The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken a solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of their horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no feeling of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out, twisted and then suddenly {079}turned around and around rapidly. Light red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single exclamation. All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their capacity, had fallen down with his adversary’s knife still sticking in his breast. He was dead. They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own! This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified, in several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In the taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a knife wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a timely bleeding. I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a furtive glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere I saw men and women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying pell-mell on the same litter. In one of these hovels I thought I recognized {080}the young girl whom I had seen on the hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to her supple and delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the lamp, she suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph. [Illustration: 100] She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war, she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. {081}She was not the only one of her sex, however, whom I saw during that fantastic night. The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp, attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music came. In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her toilet. I ought to have fled once more,--this time from bashfulness or a sense of propriety,--but a conscientious historian is bound to overcome every difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a great piece of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness, what might be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.