At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little round caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there lived in Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal.  Messer Paolo was a widower, with one married daughter, and an only son of twenty years or thereabouts, named Gerardo.  Messer Pietro’s wife was still living; and this couple had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceeding beauty, aged fourteen.  Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, was paying his addresses to a certain lady; and nearly every day he had to cross the Grand Canal in his gondola, and to pass beneath the house of Elena on his way to visit his Dulcinea; for this lady lived some distance up a little canal on which the western side of Messer Pietro’s palace looked.

Now it so happened that at the very time when the story opens, Messer Pietro’s wife fell ill and died, and Elena was left alone at home with her father and her old nurse.  Across the little canal of which I spoke there dwelt another nobleman, with four daughters, between the years of seventeen and twenty-one.  Messer Pietro, desiring to provide amusement for poor little Elena, besought this gentleman that his daughters might come on feast-days to play with her.  For you must know that, except on festivals of the Church, the custom of Venice required that gentlewomen should remain closely shut within the private apartments of their dwellings.  His request was readily granted; and on the next feast-day the five girls began to play at ball together for forfeits in the great saloon, which opened with its row of Gothic arches and balustraded balcony upon the Grand Canal.  The four sisters, meanwhile, had other thoughts than for the game.  One or other of them, and sometimes three together, would let the ball drop, and run to the balcony to gaze upon their gallants, passing up and down in gondolas below; and then they would drop flowers or ribands for tokens.  Which negligence of theirs annoyed Elena much; for she thought only of the game.  Wherefore she scolded them in childish wise, and one of them made answer, ’Elena, if you only knew how pleasant it is to play as we are playing on this balcony, you would not care so much for ball and forfeits!’

On one of those feast-days the four sisters were prevented from keeping their little friend company.  Elena, with nothing to do, and feeling melancholy, leaned upon the window-sill which overlooked the narrow canal.  And it chanced that just then Gerardo, on his way to Dulcinea, went by; and Elena looked down at him, as she had seen those sisters look at passers-by.  Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed between them, and Gerardo’s gondolier, bending from the poop, said to his master, ’O master! methinks that gentle maiden is better worth your wooing than Dulcinea.’  Gerardo pretended to pay no heed