any fear she threw herself between them: _Octavio_, out of respect to her, ceased; but _Philander_, as if he had not regarded her, would still have been striving for victory, when she stayed his hand, and begged him to hear her; he then set the point of his sword to the ground, and breathless and fainting almost, attended what she had to say: she conjured him to cease the quarrel, and told him if _Octavio_ had injured him in her heart, he ought to remember he had injured _Octavio_ as much in that of his sister: she conjured him by all the friendship both she and himself had received at _Octavio_’. hands; and concluded with saying so many fine things of that cavalier, that in lieu of appeasing, it but the more exasperated the jealous _Philander_, who took new courage with new breath, and passed at _Octavio_. She then addressed to _Octavio_, and cried: ‘Hold, oh hold, or make your way through me; for here I will defend virtue and honour!’ and put herself before _Octavio_: she spoke with so piteous a voice, and pleaded with so much tenderness, that _Octavio_, laying his sword at her feet, bid her dispose--false as she was, of his honour: ‘For oh,’ said he, ‘my life is already fallen a victim to your perjuries!’ He could say no more, but falling where he had laid his sword, left _Philander_ master of the field. By this time some gentlemen that had been walking came up to them, and found a man lie dead, and a lady imploring another to fly: they looked on _Octavio_, and found he had yet life; and immediately sent for surgeons, who carried him to his lodgings with very little hope: _Philander_, as well as his wounds would give him leave, got into a chair, telling the gentlemen that looked on him, he would be responsible for _Octavio_’. life, if he had had the ill fortune to take it; that his quarrel was too just to suffer him to fly.--So being carried to the _cabaret_, with an absolute command to _Sylvia_ not to follow him, or visit him: for fear of hurting him by disobeying, she suffered herself to be carried to her lodgings, where she threw herself on her bed, and drowned her fair eyes in a shower of tears: she advises with _Antonet_ and her page what to do in this extremity; she fears she has, by her ill management, lost both her lovers, and she was in a condition of needing every aid. They, who knew the excellent temper of _Octavio_, and knew him to be the most considerable lover of the two, besought her, as the best expedient she could have recourse to, to visit _Octavio_, who could not but take it kindly; and they did not doubt but she had so absolute a power over him, that with a very little complaisance towards him, she would retrieve that heart her ill luck had this morning forfeited; and which, they protested, they knew nothing of, nor how he got into her chamber. This advice she took; but, because _Octavio_ was carried away dead, she feared, (and swooned with the fear) that he was no longer in the world, or, at least, that