Barozzo, who had started from the ground, and now stood foaming at the
mouth like a chafed panther, said nothing in reply, but seized his
sword, and rushed upon his generous adversary with desperate but
unavailing ferocity. I could now perceive that Colonna pressed him
more hotly than before, and that his point no longer sought the
corselet, but the throat of Barozzo, where indeed alone he was
mortally vulnerable, and where, ere long, the death-stroke reached
him. A few passes had been exchanged without a hit, when suddenly
Barozzo's sword again flew from his grasp, and long before it reached
the ground, Colonna's point was buried in his throat. The thrust was
mortal. The steel had severed the duct of life; the hot blood bubbled
out in streams; and the huge Barozzo staggered, reeled, and fell upon
his back. A bloody froth now gathered round his lips, which worked
with agony and rage; the life-blood ebbed apace, and soon the trunk
and limbs of the colossal chieftain were stiffened in death. But even
in death the dominant passions of his soul were strongly written in
his livid features. His glazed and sunken eyes still glared with
fiend-like malice on his conqueror, and every lineament was inwrought
with reckless and insatiable ferocity.
Colonna gazed a while in solemn and impressive silence upon the foe he
had destroyed. His broad forehead darkened with deep thought, and his
eyes saddened with painful recollections of the beloved parent whose
untimely death he had so well avenged. Soon, however, his noble
features brightened with a fervent look of blended filial piety and
exultation. He wiped his reeking blade upon the remnants of Barozzo's
mantle, and we retraced our steps. Colonna ascended a sheep-path, and
crossed the mountain to regain his boat, while I returned by a
circuitous road to the villa, leaving the governor of Candia and his
retinue to the vultures of the Apennine, which, with unerring ken, had
espied the dead Greeks, and were already sailing in wide eddies high
above the scene of blood.
* * * * *
Here my friend, who had with difficulty pursued his way through the
mouldy pages of the decayed manuscript, was compelled to make a final
pause. The long action of time and damp had nearly obliterated the
remainder of the narrative, and glimpses only of romantic perils by
sea and land were occasionally discernible. We were obliged to suspend
all farther gratification of our curiosity until our return to Venice,
where we hoped by a chemical process to succeed in restoring to a more
legible tint the pale characters of this interesting manuscript.
NAPOLEON.
BY J. G. LOCKHART.
[_MAGA._ JULY 1821.]
The mighty sun had just gone down
Into the chambers of the deep;
The ocean birds had upward flown,
Each in his cave to sleep.
And silent was the island shore,
And breathless all the broad red sea,
And motionless beside the door
Our solitary tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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