o a buffet. He stood high and
square-shouldered; the flame of the moustache streamed on either side his
face in a splendid curve; his vigilant head was loftily posted to detect
what he chose to construe as insult, or gather the smiles of approbation,
to which, owing to the unerring judgement of the sex, he was more
accustomed. Handsome or not, he enjoyed the privileges of masculine
beauty.

This captain of a renown to come pretended that a superb Venetian lady of
the Branciani family was bound to make response in public to his private
signals, and publicly to reply to his salutations. He refused to be as a
particle in space floating airily before her invincible aspect. Meeting
her one evening, ere sweet Italy had exiled herself from the Piazza, he
bowed, and stepping to the front of her, bowed pointedly. She crossed her
arms and gazed over him. He called up a thing to her recollection in
resonant speech. Shameful lie, or shameful truth, it was uttered in the
hearing of many of his brother officers, of three Italian ladies, and of
an Italian gentleman, Count Broncini, attending them. The lady listened
calmly. Count Broncini smote him on the face. That evening the lady's
brother arrived from Venice, and claimed his right to defend her. Captain
Weisspriess ran him through the body, and attached a sinister label to
his corpse. This he did not so much from brutality; the man felt that
henceforth while he held his life he was at war with every Italian
gentleman of mettle. Count Broncini was his next victim. There, for a
time, the slaughtering business of the captain stopped. His brother
officers of the better kind would not have excused him at another season,
but the avenger of their irritation and fine vindicator of the merits of
Austrian steel, had a welcome truly warm, when at the termination of his
second duel he strode into mess, or what serves for an Austrian
regimental mess.

It ensued naturally that there was everywhere in Verona a sharp division
between the Italians of all classes and their conquerors. The great
green-rinded melons were never wheeled into the neighbourhood of the
whitecoats. Damsels were no longer coquettish under the military glance,
but hurried by in couples; and there was much scowling mixed with
derisive servility, throughout the city, hard to be endured without that
hostile state of the spirit which is the military mind's refuge in such
cases. Itinerant musicians, and none but this fry, continu