacity, the colonel rushed upon me like a tiger.

More by chance than skill, I received the blade of the descending poniard in the thick folds of Zacheo's horse-cloak, and--contrary to all rule--before he could withdraw it, dealt him a tremendous blow under the left ear, causing his rattling jaws to clatter like a pair of castanets; when as if struck by lightning, he measured his length on the turf. Though given in a moment of confusion, it was a regular knock-down blow, which would have charmed the English gentlemen of the fancy; but Signor the Colonel Almario was quite unprepared for such a mode of fighting, and seemed in no way delighted with it. He lay for a moment motionless as if dead.

"Glorious!" exclaimed Santugo, while I took the poniard from the relaxed hand of my adversary, whose long curly ringlets and mustaches fell off one by one (as we raised him up), and revealed the shaven chin, close shorn hair, and firm swart features of one well-known to us.

"Now, by all the imps of Etna!" exclaimed Santugo, in a transport of fury and surprise, letting him fall heavily on the turf, "'tis the brigand--Francatripa!"

"Al vostro commando, (at your service)"--replied that personage, bowing with perfect nonchalance.

"Rascal! and you presumed to speak of love to Bianca of Santugo? Carpo di Baccho! I am half inclined to sabre him where he lies, to teach him the respect he owes to noble ladies!"

"Aye do, your excellency," cried Andronicus; "slay him--the impostor! his head is worth its weight in ducats: crush him like a torpedo--gash him across the throat like a lynx! Where, cattivo! have I left my knife? Only think, signor--his villains the other night, burned the village of Amato--plundered the shrine of the Virgin, whose milk is preserved there in a bottle. O horror he broke off the neck and drank the contents!"

"Silence, dolt!" exclaimed Francatripa. "You have discovered me, gentlemen," continued the prostrate robber, whose throat I still grasped; "and what mean you to do now? I am in your power, and there is not a syndic or commandant in the Calabrias but would--notwithstanding that I stand so high in the Queen's favour--give a thousand pieces of gold for my head. However, as it is of more use to me, they shall not have it for ten times that number. Maladetto! how it rings after that crackjaw! Do you mean to make me prisoner?"

"No, Francatripa!" replied the generous Santugo, in a voice which, from being sternly slow, became soft and kind; "I am one of the Alfieri--thou knowest me, and knowest too well I would scorn the deed: savage and bloody though all men term you, I have heard many a good and generous trait of your character; and the uncompromising hostility you have ever evinced to France, your high courage and incorruptible patriotism, have gained my admiration and esteem: although at heart I abhorred the cruelties perpetrated by your people on our countrymen--defending our towns gallantly from Regnier to-day, and pillaging them ruthlessly to-morrow."

The brigand, who expected to be overwhelmed with reproaches and scorn, was confounded by this unexpected address; and he became still more so when I assisted him to rise, and restored his poniard, saying--

"Let us be friends, Signor! I have not forgotten how generously you entertained the Cavaliere di Castelermo and myself last night; protecting us from the insolence of your band, and the petulence of their lieutenant. Receive your poniard, and learn to make a better use of it: or rather not to use it at all. I esteem you as a brave man, though an erring one; and trust that the blow I gave you will not occasion you further inconvenience."

"Francatripa!" added Santugo, striking him familiarly on the shoulder, "seek another path than that which leads through the prison-gate to the scaffold. Carolina has sent to you, though but a mountain robber, the same badge of knighthood with which she adorns the noblest breasts in Naples--the star of St. Constantine. Learn to deserve it and to wear it with honour. Grow wise in time: become honest as you are brave: lead your bold followers against the legions of France, instead of the poor carbonari of our hills, and the peaceful vine-traders of our valleys. Fight only for Italy and honour, and, corpo di Baccho! you will live in history and in song, like Marco Sciarra--re della campagna--and lord of the wilderness!"

The robber seemed deeply affected by our frankness.

"Monsignore Visconte and Signor Capitano," said he, saluting us gracefully, and retiring a pace; "I am not the hardened villain the evil tongues of slanderers would make me. God and his blessed Mother, who read our hearts, know that I have been by stern necessity compelled to witness--ay, and to participate in--many a deed of blood and horror, from which my soul shrank with disgust. Yet there was a time, to which I look back through the long dark vista of many a sinful year" (he spoke slowly and with sighs)--"a time when, in youth and innocence, I sat by my mother's knee in our little cot among the wilds of La Syla, and when she sang to me of the exploits of Sciarra the glorious, Battimello the treacherous, and Mangone the terrible. Ah! how little did I then dream of following so closely in their footsteps--of being what I have since become! Deeply these songs sank in my heart, and more fondly were they remembered than the Ave Maria and hymn to the little child Jesus, which the same dear lips taught me to chant every night before the humble shrine in our cottage. I am not a cold-blooded and deliberate rascal. No: a combination of circumstances brought me to the unenviable position in which I now stand; roused all the evil passions of my breast, and made me an outcast and an enemy to mankind. My wife was false--her seducer was noble--my knife was sharp as my vengeance--that is my history. The Barone of Castelguelfo was my evil genius: but he did not die. I fled to poverty and despair--thence to crime. How easy is the transition! There was a time--but via! 'tis past: let me recur to it no more, but forget it; as Francatripa the gentleman is forgotten in Francatripa the capobandito.

"Remember, excellency, that I sought not the villa D'Alfieri uninvited: I went there on the pressing invitation of the viscontessa; to whom, in this disguise, I was introduced by the Bishop of Cosenza, of whom--but enough! The recollection of what I have been, leads me to love that society in which I once moved as an equal; but from whose magic circle I am now proscribed, as if the mark of Cain were upon me. Between us crime has raised up a mighty barrier, which neither this honoured badge, the gift of a queen, nor that commission (at which all men laugh as a burlesque when bestowed on me) can level. And truly, though proud of my knightly star, I know too well that it shines with diminished lustre on the breast of a poor Calabrian outlaw."

His voice faltered, and his brow clouded still more; he took his horse by the bridle, and yet paused as if he had something more to say.

"My lord, beware of our mutual enemy, the Baron Guelfo. My people lately intercepted a letter from him to the Cavaliere Belcastro, concerning some Buonapartist plot they were hatching. He has been enrolling an unusual number of sbirri, and reports are current that he intends to raise the standard of Joseph on this side of the Calabrian lines. And, my lord, let the excellent lady, your mother, be more wary in future, and avoid inviting to her own mansion those gamesters whom she meets at the palace of the bishop. Would to Heaven, I had never beheld the Signorina Bianca!--Pardon me, visconte.--Her beauty and innocence have awakened in my breast old feelings and long-forgotten sentiments of honour and love, which all the sins and toils of four-and-twenty years--wretched years of wandering and misery--have not been able to obliterate from the memory of the hapless, the crime-hardened, and heart-broken robber of Calabria!"

He turned aside for a moment to conceal the passing emotion, which caused every muscle and feature of his handsome face to quiver perceptibly.

"Gentlemen," said he, recovering, "you imagined I was completely at your mercy, yet you behaved with a noble generosity which I shall never forget. You might have proposed to slay me at that instant" (he darted a terrible glance at Andronicus), "or to deliver me up to the nearest podesta: you betrayed no intention of doing either; but, had you made the attempt, behold my prevention!"

He placed to his lips a bugle of black buffalo horn, and blew a shrill signal, which made hill and valley, wood and shore, now growing dark and grim in the twilight, re-echo to the sound. It acted like the whistle of Black Roderick in the wilderness. His followers, to the number of twice five hundred men, sprang up from their concealment among the underwood, the dark green laurels, the long wavy grass, the rocks and the crumbling ruins, and crowded around us: a startling swarm of black-browed and ruffian-like fellows, all clad in the gay brigand's garb, and well armed with the Calabrian rifle, pouch, and powder-horn; some with the spoil of the unhappy Frenchmen massacred at La Syla and the villa of Sauveria, but most of them with good British buff-belts, muskets, bayonets, and cartridge-boxes, which on our landing we had issued, perhaps rather too indiscriminately, to the peasantry.

My friend and I confronted this appalling array with firmness; but old Zacheo grew pale as death: his legs tottered under him, and he sank humbly on his knees, while the memory of the fatal words by which he had urged us to despatch Francatripa, caused a cold perspiration to come over him.

"Signori, behold my followers, those free foresters of St. Eufemio, whose fame is so terrible through all the Neapolitan territories. During our whole interview they have been around us; so you were all more in my power than I could be in yours. Do me the honour to keep the poniards for my sake; and if ever you are assaulted by a Calabrian outlaw, show him my cypher on the pommel, and his arm will be powerless against you, and the passage free. Yes! fallen though he is, the name of Francatripa finds an echo in every Italian heart; and there is something glorious in that!"

He vaulted gracefully into his saddle, and assuming all his former loftiness of manner, made a signal to his band, who immediately moved off at a running trot towards the forest, led by my old acquaintance the crookback, who now very ignobly bestrode a paunchy mule.

"Buona notte, Monsignore Visconte; Capitano, santa notte!" cried the gallant robber, waving his cap, and putting spurs to his horse.

"A long good-bye to Francatripa, and all his company," I replied, significantly, as he rode away at full gallop: but Luigi, who had also resumed his hauteur, merely gave him a cold bow, and muttered to me--

"Pshaw! I hate these sentimental ruffians. Yet he is a famous fellow."

I preserved one of the brigand's poniards, as a memorial of that strange encounter; but my haughtier friend gave the other as a gift to his servant, who immediately placed it in his leathern girdle. After watching the disappearance of the brigands, as they retired by one of those gloomy gorges through which the Calabrian roads generally wind, we prepared to return to the villa, having now been absent two hours; as we remembered how great would be the anxiety of the timid Bianca for our safety.

*Chapter VI.*

*Arrival Of The Philistines.*

It was now night, and the stars were shining in the dark blue sky; the lights from the tents and huts within the field-work sparkled amid the deep gloom which involved the lower parts of the shore, and shed red streaks of uncertain radiance on the black heaving waters of the bay. The moon, like a gigantic silver shield, began slowly to show its white disk in the direction of the Lipari Isles, and to throw a brightening ray of pallid lustre from the level horizon to the shingly beach of St. Eufemio.

"Excellency," said Andronicus, cantering up to us, "there are armed horsemen crossing the Amato, and riding straight upon our path. They may be Castel-guelfo's men: his people are not with the Masse. Shall we meet them or turn aside?"

"The former of course," replied the imprudent visconte: "why, am I to turn aside my horse every time a mounted man appears on the road? Let us once be past yonder post, and we are safe within the bounds of my own territory."

The Greek made no reply, but reined in his horse, and fell into our rear again; yet I perceived him unbuttoning the flaps of his holsters. Our path lay along the skirts of the forest, and we rode unseen under the deep shadow it cast across the path: but the bright moon revealed the dark outline of several horsemen, posted at a spot where the road crossed the river; which glittered like a broad belt of silver in the dancing beams, when its current, emerging from the depths of the wood, swept through the illumined plain. The strangers were thirteen in number, and all well armed with pikes and carbines; except one, who, by his drawn sabre and the plume in his hat, appeared to be an officer. By their equipment, we knew them to be a party of the Loyal Calabrese Masse; and we paused to reconnoitre them before pushing our horses across the stream.

"Who are you that bar our way in this manner?" demanded Santugo.

"The bearers of a message to his Excellency the visconte; who, I presume, now addresses me," was the reply.

"A troublesome one, if it requires thirteen men to deliver it. Who sends it?"

"The most reverend father in God, the Lord Bishop of Cosenza, president of the grand criminal court at Palermo," was the formal reply. "Resistance is madness. Surrender your sword, Monsignore."

"To whom?" asked Santugo, with fierce surprise.

"The Barone di Bivona."

"The hereditary bailiff surrender to a mere barone of his province! Never, by Heaven!" exclaimed the visconte, drawing the sword which, as an officer of the Free Corps, he wore continually. "Follow me, Claude! Zacheo, forward and at them. I will not be captured tamely within the bounds of my own jurisdiction. On! and cut a passage through them."

Although not quite so rash and hot-blooded as my Italian friend, I had no time for reflection; but, following his example, drew my sabre, and, despising the Masse as all our army did, we dashed through the Amato, splashing the sparkling water on every side, while a volley from twelve carbines whistled about our ears. I lost an epaulette by one shot, and had my right cheek grazed by another, but luckily no harm was done; and, charging three abreast, we fell upon them pell-mell. I contented myself with acting strictly on the defensive, and used my sabre so expertly in guarding my head, limbs, and body, that I was invulnerable; but Santugo, whose inherent Italian ferocity now burst forth without control, laid open the cheek of one poor wretch, threw a second from his horse with a thrust, and, dealing a sweeping backstroke at them all, pushed forward at full speed.

Andronicus, who was armed with a heavy couteau-de-chasse, which his sire had wielded in the wars of the gallant Conte di Leyda, after laying about him like his namesake at Tyre, followed his master's example; which I, too, was not slow in imitating.

The skirmish was one which I did not in the least relish, being aware that I stood an excellent chance of receiving a shot or a pike-thrust, without gaining an atom of honour; and that a severe reprimand, perhaps a court-martial, would be the consequence, if our general learned that I was prowling about like a wandering knight, and brawling with the constituted authorities, when I should have been riding, post-haste, with the papers which M'Leod so carefully prepared for his perusal--and for which our ambassador at Palermo was no doubt waiting with the utmost impatience.

The provincial horses are famous for their strength and speed, and Santugo's cattle carried us across the country at a tremendous pace. We were closely followed by the exasperated troopers of the Masse, who now and then fired a shot after us, by way of giving us a relish to our ride.

"Which way, visconte?" cried I.

"To the villa: it is our safest--our only halting-place. The mountains are too far off."

"By Jupiter! I feel half inclined to turn and show fight, if they continue to fire at us thus."

"Would to Heaven and San Ugo, that Giacomo and any four of my old sbirri were here!" exclaimed the visconte, as he fired his pistols at random. The last shot _told_ (as we say) effectually. A cry was heard: I looked back for a moment, and saw by the moonlight a man rolling in agony on the road, while his horse was rushing to the rear at full gallop.

"It is no sinecure being on the staff here, truly," thought I, as we pulled up in the quadrangle of the villa, after having distanced our pursuers by two miles.

The gruff clamour of male voices swearing in most guttural Neapolitan, the shrill cries of women, and the confusion reigning within the mansion, announced to my friend that the enemies of his peace had penetrated to the very centre of his household; armed equally with carnal and legal weapons, warrants of the church and state, and assisted by the followers of Bivona, who wore the red cockade of the Masse.

"Francesca is lost, and for me nothing now remains but to die! Oh! my cousin--my love--my wife, I alone am guilty!" exclaimed Santugo, in a piercing voice, as he leaped from his horse, drew his sword, and rushed up the marble staircase towards the apartment where the greatest uproar seemed to reign.

The chamber which had concealed the fugitive from the field of Benevento, in the days of Charles of Anjou, had not availed his descendant now. Dragged forth from the vault below the round tower, we beheld the unhappy Francesca, almost inanimate from terror, in the hands of two rough-looking fellows who wore the bishop's livery: a kind of monkish garb, with which their black cross belts and cartridge-boxes, and flaming scarlet cockades, but ill accorded. Overcome with shame and horror, the poor girl drooped like a crushed flower in their rude grasp.

Never was I so much struck with her resemblance to Bianca. She had the same placid brow, the same clear and brilliant eyes, the same exquisitely gentle expression and classic contour of face, which had gained these lovely sisters the soubriquet of the three Italian Graces. But now, alas! her features wore the hue of death, and appeared yet more ashy when contrasted with the heavy masses of black curls which fell in disorder over her shoulders; her teeth were set, and her eyes glared with an unnatural lustre.

With all the tenacious energy of one who struggles for life, she clung to the satin skirt of the viscontessa, whose right hand yet grasped a suite of cards, whilst her left was filled with counters. The old lady was quite paralyzed.

On the other side clung Bianca, almost sinking with terror, and surveying, with restless and tearful eyes, the fierce group of armed men who thronged the apartment.

"Heaven!--O Heaven!" exclaimed Francesca, in piercing accents; "save me, dearest Signora--my aunt--my second mother--save me! Let me not be torn from my father's house by these frightful men! O misery! what have I done? O for my father's arm to shield me now! But he died in Apulia. Luigi, Luigi, save me, or I am lost to you for ever! Luigi, anima mia!"

What a voice she had! Never did that common, but most endearing epithet of Italian love sound so soft, so thrilling, to my ear. She was free, almost ere the words had left her pallid lips. Santugo struck down both the men who held her, and the flashing of their pistols in his face only served to increase his fury. Bearing her to the other end of the room he defied them to come on, with a chivalric rashness not often possessed now by his countrymen.

They were not slow in accepting the invitation: their courage--as usual with the "swinish multitude"--being increased by their numbers, they pressed forward with clubbed carbines and fixed bayonets, and a sharp conflict ensued. Feeling certain that Santugo would be worsted, I forced a passage to his side, and endeavoured to beat back the assailants with my sabre; and now came the tug of war.

Francesca had swooned, and hung like a piece of drapery over Luigi's arm; the viscontessa implored mercy for her, whilst Bianca buried her face in the bosom of Anina, who lent her powerful voice to swell the clamour: reviling the intruders, and encouraging us to slay them without mercy.

The outcries of the assembled household, together with the clank of heavy boots, the clash of weapons, the snapping of pistols, the groans and cries of the wounded, and the imprecations of the troopers, and, added to this, my own voice calling fruitlessly on the assailants to fall back, to desist, made the lofty chamber seem a very pandemonium. Sometimes a pistol-shot filled the place with smoke: one ill-directed ball shattered the chandelier, scattering the wax-lights, and involving us in comparative darkness; after which, I believe, we all laid about us at random. Another ball stretched on the floor the venerable Andronicus, who had just come to our assistance, and was cutting away among the buskinned shins of the enemy, using his sharp couteau like a scythe.

For a time I merely used my sabre in defending Luigi and the unhappy girl, who hung insensible upon him; but finding that our numerous antagonists were repeatedly having recourse to fire-arms, and that our safety was, consequently, more endangered, I slashed a few adroitly across the fingers, cleft a slice from the buffalo-head of a sbirro, and might have performed many more exploits, had not Castelermo at that moment burst in amongst us, holding a lamp aloft in one hand, and his sword in the other.

"Basta! on peril of your lives, hold all your hands, or, by San Ermo, I will drive my sword through the body of the first who strikes!" cried this formidable cavalier, with the voice of a stentor. "Croce di Malta! has hell broken loose, or are ye mad? What! Italians fighting like wild wolves, while so many Frenchmen are yet on this side of the Alps? Sheath your sword, Santugo--back Signor Claude: shame upon you all!"

On hearing this determined threat, and beholding the Maltese cross, the troopers of the Masse shrank back respectfully: but the furious visconte, whom the protracted conflict, the helpless state of Francesca, and a wound he had received, had worked up into a perfect frenzy, yet defied them once more to the encounter; and fear of abandoning his charge, even for a moment, alone restrained him from rushing upon them.

"Anathema! a curse upon ye, cowards!" he exclaimed; "away from my house, or abide the consequences! Corpo di Caio Mario! O that the thrice villainous Bishop of Cosenza, or his contemptible minion di Bivona were here, to receive at my hands the reward of all this outrage!"

"I am here, excellency," cried the tough old barone, bursting through the throng, and confronting the fiery Santugo.

He was a thickset, hard-featured man, and wore the scarlet cockade and scarf of the Masse, with a military sword and buff belt; though otherwise he was attired as a civilian. His gray hairs glistened in the light; he bent his keen, hollow eye on Santugo with a stern careworn aspect, and his sword flashed as he stood on his guard with the air of a perfect fencer. With eyes absolutely blazing with animosity, the visconte was rushing upon him; but faint with loss of blood, he reeled, fell upon the floor, and lay still, without signs of life. His mother uttered a piercing cry: Bianca covered her face, and knelt beside him. I, too, thought him dead: his classic features expressed all that combination of mental and corporeal agony, stiffening into rigidity, which the pencil of Guido Reni has so powerfully portrayed in some of his works.

In the confusion which the visconte's fall occasioned, the bishop's officials easily possessed themselves of the inanimate Francesca, and bore her away in a close carriage. I was disposed to interfere, but Castelermo grasped my hand.

"Signor Claude," said he, "I honour the sentiment which prompts you to defend this unhappy lady; but contending in her favour is to fight against the Church, whose cause is ever the most popular in Italy. The consecrated bride of God, sworn to Heaven at the blessed altar, D'Alfieri cannot make her his either by force or fraud. For the bosom of a lover she has left that of the Church, and back to it she must return; to be chastened and mortified, but I trust not abandoned in the flesh! No, the days when that dread phrase was used have passed away. Had Santugo been more religious and less rash, her vows would have been dispensed with in the usual manner, and she might have been his happy bride; but _now_, alas! after all that has passed, they must part to meet no more. The dungeons of the castle of Cosenza, or the still more horrible vaults of Canne, must close over her, and, perhaps, for ever. Madonna, be merciful to her soul!"

The voice of Castelermo faltered, as he deplored the miseries to which the wretched Francesca would be subjected by his bigoted and superstitious countrymen. With these miseries I was then unacquainted, as I knew not the secret horrors those living tombs of Canne were yet to unfold to me, and was ignorant of the cruelties which were too often practised within the walls of continental convents; where a system of domestic persecution had replaced the greater terrors of that mighty engine of ecclesiastical tyranny, the Holy Office, whose punishments for broken vows were founded on those to which the Roman vestals were sentenced by the law of Tarquinius Priscus.

The bishop's followers having departed, the Barone di Bivona collected his horsemen and withdrew; threatening, however, to call the visconte to a severe reckoning on some future day: indeed, his dangerous wound and Castelermo's intervention, alone prevented his being carried off prisoner, as the bishop's warrant included him in the charge of sacrilege; but events which soon after occurred prevented that prelate from troubling him again about the matter.

Bivona had been despatched with thirty horsemen from the army of the Masse, in pursuit of two fugitives suspected of treason and of tampering with the enemy; and as he passed southward had been requested by the bishop to assist in the capture of Francesca, whom for certain reasons, yet to be explained, that pious prelate was most eager to have in his power. The baron departed for Jacurso in pursuit of the runaways; but our unlucky acquaintance with him ended not that night.

The visconte's senses returned on his wounds being bound up; but he nearly suffered a relapse on discovering that Francesca was away, and in the power of the bishop's people. In his ravings he cursed us all; he called for his horse, his sword and pistols, and before day dawned he was in a raging fever, which brought him to the brink of the grave. Alarmed at his danger, dreadfully agitated by the scene acted before them, and in excessive sorrow for the fate of Francesca, his mother and Bianca were scarcely less ill; so the whole household was in a state of disorder.

Mistrusting the skill of the neighbouring physicians, I despatched a note to the camp for Dr. Duncan Macnesia of ours, who was still with the medical staff. He arrived in a short time, and the visconte was committed to his care. Remembering my encounter with Francatripa, and knowing well how little a brigand's word could be relied on, I applied to the commandant at St. Eufemio for a guard to protect the villa till quieter times. Early next morning, a Serjeant and fourteen rank and file of De Watteville's corps arrived. After seeing them quartered, and giving a few orders relative to the posting of sentinels, &c., accompanied by my cicerone, I once more set out, very unwillingly, on my mission to Scylla; congratulating myself, however, that my opportune return to the villa had freed it from a dangerous personage, and Bianca from a suitor so unworthy of her.

The visconte was too ill and too indignant to bid us adieu; but he sent word by Macnesia that we should never be forgiven for having permitted his cousin to be carried off, and that he would call us out the moment he recovered. He said he had sworn by Madonna, by the body of Bacchus, and of Caius Marius to boot, that I must think no more of Bianca; who parted with me in tears, and promised, with her aunt's permission, to answer my letters, notwithstanding his threats. Thus ended my long-wished-for visit to the villa; and the event left me full of doubt and anxiety for the future.

It was evening before we were again in our saddles and _en route_. We hired a goat-herd to conduct us by a short, though unfrequented, road to Francavilla; but it proved a long journey to us: the rogue led us the wrong way, and absconded about nightfall, leaving us among the mountain forests near Squillaci, on the Adriatic side of this land of brawl and uproar.

*Chapter VII.*

*Adventure At The Centaur.*

By the way-side we met a poor and aged priest, travelling on foot; he was exhausted with toil, and his gray hair and tattered cope were covered with the dust of a long journey; he had sandals on his feet, a wallet on his back, and a long staff in his hand. I could not ride past him: I, who was young, stout, and active; so dismounting, I marched on foot for six miles, while the thankful canon rode my caparisoned grey to Squillaci. He was a Greek priest, travelling from Rossano, where there were several monasteries of the order of St. Basil; all afterwards suppressed by Murat.

My kindness was repaid by his superior, the old Abate of the Basilians; to whom he reported our arrival in the decayed and solitary town, which was then involved in the gloom and obscurity of night. We heard no sound as we entered, save that of our horse's hoofs ringing on the old Roman road, and the distant roar of the Ionian sea, as it rolled on the reverberating shores of the gulf--the Scylletic gulf of classical antiquity, famous for the shipwreck of "wise Ulysses;" who, as tradition asserts, with the survivors of his disaster, founded the city.

We were hospitably received by the Abate, who was a true Calabrian and staunch royalist; and he made the purple wines of the province flow like water, in honour of Ferdinand and Carolina of Naples--"il Cavaliere Stuardo, and the brave soldiers of his Britannic Majesty--Evoe, viva!"

As we had ridden our horses at an easy pace, they held out admirably; but seventy miles of such miserable roads as those we had travelled--ways suited only for mules, goats, and buffaloes--were equal to a hundred on level ground. By the war-like operations of the French, the Masse, and the brigands, the rustic bridges were everywhere broken down, and the roads trenched and cut up to hinder the passage of cannon and waggons; so we had to make many a weary detour among the hills, following sheep-tracks, at one time at the summit, at another at the bottom of a precipice: too often we had no better road than the dry channel of a mountain stream afforded; and on such a path it required the utmost powers of spur and bridle, and all the rider's skill, to prevent the horse breaking his knees by slipping on the wave-worn pebbles.

On quitting the monastery next morning, we beheld the ceremony of a military salutation of the consecrated host, by a party of the Sicilian volunteers belonging to Kempt's brigade, then lying there in cantonment.

The host was borne aloft through the streets by the venerable Abate, followed in solemn procession by his Greek basilians, carrying crosses, banners, relics of saints and martyrs, smoking censers and lighted tapers, which filled the air with perfume. They moved to the sound of a low chant; and the whole population knelt bare-headed on each side, as they passed. The Sicilian infantry formed a lane, with the ranks facing inwards--the commanding officer kneeling in front, while the arms were presented--the colours levelled to the dust, and the drums beat a march on the flanks. Castelermo dismounted, and knelt on the pavement; but I, like a heretical presbyterian, kept my saddle: yet the sour looks of the watchful fathers softened when I uncovered my head; for I was well aware that it would have been gross disrespect not to have done so, on an occasion so solemn.

Turning our horses eastward to regain our lost ground, we passed through the village of Jacurso, and the town of Francavilla, crossed the stream of Angistola, and ascended towards Monteleone; whose castled height, and groves of oak, burst at once upon our view, as we turned an angle of the mountain path. At our feet spread the Tyrrhene sea, calmly rolling, and stretching like a vast blue mirror from St. Eufemio to Castello di Bivona; whilst its waves flashed golden in the sun, as they broke on the distant promontory of Tropea--the Portus Hercules of the Romans. Further westward, the dim but sunny horizon was streaked by the light smoke ascending from the peak of Stromboli, nearly fifty miles distant. Around us the country was like a beautiful garden: the maple, the vallonia oak, the dark sepulchral cypress, the wild acacia, the towering pine, the pistachio, the sweet-chestnut, and the walnut-trees, all displayed their varying foliage on the lowlands; while the quivering aspen and evergreen oleander waved their leafy branches from the sandy rocks. Sheltered by graceful weeping-willows and lofty Judas'-trees, little cottages peeped out on the green hill sides; whilst the ruddy orange, the golden-apple, the pomegranate, the almond, the grape, and the plum, were flourishing around in glorious luxuriance beneath the warm light of an unclouded sun.

Spangled with myriads of flowers, the green and lofty hills reared their verdant or wooded summits to the azure sky; numerous flocks browsed on their sides, beneath the shepherd's care, and the cawing rooks wheeled in airy circles around them. We were always greeted with a wave of the hat by the guardians of this modern Arcadia; who lay basking on the grassy sward, or sat beneath the brow of an ivy-clad rock, or a shadowy tree, where they had slept away the night in their rough tabarri. Each had by him his keen-eyed wolf-dog, courageous in spirit, strong, muscular, and beautiful in form, with bushy tail and long hairy coat whiter than snow. These dogs watched alternately the browsing herds, the twittering birds, and the dark eyes of their indolent masters; who spent their solitary hours in smoking home-made cigars, sucking liquorice root, carving cudgels, scraping reeds for the zampogna, or improvising their mistresses on the three-stringed guitar.

The breeze from the Tyrrhene Sea swept over the fertile shore, making the morning air delightfully cool and agreeable; but when noon approached, we were glad to halt at Monteleone, until its fierce glow and suffocating closeness had passed away.

Monteleone (a marquisate which Buonaparte had bestowed on one of the most famous and favoured of his officers) lies close to the base of lofty mountains, which are covered with the richest foliage during the greater part of the year: they form a part of that mighty chain which runs through the centre of all Italy. Its regular streets and handsome houses, built in the picturesque style of the country, were securely enclosed by a fortified wall, where the bayonets of our sentinels were gleaming through loop and embrasure. On the towers of its castle, which were half-hidden amid a wood of lordly oaks and pines, the standard of Naples drooped listlessly; every breath of wind had died away, and the air was hot and still: profound silence reigned in the streets, and the white sunny pavement appeared new and strange to us, after riding so long on the green velvet turf of the country. Both piazza and street were lonely and deserted; the citizens were enjoying their forenoon nap, and the sentinels kept close within their boxes.

We put up at an inn, or hotel, over the arched portal of which projected a hideous centaur, holding loft a sign-board, on which a long string of verses informed us that Andrea da Fossi gave the best entertainment in Italy for man and horse. Beneath this peeped out a coat armorial, cut in stone, time-worn and decayed; but the collar that surrounded it bore the Order of the Crescent, instituted by Rendler of Anjou on his conquering Sicily. Above this was the coronet of the Princes of Squillaci, to whom, in happier times, the edifice had been a palace; and, though partly ruined, altered, and transmogrified, it still bore traces of its ancient grandeur.

"We shall be well quartered here," said Castelermo, with a sigh of weariness, as we dismounted; both feeling inactive enough after our long morning ride: "but if Signor da Fossi promises more than he can perform, why, then, basta! my riding-rod shall cultivate acquaintance with his shoulders. We gentlemen of Malta like not to be trifled with."

The ostlers received our horses, and with much ceremony we were ushered up-stairs by mine host himself (who, indeed, was seldom troubled with visitors), and led into a magnificent room of the old palace: the cushions of the sofas and chairs were of scarlet silk, figured with gold; the hangings were of crimson velvet, edged with the same costly material; the ceiling was in fresco, and the floor of fancy tiles; while the tables were slabs of white or yellow marble, on columns of gilded wood. Above a sideboard, stood a little Madonna in a niche, with a lamp before it, before which, on entering, Castelermo made a most profound genuflexion: we afterwards found it very convenient for our cigars.

Wine and iced water were the first refreshments we summoned; then throwing open the windows, which faced the west, to admit the cool breeze from the distant sea, we drew the dark thick curtains to elude the glaring sun, and each threw himself upon a sofa, overcome with fatigue and lassitude. What a relief I experienced when divested of my sash and belt, and its heavy appurtenances the sword and sabre-tache; and when I exchanged for a light shell-jacket, the tight regimentals: in which it was no joke to be harnessed and buttoned from waist to chin in a climate so sultry.

Among novelists and narrators, an inn has always been famous as a place of introduction, a starting point, or the casual scene of unexpected rencontres and adventures; and so "Il Centauro" proved to us: we had not been two hours beneath its roof before we became involved in a very heart-stirring affair.

The waiter had cleared away a hasty luncheon, and the glittering decanters of well-iced champagne and gioja, the salvers of cool, refreshing grapes, and little maccaroons sweet as sugar and almonds could make them, were all receiving due justice from myself and cicerone. The sun was verging westward, the air grew more cool, and we were beginning to breathe again; when a bustle was heard at the gate of the inn-yard, and an elderly man, armed like an officer of the Loyal Masse, and dressed in a suit of light green, bare-headed and with his long white hair streaming behind him, dashed through the archway on a swift and powerful horse--one of the true Barbary breed, clean-legged, compact, black as jet, and full of blood and fire. It was covered with foam, and seemed to have been ridden far and fast; for no sooner did the fierce rider pull impetuously up, than the noble horse staggered back upon its haunches, threw up its head wildly, and then rolled in the dust beneath the weight of its double burden: for a young girl was seated across the holsters. She clung to the officer with a degree of terror and affection, which at once excited our interest and curiosity; and uttering a cry of despair, as their last hope, the brave horse, sank beneath them, she fainted: but the old cavalier, disengaging himself from the falling steed, bore her up harmless, and in a manner so graceful and adroit, that Marco clapped his hands and muttered "Basta!" The days of the Barbary courser were ended: stretching out his long yet slender legs, he beat the gravel with quivering hoof, and protruded a dry white tongue; a spasm convulsed his form, the dark blood gushed in a torrent from his dilated nostrils, and the brave horse moved no more.

"Horses, fresh horses for Scylla," cried the cavalier. "Quick! as you value life--fresh horses!"

"Maladetto," muttered Andrea da Fossi, nonplussed, "we have not had such a thing these three years as relays of horses. When Signor the Marchese di Monteleone----"

"Enough--the old story. Are there British troops in the town?"

"In the castle, signor."

"Blessed be Madonna, then we are saved! Farewell! my faithful Barbary, that has borne me through the hot perils of many a dangerous day: thou hast failed me now!" said the old officer, turning to his dead horse, and gazing wistfully upon it. A tear shone in his eye: it was the feeling of a moment; other and weightier cares pressed close upon him, and he advanced to the inn-door with the inanimate lady.

The burly Andrea seemed rather unwilling to admit guests who came in such a questionable manner; but Castelermo and I cut the matter short by conducting the strangers into our apartment; while their horse-furniture was pounced upon by the innkeeper, to make sure amends so far for any trouble or expense he might be put to on their account. His wife and the female part of the household, used all means to restore the inanimate girl; after which I had leisure to observe her companion. He was a fine-looking old man, somewhere about sixty, with all the _beau-ideal_ of the gentlemanly old soldier in his figure, aspect, and address; his thin hair and moustaches were silvered with age, and his cheek had been well tanned by the fourteen years' campaigning of the French invasion; his coat was laced with silver and girt with a scarlet sash, after the fashion of the Masse, and he wore a heavy sabre of Eastern fashion, which, when he laid it on a side-table, Andrea da Fossi also secured unobserved. So deep was his anxiety, so vivid his excitement, while the young girl slowly revived, that he had not as yet addressed us; but kept his face closely bent over her.

We became deeply interested in their fortunes.

"'Tis some wild love-adventure, like poor Luigi's," whispered Castelermo: "may it end less fatally! The cavalier is none of the youngest; but this pretty donzella has quite won my friendship."

At that moment the heavy velvet curtains were withdrawn, the bright light of the setting sun poured into the room, and the stranger turned towards us.

"Major Gismondo!" we both exclaimed, now recognising him, for the first time, through the dust which powdered his altered features.

"The same, signori," said he, with a grave bow, and, grasping our hands. "Thank God you are here: we are safe, then: Signor Dundas can protect us--my daughter is saved!" He covered his face with his handkerchief, while Marco handed him wine.

"Poor little Luisa!" said Castelermo. "Claude, saw you ever a girl so beautifully fair? But, in Heaven's name, what has happened?--speak, Signor Gismondo."

"You shall hear, when these people are gone--when Luisa recovers. My tongue can scarcely articulate: patience--but a minute!"

He was dreadfully exhausted and agitated. Castelermo might well term Luisa fair: one excepted, her face appeared to me the most enchanting I had yet seen in Calabria. Though less showy and stately than the three sisters D'Alfieri, her beauty was, perhaps, more touching and girlish. A tight satin vest, with sleeves that reached only to the elbow, displayed the full outline of her bust; whose whole proportions were equally just and delicate. The thick white lace which edged her boddice, and fell in folds from her short sleeves, could not rival in whiteness the snowy arms and swelling bosom; of which her disordered attire revealed rather more than usual. Her complexion was remarkably pale for an Italian girl: but the arch of her brown eyebrows, the length of her lashes, and the delicate little lids they fringed were perfectly beautiful; her cheeks were full and round, almost imperceptibly tinged with red, and, as Marco said of her mouth, so pretty and pouting, it "seemed formed only for kisses." The girl was a very Hebe! and not more than sixteen. The glossy ringlets of her long hair streamed in the sunlight, like a golden shower, over the shoulder of the old man on whose arm she rested, and who hung over her with all the tenderness and anxiety she merited. After a time she sighed deeply, disclosing a row of little white teeth, pure as those of an infant, and opening her eyes she became at once alive to the scene around her. The vivacity which sparkled in those bright blue orbs, together with the crimson blush which overspread her face and polished neck, made her appear a thousand times more attractive than before. "It was the hectic of a moment:" it died away. Alas! the poor girl was utterly exhausted, and almost speechless.

"My daughter! have I saved you only to see you perish from fatigue?" said Gismondo, in a faltering voice. "Luisa, look up--'tis your poor father who speaks! Hear me, little one!"

She embraced him closely and burst into tears.

"Luisa!"

"Caro padre, are they near us yet?"

"About three leagues in the rear, perhaps," he replied in a troubled voice.

"And these gentlemen?"

"Our friends, and I trust our saviours! You remember the Signor di Castelermo?"

"O yes; and Signor Claude," she added, in a faint voice.

"May their timely presence and intervention avert that most dread catastrophe, of which even the contemplation is horror."

"You may depend upon us--ay, to the death!" said we both at once.

"You are pursued, I have reason to believe;" added the Maltese knight.

"Yes, and wish to continue our journey."

"Where to, signor?"

"Anywhere to safety: but my poor daughter would certainly expire with fatigue if we rode a league further. We have travelled seventy miles on the spur without drawing bridle once; save when Luisa's horse fell beneath her in the wilderness of La Syla, when I was compelled to take her on the saddle of my own gallant Barbary. Often since then have we been in deadly peril: when lynxes shrieked, and herds of forest wolves howled behind us--when rivers foamed in front, and the mountain robbers showered their bullets from the rocks--I trembled and I prayed: but only for my daughter; and God--good and merciful--has spared her. Cavalieri! I am very unfortunate: I throw myself upon your generosity; and when did one soldier implore in vain the generosity of another? I trust that, like honourable men, you will stand by me in the coming peril: not for my sake, but for that of this poor sufferer; whom the Mother of Mercy preserve from the fury of those who are tracking her with horse and horn, as if she were some wild boar of Abruzzi, instead of the adorable girl she is. Perdition--let them come! The cowards shall find that Battista Gismondo has a willing heart and able hand, to defend the child that God has given, and the last that war and man have left him." He pressed the trembling girl to his breast: she sobbed convulsively, and nearly relapsed into unconsciousness.

"O my father!" exclaimed she, in piercing accents; "padre mia, my lips refuse to utter what my heart would bid them say: I can only hang upon your neck and sob like a little child, and kiss your cheek and weep. My father, I have destroyed you."

"Say rather, Luisa, that by casting temptation in your way, I have been the destroyer of you. Peace, peace little heart! Ah! how it beats and flutters!" he added, half playfully, pressing his fingers on her bosom.

"There are those at hand who may soon make it cease to beat for ever," said she, in a faint voice; and, sinking backwards on the sofa, her eyes closed, and the pallor of her hue increased.

"Madonna, preserve my child!" exclaimed the old cavalier, beating his breast, while his eyes gleamed with fear and distraction; for at that moment the noise of advancing hoofs was heard on the hard dusty road that wound down from the mountains. Though the inn stood within the Porto Nuovo of the town, we could hear the din of the pursuers: but it sounded faint and distant.

"Major Gismondo, I implore you to tell us the meaning of all this," said I.

"They come:" replied he, turning round to look for his sabre, "they come; and with renewed vigour, too, to judge by the trampling hoofs. Perdition! all the powers in Italy, or in hell below it, shall not separate us while hand and hilt can hold together: but, O San Gennaro, what has my poor child done to be persecuted thus? I had hopes of reaching the British fleet; when, perhaps, we should have found safety; but I trust that with you, Captain Dundas, I shall find that protection which your countrymen never refuse to the unfortunate." I bowed, but understood him not.

*Chapter VIII.*

*Love And War.*

"Gentlemen," he continued, when the room had been cleared of Fossi and his household, who were all in an agony of curiosity; "you know me well: I am Battista Gismondo, a major of the loyal Masse, and this is my daughter, Luisa. After the events of these few hours past I can scarcely deem myself the same person: I am bewildered. Luisa is the last of a once numerous family; but my sons--my sons!--they have all gone before me to God: one perished on the walls of Andria, one in the breach of Altamurra, and three in the hands of the French; cruelly and savagely shot as rebels by the Marchese di Monteleone,--whom Madonna forgive! for I never can.

"When that unrelenting commander was attacked by our patriots at La Syla,--where all perished save himself and his aide-de-camp--from the rocks above that hideous gorge I beheld the work of death. It was a scene of thrilling horror. Within that n