led he was, but not drunk. He
took her incontinent upon his knee and began to deal in rather liberal
innuendo. Divining him darkly, she went to work with such arts as she
had to wheedle the worst out of him.

"Carissimo padre,"--so she coaxed him, with hands interwoven about his
scrubby face,--"tell me more of this gallantry of young blades."

"Chuck, chuck, chuck," he babbled, oozing wine, "come and feed out of my
hand. Bill me, sweeting, and I bill thee. Ho, ho! Two doves on a branch!
What, turtle? Wilt thou mope for ever?"

She trembled. "Nay, nay, I'll mope no more, father," says she. "But do
thou tell me who my mate is to be."

Slyly he looked at her burning face and slyly kissed it. Then he began
to sing--

"Quell' drudo, Messer Amore,
Ha scelto un Dardo per cuore!
Dardo acerbo, ardente,
Che fa gridare le genti--
Ohime! Dolce dolore!"

She had been a fool indeed to miss such a rebus. So the peril was worse
than her dread! The lees of twenty ducats shabby in his fist told her
how near the peril was.

Going to bed, he folded her in his arms, making her prop while he
mumbled comfort.

"It is all for the best, my beauty-bright," he hiccoughed, "all clearly
for the best. Messer Alessandro is a lover in ten thousand. I shall be
as good as a father-in-law any day of the week. Why, it's 'My honest
friend' that he hails me already! That is what a man may call climbing
up, I hope, when a poetical roaring blade cuts out your 'servo suo' in
that fashion. And he's Sotto-Prefetto, remember. That means all Padua
yours for the asking. Sleep sound, my pretty bird, Ippolita bella! After
this night you shall sleep by day." So he found, by good luck, his bed,
and she a time for tears.

III

THE JEW IN THE VIA DELLA GATTA

If there is not much to be said for the Via della Gatta in these days,
there was even less when Ippolita was the reigning toast. It was
cloistered (as now), it was cobbled, shabby-white, secret, blind; it
echoed silence, was a place for slippering crones, for furtive cats, and
the smell of garlic and charcoal fires. Of nights, by the same token, it
was not the place to choose for an after-supper walk. The watch used to
go through it with swords before and daggers behind. Lanterns were
little use save to reveal the cut-throat blackness all about.

Now, on the very night when Matteo was fuddled, Ippolita in tears,
Alessandro in a fever, and the more reputable Pado