Plowden had never fired a pistol in his life, and knew about as much of the management of one as an archbishop.  The other was an old duellist, and a practised performer with the weapon.  All this was perfectly well known, and the young men around the Irishman were earnest with him during their drive to the ground not to take his adversary’s life, beseeching him to remember how heavy a load on his mind would such a deed be during the whole future of his own.  Not a soul of the whole society of the Baths, who by this time knew what was going on to a man, and almost to a woman (my mother, it may be observed, had not been at the ball, and knew nothing about it), doubted that Plowden was going out to be shot as certainly as a bullock goes into the slaughter house to be killed.

The Irishman, in reply to all the exhortations of his companions, jauntily told them not to distress themselves; he had no intention of killing the fellow, but would content himself with “winging” him.  He would have his right arm off as surely as he now had it on!

In the midst of all this the men were put up.  At the first shot the Irishman’s well-directed bullet whistled close to Plowden’s head, but the random shot of the latter struck his adversary full in the groin!

He was hastily carried to a little osteria, which stood (and still stands) by the side of the road which runs up the valley of the Serchio, at no great distance from the mouth of the Turrite Cava gorge.  There was a young medical man among those gathered there, who shook his head over the victim, but did not, I thought, seem very well up to dealing with the case.

One of my mother’s earliest and most intimate friends at Florence was a Lady Sevestre, who was then at the Baths with her husband, Sir Thomas Sevestre, an old Indian army surgeon.  He was a very old man, and was not much known to the younger society of the place.  But it struck me that he was the man for the occasion.  So I rushed off to the Baths in one of the bagherini (as the little light gigs of the country are called) which had conveyed the parties to the ground, and knocked up Sir Thomas.  Of course all the story came new to him, and he was very much inclined to wash his hands of it.  But on my representations that a life was at stake, his old professional habits prevailed, and he agreed to go back with me to Turrite Cava.

But no persuasions could induce him to trust himself to a bagherino.  And truly it would have shaken the old man well-nigh to pieces.  There was no other carriage to be had in a hurry.  And at last he allowed me to get an arm-chair rigged with a couple of poles for bearers, and placed himself in it—­not before he had taken the precaution of slinging a bottle of pale ale to either pole of his equipage.  He wore a very wide-brimmed straw hat, a suit of professional black, and carried a large white sunshade.  And thus accoutred, and accompanied by four stalwart bearers, he started, while I ran by the side of the chair, as queer-looking a party as can well be imagined.  I can see it all now; and should have been highly amused at the time had I not very strongly suspected that I was taking him to the bedside of a dying man.