in my hand, crying, “Hold hard, Alessandro, and get along with you in God’s name, for we are not here for you!” He then threw himself around my waist, and grasped my arms, and kept on calling out.  Seeing how wrong I had been to try to spare his life, I wrenched myself as well as I could from his grip, and with my lifted poignard struck him, as God willed, above the eyebrow, and a little blood trickled from the wound.  He, in high fury, gave me such a thrust that I fell backward, and the ground besides was slippery from having rained a little.  Then Alessandro drew his sword, which he carried in its scabbard, and thrust at me in front, and struck me on the corslet, which for my good fortune was of double mail.  Before I could get ready I received three passes, which, had I worn a doublet instead of that mailed corslet, would certainly have run me through.  At the fourth pass I had regained my strength and spirit, and closed with him, and stabbed him four times in the head, and being so close he could not use his sword, but tried to parry with his hand and hilt, and I, as God willed, struck him at the wrist below the sleeve of mail, and cut his hand off clean, and gave him then one last stroke on his head.  Thereupon he begged for God’s sake spare his life, and I, in trouble about Bebo, left him in the arms of a Venetian nobleman, who held him back from jumping into the canal.’

Who this Venetian nobleman, found unexpectedly upon the scene, was, does not appear.  Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything of that Martelli, the bravo, ’who kept his sword for the defence of Lorenzo’s person.’  The one had arrived accidentally, it seems.  The other must have been a coward and escaped from the scuffle.

‘When I turned,’ proceeds Bibboni, ’I found Lorenzo on his knees.  He raised himself, and I, in anger, gave him a great cut across the head, which split it in two pieces, and laid him at my feet, and he never rose again.’

VI.—­THE ESCAPE OF THE BRAVI

Bebo, meanwhile, had made off from the scene of action.  And Bibboni, taking to his heels, came up with him in the little square of San Marcello.  They now ran for their lives till they reached the traghetto di San Spirito, where they threw their poignards into the water, remembering that no man might carry these in Venice under penalty of the galleys.  Bibboni’s white hose were drenched with blood.  He therefore agreed to separate from Bebo, having named a rendezvous.  Left alone, his ill luck brought him face to face with twenty constables (sbirri).  ’In a moment I conceived that they knew everything, and were come to capture me, and of a truth I saw that it was over with me.  As swiftly as I could I quickened pace and got into a church, near to which was the house of a Compagnia, and the one opened into the other, and knelt down and prayed, commending myself with fervour to God for my deliverance and safety.