Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the melody of music was rife on the water.  Gondolas continued to glide along the shadowed canals, while the laugh or the song was echoed among the arches of the palaces.  The piazza and piazzetta were yet brilliant with lights, and gay with their multitudes of unwearied revellers.

The habitation of Donna Violetta was far from the scene of general amusement.  Though so remote, the hum of the moving throng, and the higher strains of the wind-instruments, came, from time to time, to the ears of its inmates, mellowed and thrilling by distance.

The position of the moon cast the whole of the narrow passage which flowed beneath the windows of her private apartments into shadow.  In a balcony which overhung the water, stood the youthful and ardent girl, listening with a charmed ear and a tearful eye to one of those soft strains, in which Venetian voices answered to each other from different points on the canals, in the songs of the gondoliers.  Her constant companion and Mentor was near, while the ghostly father of them both stood deeper in the room.

“There may be pleasanter towns on the main, and capitals of more revelry,” said the charmed Violetta, withdrawing her person from its leaning attitude, as the voices ceased; “but in such a night and at this witching hour, what city may compare with Venice?”

“Providence has been less partial in the distribution of its earthly favors than is apparent to a vulgar eye,” returned the attentive Carmelite.  “If we have our peculiar enjoyments and our moments of divine contemplation, other towns have advantages of their own; Genoa and Pisa, Firenze, Ancona, Roma, Palermo, and, chiefest of all, Napoli—­”

“Napoli, father!”

“Daughter, Napoli.  Of all the towns of sunny Italy, ’tis the fairest and the most blessed in natural gifts.  Of every region I have visited, during a life of wandering and penitence, that is the country on which the touch of the Creator hath been the most God-like!”

“Thou art imaginative to-night, good Father Anselmo.  The land must be fair indeed, that can thus warm the fancy of a Carmelite.”

“The rebuke is just.  I have spoken more under the influence of recollections that came from days of idleness and levity, than with the chastened spirit of one who should see the hand of the Maker in the most simple and least lovely of all his wondrous works.”

“You reproach yourself causelessly, holy father,” observed the mild Donna Florinda, raising her eyes towards the pale countenance of the monk; “to admire the beauties of nature, is to worship Him who gave them being.”

At that moment a burst of music rose on the air, proceeding from the water beneath the balcony.  Donna Violetta started back, abashed; and as she held her breath in wonder, and haply with that delight which open admiration is apt to excite in a youthful female bosom, the color mounted to her temples.