As remarked, the youth lay in front of the pillars of the Custom-house,
his head resting on his right arm, and his eyes riveted in a vacant
stare upon the sea, without movement or change of posture. An observer
might well have fancied that he was devoid of life, or that death had
fixed him there whilst turning him into an image of stone, had not a
deep sigh escaped him from time to time, as if wrung from him by
unutterable pain. And they were in fact occasioned by the pain of his
left arm, which had apparently been seriously wounded, and was lying
stretched out on the pavement, wrapped up in bloody rags.

All labour had ceased; the hum of trade was no longer heard; all
Venice, in thousands of boats and gondolas, was gone out to meet the
much-lauded Falieri. Hence it was that the unhappy youth was sighing
away his pain in utter helplessness. But just as his weary head fell
back upon the pavement, and he seemed on the point of fainting, a
hoarse and very querulous voice cried several times in succession,
"Antonio, my dear Antonio." At length Antonio painfully raised
himself partly up; and, turning his head towards the pillars of the
Custom-house, whence the voice seemed to proceed, he replied very
faintly, and in a scarce intelligible voice, "Who is calling me? Who
has come to cast my dead body into the sea, for it will soon be all
over with me." Then a little shrivelled wrinkled crone came up panting
and coughing, hobbling along by the aid of her staff; she approached
the wounded youth, and squatting down beside him, she burst out into a
most repulsive chuckling and laughing. "You foolish child, you foolish
child," whispered the old woman, "are you going to perish here--will
you stay here to die, while a golden fortune is waiting for you? Look
yonder, look yonder at yon blazing fire in the west; there are sequins
for you! But you must eat, dear Antonio, eat and drink; for it's only
hunger which has made you fall down here on this cold pavement. Your
arm is now quite well again, yes, that it is." Antonio recognised in
the old crone the singular beggar-woman who was generally to be seen on
the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing,
and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some
inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned
penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you
insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunge