"Remorseless villain!" he shouted, in a voice of appalling wrath, "I know a venom yet shall sting thy recreant spirit into action. Know, Ercole Barozzo! that Foscari's daughter was wooed and won by _me_--plighted her troth to _me_--long ere she saw thy truculent and yellow visage. Nay, more, she would ere this have fled with me from Lombardy, had not higher duties staid our mutual purpose." The governor, although a renowned and fearless soldier in earlier life, had betrayed a terror on the first view of Colonna, and a reluctance to engage with him in single-handed conflict, which I had referred to the depressing action of a diseased conscience, or to the increased love of life generated by his prosperous condition; but a taunt like this was beyond all human endurance; it stung him to the very soul, and roused his lazy valour into life and fury. His sinews stiffened with rage, and his widely-opened eyes glared upon Colonna like those of a tigress at bay, while his teeth remained firmly clenched, and inaudible maledictions quivered on his working lips. Tearing his formidable sword from its sheath, he rushed like one delirious upon his adversary, and their blades met with a clash which told the deadly rancour of the combatants. I now witnessed a conflict unparalleled for intense and eager thirst of blood. It was truly the death-grapple of the lion and the serpent. The noble and generous Colonna, pursuing his just revenge, and trusting, like the kingly animal, to native strength and courage, sought no unfair advantage; while the crafty Barozzo, huge in body, tortuous in mind, and scaled with impenetrable steel, well personified the reptile of Colonna's vision. Although a practised and wary swordsman, he did not wield his weapon like Colonna, who, with equal skill in stratagem and feint, was unrivalled in that lightning-quickness and ready sympathy of eye and hand, for which the Italians are pre-eminent amongst the swordsmen of Europe; but the courage and self-possession of the governor had been exercised in frequent conflicts with the Moslem; his sinews were strung with martial toil and daily exercise; and his well-mailed person presented so little vulnerable surface as greatly to protract and facilitate his defence. He soon learned, however, to respect the formidable skill and untiring arm of his young opponent, whose weapon played with a motion so rapid and incessant, that he seemed to parry and thrust at the same instant; and had not the large and powerful hand of Barozzo retained a firm grasp of his hilt, he would have been disarmed at the first onset. After a few passes, Colonna's point struck the centre of the governor's corselet with a force which made the scales sink deep beneath the pressure, but the tempered steel resisted this and many other well-directed hits. The conflict proceeded with unabated fierceness, and for a period which would have utterly exhausted men of ordinary lungs and sinews, when Barozzo, finding all his lunges