This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
By George Meredith
The surgeon, who attended us both, loudly admired our mutual delicacy insparing arteries and vital organs: but a bullet cuts a rougher pathwaythan the neat steel blade, and I was prostrate when the prince came topress my hand on his departure for his quarters at Laibach. The utterlyunreasonable nature of a duel was manifested by his declaring to me, thathe was now satisfied I did not mean to insult him and then laugh at him.We must regard it rather as a sudorific for feverish blood and brains.I felt my wound acutely, seeing his brisk step when he retired. Havingoverthrown me bodily, it threw my heart back to its first emotions, and Iyearned to set eyes on my father, with a haunting sense that I had oflate injured him and owed him reparation. It vanished after he had beenin my room an hour, to return when he had quitted it, and incessantly andinexplicably it went and came in this manner. He was depressed.I longed for drollery, relieved only by chance allusions to my belovedone, whereas he could not conceal his wish to turn the stupid duel toaccount.
'Pencil a line to her,' he entreated me, and dictated his idea of amoving line, adding urgently, that the crippled letters would beaffecting to her, as to the Great Frederick his last review of hisinvalid veterans. 'Your name—the signature of your name alone, darlingRichie,' and he traced a crooked scrawl with a forefinger,—", Still,dearest angel, in contempt of death and blood, I am yours to eternity,Harry Lepel Richmond, sometimes called Roy—a point for your decision inthe future, should the breath everlastingly devoted to the most celestialof her sex, continue to animate the frame that would rise on wings to sayadieu! adieu!"—Richie, just a sentence?'
He was distracting.
His natural tenderness and neatness of hand qualified him for spreadingpeace in a sick-room; but he was too full of life and his scheme, andknowing me out of danger, he could not forbear giving his despondency anoutlet. I heard him exclaim in big sighs: 'Heavens! how near!' andagain, 'She must hear of it!' Never was man so incorrigibly dramatic.
He would walk up to a bookcase and take down a volume, when theinterjectional fit waxed violent, flip the pages, affecting a perplexityhe would assuredly have been struck by had he perused them, and read, ashe did once,—'Italy, the land of the sun! and she is to be hurried awaythere, and we are left to groan. The conspiracy is infamous! One of theFamily takes it upon himself to murder us! and she is to be hurried outof hearing! And so we are to have the blood of the Roys spilt fornothing?—no!' and he shut up the book with a report, and bounded to myside to beg pardon of me. From his particular abuse of the margravine,the iteration of certain phrases, which he uttered to denounce and defythem, I gathered that an interview had passed between the two, and thatshe had notified a blockade against all letters addressed to theprincess. He half admitted having rushed to the palace on his road tome.
'But, Richie,' said he, pressing me again to write the moving line, 'aletter with a broad black border addressed by me might pass.'