ination of the claim preferred by Don
Camillo. Can we do better than to recommend a compromise, that he may
return without delay to his own Calabria?"

"The concern is weighty, and it demands deliberation."

"He complains of our tardiness already, and not without show of reason.
It is five years since the claim was first preferred."

"Signor Gradenigo, it is for the vigorous and healthful to display their
activity--the aged and the tottering must move with caution. Were we in
Venice to betray precipitation in so weighty a concern, without seeing
an immediate interest in the judgment, we should trifle with a gale of
fortune that every sirocco will not blow into the canals. We must have
terms with the lord of Sant' Agata, or we greatly slight our own
advantage."

"I hinted of the matter to your excellencies, as a consideration for
your wisdom; methinks it will be something gained to remove one so
dangerous from the recollection and from before the eyes of a love-sick
maiden."

"Is the damsel so amorous?"

"She is of Italy, Signore, and our sun bestows warm fancies and fervent
minds."

"Let her to the confessional and her prayers! The godly prior of St.
Mark will discipline her imagination till she shall conceit the
Neapolitan a Moor and an infidel. Just San Teodoro, forgive me! But thou
canst remember the time, my friends, when the penance of the church was
not without service on thine own fickle tastes and truant practices."

"The Signore Gradenigo was a gallant in his time," observed the third,
"as all well know who travelled in his company. Thou wert much spoken of
at Versailles and at Vienna; nay, thou canst not deny thy vogue to one
who, if he hath no other merit, hath a memory."

"I protest against these false recollections," rejoined the accused, a
withered smile lighting his faded countenance; "we have been young,
Signori, but among us all, I never knew a Venetian of more general
fashion and of better report, especially with the dames of France, than
he who has just spoken."

"Account it not--account it not--'twas the weakness of youth and the use
of the times!--I remember to have seen thee, Enrico, at Madrid, and a
gayer or more accomplished gentleman was not known at the Spanish
court."

"Thy friendship blinded thee. I was a boy and full of spirits; no more,
I may assure thee. Didst hear of my affair with the mousquetaire when at
Paris?"

"Did I hear of the general war? Thou art too modest to rai