challenge, while I looked on with that noble interest which the
enlightened mind always feels in people about to punch each other's heads.

But the storm burst in words.

"Figure of a pig!" shrieked the Venetian, "you have ruined my boat
forever!"

"Thou liest, son of an ugly old dog!" returned the countryman, "and it was
my right to enter the canal first."

They then, after this exchange of insult, abandoned the main subject of
dispute, and took up the quarrel laterally and in detail. Reciprocally
questioning the reputation of all their female relatives to the third and
fourth cousins, they defied each other as the offspring of assassins and
prostitutes. As the peace-making tide gradually drifted their boats
asunder, their anger rose, and they danced back and forth and hurled
opprobrium with a foamy volubility that quite left my powers of
comprehension behind. At last the townsman, executing a _pas seul_ of
uncommon violence, stooped and picked up a bit of lime, while the
countryman, taking shelter at the stern of his boat, there attended the
shot. To my infinite disappointment it was not fired. The Venetian seemed
to have touched the climax of his passion in the mere demonstration of
hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the countryman the right
of way. The courage of the latter rose as the danger passed, and as far as
he could be heard, he continued to exult in the wildest excesses of
insult: "Ah-heigh! brutal executioner! Ah, hideous headsman!" _Da
capo._ I now know that these people never intended to do more than
quarrel, and no doubt they parted as well pleased as if they had actually
carried broken heads from the encounter. But at the time I felt affronted