gently
rubbed and stroked his forehead, calling him by the sweetest of names.
As the people noted the old woman's ugly apish face, and the repulsive
play of its muscles, bending over the young fellow's fine handsome
face, his soft features now stiff and pale as in death, when they saw
her filthy rags fluttering about over the rich clothing the young man
wore, and her lean brownish-yellow arms and long hands trembling upon
his forehead and exposed breast--they could not in truth resist
shuddering with awe. It looked as if it were the grinning form of death
himself in whose arms the young man lay. Hence the crowd standing round
slipped away quietly one after the other, till there were only a few
left They, when the young man opened his eyes with a deep sigh, took
him up and carried him, at the old woman's request, to the Grand Canal,
where a gondola took them both on board, the old woman and the youth,
and brought them to the house which she had indicated as his dwelling.
Need it be said that the young man was Antonio, and that the old woman
was the beggar of the steps of the Franciscan Church, who wanted to
make herself out to be his nurse?

When Antonio was quite recovered from his stupefaction and perceived
the old woman at his bed-side, and knew that she had just been giving
him some strengthening drops, he said brokenly in a hoarse voice,
bending a long gloomy melancholy gaze upon her, "_You_ with me,
Margaret--that is good; what more faithful nurse could I have found
than you? Oh! forgive me, mother, that I, a doltish, senseless boy,
doubted for an instant what you discovered to me. Yes, you are _the_
Margaret who reared me, who cared for me and tended me; I knew it all
the time, but some evil spirit bewildered my thoughts. I have seen her;
it is she--it is she. Did I not tell you there was some mysterious
magical power dwelling in me, which exercised an uncontrollable
supremacy over me? It has emerged from its obscurity dazzling with
light, to effect my destruction through nameless joy. I now know
all--everything. Was not my foster-father Bertuccio Nenolo, and did he
not bring me up at his country-seat near Treviso?" "Yes, yes," replied
the old woman, "it was indeed Bertuccio Nenolo, the great sea-captain,
whom the sea devoured as he was about to adorn his temples with the
victor's wreath." "Don't interrupt me," continued Antonio; "listen
patiently to what I have to say.

"With Bertuccio Nenolo I lived in clover