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Updated: June 16, 2025
Take three men; the rest shall be my escort." Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively. Meanwhile Glyndon besought Isabel, who recovered but slowly, to return home in his carriage. She had done so once or twice before, though she had never permitted him to accompany her. This time she refused, and with some petulance.
"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly. "Nay, why not enter the house itself? The situation is lonely, and the door is not made of iron." Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the Signor Zicci.
None except Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, strove to conciliate; some took one side, some another. The issue may be well foreseen. Swords were drawn. I had left mine in the ante room; Zicci offered me his own, I seized it eagerly. There might be some six or eight persons engaged in a strange and confused kind of melee, but the Prince and myself only sought each other.
I will win this girl, if I die for it. Who laughed? Mascari, didst thou laugh?" "I, your Excellency, I laugh?" "It sounded behind me," said the Prince, gazing round. It was the day on which Zicci had told Glyndon that he should ask for his decision in respect to Isabel, the third day since their last meeting. The Englishman could not come to a resolution.
"All stratagems fair in love, as in war. Of course you profited by my defeat, and did not content yourself with leaving the little actress at her threshold?" "She is Diana for me," answered Zicci, lightly; "whoever wins the wreath will not find a flower faded." "And now you would cast for her, well; but they tell me you are ever a sure player." "Let Signor Mascari cast for us." "Be it so.
The Prince greeted him with a meaning smile, to which Zicci answered by a whisper: "He who plays with loaded dice does not always win." The Prince bit his lip; and Zicci, passing on, seemed deep in conversation with the fawning Mascari. "Who is the Prince's heir?" asked the Corsican. "A distant relation on the mother's side; with his Excellency dies the male line."
Oh, no! you may be sure she went willingly enough. I only just heard the news: the prince himself proclaimed his triumph this morning, and the accommodating Mascari has been permitted to circulate it. I hope the connection will not last long, or we shall lose our best singer. Addio!" Glyndon stood mute and motionless. He knew not what to think, to believe, or how to act.
"Mascari," said Zicci, "your patron is no more. Your services will be valueless to his heir, a sober man, whom poverty has preserved from vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to the executioner, recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man, it could not act on me, though it might re-act on others, in that it is a common type of crime.
There and then will be the crisis of your fate; go. I have business here yet, remember, Isabel is still in the house of the dead man." As Glyndon yet hesitated, strange thoughts, doubts, and fears that longed for speech crowding within him, Mascari approached; and Zicci, turning to the Italian and waving his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed.
When the last rose from the corpse and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon remarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder, and said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon followed Zicci into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlight slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows of the advancing night.
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