ignory, nursing their swelling resentment, were more inclined to
condone Michele Steno's fault, than to see justice done to their
deeply-wounded chief. The matter was referred by the Council of Ten to
the Forty, one of the leaders of which Michele had formerly been. The
verdict was that Michele Steno had already suffered sufficiently, and a
month's banishment was quite punishment enough for the offence. This
sentence only served to feed anew and more fully old Falieri's
bitterness against a Seignory which, instead of protecting their own
head, had the impudence to punish insults that were offered to him as
they would offences of merely the most insignificant description.

As generally happens in the case of lovers, once a single ray of the
happiness of love has fallen upon them, they are surrounded for days
and weeks and months by a sort of golden veil, and dream dreams of
Paradise; and so Antonio could not recover himself from the stupefying
rapture of that happy moment; he could hardly breathe for delirious
sadness. He had been well scolded by the old woman for running such a
great risk; and she never ceased mumbling and grumbling about exposure
to unnecessary danger.

But one day she came hopping and dancing with her staff in the strange
way she had when apparently affected by some foreign magical influence.
Without heeding Antonio's words and questions, she began to chuckle
and laugh, and kindling a small fire in the stove, she put a little
pan on it, into which she poured several ingredients from many
various-coloured phials, and made a salve, which she put into a little
box; then she limped out of the house again, chuckling and laughing.
She did not return until late at night, when she sat down in the
easy-chair, panting and coughing for breath; and after she had in a
measure recovered from her great exhaustion, she at length began,
"Tonino, my boy Tonino, whom do you think I have come from? See--try if
you can guess. Whom do I come from? where have I been?" Antonio looked
at her, and a singular instinctive feeling took possession of him.
"Well now," chuckled the old woman, "I have come from her--her herself,
from the pretty dove, lovely Annunciata." "Don't drive me mad, old
woman!" shouted Antonio. "What do you say?" continued she, "I am always
thinking about you, my Tonino.

"This morning, whilst I was haggling for some fine fruit under the
peristyle of the Palace, I heard the people talking with bated breath