"Giacomo," said the visconte, "end his misery."
The Calabrian levelled his musket over the breast-work, and his aiming eye, as it glanced along the smooth barrel, met the fixed and agonized glance of Navarro. He fired; the ramparts round us, and the rocks and caves beneath gave back the reverberated report like thunder: the ball had passed through the brain of Navarro, who vanished from the cliff, and was seen no more.
The exciting affair with Navarro was scarcely over, before we became involved in another; which, though of a different description, caused me no little anxiety: of this, my gay friend, Oliver Lascelles, was the hero.
Oliver was a handsome, good-humoured, light-hearted, curly-headed, thoughtless, young fellow; heir to one of the finest estates in Essex, with a venerable Elizabethan manor-house and deer park, a stud of horses and a kennel of hounds. He was a good shot, and a sure stroke at billiards; could push his horse wherever the hounds went, and, when hunting, was never known to crane in his life: he would spur, slapdash over everything; and he always led the field. However, these were but the least of his good qualities: he possessed others that were of a better order. Oliver was, every inch, an English gentleman and soldier; possessing a refined taste, and more solid acquirements than such as are necessary merely to enable a man to acquit himself in fashionable or military life: for, in truth, a very "shallow fellow" may pass muster, at times, in the ball room, on parade, or in the hunting-field.
About this time, when Regnier’s advance kept us all on the alert, Oliver, as if he had not wherewithal to occupy his thoughts, contrived to fall in love; and, to all appearance, so earnestly, that I was not long in discovering and rallying him about it. People are very prone to fall in love in that land of bright eyes: the little god Cupid is still "king of gods and men," in sunny Ausonia; where love seems to be the principal occupation of the inhabitants.
Though the advanced posts of the enemy were now pretty close to us on all sides, our fiery spark, Lascelles, went forth every evening, to visit his inamorata; who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Fiumara, which had now become a French cantonment. I have elsewhere alluded to his artistic talent: he had now conceived a violent fancy for delineating Italian girls in all the glory of ruddy and dimpled cheeks, dark eyes, braided hair, and very scanty petticoats. His apartments were strewed with such sketches; and Bianca rallied him smartly on finding that the same pretty face was traceable in every drawing: Oliver had evidently one vivid and particular idea ever uppermost in his mind. He had a rival, too,—a devil of a fellow,—who contrived to infuse an unusual quantum of mystery into this love affair: all the perils of which I will relate to the reader, while our friends, the French, are labouring at the Seminara road, in order to bring up their train of cannon.