wounded; certainly more slightly than I am by your eyes.”
“You did not see him?”
“I am not acquainted with the happy man, though I was told that an officer who frequently rode past during the engagement with his visor down, and in steel-blue armour, was Count Frangipani. By Heaven! were I in his enviable place, the whole army should know me by Apollonia’s breast-knot attached to my helmet.”
The countess dropped the veil over her lovely blushing face, and ordered her attendant to conduct the captain to the strangers’ apartments, and to provide him with every thing requisite for his accommodation.
Camillo had too nice a sense of honour not to feel Apollonia’s rebuke, but he was too much of a sensualist to regard it as any other than a challenge to venture still further. He considered every female as a lawful prize, and as having been endowed with beauty merely to embellish with it the hard life of the soldier. This notion is but too prevalent at the present day, though it is a disgrace to the noble profession of arms. The genuine soldier respects the property of others, and protects female virtue that is committed to his care. The rude mercenary, the vulgar free-booter, himself wholly destitute of moral worth, disbelieves its existence in others, and is on a level with the robber. Like the latter, he will
