good,' softly whispered the sick darling. Then Marino cried quite
delighted, 'You shall have a thousand sequins, old woman, if you save
me the Dogess;' and therewith he left the room.

"For three hours I sat there, holding her little hand in mine, stroking
and attending to it. Then the darling woman woke up out of the gentle
slumber into which she had fallen, and no longer felt any pain. After I
had made a fresh poultice, she looked at me with eyes brimming with
gladness. Then I said, 'O most noble lady, you once saved a boy's life
when you killed the little snake that was about to attack him as he
slept.' O Tonino, you should have seen the hot blood rush into her pale
face, as if a ray of the setting sun had fallen upon it--and how her
eyes flashed with the fire of joy. 'Oh! yes, old woman,' she said, 'oh!
I was quite a child then--it was at my father's country villa. Oh! he
was a dear pretty boy--I often think of him now. I don't think I have
ever had a single happy experience since that time.' Then I began to
talk about you, that you were in Venice, that your heart still beat
with the love and rapture of that moment, that, in order to gaze _once_
more in the heavenly eyes of the angel who saved you, you had faced the
risk of the dangerous aerial voyage, that you it was who had given her
the nosegay on Holy Thursday. 'O Tonino, Tonino,' she cried in an
ecstasy of delight, 'I felt it, I felt it; when he pressed my hand to
his lips, when he named my name, I could not conceive why it went so
strangely to my heart; it was indeed pleasure, but pain as well. Bring
him here, bring him to me--the pretty boy.'" As the old woman said this
Antonio threw himself upon his knees and cried like one insane, "O good
God! pray let no dire fate overtake me now--now at least until I have
seen her, have pressed her to my heart." He wanted the old woman to
take him to the Palace the very next day; but she flatly refused, since
old Falieri was in the habit of paying visits to his sick wife nearly
every hour that came.

Several days went by; the old woman had completely cured the Dogess;
but as yet it had been quite impossible to take Antonio to see her. The
old woman soothed his impatience as well as she could, always repeating
that she was constantly talking to beautiful Annunciata about the
Antonio whose life she had saved, and who loved her so passionately.
Tormented by all the pangs of desire and yearning love, Antonio spent
his time