ng, "and you can tell
me the whole story of the twin brothers as we go along."

"Shall we take a gondola or walk?" was Larry's interrogative
acceptance of the suggestion.

"It's in the Ghetto, isn't it?"

"Most of the Jew curiosity dealers have left the Ghetto. Our Shylock
has a palace on the Grand Canal. I guess we had better take a gondola,
though it can't be far."

So they sat themselves down in one of the aquatic cabs which ply the
water streets of the city in the sea. The gondolier stood to his oar
and put his best foot foremost, and as the boat sped forward on its
way along the capital S of the Grand Canal, Larry told the tale of the
twin brothers and the shattered goblet.

"Well, it seems that some time in the sixteenth century, say three
hundred years ago or thereabout, there were several branches of the
great and powerful Manin family--the same family to which the
patriotic Daniele Manin belonged, you know. And at the head of one of
these branches were the twin brothers Marco Manin and Giovanni Manin.
Now, these brothers were devoted to each other, and they had only one
thought, one word, one deed. When one of them happened to think of a
thing, it often happened that the other brother did it. So it was not
surprising that they both fell in love with the same woman. She was a
dangerous-looking, yellow-haired woman, with steel-gray eyes--that is,
if her eyes were not really green, as to which there was doubt. But
there was no doubt at all that she was powerfully handsome. The
_abbate_ said that there was a famous portrait of her in one of these
churches as a Saint Mary Magdalen with her hair down. She was a
splendid creature, and lots of men were running after her besides the
twin Manins. The two brothers did not quarrel with each other about
the woman, but they did quarrel with some of her other lovers, and
particularly with a nobleman of the highest rank and power, who was
supposed to belong not only to the Council of Ten but to the Three.
Between this man and the Manins there was war to the knife and the
knife to the hilt. One day Marco Manin expressed a wish for one of
these goblets of Venetian glass so fine that poison shatters it, and
so Giovanni went out to Murano and ordered two of them, of the very
finest quality, and just alike in every particular of color and shape
and size. You see the twins always had everything in pairs. But the
people at Murano somehow misunderstood the order, and although th