University of Virginia Library

2. CHAP. II.

The hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the
convent of that name, standing on one of the canals
which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It
is a long building, with its low windows and latticed
doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the
wards for the sick are large and well aired; but,
except when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with
a saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali
remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not
so good for the patient.

The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse
after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought
on by the slightness of her dress and the spattering he
had given her in the race, had increased by the end of
the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old
and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman
as she was) with the disease, but being one night a
little out of her head, her loving husband took
occasion to shudder at the responsibility of taking
care of her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled
across to St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and
a sister of charity, and brought back the pious father
Gasparo and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was
dozing when they arrived, and the kind hearted
tailor willing to spare her the pain of knowing that

she was on her way to the hospital for the poor,
set out some meat and wine for the monk, and sending
over for Turturilla and the nurse to mix the
salad, they sat and eat away the hours till the poor
dame's brain should be wandering again.

Toward night the monk and dame Bentoccata
were comfortably dozing with each other's support,
(having fallen asleep at table,) and Pasquali with a
kiss from Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiametta
was muttering unquietly, and working her fingers in
the palms of her hands, and on feeling her pulse he
found the fever was at its height. She took him,
besides, for the prize pig of the festa, for he knew
her wits were fairly abroad. He crept down stairs,
gave the monk a strong cup of coffee to get him
well awake, and, between the four of them, they got
poor Fiametta into the litter, drew the curtains tenderly
around and deposited her safely in the bottom
of the gondola.

Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled
away with his loving burden, and gliding around the
slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice
as he cried out “right!” or “left!” to guard the
coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a
thought of love to a maid's mind in sleep, at the door
of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said,
“benedicite!” and the monk stood firm on his brown
sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms

of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent
to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of
course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in
this world, the soft-hearted tailor wiped his eye as
she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from father
Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the
state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with
lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower's
home and Turturilla.

For many good reasons, and apparent as good,
it is a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the
sick under its holy charge shall receive the visit of
neither friend nor relative. If they recover, they
return to their abodes to earn candles for the altar
of the restoring saint. If they die, their clothes are
sent to their surviving friends, and this affecting memorial,
besides communicating the melancholy news,
affords all the particulars and all the consolation they
are supposed to require upon the subject of their
loss.

Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his
bundle, Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up
to hopes, which on the tailor's part, (we fear it must
be admitted,) augured a quicker recovery from grief
than might be credited to an elastic constitution.
The fortune of poor Fiametta was sufficent to warrant
Pasquali in neglecting his shop to celebrate every
festa that the church acknowledged, and for ten days

subsequent to the committal of his wife to the tender
mercies of St. Girolamo, five days out of seven was
the proportion of merry holidays with his new
betrothed.

They were sitting one evening in the open piazza
of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged café of
that matchless square. The moon was resting her
silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the
shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on the
immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn
as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the
square lay half in shades half in light, with their
innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured
work, and, frowning down on all, in broken light and
shadow, stood the arabesque structure of St. Mark's
itself dizzying the eyes with its mosaicks and confused
devices, and thrusting forth the heads of her four
golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they
looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto
issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of
the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich contralto,
an old song of the better days of Venice; and
against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed
his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with
an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted
galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles
of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark's that
night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw
anything so gay!

Every body who has “swam in a gondola,”
knows how the cafés of Venice thrust out their
checkered awnings over a portion of the square, and
fill the shaded space below with chairs and marble
tables. In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with
ice and coffee on a small round slab between them,
and the flat pavement of the public promenade under
their feet, sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor
wheel to drown or interrupt their voices, (as in cities
whose streets are stones, not water,) they murmured
their hopes and wishes in the softest language under
the sun, and with the sotto voce acquired by all the inhabitants
of this noiseless city. Fiametta had taken
ice to cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her
ice, and a bicchiere del perfetto amore to reconcile
these two antagonists in her digestion, when the
slippers of a monk glided by, and in a moment the
recognized father Gasparo made a third in the
shadowy corner. The expected bundle was under
his arm, and he was on his way to Pasquali's dwelling.
Having assured the disconsolate tailor that
she had had unction and wafer as became the wife
of a citizen of Venice like himself, he took heart and
grew content that she was in heaven. It was a
better place, and Turturilla for so little as a gold
ring, would supply her place in his bosom.

The moon was but a brief week older when Pasquali
and Turturilla stood in the church of our Lady

of Grief, and father Gasparo within the palings of
the altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed
in the garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the
tailor was nearer worth nine men to look at, than
the fraction of a man considered usually the exponent
of his profession. Away mumbled the good
father upon the matrimonial service, thinking of the
old wine and rich pastries that were holding their
sweetness under cork and crust only till he had
done his ceremony, and quicker by some seconds
than had ever been achieved before by priest or
bishop, he arrived at the putting on of the ring.
His hand was tremulous, and (oh unlucky omen!)
he dropped it within the gilden fence of the chancel.
The choristers were called, and father Gasparo
dropped on his knees to look for it—but if the
devil had not spirited it away, there was no other
reason why that search was in vain. Short of an
errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at last
determined the wedding could not proceed. Father
Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the
restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against
the arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally
to their pious occupations. Pasquali was half
way to the Rialto.

Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the
light grazing of a swift-sped gondola along the
church stairs, the splash of a sullen oar was heard,

and Pasquali stepped on shore. They had hastened
to the door to receive him—monk, choristers
and bride—and to their surprise and bewilderment,
he waited to hand out a woman in a strange dress,
who seemed disposed, bridegroom as he was, to
make him wait her leisure. Her clothes fitted her
ill, and she carried in her hand a pair of shoes, it
was easy to see were never made for her. She
rose at last, and as her face became visible, down
dropped Turturilla and the pious father, and motionless
and aghast stood the simple Pasquali. Fiametta
stepped on shore!

In broken words Pasquali explained. He had
landed at the stairs near the fish market, and
with two leaps reaching the top, sped off past the
buttress in the direction of the goldsmith, when his
course was arrested by encountering at full speed,
the person of an old woman. Hastily raising her
up, he recognized his wife, who, fully recovered,
but without a gondola, was threading the zig-zag
alleys on foot, on her way to her own domicil. After
the first astonishment was over, her dress explained
the error of the good father and the extent
of his own misfortune. The clothes had been hung
between the bed of Fiametta and that of a smaller
woman who had been long languishing of a consumption.
She died, and Fiameta's clothes, brought
to the door by mistake were recognized by father
Gasparo and taken to Pasquali.

The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his solitary
way to the convent, but with the first step he
felt something slide into the heel of his sandal. He
sat down on the church stairs and absolved the devil
from theft—it was the lost ring, which had fallen
upon his foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from
the pains of bigamy.