“When we got up we found the convent full of bad news, which interested us a great deal more than people imagined.  It was reported that, an hour before daybreak, a fishing-boat had been lost in the lagune, that two gondolas had been capsized, and that the people in them had perished.  You may imagine our anguish!  We dared not ask any questions, but it was just the hour at which you had left me, and we entertained the darkest forebodings.  We returned to our room, where M——­ M——­ fainted away.  More courageous than she is, I told her that you were a good swimmer, but I could not allay her anxiety, and she went to bed with a feverish chill.  Just at that moment, my aunt, who is of a very cheerful disposition, came in, laughing, to tell us that during the storm the Pierrot who had made us laugh so much had had a narrow escape of being drowned.  ’Ah! the poor Pierrot!’ I exclaimed, ’tell us all about him, dear aunt.  I am very glad he was saved.  Who is he?  Do you know?’ ‘Oh! yes,’ she answered, ’everything is known, for he was taken home by our gondoliers.  One of them has just told me that Pierrot, having spent the night at the Briati ball, did not find any gondola to return to Venice, and that our gondoliers took him for a sequin.  One of the men fell into the sea, but then the brave Pierrot, throwing handfuls of silver upon the ‘Zenia’ pitched the ‘felce’ over board, and the wind having less hold they reached Venice safely through the Beggars’ Canal.  This morning the lucky gondoliers divided thirty philippes which they found in the gondola, and they have been fortunate enough to pick up their ‘felce’.  Pierrot will remember Muran and the ball at Briati.  The man says that he is the son of M. de Bragadin, the procurator’s brother.  He was taken to the palace of that nobleman nearly dead from cold, for he was dressed in light calico, and had no cloak.’

“When my aunt had left us, we looked at one another for several minutes without uttering a word, but we felt that the good news had brought back life to us.  M——­ M——­ asked me whether you were really the son of M, de Bragadin.  ‘It might be so,’ I said to her, ’but his name does not shew my lover to be the bastard of that nobleman, and still less his legitimate child, for M. de Bragadin was never married.’  ‘I should be very sorry,’ said M——­ M——­, ‘if he were his son.’  I thought it right, then, to tell her your true name, and of the application made to my father by M. de Bragadin for my hand, the consequence of which was that I had been shut up in the convent.  Therefore, my own darling, your little wife has no longer any secret to keep from M——­ M——­, and I hope you will not accuse me of indiscretion, for it is better that our dear friend should know all the truth than only half of it.  We have been greatly amused, as you may well suppose, by the certainty with which people say that you spent all the night at the Briati ball.  When people do not know everything, they invent, and what