to these words; but after rowing a little way, he bade the man turn, and they went slowly back beneath the window.  This time Elena, thinking to play the game which her four friends had played, took from her hair a clove carnation and let it fall close to Gerardo on the cushion of the gondola.  He raised the flower and put it to his lips, acknowledging the courtesy with a grave bow.  But the perfume of the clove and the beauty of Elena in that moment took possession of his heart together, and straightway he forgot Dulcinea.

As yet he knew not who Elena was.  Nor is this wonderful; for the daughters of Venetian nobles were but rarely seen or spoken of.  But the thought of her haunted him awake and sleeping; and every feast-day, when there was the chance of seeing her, he rowed his gondola beneath her windows.  And there she appeared to him in company with her four friends; the five girls clustering together like sister roses beneath the pointed windows of the Gothic balcony.  Elena, on her side, had no thought of love; for of love she had heard no one speak.  But she took pleasure in the game those friends had taught her, of leaning from the balcony to watch Gerardo.  He meanwhile grew love-sick and impatient, wondering how he might declare his passion.  Until one day it happened that, talking through a lane or calle which skirted Messer Pietro’a palace, he caught sight of Elena’s nurse, who was knocking at the door, returning from some shopping she had made.  This nurse had been his own nurse in childhood; therefore he remembered her, and cried aloud, ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ But the old woman did not hear him, and passed into the house and shut the door behind her.  Whereupon Gerardo, greatly moved, still called to her, and when he reached the door, began to knock upon it violently.  And whether it was the agitation of finding himself at last so near the wish of his heart, or whether the pains of waiting for his love had weakened him, I know not; but, while he knocked, his senses left him, and he fell fainting in the doorway.  Then the nurse recognised the youth to whom she had given suck, and brought him into the courtyard by the help of handmaidens, and Elena came down and gazed upon him.  The house was now full of bustle, and Messer Pietro heard the noise, and seeing the son of his neighbour in so piteous a plight, he caused Gerardo to be laid upon a bed.  But for all they could do with him, he recovered not from his swoon.  And after a while force was that they should place him in a gondola and ferry him across to his father’s house.  The nurse went with him, and informed Messer Paolo of what had happened.  Doctors were sent for, and the whole family gathered round Gerardo’s bed.  After a while he revived a little; and thinking himself still upon the doorstep of Pietro’s palace, called again, ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ She was near at hand, and would have spoken to him.  But while he summoned his senses to his aid, he became gradually aware of his own kinsfolk