Cardinal.

"When Your Eminence understands the distinction between the accredited representative of the King of Spain, and the lurking emissary of a dethroned, and medicant Sovereign; then the Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty may appear where he is not to be insulted."

Every person had risen from their seats in consternation; and Giovenozzo, not the least alarmed of the party, seized the Duke's arm, and began a confused apology for the attention he had paid to Wharton; and even attempted an excuse for the English Duke.

"I beg Your Eminence, not to trouble yourself with my apology," cried the unruffled Wharton;—"I meant all I said. And, I am obliged to the candour of the Spanish Ambassador, for so publickly declaring the distinction that is indeed between us! He is the representative of a King in the plenitude of power; at the head of the fountain of riches and honours; and the stream flows bounteously! I am the lurking emissary of a dethroned and mendicant monarch: but it has not yet been my good fortune to play the successful Gaberlunzie in the courts of rival sovereigns, or to beg alms for my Prince, at the gate of the Duke de Ripperda!"

Ripperda, turned on him with an eye of flame. His soul was on fire; and, at that moment insensible to every thing but the expression of his burning hatred, he sternly exclaimed:

"Were not Duke Wharton as impotent as he is vain, I might stoop to chastise what offends me: but I pardon, what I pity."

"And I," replied the Duke, "am proud to imitate so great an example!"

Ripperda, almost beside himself with wrath, struck the hilt of his sword fiercely with his hand. Wharton turned gaily on his heel, and asked some indifferent question of the Duke de Richelieu.

The Cardinal followed Ripperda out of the apartment. Alarmed at the consequence of suffering him, who seemed to hold the balance of Christendom in his hands, to quit his roof unappeased, he drew the enraged Duke into another room, and vainly tried to assuage his fury. Ripperda's pride was in arms, at being so insolently braved before all the nations of Europe, in the persons of their Ambassadors. He was angry with himself, at having shewn himself susceptible of insult from the man, it was his policy to teach others to despise; and in a disorder of mind he had never known before, he poured on the Cardinal all his resentments against the Duke and himself. He saw that nothing could redeem him to the vantage ground he had so intemperately abandoned, but an ample and formal apology from Wharton; and, he told Giovenozzo, he must force the English Duke to make that restitution; else he should act from a conviction that they had been invited together, to insult the politics of Spain in the person of its minister.

The Cardinal feared Ripperda; and flattered himself, that he might work upon the zeal and good-nature of Wharton, to serve the interest of His Holiness by this concession. When Ripperda arose to withdraw, on being informed that his carriage was ready, Giovenozzo attended him to the foot of the stairs, and absolutely promised to bring him the demanded apology next day.

But unfortunately, the company in the dining-room, supposing that Ripperda had been sometime gone, moved to depart also. In the hall, Wharton again met his proud antagonist; and, in the instant when most unhappily the spirit of discord seemed to have extended itself to their respective domestics. Wharton's carriage and that of Ripperda had drawn up at the same moment; and their coachmen were disputing the right to maintain the door. From words, they had recourse to whips.

"A comfortable way of settling a controversy!" exclaimed Wharton, who stepped forward, to order his servant to draw off; but Ripperda, who felt the late scene festering in his heart, and supposing a different intention, and a new affront in the Duke's prompt advance; cried aloud, with an air of derision:—"Less haste, my Lord! or the whip of my coachman, may chance to brush Your Grace's skirts!"

"If it did," replied Wharton, with a glance that told he understood the remark; "I should know where to repay the impertinence."

Ripperda was again in a blaze.

"Insolent!" cried he.

Wharton, who had checked his advancing step, on the first word from his antagonist, now leaned towards him; and whispered:

"The lion may be chafed beyond its bearing! It is possible for the father of Louis de Montemar to go too far with the Duke of Wharton!"

This assumption of forbearance to him, Ripperda felt as the climax of insult; and starting back, with all the pride and resentments of his nature rushing through his veins, he touched the hilt of his sword with a significant glance, and in a subdued voice, replied:

"If you do not shroud cowardice under the name of my son, you will follow me!"

This had cleft the threatened cord; and, in one moment the two Dukes had vanished through the colonades of the hall, into an interior and lonely court of the building.

In the same instant they found themselves alone, the drawn sword of Ripperda was in his hand, and he called on Wharton to defend himself. There was no time for further forbearance or parley. Wharton had hardly warded off the first thrust of his determined antagonist, before a second and a third were repeated with the quickness of lightning. The glimmer of the lamps, which lit this little solitary quadrangle, marked each movement of the weapon with a gleam on its polished steel; and Wharton continued rather to defend than attack. But a noise of approaching steps, withdrawing his attention for a moment from his guard, a desperate lunge from the infuriate arm of his adversary, ran him through the breast, and he fell. The blood sprang over his hand, as he laid it on the wound.—His proud destroyer stood confounded at the sight.

"I forgive you my death!" cried Wharton, "but I guess your son will not. Rash Duke, to you he dies in me!" The tongue of Ripperda clove to the roof of his mouth; and in the next instant the Cardinal and the French Ambassador appeared at his side. As the bloody scene presented itself, Giovenozzo shut the door, and bolted it behind him, to prevent further entrance. Richelieu hurried to the prostrate Duke, and spoke to him. Wharton looked up, and in hardly articulate accents, said, "bear witness, Richelieu, that I acquit the Duke de Ripperda. He was in wrath, and I provoked him. Let not his high character be dishonoured by my death."

This was the first time that Ripperda's lofty consciousness of consistent greatness had ever shrunk before the eye of man; he could not brook the strange humiliation, and with asperity he haughtily exclaimed; "my honour does not require protection. I know that I have been intemperate and rash. But let the world know it as it is: I have done nothing that I am not prepared to defend." Wharton raised himself on his arm to reply; but in the exertion he fainted and fell.