the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some other party of
pleasure, than in the usual guise of men bent on such an errand.

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