He brandished his fists in my face, but for the instant I held him back by the lightnings in my eyes. “You make your daughter to be pitied by every old woman and every clown. You think to smuggle yourself into heaven, when hell--if hell there be--yawns to receive you. You are one of those Germans who make the German name hateful in Italy, as the name for false piety, oafishness, swinishness, and pure devilishness.” But here, with a great beast-like roar, he had broken away from Moritz, trying to hold him, and clutched a heavy boar’s spear from the rack behind the table. I paused in my torrent of words just enough to see the weapon glittering over his head, and whing!--it had shot across my shoulder, just grazing the skin, and dug into the table below the dais. A scream from Ilsa, the abbess rising with every sign of horror, shouts, runnings to and fro, some of my own Regensteiners hurrying me from the hall, a rending volley of curses from the Graf, who was struggling with his son and trusted retainers,--it all passed like a hideous dream. I was outside the castle and standing under the black night while they brought up the horses. The cool wind was lessening the effects of the wine. I looked upward. Above me was the selfsame canopy of stars that had been when Marianna and I had gazed upon them together, sitting still and close in the Vatican gardens. Marianna! At the moment I was ready to retract every word spoken publicly or privately in praise of Germany; to denounce it as the most man-accursed and God-forsaken land on the wide earth, from the savage Indes to roaring Muscovy. “By Zeus and the Styx,” I swore in true classic style, “let me but live out one year in this crow’s nest of mine, and then back to Italy--and to _her_!” In this mood I fared home to Regenstein. The next morning, sober, and with a headache, I sent Adolf with my cartel, telling the Graf von Blankenburg I must needs desire to meet him on the field of honor, the insult which he proffered me affording but one atonement. * * * * * However, in the cool of the day, as I walked moody and alone in the little pine grove at the foot of the Regenstein, lo! out of the trees, as in the manner of an apparition, glided Gräfin Ilsa. She was white as new paper; her eyes were red: her hair flew uncombed over her shoulders; her dress was sombre and mean. Much embarrassed at her coming, I stood stock still, while she, moving up to me, paused as if to take courage, then without more ado knelt at my very feet. Next her words came, mingled in a torrent of sobbing. “Oh, you are generous! You are noble and forgiving. _Liebe Gott_, do not, do not--” “Do not what, gracious Lady?” I asked, still sorely confused myself. “Do not press this duel on my father. You know he was in his cups. He has treated you--his own guest--most foully. He sought your life. But Moritz egged you both on. Be merciful, be generous--spare him, spare!”