s with things--but on the wall I caught sight of a
bright-colored unfinished sketch of the Bridge of Sighs. It was little
more than an outline, and probably did not represent ten minutes' work,
but the lines seemed so firm and sure that I at once asked who did it.

"An American did it, Signore, an American painter; he comes here every
year; our son is his gondolier and shows him all the best places to
paint, and takes him there when the light is good and keeps the people
back so the artist can work--you understand? A shower came up just as his
Excellency, the American, began on this, and it got wet and so he gave it
to my son and he gave it to me."

"What is the painter's name?" I asked. Enrico could not remember, but
Mona Lisa said his name was Signore Hopsmithiziano, or something like
that.

There were several little plaster images on the walls, and through the
open door that led to the adjoining room I saw a sort of an improvised
shrine, with various little votive offerings grouped about an unframed
canvas. The picture was a crude attempt at copying that grand figure in
Titian's "Assumption."

"And who painted that?" I asked.

Enrico crossed himself in silence, and Mona Lisa's subdued voice
answered: "Our other son did that. He was only nineteen. He was a
mosaicist and was studying to be a painter; he was drowned at the Lido."

The old woman made the sign of the cross, her lips moved, and a single
big tear stood on her leathery cheek. I changed the painful subject, and
soon found excuse to slip away. That evening as the darkness gathered and
twinkling lights began to appear like fireflies, up and down the Grand
Canal, I sat in a little balcony of my hotel watching the scene. A
serenading party, backing their boats out into the stream, had formed a
small blockade, and in the group of gondolas that awaited the unraveling
of the tangle I spied Enrico. He had a single passenger, a lady in the
inevitable black mantilla, holding in her hands the inevitable fan. A
second glance at the lady--and sure enough! it was Mona Lisa. I ran
downstairs, stepped out across the moored line of gondolas, took up a
hook, and reaching over gently pulled Enrico's gondola over so I could
step aboard.

Mona Lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming
in occasionally with bars of melodious bass. I felt guilty for being
about to break in upon such a sentimental little scene, and was going to
retreat, but Enrico a