He is well, and happy; but the stranger has not seen him for three weeks! Fabian makes a motion of disappointment. "I have heard of him more recently."--"How?--when?" exclaims the mother.--"Last night," replies Fabian; "and he is ill." He takes the stranger apart; hurriedly tells him not to be incredulous, or, at all events, disdainful, of their old Corsican superstitions; informs him that he and his brother are twins, and so like each other as to be almost undistinguishable; that from their birth, absent or united, a strange sympathy exists between them; that one cannot experience joy or grief that is not in this mysterious manner shared by the other; and, seeing a smile on the gay Frenchman's countenance, he relates an anecdote of a similar case which occurred three hundred years before, and in the very house in which they then stood. A strange wild story it was, and prepares us for what is to come. To prepare us also for the bitterness of a Corsican vendetta, a tumultuous scene is introduced of the compulsory reconcilement of a quarrel between two peasants, which, in a few years, had cost nine lives, and took its origin from some indignity offered to a hen of the Orlandos. Colonna makes the _amende_ by presenting his adversary with a white cock; and Fabian is again left alone. The stage grows dark; something wild and unearthly is felt in the sudden hush of the dim hall; he sits down at the side to write to Louis. "Brother," he says, "I feel so miserable, that I am certain you are in pain. Write--write!" While he is setting down these words, a pallid, dreadful countenance rises from the boards at the other end of the stage--rising gradually and without sound--neck, shoulders, body--and advancing at the same time towards the table at which Fabian writes; it reaches its feet when it comes within touch of his shoulder. The features of the brothers are the same; the height, the figure, even the dress--for Fabian has taken off his coat before he began to write,--and all the difference is a speck of blood on the left breast of Louis' shirt; and gazing on the group before him, (for the mother has entered in the mean time,) he slowly sinks. But this is not the end. The window at the back of the hall opens, and through that vista, what do we see? The brother exactly as we saw him a moment before, lying dead beneath the stump of a tree, supported in the arms of his seconds--a gentleman in his shirt sleeves wiping his sword--two other gentlemen in attitudes of watchfulness: it is the Bois de Boulogne; a duel has been fought. Louis dei Franchi is the victim, and the drop-scene falls, leaving the Countess and Fabian transfixed with horror at this wondrous sight.