"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.
The Cardinal, (in consternation at the report he must give to the Pope of such an affray under his holy roof,) implored his implacable guest to pass into the oratory, which was on the opposite side of the court, and await him there, till the French Ambassador and he had borne the insensible Wharton to a place where his state might be examined.