who knew that the despair of one of my friends and the joy of the other depended on the merest chance, it was painful in its excitement. As to the woman whose fate was hanging in the balance, though at last mercifully silent, I thought as she leant forward, panting and with glittering eye, that she seemed to draw more joy than anxiety from the spectacle.

With a clean, firm click the shining sabres met and parted, and now, after a rapid perfunctory give and take, began the strangest fight. By one accord the masters seemed to abandon all true sabre play, to discard cuts and aim at scoring by the thrust alone.

Then evolved itself a lengthy "sword phrase;" redoubled attacks and terrific returns, all with the point, and without an attempt at a pause on either side. Every second the exchange of thrusts became fiercer and swifter, till it was as fevered as mere foil play, despite the fact that the sabre of Italian schools is perilously thin and slender. Through the mastery and precision of each pass, I could feel a frenzy giving life to the very blades as it sought for the victory of that first hit. Under their masks the combatants' eyes, as of menacing wolves, shone with purple light, and the bared set teeth gleamed between drawn-back lips.

"This would be dangerous work," said I to my unheeding companion, trying to reassure myself by the sound of the words, "in less practised hands. But they know what they are about."

But while I spoke, Carlo's pointrounded it is true, but hardly blunter than a table knife - was only turned aside from his brother's throat, bared between mask and collar, by an incredibly swift parry, and I noticed then for the first time, and with a flash of indescribable dismay, that the brothers wore light fencing masks and had not changed their thin, open-collared linen jackets, which, however sufficient protection against a pliant buttoned foil, were as good as useless against the sabre, above all, when wielded in such deadly fashion. I started up, a terrible suspicion creeping like an icy snake round my heart. I tried to call out; in vain; my throat refused to bring forth a sound. But the next instant, my insight was shared, my nameless thought was echoed; through the anxious silence which had settled heavily over the room, and allowed every dry clink of steel, every panting hiss of the brothers' laboring breath to be heard with painful distinctness, there rang a wild shriek. She, the unwitting mover of this VOL. LXXIV. 3832

LIVING AGE.

ghastly duel in disguise, had sprung to her feet open-mouthed, stricken by the awful realization that now paralyzed me. 66 Stop stop them for God's sake, stop them!"

The anguished cry broke the spell which seemed to have held the president in the same thrall as the other spectators. He leaped forward to beat up the fratricidal blades. Too late! Ettore Lugani had secured the first hit. Even as the woman's wail still echoed in the air, meeting a furious lunge with a volte aside and a rigid time-thrust, he had driven his slender blade deep under his opponent's mask.

Carlo stood a second, quivering, while a bright red jet ran along the virgin steel; then, as his brother withdrew the bloody sword, fell forward on his face and rolled over on his side.

The victor stepped back; the weapon escaped from his hand and struck, clattering with lugubrious echo, upon the stone floor; with a stiff, mechanical gesture, he removed his mask and stood glaring at his handiwork with eyes that seemed to start from their orbits.

Then was the silence filled by a clamor of horror, the screams of women, the deepmouthed exclamations of men. Scarcely knowing how it came about, I found myself cleaving the excited, swaying crowd, and kneeling beside the wounded man.

I raised him in my arms, tore his mask away, and inanely strove to hold back the generous young blood, which, at each waning pulse, spurted forth, soft and warm, between my fingers. I have said wounded! Alas! his eyes were fast glazing. He made some faint signs, moving his hand restlessly as if in search of some. thing, and languidly turning his dying gaze from side to side.

Calarone, who seemed to be the only one, save myself, in the affrighted assembly, who retained any species of self-control, and who was kneeling upon the other side helping me to support the lagging weight, suddenly rose, and seizing the petrified figure of Ettore by the shoulders almost threw him on his knees upon the | place he had himself occupied.

Instantaneously, as if by instinct, Carlo became aware of his brother's proximity; the uneasy look left his face; blindly he sought for the other's hand and raised it to his lips, sighing out with a supreme effort which brought a last terrible gush of blood from his wound:

I remember how from the throng the widow ran forth and halted a little way off, bending forward with hands clasped and lips distorted with a rictus of horror, look ing from her dead to her living lover in speechless agony; how Ettore, assisted to his feet again, stood helplessly where he was placed, passing his hand, red from the dead man's kiss, over his forehead, where it left a hideous smear; his eyes fixed in the same appalling stare, resting unseeing upon her.

Then she tottered towards him and broke into loud lamentations.

"O God, what have you done? Sweet Saviour, mercy! I never meant that! Oh, Ettore, Ettore, unhappy, how could you have thought I meant that?

Never shall I forget the look upon Ettore's face as for the space of one short minute into his strained eyeballs a dim and awful consciousness crept back; with what inexpressible loathing, what horror he recoiled from her touch!

She wrung her hands, lifting her voice still higher; and then some one laid a heavy palm upon her mouth and stifled the mad indiscretion of her clamoring re

"It was an accident - a fencing-room accident; we all saw it. We will attest; it was an accidentan accident!" I can see Ettore standing unheeding, rigid, seemingly, since that transient show of passion, as deaf, blind, and unfeeling well-nigh as the fair boy that lay in his blood at our feet, in the midst of all the confusion and his own imminent peril.

And then I remember Calarone clearing the room, and how, by and by, all were gone save him and the president, who was crying like a child, and the two terrible motionless figures, the one smiling as if asleep, the other with a look upon his face

I went up to my room. I was to leave at dawn; I had to pack the rest of my things, which occupied me for a while mechanically, for there could be no question now of my ever returning to the shadow of this ill-fated house. But I could not make up my mind to go into the studio, I remember, for fear of the sight of that picture whereon the brothers were fighting, even as I had just seen them fight in such dire earnest, for the sake of the soulless, empty beauty I had been so proud to portray.

What has become of that picture? Are the brothers still fighting on? Is that woman still leaning over the balcony in mock alarm? Is it still in the old studio, and will it remain there till it crumbles into dust, a memento of two of the most noble and most lovable beings I ever knew, and of the most foolish woman?

As night wore on, I could bear the sus pense no longer, I crept down the stairs; from the instant I opened my door the sound of a distant tramping foot fell upon my ear. It grew more distinct as I'descended; when I reached the landing of the first floor I found that the door of the fencing-room was ajar, and that the noise of the restless foot proceeded from within. Holding my breath, on tiptoe, I drew near.

In the centre of the vast, black room now stood a little truckle bed hung with white, and on it lay the inert remains of him who so short a time ago, had been full of seemingly unconquerable energy. A few candles round the couch, and the white draperies, made a sort of little oasis of light amid the surrounding gloom. At the head of the bed sat Calarone, his great white beard flowing on his breast, motionless as a carven figure, save for the moving gleam of his eyes. And up and down the long floor, with ceaseless beat, went Ettore, tramp, tramp, tramp. God alone knows what despair brooding behind the livid mask of his face.

Once he stopped and looked at the peaceful form upon the bed, with a frightful, staring gaze, like a man under the thrall of some appalling dream, and then be struck his forehead with a fierce hand and cried in a toneless voice: "The mark of Cain-the mark of Cain !"

I turned away and stole back to my room; and following me was the sound of that weary tramp again. And as I sat at my open door hour after hour, all through the dead, still night, it went on echoing up through the bare stone passage, muffled, relentless, awful.

At rare intervals would come a pause, and then I knew Ettore was standing beside the corpse as I had seen him stand, and there would fall through the black silence the murmur of his agonized refrain, and after that the tramp once more.

At length the dawn broke. The fac chini I had ordered struggled sleepingly up-stairs for my luggage and heavily down again; the carriage which was to take me away drew up clattering in the deserted streets. I took a lingering look round the room, now filled with such heart-rending associations, and descended for the last time the great, cold stairs.

Outside the fencing-room I stopped, my heart yearning to take a final farewell of my friends.

The door was shut. All seemed quiet. Softly I turned the handle, and looked in.

Ettore was on his knees, by the smiling clay. His shoulders were heaving in an agony of sobs; Calarone, his face turned towards the chill, grey light which stole in through the high windows, had his hands folded as if in prayer.

Neither saw me. I closed the door and ran down stairs to my carriage; and as I went I think I too was muttering a prayer, to thank God that Ettore had found tears at last.

As soon as I arrived in England, I wrote to Calarone imploring him to send me some tidings of the unfortunate survivor of the brave pair who had, in brief madness, wrought each other's undoing. He did not reply. I wrote again, and yet again. At length came a short and characteristic letter, through every line of which I discerned the same ill-concealed hostility he had shown me on the night of Carlo's death.

"You are curious for news," he wrote; "I do not think I have any to give you that can be especially gratifying to you; however, I will do my best to answer your questions. Ladies first forever. The Catalani, that beautiful and amiable person, the privilege of whose acquaintance you generously shared with so many of

cared little, I confess, to follow her further movements, but I have heard that rumor is at present coupling her name with that of some Florentine cavaliere celebrated in connection with a special make of silk blanket. The Palazzo Lugani is sold. Count Carlo Lugani, who lost his life by that deplorable accident we all were unfortunate enough to witness, lies in the family vault, the only remnant of all their once vast possession, which that ancient race could now call its own. Count Ettore is dead too - dead at least to the world and to all who knew him.

"The Carthusian Monastery, upon the slopes of the Apennines, which you used to be fond of admiring from your studio window, is the tomb of the last of the Luganis until the time comes for him to join his brother."

From The London Quarterly Review. THE REWARDS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MEDICAL PRACTICE. HOWEVER small may be the dignity investing the average medical practitioner of our day, it requires a positive effort to picture the times so well described by Mr. Sidney Young in his recent admirable work, "The Annals of the Barber Surgeons of London." The modern surgeon often complains, perhaps with justice, that he is not recognized as on quite the same level as barristers, officers, and clergymen of the Established Church; but what would he say of a time when the surgeon was far less intelligent and competent than the druggist of the last decade of the nineteenth century, and not a quarter so much respected, and when, according to our standard, he was little more than a rude and impertinent meddler in matters of which he was almost wholly ignorant?

Some rough surgery must always have been practised in remote antiquity; indeed, even the most uncivilized races, however barbarous they may have been, had their surgery and their medicine-men, and have contrived to acquire some little dexterity in the treatment of wounds and fractures.

Crafte of the Barbor Surgions of the Citie of The origin of the ancient "Misterie or London "is of immemorial antiquity. We know that "Ric's le Barbour, dwelling opposite the church of Allhallows the Less," was sworn master at the Guildhall in 1308.

We

know that eighty years later the masters and surveyors of the "ffraternite des Barbers de la Citee de Londres," then a regularly constituted craft guild, certified the king's council that they had found a paper of articles "made of the time to which memory runneth not," and most of which "the Company had not used in their time." But when these very curious articles were compiled, and the brotherhood formed, "al honourance de Dieu et touz ses Seyntes," and to the worship, profit, and common weal of its members, we have no evidence to show. Curiously enough, the first enactment "de Barbours," in the City records relates to their practice of surgery. It is dated 1307, and forbids them "to put blood in their windows as an advertisement. Barbers were constantly told off to keep the City gates, probably, to judge from a record of 1375, as quarantine officers to exclude the lepers. In 1376 they obtained from the Mayor's Court the important privilege of assaying and examining all barbers resorting "from uppelande" unto the City, and there intermeddling with "barbery, surgery, and the cure of other maladies while they know not how to do such things." This privilege, however, was not undisputed. The rival Guild of Surgeons, with whom "the Rector and Supervisors of physic" sometimes made common cause, had a concurrent authority to examine practitioners. Professional rivalry was keen in the fifteenth century, and this multiplicity of qualifications led to heartburnings and confusion in times so rude. The barbers, however, had the best of the controversy. Men who weekly did "feats of barbery" upon the polls and chins of their neighbors had manifest opportunities for insinuating their cunning in fleabothomye," and the mystery of healing. In 1462 the barbers obtained a decisive advantage by getting a charter. The document is not very complimentary to the craft, for it begins by reciting, no doubt with truth, that "through the ignorance, negligence, and stupidity of some of the men of the said barbers as of other surgeons, some of our said liege men have gone the way of all flesh, and others have been by all given over as incurable, and past relief. These evils, the charter declares, happen for want of due supervision, and accordingly it grants the bar bers stringent powers over their members, and for the exclusion of interlopers. An ordinance of 1482 throws a strange light on the social and sanitary condition of London in the fifteenth century. It directs the presentation of every apprentice to the Master and Wardens that they may examine "if he be avexed or disposed to be lepur or gowty, maymed or disfigured, or if there be on hym any bonde claymed." A diploma issued to Roberd Anson in 1497 shows that licenses to practise surgery were granted upon public examination only. This certificate, which is probably the oldest English surgical diploma extant, recites that the candidate, a freeman of the Company, "at the comyn hall of the same in

London appered in his proper person, submytting hym self to the examynacion and the apposition of Mastur John Smyth, doctour in phesik, Instructour, and examiner of the seide feliship," and there, "in a great audiens of many ryght expert men in surgery and other, was opynly examined in dyvers things concerning the practise operatife and disectife in the seyde Crafte of Surgery," and "was founde abyll and discrete to ocupy and use the practise of surgery," and thereupon the Masters and Wardens declare that they "have lycensid hym and grauntid to hym by those presentes" "to ocupy and practyse in the seide faculte."

The very same difficulties which face us met our ancestors - difficulties due to a vast field of study, which we are at present vainly trying to reconcile with a short, cheap curriculum and severe examinations. Our forefathers were perplexed by the incapacity and imperfect preparation of many of their barber surgeons. These have their counterpart in our day. At one time the Royal College of Surgeons of England only granted its diploma to persons twenty-two years of age and upwards, and now, that at least five full years are needed to cover the ground and to get the rudiments of a good medical education, we have actually lowered the minimum age to twenty-one, and we have not extended the curriculum beyond four years. True, many students read hard for six, seven, and even eight years, and do not qualify till they are twenty-seven or those from our ancient seats of learning, but these are the best men, twenty-eight; aspirants for the highest diplomas, while the inferior and less fortunate, those whose preliminary education is the most superficial, and those with the smallest amount of leisure and money, are precisely the men who try to scramble through - we cannot use a milder word - at twenty-one or twenty-two.

cation will be to extend the curriculum to The next great reform in medical eduat least five years, and the minimum age to twenty-two. We are glad to find that many of the highest authorities are agreed that these changes are urgently called for, and though some poor students may thereby be excluded, we shall, as one result, have better practitioners. There is no reason to fear any dearth of surgeons and physicians. Indeed, every addition to the standard of qualification has, so far, actually brought in more candidates. By compelling the student to give at least one additional year to his studies, and to wait another year for his diploma, the