Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/264

 appearance, but she bad no longer strength to fly, nor voice to beg for mercy, and what was her surprise, when the ugliest of the devils, foiling on his knee, and kissing her hand, said to her, in the sweetest tone:

"My angel, my beloved Marianna, God is for us! Oh! tell me that thou lovest me, whilst my friends detain thy jailer! Come with me, I know an asylum where none can reach us!"

"Antonio!" exclaimed Marianna, ready to fall.

But suddenly Ripetta street was inundated with the light of torches, and Antonio felt the sudden chill of a blade which grazed his shoulder. He sprang up, turned round, and, sword raised, attacked his adversary, whilst his three friends were wrangling with a company of Sbires. But their bravery was about yielding to the number of their assailants, if two strangers had not sprung into the midst of the soldiers, uttering menacing cries, and if one of them had not struck to the earth, with a furious blow, the Sbire who was struggling with Antonio This unlooked for aid ended the combat, and the Sbires dispersed in the direction of the People's Gate.

Salvator Rosa, for it was he who had so energetically aided his friend Antonio, proposed to follow the Sbires into the city. But the young painters who had aided Antonio in his nocturnal adventure, and the comedian Maria Agli, who had not shown himself as lacking courage, observed that this proceeding would hardly be wise, because the sentinels at the Gate, warned by the Sbires, would doubtlessly arrest them. They then agreed to ask for shelter for the night at Nicolo Musso's house, who received them and gave them a cordial welcome. The painters laid aside their pasteboard masks and their cloaks, rubbed with phosphorus: they then examined the wounds and bruises which they had received, and washed away, as far as was in their power, all traces of the fight. When our friends talked over the events of the night, they discovered that the expedition had failed, on account of their having forgotten a very important personage, Michael,