“I have stayed too long listening to talk that a maiden should not hear; permit me, signor, to withdraw.”

“Have pity on me, my cruel enemy!  What have I done to you that you should thus leave me with death in my soul?  You do not know that, for months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow, that I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they should disturb your peaceful slumber.  You are afraid, perhaps, to let yourself be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who adores you.  Alas!  Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she did not need many entreaties to take pity on Romeo.”

Nisida suffered a sad and thoughtful look to fall upon this handsome young man who spoke to her in so gentle a voice, and withdrew without further reply, that she might not humiliate his poverty.

The prince made great efforts to suppress a strong inclination towards laughter, and, very well satisfied with this opening, turned his steps towards the spot where he had left his servant.  Trespolo, after having emptied a bottle of lacryma with which he had provided himself for any emergency, had looked long around him to choose a spot where the grass was especially high and thick, and had laid himself down to a sound sleep, murmuring as he did so, this sublime observation, “O laziness, but for the sin of Adam you would be a virtue!”

The young girl could not close her eyes during the whole night after the conversation that she had held with the stranger.  His sudden appearance, his strange dress and odd speech, had awakened in her an uncertain feeling that had been lying asleep in the bottom of her heart.  She was at this time in all the vigour of her youth and of her resplendent beauty.  Nisida was not one of the weak and timid natures that are broken by suffering or domineered over by tyranny.  Far otherwise:  everything around her had contributed towards shaping for her a calm and serene destiny; her simple, tender soul had unfolded in an atmosphere of peace and happiness.  If she had not hitherto loved, it was the fault, not of her coldness but of the extreme timidity shown by the inhabitants of her island.  The blind depth of respect that surrounded the old fisherman had drawn around his daughter a barrier of esteem and submission that no one dared to cross.  By means of thrift and labour Solomon had succeeded in creating for himself a prosperity that put the poverty of the other fishermen to the blush.  No one had asked for Nisida because no one thought he deserved her.  The only admirer who had dared to show his passion openly was Bastiano, the most devoted and dearest friend of Gabriel; but Bastiano did not please her.  So, trusting in her beauty, upheld by the mysterious hope that never deserts youth, she had resigned herself to wait, like some princess who knows that her betrothed will come from a far country.