an unseemly or extravagant word
or gesture. My _comare_ careered about with a light maenadic impetuosity,
which made me regret my inability to accept her pressing invitations.
She pursued me into every corner of the room, but when at last I dropped
excuses and told her that my real reason for not dancing was that it
would hurt my health, she waived her claims at once with an _Ah,
poverino_!

Some time after midnight we felt that we had had enough of
_divertimento_. Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. With many
silent good wishes we left the innocent, playful people who had been so
kind to us. The stars were shining from a watery sky as we passed into
the piazza beneath the Campanile and the pinnacles of S. Mark. The Riva
was almost empty, and the little waves fretted the boats moored to the
piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering by. We smoked a last
cigar, crossed our _traghetto_, and were soon sound asleep at the end of
a long, pleasant day. The ball, we heard next morning, finished about
four.

Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for seeing my
friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment.
Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried fish and
amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always cooked with scrupulous
cleanliness, and served upon a table covered with coarse linen. The
polenta is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with a string
called _lassa_. You take a large slice of it on the palm of the left
hand, and break it with the fingers of the right. Wholesome red wine of
the Paduan district and good white bread were never wanting. The rooms
in which we met to eat looked out on narrow lanes or over pergolas of
yellowing vines. Their whitewashed walls were hung with photographs of
friends and foreigners, many of them souvenirs from English or American
employers. The men, in broad black hats and lilac skirts, sat round the
table, girt with the red waist-wrapper, or _fascia_, which marks the
ancient faction of the Castellani. The other faction, called Nicolotti,
are distinguished by a black _assisa_. The quarters of the town are
divided unequally and irregularly into these two parties. What was once
a formidable rivalry between two sections of the Venetian populace,
still survives in challenges to trials of strength and skill upon the
water. The women, in their many-coloured kerchiefs, stirred polenta at
the smoke-blackened chimney, w