“I would that they were done!” exclaimed Violetta, stopping her ears.  “None know the excellence of our friend better than I; but this open exposure of thoughts that ought to be so private, must wound her.”

“Thou mayest go again into the balcony; the music ceases.”

“There are gondoliers singing near the Rialto—­these are sounds I love!  Sweet in themselves, they do no violence to our sacred feelings.  Art thou for the water to-night, my Florinda?”

“Whither would’st thou?”

“I know not; but the evening is brilliant, and I pine to mingle with the splendor and pleasure without.”

“While thousands on the canals pine to mingle with the splendor and pleasure within!  Thus is it ever with life:  that which is possessed is little valued, and that which we have not is without price.”

“I owe my duty to my guardian,” said Violetta; “we will row to his palace.”

Though Donna Florinda had uttered so grave a moral, she spoke without severity.  Casting aside her work, she prepared to gratify the desire of her charge.  It was the usual hour for the high in rank and the secluded to go abroad; and neither Venice with its gay throng, nor Italy with its soft climate, ever offered greater temptation to seek the open air.

The groom of the chambers was called, the gondoliers were summoned, and the ladies, cloaking and taking their masks, were quickly in the boat.

CHAPTER V.

                     “If your master

Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him
That majesty, to keep decorum, must
No less beg than a kingdom.” 

          
                                                Antony and Cleopatra.

The silent movement of the hearse-like gondola soon brought the fair Venetian and her female Mentor to the water-gate of the noble, who had been intrusted by the Senate with the especial guardianship of the person of the heiress.  It was a residence of more than common gloom, possessing all the solemn but stately magnificence which then characterized the private dwellings of the patricians in that city of riches and pride.  Its magnitude and architecture, though rather less imposing than those which distinguished the palace of the Donna Violetta, placed it among the private edifices of the first order, and all its external decorations showed it to be the habitation of one of high importance.  Within, the noiseless steps and the air of silent distrust among the domestics, added to the gloomy grandeur of the apartments, rendered the abode no bad type of the Republic itself.