hat I should not lie out in the streets with the
Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now with her bare feet, and
her finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights, and
bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where, praised be the saints!
a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry amoroso. At last,
however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor. Her
father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door
in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I.
Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket
or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a
Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily
we were attacked by a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the
rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see,
signor,--monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates
took a fancy to me. 'Serve with us?' said he. 'Too happy,' said I.
Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary
for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing,
what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like
princes; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest
sea that man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sail
came in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming
profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship
was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the
waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us and
more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain's cabin, I at
the head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there he stood at
the doorway, a pistol in each hand; and his one eye (he had only one)
worse to meet than the pistols were.

"'Yield!' cried I; 'your life shall be safe.'

"'Take that,' said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints took
care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot the
boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistol
went off without mischief in the struggle. Such a fellow he was,--six
feet four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other.
Santa Maria! no time to g