er any hope of seeing
M---- M---- come to justify herself, I kissed C---- C----. I gave her the
key of the casino, requesting her to return it for me to M---- M----, and
my young friend having gone back to the convent, I put on my mask and
left the casino.

CHAPTER XX

I Am in Danger of Perishing in the Lagunes--Illness--Letters from C. C.
and M. M.--The Quarrel is Made Up--Meeting at the Casino of Muran I Learn
the Name of M. M.'s Friend, and Consent to Give Him A Supper at My Casino
in the Company of Our Common Mistress

The weather was fearful. The wind was blowing fiercely, and it was
bitterly cold. When I reached the shore, I looked for a gondola, I called
the gondoliers, but, in contravention to the police regulations, there
was neither gondola nor gondolier. What was I to do? Dressed in light
linen, I was hardly in a fit state to walk along the wharf for an hour in
such weather. I should most likely have gone back to the casino if I had
had the key, but I was paying the penalty of the foolish spite which had
made me give it up. The wind almost carried me off my feet, and there was
no house that I could enter to get a shelter.

I had in my pockets three hundred philippes that I had won in the
evening, and a purse full of gold. I had therefore every reason to fear
the thieves of Muran--a very dangerous class of cutthroats, determined
murderers who enjoyed and abused a certain impunity, because they had
some privileges granted to them by the Government on account of the
services they rendered in the manufactories of looking-glasses and in the
glassworks which are numerous on the island. In order to prevent their
emigration, the Government had granted them the freedom of Venice. I
dreaded meeting a pair of them, who would have stripped me of everything,
at least. I had not, by chance, with me the knife which all honest men
must carry to defend their lives in my dear country. I was truly in an
unpleasant predicament.

I was thus painfully situated when I thought I could see a light through
the crevices of a small house. I knocked modestly against the shutter. A
voice called out:

"Who is knocking?"

And at the same moment the shutter was pushed open.

"What do you want?" asked a man, rather astonished at my costume.

I explained my predicament in a few words, and giving him one sequin I
begged his permission to shelter myself under his roof. Convinced by my
sequin rather than my words, he opened the d