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On the last day of January I returned to Naples, after an absence of more than a month, and was welcomed back by all my numerous acquaintance with enthusiasm. The Marquis D'Avencourt had informed me rightly the affair of the duel was a thing of the past an almost forgotten circumstance.
Neither the Marquis D'Avencourt nor Captain Freccia had ever known me personally when I was Fabio Romani nor was it at all probable that the two tavern companions of Ferrari had ever seen me. A surgeon would be on the field most probably a stranger.
"Are we ready, gentlemen?" demanded Freccia, with courteous coldness. "Quite ready," was the response. The Marquis D'Avencourt took out his handkerchief. Then Ferrari raised his head and faced me fully for the first time. Great Heaven! shall I ever forget the awful change that came over his pallid countenance the confused mad look of his eyes the startled horror of his expression!
Permit me to remark that it is altogether exceptional, after such ungentlemanly conduct." Ferrari looked from one to the other in silent fury. His face had grown pale as death. He wrenched himself from the grasp of D'Avencourt and De Hamal. "Fools! let me go!" he said, savagely. "None of you are on my side I see that!" He stepped to the table, poured out a glass of water and drank it off.
But you must promise not to interrupt any of the proceedings by so much as an exclamation." He promised readily, and when I joined the marquis he followed, carrying my case of pistols. "He can be trusted, I suppose?" asked D'Avencourt, glancing keenly at him while shaking hands cordially with me. "To the death!" I replied, laughingly.
The thought of that coffin moved me to a stern smile that splintered, damp, and moldering wood must speak for itself by and by. Lastly I look the letters sent me by the Marquis D'Avencourt the beautiful, passionate love epistles she had written to Guido Ferrari in Rome. Now, was that all? I thoroughly searched both my rooms, ransacking every corner.
I turned to the Marquis D'Avencourt. "There can be but one answer to this," I said, with indifferent coldness. "Signor Ferrari has brought it on himself. Marquis, will you do me the honor to arrange the affair?" The marquis bowed, "I shall be most happy!" Ferrari glared about him for a moment and then said, "Freccia, you will second me?" Captain Freccia shrugged his shoulders.
I could not hear what they said except at the end, when these two strangers consented to appear as seconds for Signor Ferrari, and they at once left him, to come straight to this hotel. And they are arrived, for I saw them through a half-opened door as I came in, talking with the Marquis D'Avencourt." "Well!" I said, "and what of Signor Ferrari when he was left alone by his two friends?"
At the same instant I touched Vincenzo, who, obedient to his orders, had remained an impassive but evidently astonished spectator of all that had passed, and whispered "Follow that man and do not let him see you." He obeyed so instantly that the door had scarcely closed upon Ferrari when Vincenzo had also disappeared. The Marquis D'Avencourt now came up to me.
"Your very true friend and servitor, "PHILIPPE D'AVENCOURT." I folded this letter carefully and put it aside. The little package he had sent me lay in my hand a bundle of neatly folded letters tied together with a narrow ribbon, and strongly perfumed with the faint sickly perfume I knew and abhorred.
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