The recollection of Mascalbruni had been almost effaced from his mind; but, had he met him face to face, it is not unlikely that he _would_ have remembered the villain who had destroyed the hopes of his family, and marred their happiness for ever. For some time he never went out at night unaccompanied by his wife, and always in a carriage. But a day came when he happened to dine without her in the Rue St. Honoré. The weather being fine, and the party a late one, he sent away his cabriolet, and after midnight proceeded to walk home. Paris was at that time very badly lighted; the _reverberées_ at a vast distance apart, suspended between the houses, giving a very dim and feeble ray. Few persons--there being then no _trottoirs_--were walking at that hour; and it so happened that not a soul was stirring the whole length of the street. But, within a few yards of his own door, the figure I have described rushed from under the shadow of a _porte cochère_, and plunged a dagger in his heart. He fell without a groan, and lay there till the patrol passed, when he was conveyed, cold and lifeless, to the arms of his bride, who was anxiously awaiting his return. Her agony I shall not make the attempt to depict: there are some sorrows that defy description. Notwithstanding the boasted excellence of the Parisian police, the author of this crime, who I need not say was Mascalbruni, remained undiscovered. Strange as it may appear, I am enabled to connect two more links in the chain of this ruffian's history, and thus, as it were, to become his biographer. Having been in town at the period when he was in the zenith of his glory, and being slightly acquainted with the family whom, like a pestilence, it was his lot to destroy and blight, I was well acquainted with his person, and he with mine; indeed, once seen, it was not easy to mistake his. After two winters at Naples, I travelled, by the way of Ravenna and Rimini, to Venice. The carnival was drawing to a close, and, on quitting a _soirée_ at Madame Benzon's, I repaired to the Ridotta. The place was crowded to excess with that mercurial population, who during this saturnalia, particularly its last nights, mingle in one orgie, and seem to endeavour, by a kind of intoxication of the senses, and general licentiousness, to drown the memory of the destitution and wretchedness to which the iron despotism of the Austrian has reduced them. The scene had a sort of magnetic attraction in it. I had neither mask nor domino, but it is considered rather _distingué_ for men to appear without them; and, as I had no love-affair to carry on, it was no bad means of obtaining one, had I been so inclined.