University of Virginia Library

PALETTO'S BRIDE.

1. CHAPTER I.

“My daughter!” said the count Spinola.

The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle and
turned her fair features inquiringly to her father. Heedless
of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted
count paced up and down the marble pavement of his
hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca came to
him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted it silently
on her forehead, and stepped out on the balcony to
pursue, under the aiding light of the stars, thoughts
that were more imperative than sleep.

There had been a fête of great splendor in the ducal
gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola had
shown there, as usual, the most radiant and worshipped
daughter of the nobilita of Florence. The melancholy
duke himself (this was in the days of his first
marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting her with
flowers which he had gathered at her side, with the
dew on them (in an alley glittering with the diamonds on
noble bosoms, and dewdrops on roses that would slumber,
though it was the birth-night of a princess), and

marked as was the royal attention to the envied beauty,
it was more easily forgiven her than her usual triumphs—for
it cost no one a lover. True to his conjugal
vows, the sad-featured monarch paid to beauty
only the homage exacted alike by every most admirable
work of nature.

The grand-duke Leopold had not been the only admirer
whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had been
remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence
that seemed more fitted for a masquerade than a court-ball,
and yet of a mien that promised danger to the
too inquisitive, had entered alone, and, marking out the
daughter of the haughty count from the first, had
procured an introduction, no one knew how, and
sought every opportunity which the intervals of the
dance afforded, to place himself at her side. Occupied
with the courtly devoirs of his rank, the count
was, for a while, unaware of what struck almost every
one else, and it was only when the stranger's name
was inquired of him by the duke, that his dark and
jealous eye fell upon a face whose language of kindling
and undisguised admiration a child would have interpreted
aright. It was one of those faces that are of
no degree—that may belong to a barbaric king, or to
a Greek slave—that no refinement would improve, and
no servile habits degrade; faces which take their
changes from an indomitable and powerful soul, and
are beyond the trifling impression of the common usages
of life. Spinola was offended with the daring and
passionate freedom of the stranger's gaze upon his
daughter; but he hesitated to interrupt their conversation
too rudely. He stayed to exchange a compliment
with some fair obstruction in his way across the
crowded saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca
stood alone.

“Who left you this moment, my Francesca?” asked
the count, with affected unconcern.

“I think, a Venetian,” she answered.

“And his name?”

“I know not, my father!”

The count's face flashed.

“Who presented him to my darling?” he asked,
again forcing himself to composure.

Francesca colored; and, with downcast eyes, answered:—

“No one, my father! He seemed to know me, and
I thought I might have forgotten him.”

Spinola turned on his heel, and, after a few vain inquiries,
and as vain a search for the stranger, ordered
his attendants, and drove silently home.

It was close upon the gray of the morning, and the
count still leaned over the stone-railing of his balcony.
Francesca had been gone an hour to her chamber.
A guitar-string sounded from the street below, and, a
moment after, a manly and mellow voice broke into a
Venetian barcarole, and sang with a skill and tenderness
which a vestal could scarce have listened to unmoved.
Spinola stepped back and laid his hand upon
his sword; but, changing his thought, he took a lamp
from the wall within, and crept noiselessly to his
daughter's chamber. She lay within her silken curtains,
with her hands crossed on her bosom, and from
her parted lips came the low breath of innocent and
untroubled sleep. Reassured, the count closed her
window and extinguished his lamp; and, when the
guitar was no longer heard echoing from the old
palace walls, and the rich voice of the serender had
died away with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo
Spinola betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat
relieved of its burden.

On the following day, the count pleaded the early-coming
heats of summer; and, with slight preparation,
left Florence for his summer-palace in the Apennines.
When Francesca joined him cheerfully, and
even gayly, in his sudden plan, he threw aside the
jealous fears that had haunted his breast, and forgot
the stranger and his barcarole. The old trees of his
maison de plaisance were heavy with the leaves of the
Italian May; the statues stood cool in the shade; the
mountain rivulets forgot their birth in the rocky
brooks, and ran over channels of marble, and played
up through cactus-leaves and sea-shells, and nereids'
horns, all carved by the contemporaries of Donatello.
“And here,” thought the proud noble, “I am á l'ecart
of the designs of adventurers, and the temptations and
dangers of gayety, and the child of my hopes will refresh
her beauty and her innocence, under the watchful
eye, ever present, of my love.

Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures
of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other
climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had
passions. She could love—but it sprang in an instant
to its fullest power—and maidenly reserve and hesitation
were incompatible with its existence. She had
listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of the duke's
court, and had been amused with the devotion of all
around her—but never touched. The voice of the
stranger at the fête of the Boboli—the daring words
he had addressed to her—had arrested her attention;
and it needed scarce the hour—which flew like a moment
at his side—to send a new sensation, like a tempest,
through her heart. She reasoned upon nothing
—asked nothing; but, while she gave up her soul
wholly to a passion hitherto unfelt, the deep dissimulation
which seems a natural part of the love of that
burning clime, prompted her, by an unquestioned impulse,
to conceal it entirely from her father. She had
counterfeited sleep when nearly surprised in listening
to the barcarole, and she had little need to counterfeit
joy at her departure for the mountains.

The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon
the landscape by a wreath of vapor, stealing up as if
enamored of the fading color of the clouds; and far
away, like a silver bar on the rim of the horizon, shone
the long line of the Mediterranean. The mountain
sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing from the
nearest, came the vesper-bells of Vallombrosa. Peace
and purity were stamped upon the hour.

“My child,” said the softened count, drawing Francesca
to his bosom, as they stood looking off upon
this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the portico;
“does my child love me?”

Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and
kissed him for reply.

“I feel impelled,” he continued, “to talk to you
while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection
that resembles it.”

“Resembles the sunset, my father?”

“Yes! Shall I tell you how? By affecting with
its soft influence every object under the bend of the
sky! My Francesca! there are parents who love
their children, and love them well, and yet find feelings
for other attachments, and devotion for every
other interest in life. Not so mine! My love for
my child is a whole existence poured into hers.
Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capable,
perhaps, of other love than a parent's. There are
among the young and beautiful who have looked on
me with favoring eyes. My blood runs warm yet, and
my step is as full of manhood—perhaps my heart as
prompt to be gay—as ever. I mean to say that I am
not too old for a lover. Does my daughter think so?”

“I have been long vain of your beauty, dear father,”
said Francesca, threading her hand in his dark
curls.

“There are other things that might share your
empire in my heart—politics, play, the arts—a hundred
passions which possess themselves of men whose
fortune or position gives them means and leisure.
Now listen, my daughter! You have supplanted all
these! You have filled my heart with yourself.

I am tempted to love—my heart is my daughter's.
I am asked to play—my thoughts are with my child.
I have neither time for politics, nor attention for the
arts—my being breathes through my child. I am
incapable of all else. Do you hear me, Francesca?”

“I do, dear father!”

“Then, one moment more! I can not conceal my
thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like mine
for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger at the
duke's palace.”

Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and,
with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its
tranquillity.

“I say I liked him not! No one knew him! He
is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will never
be seen more in Florence. But I will not disguise
from you that I thought you—pleased with him!”

“Father!”

“Forgive me if I wrong you—but, without pursuing
the subject, let your father implore you, on his
knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you
tell me your thoughts, Francesca? Will you love
me with but the thousandth part of my adoration, my
devotion, for my child?”

“Father! I will!”

The count rose from the knee on which he had
fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led her
in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan border,
into neighboring Romagna, and, with the stranger at
her side, sped away, under the cover of night, toward
the shores of the Brenta.

Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her
sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth
glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark caverns,
impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames are
unseen in their floating chambers, as they go from
street to street; and mysteriously and silently glide to
and fro those swift gondolas, black as night, yet carrying
sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt, alike
swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water, that betrays
no footstep, and covers all with the same mantle
of light, fills her streets. Silence, that is the seal of
secrecy, reigns day and night over her thousand
palaces.

For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal
that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided by
the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola stood
at the window of a chamber in a palace of gorgeous
magnificence, watching that still water for the coming
of her husband. The silver lines of the moon stole
back imperceptibly, as her full orb sailed up the
heavens, and the turrets of the old architecture of
Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled bosom of the
canal, seemed retiring before a consuming sheet of
silver. The silence seemed painful. To the ear of
the beautiful Florentine, the want of the sound of a
footstep, of the echo of some distant wheel, the utter
death of all sound common to even the stillest hour of
a paved city, seemed oppressive and awful. Behind
her burned lamps of alabaster, and perfumes filled the
chamber, and on a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean
and unornamented guitar. Its presence in so costly a
palace was a secret yet withheld. She wished to
touch its strings, if only to disperse the horror of silence.
But she raised her fingers, and again, without
touching it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of
the Rialto.

A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from its
black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He had
gone with his two faithful servants to St. Mark's.
The oar ceased—the bark headed in—the water
splashed on the marble stair—and the gondolier stepped
on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had such a form
as stood there in the moonlight?

“Are we to be married again,” said Francesca, as
her husband entered the chamber, “that you have
once more disguised yourself as a fisherman?”

Paletto turned from the light, and took up the
mysterious guitar. “It is no night to be in-doors, my
Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and I will
tell you the story of this despised instrument. Will
you come?” he pursued, as she stood looking at him
in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed look.
“Will you come, my wife?”

“But you have returned without your gondoliers!”
she said, advancing a step to take his hand.

“I have rowed a gondola ere now,” he answered;
and, without further explanation, he led her down the
lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of the bark
which he had brought with him, stepped upon the
platform, and, with masterly skill and power, drove it
like a shadow under the Rialto.

He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon
gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the
drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain,
fancied such must be the smooth delight and changing
vision of a traveller in strange lands—one who has
thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot though
Venice for the first time in a gondola, without a
sense of familiarity with the scene and motion. The
architecture of the clouds is again drifting past, and
himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop of
the moon.

Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola,
watching and wondering. How should her luxurious
Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with which
he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly over the
water. Another gondola approached or was left behind,
the corner of a palace was to be rounded, or the
black arch of a bridge to be shot under, and the
peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers, giving notice
of their unheard approach, fell from his lips so mechanically,
that the hireling oarsmen of the city, marvelling
at his speed, but never doubting that it was a
comrade of the Piazza, added the “fratello mio” to
their passing salutation. She saw by every broad
beam of light, which, between the palaces, came down
across them, a brow clouded and a mind far from the
oar he turned so skilfully. She looked at the gondola
in which she sat. It was old and mean. In the prow
lay a fisher's net, and the shabby guitar, thrown upon
it, seemed now, at least, not out of place. She looked
up at Paletto once more, and, in his bare throat and
bosom, his loose cap and neglected hair, she could
with difficulty recognise the haughty stranger of the
Boboli. She spoke to him. It was necessary to
break the low-born spell that seemed closing around
her. Paletto started at her voice, and suspending his
oar, while the gondola still kept way as if with its own
irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes,
and seemed waking from some painful dream.

The gondola was now far out in the lagoon.—
Around them floated an almost impalpable vapor,
just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click
of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow was
the only sound between them and the cloudless heaven.
In that silence Paletto strung his guitar and sang to
his bride with a strange energy. She listened and
played with his tangled locks, but there seemed a spell
upon her tongue when she would ask the meaning of
this mystery.

“Francesca!” he said at last, raising his head from
her lap.

“What says my fisherman?” she replied, holding
up his rough cap with a smile.

Paletto started, but recovering his composure, instantly
took the cap from her jewelled fingers and
threw it carelessly upon his head.

“Francesca! who is your husband?”

“Paletto?”

“And who is Paletto?”

“I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses
have interrupted me. Yet I know enough.”

“What know you?”

“That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice!”

“Do I look one to-night?”

“Nay—for a masquerade, I have never seen a
better! Where learned you to look so like a fisherman
and row so like a gondolier?”

Paletto frowned.

“Francesca!” said he folding his arms across his
bosom, “I am the son of a fisherman, and I was bred
to row the gondola beneath you!”

The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon
her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a
look almost as stern as his own.

“You mock me too gravely, Paletto! But come!
I will question you in your own humor. Who educated
the fisherman's son?”

“The fisherman.”

“And his palace and his wealth—whence came
they, Signor Pescatore?”

The scornful smile of incredulity with which this
question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as Paletto
answered it.

“Listen! Three months since I had never known
other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor
worn other dress than this in which you see me. The
first property I ever possessed beyond my day's earnings,
was this gondola. It was my father's, Giannotto
the fisherman. When it became mine by his death,
I suddenly wearied of my tame life, sold boat and nets,
and with thoughts which you can not understand,
but which have brought you here, took my way to
the Piazza. A night of chance, begun with the whole
of my inheritance staked upon a throw, left me master
of wealth I had never dreamed of. I became a
gay signore. It seemed to me that my soul had gone
out of me, and a new spirit, demoniac if you will, had
taken possession. I no longer recognised myself. I
passed for an equal with the best-born, my language
altered, my gait, my humor. One strong feeling alone
predominated—an insane hatred to the rank in which
you were born, Francesca! It was strange, too, that
I tried to ape its manners. I bought the palace you
have just left, and filled it with costly luxuries. And
then there grew upon me the desire to humiliate that
rank—to pluck down to myself some one of its proud
and cherished daughters—such as you!”

Francesca muttered something between her teeth,
and folded her small arms over her bosom. Paletto
went on.

“I crossed to Florence with this sole intention.
Unknown and uninvited, I entered the palace at the
fête of the Boboli, and looked around for a victim.
You were the proudest and most beautiful. I chose
you and you are here.”

Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never sunbeam
was more unmixed with shadow than the smile
which answered it on the lips of Spinola's daughter.

“My Paletto!” she said, “you have the soul of a
noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride. Let
us return to the palace!”

“I have no palace but this!” he said, striking his
hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola.
“You have not heard out my tale.”

Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble.

“This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are
dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with
this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more
Paletto the fisherman!”

A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine
was her only response to this astounding announcement.
Her eyes turned slowly from the face of the
fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point far out
in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless, and cold.

“I am a man, Francesca!” said Paletto after a pause
which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon around them,
seemed like a suspension of the breathing of nature,
and “I have not gone through this insane dream without
some turning aside of the heart. Spite of myself,
I loved you, and I could not dishonor you. We
are married, Francesca!”

The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered
till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting
from beneath her forehead. Her eyes flashed fire
below.

“Bene!” said Paletto, rising to his feet; “one
word more while we have silence around us and are
alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so far repair
the wrong I have done you, as to point out the
way. It will be daylight in an hour. Fly to the
governor's palace, announce your birth, declare that
you were forced from your father by brigands, and
claim his protection. The world will believe you, and
the consequences to myself I will suffer in silence.”

With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca thrust
out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward Venice.
Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering in every seam
beneath its blade, the gondola sped on his way. The
steel prow struck fire on the granite steps of the
Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola stepped over
the trembling side, and with a half-wave of her hand,
strode past the Lion of St. Mark, and approached the
sentinel at the palace-gate. And as her figure was
lost among the arabesque columns shaded from the
moon, Paletto's lonely gondola shot once more silently
and slowly from the shore.

2. CHAPTER II.

The smooth, flat pavement of the Borg'ognisanti
had been covered since morning with earth, and the
windows and balconies on either side were flaunting
with draperies of the most gorgeous colors. The
riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival in
Florence, were to be honored by the presence of the
court. At the far extremity of the street, close by the
gate of the Cascine, an open veranda, painted in fresco,
stood glittering with the preparations for the royal party,
and near it the costlier hangings of here and there a
window or balustrade, showed the embroidered crests
of the different nobles of Tuscany. It was the people's
place and hour, and beneath the damask and cloth of
gold, the rough stone windows were worn smooth by
the touch of peasant hands, and the smutched occupants,
looking down from the balconies above, upon
the usupers of their week-day habitations, formed, to
the stranger's eye, not the least interesting feature of
the scene.

As evening approached, the balconies began to
show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street
below filled with the press of the gay contadini.
The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down
the length of the course to their veranda at the gate,
but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the serried
crowd; and, on foot like the peasant-girl, the
noble's daughter followed the servants of her house,
who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony
she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden.
The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal
of vespers, and the horses were led in.

It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that race
was to be run. The entire population of Florence
was crowded into a single narrow street—men, women,
and children, struggling only for a foothold. The signal
was about to be given for the start, yet no attempt
was made to clear a passage. Twenty high-spirited
horses fretted behind the rope, each with a dozen
spurs hung to his surcingales, which, at the least motion,

must drive him onward like the steed of Mazeppa.
Gay ribands were braided in their manes, and the
bets ran high. All sounded and looked merry, yet it
would seem as if the loosing of the start-rope must be
like the letting in of destruction upon the crowd.

In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next
the Arno, was a party that attracted attention, somewhat
from their rank and splendid attire, but more
from the remarkable beauty of a female, who seemed
their star and idol. She was something above the
middle height of the women of Italy, and of the style
of face seen in the famous Judith of the Pitti—dark,
and of melancholy so unfathomable as almost to affray
the beholder. She looked a brooding prophetess;
yet through the sad expression of her features
there was a gleam of fierceness, that to the more critical
eye betrayed a more earthly gleam of human passion
and suffering. As if to belie the maturity of years
of which such an expression should be the work, an
ungloved hand and arm of almost childlike softness
and roundness lay on the drapery of the railed gallery;
and stealing from that to her just-perfected form, the
gazer made a new judgment of her years, while he
wondered what strange fires had forced outward the
riper lineaments of her character.

The count Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame,
stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed on
his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was turned
from her. He was a slight youth, little older, apparently,
than herself, of an effeminate and yet wilful cast
of countenance, and would have been pronounced by
women (what a man would scarce allow him to be)
eminently handsome. Effeminate coxcomb as he was,
he had power over the stronger nature beside him, and
of such stuff, in courts and cities, are made sometimes
the heroes whose success makes worthier men almost
forswear the worship due to women.

There were two other persons in the balconies of
the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which this
was a scene. The first was the prima donna of the
Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms the capricious
Fazelli had been for a month paying a too open
homage; and the second was a captain in the duke's
guard, whose personal daring in the extermination of
a troop of brigands, had won for him some celebrity
and his present commission. What thread of sympathy
rested between so humble an individual and the
haughty countess Fazelli, will be shown in the sequel.
Enough for the present, that, as he stood leaning
against the pillar of an opposite gallery, looking carelessly
on the preparations for the course, that proud
dame saw and remembered him.

A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting-post,
and in another minute the rope was dropped, and
the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right into
the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens of
Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded troop,
and the impossible thing was done, for the suffocating
throngs divided like waves before the prow, and united
again as scathless and as soon. The spurs played
merrily upon the flanks of the affrighted animals, and
in an instant they had swept through the Borg'ognisanti,
and disappeared into the narrow lane leading to
the Trinita. It was more a scramble than a race, yet
there must be a winner, and all eyes were now occupied
in gazing after the first glimpse of his ribands as
he was led back in triumph.

Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd made
way with more difficulty for the one winning horse
than they had done for the score that had contended
with him. Yet, champing the bit, and tossing his
ribands into the air, he came slowly back, and after
passing in front of the royal veranda, where a small
flag was thrown down to be set into the rosette of his
bridle, he returned a few steps, and was checked by
the groom under the balcony of the prima donna. A
moment after, the winning flag was waving from the
rails above, and as the sign that she was the owner of
the victorious horse was seen by the people, a shout
arose which thrilled the veins of the fair singer more
than all the plaudits of the Cocomero. It is thought
to be pleasant to succeed in that for which we have
most struggled—that for which our ambition and our
efforts are known to the world—to be eminent, in
short, in our metier, our vocation. I am inclined to
think it natural to most men, however, and to all possessors
of genius, to undervalue that for which the
world is most willing to praise them, and to delight
more in excelling in that which seems foreign to their
usual pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to
disappoint the world by success in anything. Detraction,
that follows genius to the grave, sometimes admits
its triumph, but never without the “back-water”
that it could do no more. The fine actress had won a
shout from assembled Florence, yet off the scene. She
laid one hand upon her heart, and the other, in the
rash exultation of the moment, ventured to wave a
kiss of gratitude to the count Fazelli.

As that favored signor crossed to offer his congratulations,
his place beside the countess was filled by a
young noble, who gave her the explanatory information—that
the horse was Fazelli's gift. Calmly, almost
without a sign of interest or emotion, she turned her
eyes upon the opposite balcony. A less searching and
interested glance would have discovered, that if the
young count had hitherto shared the favor of the admired
singer with his rivals, he had no rival now.
There was in the demeanor of both an undisguised
tenderness that the young countess had little need to
watch long, and retiring from the balcony, she accepted
the attendance of her communicative companion,
and was soon whirling in her chariot over the Ponte
St. Angelo, on her way to the princely palace that
would soon cease to call her its mistress.

Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came
through the battlements of the royal abode of the
Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy heel
of the sentry was the only sound near the walls of the
Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple of the
Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller's bridge broke
faintly on the ear. The captain of the guard had
strolled from the deep shadow of the palace into the
open moonlight, and leaned against a small stone shrine
of the Virgin set into the opposite wall, watching musingly
the companionable and thought-stirring emperess
of the night.

“Paletto!” suddenly uttered a voice near him.

The guardsman started, but instantly recovered his
position, and stood looking over his epaulet at the
intruder, with folded arms.

“Paletto!” she said again, in a lower and more appealing
tone—“will you listen to me?”

“Say on, Countess Fazelli!”

“Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto's wife!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the guardsman bitterly, “that
story is old, for so false a one.”

“Scorn me not! I am changed.” The dark eyes
of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into
the moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the soldier's,
she seemed to demand that he should read her
soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a troubled
emotion was visible in his own features, but a new
thought seemed to succeed the feeling, and turning
away with a cold gesture, he said, “I knew you false,
but till now I thought you pure. Tempt me not to
despise as well as hate you!”

“I have deserved much at your hand,” she answered,
with a deeper tone, “but not this. You are my husband,
Paletto!”

“One of them!” he replied, with a sneer.

Francesca clasped her hands in agony. “I have
come to you,” she said, “trusting the generous nature

which I have proved so well. I can not live unloved.
I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself. I have
tried splendor and the love of my own rank, but one
is hollow and the last is selfish. Oh, Paletto! what
love is generous like yours?”

The guardsman's bosom heaved, but he did not turn
to her. She laid her hand upon his arm: “I have
come to implore you to take me back, Paletto. False
as I was to you, you have been true to me. I would
be your wife again. I would share your poverty, if
you were once more a fisherman on the lagoon. Are
you inexorable, Paletto?”

Her hand stole up to his shoulder: she crept closer
to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in his bosom.
Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of raven hair
whose touch had once been to him so familiar, and
while the moon drew their shadows as one on the
shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early love were repeated
with a fervor unknown hitherto to the lips of
Cappone's daughter, and Paletto replied, not like a
courtly noble, but like that which was more eloquent
—his own love-prompted and fiery spirit.

The next day there was a brief but fierce rencontre
between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto, at
the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca
had gone openly with her husband to vespers, attended
by a monk. When attacked by the young count
as the daring abducer of his wife, he had placed her
under that monk's protection till the quarrel should be
over, and, with the same holy man to plead his cause,
he boldly claimed his wife at the duke's hands, and
bore her triumphantly from Florence.

I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier Paletto,
they say, still rows his boat on the lagoon: and
sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes a daughter,
whose exquisite beauty, though she is still a child,
is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes under. I
never chanced to see him, but many a stranger has
hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull out toward the
Adriatic in the hope of finding Paletto's boat and getting
a glimpse of his proud and still most beautiful
wife—a wife, it is said, than whom a happier or more
contented one with her lot lives not in the “city of
the sea.”