cca, with a stranger, who had
occasion to say his prayers at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in
the canopy, and broke up the gondola, as if it had been a bubble left by
the Bucentaur."

"The padrone should have been too generous to complain of Pietro's
clumsiness, since it met with its own punishment."

"Madre di Dio! He went to sea that hour, or he might be feeding the
fishes of the Lagunes! There is not a gondolier in Venice who did not
feel the wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain justice for an
insult, as well as our masters."

"Well, a gondola is mortal, as well as a felucca, and both have their
time; better die by the prow of a brig than fall into the gripe of a
Turk. How is thy young master, Gino; and is he likely to obtain his
claims of the senate?"

"He cools himself in the Giudecca in the morning; and if thou would'st
know what he does at evening, thou hast only to look among the nobles in
the Broglio."

As the gondolier spoke he glanced an eye aside at a group of patrician
rank, who paced the gloomy arcades which supported the superior walls of
the doge's palace, a spot sacred, at times, to the uses of the
privileged.

"I am no stranger to the habit thy Venetian nobles have of coming to
that low colonnade at this hour, but I never before heard of their
preferring the waters of the Giudecca for their baths."

"Were even the doge to throw himself out of a gondola, he must sink or
swim, like a meaner Christian."

"Acqua dell' Adriatico! Was the young duca going to the Redentore, too,
to say his prayers?"

"He was coming back after having; but what matters it in what canal a
young noble sighs away the night! We happened to be near when the
Ancona-man performed his feat; while Giorgio and I were boiling with
rage at the awkwardness of the stranger, my master, who never had much
taste or knowledge in gondolas, went into the water to save the young
lady from sharing the fate of her uncle."

"Diavolo! This is the first syllable thou hast uttered concerning any
young lady, or of the death of her uncle!"

"Thou wert thinking of thy Tunis-man, and hast forgotten. I must have
told thee how near the beautiful signora was to sharing the fate of the
gondola, and how the loss of the Roman marchese weighs, in addition, on
the soul of the padrone."

"Santo Padre! That a Christian should die the death of a hunted dog by
the carelessness of a gondolier!"

"It may have been lucky for the Ancona-man