Baretti picked up the sword, broke the blade across his knee, and flung the pieces into a corner, the tattered sleeve still entangled in the guard.
“John,” shouted Goldsmith to his servant, who was not far off. (He had witnessed the duel through the keyhole of the door until it became too exciting, and then he had put his head into the room.) “John, give that man your oldest coat. It shall never be said that I turned a man naked out of my house.” When John Eyles had left the room, Oliver turned to the half-naked panting man. “You are possibly the most contemptible bully and coward alive,” said he. “You did not hesitate to try and accomplish the ruin of the sweetest girl in the world, and you came here with intent to murder me because I succeeded in saving her from your clutches. If I let you go now, it is because I know that in these letters, which I mean to keep, I have such evidence against you as will hang you whenever I see fit to use it, and I promise you to use it if you are in this country at the end of two days. Now, leave this house, and thank my servant for giving you his coat, and this gentleman”—he pointed to Nicolo—“for such a lesson in fencing as, I suppose, you never before received.”
The man rose, painfully and laboriously, and took the coat with which John Eyles returned. He looked at Goldsmith from head to foot.
“You contemptible cur!” he said, “I have not yet done with you. You have now stolen the second packet of letters; but, by the Lord, if one of them passes out of your hands it will be avenged. I have friends in pretty high places, let me tell you.”
“I do not doubt it,” said Baretti. “The gallows is a high enough place for you and your friends.”
The ruffian turned upon him in a fury.
“Look to yourself, you foreign hound!” he said, his face becoming livid, and his lips receding from his mouth so as to leave his wolf-fangs bare as before. “Look to yourself. You broke my sword after luring me on to be made a fool of for your sport. Look to yourself!”