“I!—­I was more like thy lion here, with some small additions of chains and muzzles.”

“As was seen by thy felucca’s speed?”

“Cospetto!  I wished myself a knight of San Giovanni a thousand times during the chase, and La Bella Sorrentina a brave Maltese galley, if it were only for the cause of Christian honor!  The miscreant hung upon my quarter for the better part of three glasses; so near, that I could tell which of the knaves wore dirty cloth in his turban, and which clean.  It was a sore sight to a Christian, Stefano, to see the right thus borne upon by an infidel.”

“And thy feet warmed with the thought of the bastinado, caro mio?”

“I have run too often barefoot over our Calabrian mountains, to tingle at the sole with every fancy of that sort.”

“Every man has his weak spot, and I know thine to be dread of a Turk’s arm.  Thy native hills have their soft as well as their hard ground, but it is said the Tunisian chooses a board knotty as his own heart, when he amuses himself with the wailings of a Christian.”

“Well, the happiest of us all must take such as fortune brings.  If my soles are to be shod with blows, the honest priest of Sant’ Agata will be cheated by a penitent.  I have bargained with the good curato, that all such accidental calamities shall go in the general account of penance.  But how fares the world of Venice?—­and what dost thou among the canals at this season, to keep the flowers of thy jacket from wilting?”

“To-day, as yesterday, and to-morrow will be as to-day I row the gondola from the Rialto to the Giudecca; from San Giorgio to San Marco; from San Marco to the Lido, and from the Lido home.  There are no Tunis-men by the way, to chill the heart or warm the feet.”

“Enough of friendship.  And is there nothing stirring in the republic?—­no young noble drowned, nor any Jew hanged?”

“Nothing of that much interest—­except the calamity which befell Pietro.  Thou rememberest Pietrello? he who crossed into Dalmatia with thee once, as a supernumerary, the time he was suspected of having aided the young Frenchman in running away with a senator’s daughter?”

“Do I remember the last famine?  The rogue did nothing but eat maccaroni, and swallow the lachryma christi, which the Dalmatian count had on freight.”

“Poverino!  His gondola has been run down by an Ancona-man, who passed over the boat as if it were a senator stepping on a fly.”

“So much for little fish coming into deep water.”

“The honest fellow was crossing the Giudecca, with a stranger, who had occasion to say his prayers at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in the canopy, and broke up the gondola, as if it had been a bubble left by the Bucentaur.”

“The padrone should have been too generous to complain of Pietro’s clumsiness, since it met with its own punishment.”

“Madre di Dio!  He went to sea that hour, or he might be feeding the fishes of the Lagunes!  There is not a gondolier in Venice who did not feel the wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain justice for an insult, as well as our masters.”