Any spectator
from a foreign land would have thought it the business of such an
officer of the law to press in and stop the fighting; but he did not so
interpret his duty. He gingerly touched the shoulders next him with the
tips of his fingers, and now and then lifted himself on the tips of his
toes to look if the fight had stopped of itself or not.
At last the fat, elderly man, whom his friends--and all the throng
except that one wicked youth seemed his friends--were caressing in
untimely embraces and coaxing in tones of tender entreaty, burst from
them, and, aiming at the head of his enemy, flung his club, to the
imminent peril of all the bystanders, and missed him. Then he frankly
put himself in the hands of his friends, who lifted him into a cab,
where one of them mounted with him and stayed him on the seat, while the
cabman drove rapidly away. The wicked youth had vanished in unknown
space; but the cara-biniere, attended by a group of admirers, marched
boldly up the middle of the street, and the crowd, with whatever
reluctance, persuaded itself to disperse, though the cabmen, to the
number of ten or twenty, continued to drive around in concentric circles
and irregular ellipses.
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