r left arms, while
they seized and clung to what was left available of us for locomotion.
There was considerable giggling and tittering throughout the company
when Signora Fenzo, the young and comely wife of a gondolier, thus
took possession of Eustace, and Signora dell' Acqua, the widow of
another gondolier, appropriated me. The affair had been arranged
beforehand, and their friends had probably chaffed them with the
difficulty of managing two mad Englishmen. However, they proved equal
to the occasion, and the difficulties were entirely on our side.
Signora Fenzo was a handsome brunette, quiet in her manners, who meant
business. I envied Eustace his subjection to such a reasonable being.
Signora dell' Acqua, though a widow, was by no means disconsolate; and
I soon perceived that it would require all the address and diplomacy I
possessed, to make anything out of her society. She laughed
incessantly; darted in the most diverse directions, dragging me along
with her; exhibited me in triumph to her cronies; made eyes at me over
a fan, repeated my clumsiest remarks, as though they gave her
indescribable amusement; and all the while jabbered Venetian at
express rate, without the slightest regard for my incapacity to follow
her vagaries. The _Vecchio_ marshalled us in order. First went the
_sposa_ and _comare_ with the mothers of bride and bridegroom. Then
followed the _sposo_ and the bridesmaid. After them I was made to lead
my fair tormentor. As we descended the staircase there arose a hubbub
of excitement from the crowd on the canals. The gondolas moved
turbidly upon the face of the waters. The bridegroom kept muttering to
himself, 'How we shall be criticised! They will tell each other who
was decently dressed, and who stepped awkwardly into the boats, and
what the price of my boots was!' Such exclamations, murmured at
intervals, and followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep
preoccupation. With regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety.
They were of the shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without
a speck of dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a
cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we comported
ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the boat! If this
operation, upon a ceremonious occasion, has terrors even for a
gondolier, how formidable it ought to be to me! And here is the
Signora dell' Acqua's white cachemire shawl dangling on one arm, and
the Signora hersel