Though bruised and dizzied, I endeavoured to struggle up; but my adversary threw himself from his horse, grappled with me, and cast me back upon the ground with my face upwards. Oh how shall I describe the fearful struggle for life that then ensued?--the agonising grasp with which I clenched the hands wherewith he endeavoured to reach my neck--the pressure of his knees upon my chest--the beating of my heart as I still strove, yet found myself overmastered, and my strength failing--the dreadful, eager haste with which he tried to hold back my head, and gash my throat with the knife he held in his hand--and the muttered curses he vented, on finding my resistance so long protracted. Five times he shook off my grasp, and five times I caught his hands again, as they were in the act of completing his object. At the same time, I could hear his teeth cranching against each other with the violence of his efforts. My hands were all cut and bleeding, his dress was nearly torn to pieces, the strength of both was well nigh exhausted, when we heard the sounds of voices advancing along the road. Though our struggle had hitherto been silent, I now called loudly for assistance. He heard the noise also. "This then shall settle it," cried he, raising his arm to plunge the knife into my chest, but I interposed my hand; and though the force with which he dealt the blow was such as to drive the point through my palm, yet this saved my life, for before he could repeat the stroke the horsemen had come up, attracted by the cries I continued to utter. One of them sprang from his horse, beheld the deathly struggle going on, and not knowing which was the aggressor, but seeing that one held the other at a fatal disadvantage, called to my assailant instantly to desist or die. The assassin again raised his arm: the horseman saw him about to strike--levelled a pistol at his head--fired--and the murderer, dropping the weapon from his hand, staggered up upon his feet--reeled for a moment, and then fell dead across my chest. CHAPTER XV. Oh, life! thou strange mysterious tie between the spirit and the clay; what is it makes the bravest of us shrink from that separation which the small dagger or the tiny asp can so easily effect. For a moment I lay to recover myself from all the agitated feelings that hurried through my heart, and then struggling up, I rolled the ponderous mass of the dead man from off my breast, and rose from the ground. "Is it Count Louis de Bigorre?" said the voice of the Chevalier de Montenero. I answered that it was; and he proceeded,--"I thought so: infatuated young man, why would you trust yourself in the hands of your enemy, when you were warned of his cruelty and his baseness?" "Because," I answered, "I thought that a person who had done injustice to me, might also do injustice to him."