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Again the lightning flashed, and I distinguished the assassin features of Barozzo, expanded into horrible and revolting magnitude. Eyes, lurid and menacing as meteors, glared upon me with a malignant scowl, and huge lips, parted in a fiendish grin, disclosed an array of fangs, pointed and glittering as poniards.
He composed his excited features into tranquillity; and after a long pause, of which I endeavoured to disguise the embarrassment by some comments on the Venetian school of painting, Barozzo returned from the window and resumed his seat.
At this moment, the heavy trampling of approaching horses rolled in doubling echoes through the ravine. Encouraged by the welcome sound, Barozzo attempted to draw his sword, but before the plunging of his horse would allow him to reach the hilt, the vigilant Colonna smote him on the cheek with his sheathed weapon.
I will avail myself of this delay to bring home to Barozzo the evidence of his guilt, and defy him to mortal combat; or, should he shrink from it, I will treat him as a savage and noxious animal, and hunt him to death."
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 ineffective, and fearing premature exhaustion, endeavoured to sustain and collect his powers by remaining on the defensive; but it was now too late.
The dull grey eyes of the again agitated Barozzo quailed and fell under this intolerable scrutiny; his sallow visage was suffused with a ghastly yellow; again he glanced in terror at the artist, and then half rose from his chair in undisguised consternation.
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.
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.
If the strong attachment of Laura to her mother does not again baffle my hopes, we shall effect our escape three days before the one appointed for her marriage with Barozzo; but I can discern too well, through her invincible dejection, that she is still balancing the dreadful alternatives of a marriage abhorrent to her feelings, and the abandonment of her mother."
Had I wished to save the life of this lawless pander to the cruelty of Cosmo, I saw no expedient which would not expose my valued friend to imminent and deadly peril; and could I for a moment hesitate between the chivalrous, the princely Colonna, so unrivalled in form and feature, so elevated and pure in sentiment, so eminently fitted, by his high intelligence, his glowing diction, and his kindling, all-impelling energies, to rouse a better, higher, nobler spirit, in all who came within the sphere of his activity could I pause an instant between this first of nature's nobles and the base Barozzo, who, inaccessible to pity, and fortified against all compunction by years of crime, had, unprovoked, and with the malice of a demon, destroyed the best and bravest of the sons of Florence?
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