a master of his art; but there is no weapon whose use depends
so much upon the mind of the moment as the sword. He was evidently
resolved to kill or be killed; and the desperation with which he rushed
on me exposed him to my very inferior skill. At the third pass I ran him
through the sword arm. He staggered back with the twinge; but at the
instant when he was about to bound on me, and perhaps take his revenge,
a scream stopped us all; a female, wrapped in cloak and veil, rushed
forward, and threw herself into Lafontaine's arms in a passion of sobs.
An attendant, who soon came up, explained the circumstance; and it
finally turned out, that the fair Mariamne, whatever her coquetry might
have intended at night, repented at morn; recollected some of the
ominous expressions of her lover; and on hearing that he had been seen
with a group entering the grove, and that I, too, was absent, had
conjectured the truth at once, and flown, with her _femme de chambre,_
to the rendezvous. She had come just in time.

The reconciliation was complete. I was now not only forgiven by the
lover, but was the "very best friend he had in the world;--a man of
honour, a paragon, a _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_." The wound
of the gallant chasseur was bound up, like an ancient knight's, with his
mistress's scarf. She upbraided me, with her glistening eyes, for having
had the audacity to quarrel with her hero; and then, with the same eyes,
thanked me for the opportunity of proving her faith to _cher et
malheureux Charles_. Her little heart poured out its full abundance in
her voluble tongue; and for a quarter of an hour, and it is a long life
for happiness, we were the happiest half dozen in Christendom.

How Mordecai would admire all this, was yet to be told; but my casual
mention of his name broke up the rapture at once. Mariamne suddenly
became sensible of the irregularity of alternately fainting and smiling
in the arms of a handsome young soldier; and in the presence, too, of so
many spectators, all admirers of her black eyes and blooming
sensibilities. She certainly looked to me much prettier than in her
full-dress charms of the evening before, and I almost began to think
that the prize was worth contending for; but the guardsman and the old
general had felt the effects of the morning air, and were
unsentimentally hungry. Mariamne and her attendant were escorted to the
edge of the plantation by her restored knight; and I accepted the