filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night coming, and wind unceasing.  On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo palace, on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows and breast.  She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing round her, and the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves.  On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected, but calling out to me—­’Ah! can’ della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar’ al’ Lido?’ (Ah! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to Lido?) ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the ‘temporale.’  I am told by the servants that she had only been prevented from coming in a boat to look after me, by the refusal of all the gondoliers of the canal to put out into the harbour in such a moment; and that then she sat down on the steps in all the thickest of the squall, and would neither be removed nor comforted.  Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.

“But her reign drew near a close.  She became quite ungovernable some months after, and a concurrence of complaints, some true, and many false—­’a favourite has no friends’—­determined me to part with her.  I told her quietly that she must return home, (she had acquired a sufficient provision for herself and mother, &c. in my service,) and she refused to quit the house.  I was firm, and she went threatening knives and revenge.  I told her that I had seen knives drawn before her time, and that if she chose to begin, there was a knife, and fork also, at her service on the table, and that intimidation would not do.  The next day, while I was at dinner, she walked in, (having broken open a glass door that led from the hall below to the staircase, by way of prologue,) and advancing straight up to the table, snatched the knife from my hand, cutting me slightly in the thumb in the operation.  Whether she meant to use this against herself or me, I know not—­probably against neither—­but Fletcher seized her by the arms, and disarmed her.  I then called my boatmen, and desired them to get the gondola ready, and conduct her to her own house again, seeing carefully that she did herself no mischief by the way.  She seemed quite quiet, and walked down stairs.  I resumed my dinner.

“We heard a great noise, and went out, and met them on the staircase, carrying her up stairs.  She had thrown herself into the canal.  That she intended to destroy herself, I do not believe; but when we consider the fear