olier who had conducted them, an old, gray-headed,
hard-looking fellow, had pocketed his fee, nodded his thanks, and
pushed off again from the landing.

"There goes old Beppo," said one of the gondoliers on shore. "He will
make a good day's work of it. I can swear I saw the glitter of gold in
his hand just now."

"Yes, yes!" said another. "Let him alone for making his money. And
what he makes, he keeps. He's a close-fisted old hunks."

"And what is he so scrimping and saving for?" asked a third. "He is
unmarried--he has no children."

"No--but he is to be married," said the first.

"How! the man's past sixty."

"Yes, comrade, but he will not be the first old fellow who has taken a
young wife in his dotage. Have you never heard that he has a young
ward, beautiful as an angel, whom he keeps cooped up as tenderly as a
brooding dove in his tumble-down old house on the Canal Orfano? Nobody
but himself has ever set eyes on her to my knowledge."

"There you're mistaken, Stefano," said a young man, who had not
hitherto spoken. He was a fine, dashing, handsome young fellow of
twenty-six, in a holiday suit of crimson and gold, with a fiery eye,
long, curling locks, and a mustache as black as jet.

"Let's hear what Antonio Giraldo has to say about the matter!" cried
his companions.

"Simply this," said the young man. "I have seen the imprisoned fair
one--the peerless Zanetta--for such is her name. She is lovely as the
day; and for her voice--why--_Corpo di Bacco_! La Gianina, the prima
donna, is a screechowl to _my_ nightingale."

"_Your_ nightingale! Bravo!" cried Stefano, in a tone of mocking
irony. "What can you know about her voice?"

"Simply this, Master Stefano," replied the young gondolier. "When
floating beneath her window in my gondola, I have addressed her in
such rude strains of melody as I best knew how to frame. She has
replied in tones so liquid and pure that the angels might have
listened."

"By Heaven! the fellow's in love!" cried Stefano.

"Long live music and love!" cried Antonio. "What were life worth
without them?"

"You're in excellent spirits!" cried Stefano.

"And why shouldn't a man be, on his wedding day?"

"Mad as a march hare," cried Stefano.

"Mark me," said Antonio. "That girl shall never marry old Beppo--my
word for it. She hates him."

"She'll elope with some noble, then."

"To be cast off to wither when he is tired of her charms? No! the
bridegroom for Zanetta is a gondolie