Being on my way one day from Puzzuoli to Naples in a hired cab, I met a battalion of the Royal guards on their way to Baja; a party of three or four who were much in advance of the others, and who had with them a woman of the lowest description, stopped me and insisted upon my giving up the cab to take the woman on their journey. Of course I resisted, when I received a violent blow with a musket on the arm, and on my returning it with my whip a fellow actually made a thrust at me with his bayonet which I parried so that it only passed sideways through my shooting jacket and waistcoat. I jumped out of the cab and seized hold of the fellow’s musket; in the scuffle we both fell, whilst a comrade aiming at me a thrust with his bayonet, ran it clean through the arm of his companion without injuring me. Luckily at this instant an officer and more men came up, and listening to the vociferations of my driver I was liberated from my antagonist. Upon telling my story to the officer, he very coolly remarked that his soldiers were not to be struck with a whip, leaving quite out of the question the stoppage, blow, and bayonet-thrust I had previously endured. I told this officer my mind in very plain language, and indeed I was quite mad with regret at having left my double barreled gun and ball cartridges behind me at Patria. Never before or ever after did I travel without it, and I assured the officer that had I not been so totally unarmed, a brace, at least, of his ruffians should have passed the Styx. Insolent in his attitude of power, this blackguard declined punishing my assailants; so mounting my calesse I proceeded on to Naples. In due legal form I caused a recital of the affair to be drawn up by the lawyer of my friend Valentine, a most clever fellow named Camillo Cacace. This I presented to the Minister of War, but I never could learn that the soldiers had been punished; however, I discovered the officer who had treated me with such contempt on the occasion, and demanding, I obtained, satisfaction from him. We fought with swords in the garden of a tavern called the Carciofalo (the Artichoke), near the Ponte della Maddalena; he was a very cautious fighter, and well for him he was so. He tired out my patience by constantly jumping backwards at every move,—a dozen times did I drive him to the verge of the ditch, from one side of the garden to the other. My second was too conceding, for had he not at each of those times allowed my adversary’s second to interpose his sword and stop “the round,” I would either have driven him into the ditch or my sword through his body. He was a capital fencer, so I was bound to caution; however, at last I passed my sword through his right arm near the shoulder, and then the seconds put a stop to the affair. My second who was the Prince Ferdinand Colonna Stigliano, took the jumping back as a good joke, and said that he thought too lightly of my adversary to forbid the timely interposition of his second’s sword. He afterwards allowed that he had been in error, which he certainly had, and gave my opponent an undue advantage. On a subsequent occasion I was second to Colonna, when he triumphed I may say, mainly through my assistance.
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