With prompt and ardent enthusiasm, I assured him of my devotion to his cause, and unfolded to him a stratagem, which my knowledge of the surrounding country, and of the habits of Barozzo, had readily suggested. During the frequent absence of Colonna, I had occasionally joined the governor in his equestrian excursions, and, from neighbourly feeling to the senator Foscari, had escorted his guest to the most picturesque scenery of this romantic district. His rides were daily, and at the same hour. I proposed to join him as usual, and to lead him into a narrow and unfrequented defile in the mountains, which rise from the lake about three leagues from Peschiera. Colonna might there await and force him into personal encounter, while I would act as umpire, and prevent any interference from the Greek escort of the wary chieftain. At this proposal Colonna eagerly approached, and embraced me with grateful rapture. His dark eye kindled with its wonted fire; his pallid cheeks were flushed; the settled gloom, which had so long clouded his fine features, vanished like mists before the sun, and was succeeded by a radiant and exulting energy, eloquently expressive of his conviction that the hope on which he had lived so long--the hope of just revenge--would now be realised. I urged him to seek, in immediate repose, the restoration of his exhausted strength, and undertook to provide him with a managed horse, armour, and weapons, which should place him upon a level with his mailed and well-mounted antagonist. Horse and armour, however, he promptly declined. He would find an expedient, he said, to compel Barozzo to fight him foot to foot, and he pledged himself to find a way with a good weapon through the scaly corselet of his serpent foe. He requested only a straight two-edged sword, of well-tried temper; and a woodman's axe, the purpose of which he did not explain. He then left me, to plunge into the lake, and to find in its pure and bracing waters that refreshment which, he said, it would be a vain attempt to obtain in sleep, while I proceeded to my father's armoury, and selected from the numerous weapons which adorned it, a long and powerful two-edged blade, which he had brought from the Levant. This sword was black from hilt to point, and destitute of ornament, except some golden hieroglyphics near the guard; but I knew that it had stood the brunt of several stirring campaigns, without material injury to its admirable edge and temper.