University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

Giannino Pasquali was a smart tailor some five
years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller
canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print
of the fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored
trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented the window
looking on the dark alley in the rear, and, attached
to the post of the water-gate on the canal side,
floated a small black gondola, the possession of which
afforded the same proof of prosperity of the Venetian
tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy at the
door of a snip in London. The place-seeking traveller,
who, nez en l'air, threaded the tangled labyrinth
of alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St.
Mark's, would scarce have observed the humble shop-window
of Pasquali, yet he had a consequence on the
Piazza, and the lagoon had seen his triumphs as an
amateur gondolier. Giannino was some thirty years
of age, and his wife Fiametta, whom he had married
for her zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty.

If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered
that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fiametta
was not always the most lovely woman in
Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna
Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Turturilla
was like the blonde in Titian's picture of the Marys;
and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through
the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali was
far from insensible.

The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week
of November, and though you would suppose the atmosphere
of Venice not liable to any very sensible increase
of moisture, Fiametta, like people who live on
land, and who have the rheumatism as a punishment
for their age and ugliness, was usually confined to her
brazero of hot coals till it was dry enough on the Lido
for the peacocks to walk abroad. On this festa, however,
San Antonio being, as every one knows, the
patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to come
down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over
the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration; and
Fiametta once more thought Pasquali loved her for
herself alone when he swore by his rosary that unless
she accompanied him to the festa in her wedding dress,
he would not turn an oar in the race, nor unfasten his
gondola from the door-post. Alas! Fiametta was

married in the summer solstice, and her dress was
permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. Is
it possible you could have remembered that, oh, wicked
Pasquali?

It was a day to puzzle a barometer; now bright,
now rainy; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and
now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was
up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and, by way
of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring the wedding
dress, he chose to play dressing maid, and arranged
with his own hands her jupon and fezzoletta.
She emerged from her chamber looking like a slice
of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling and nodding,
and vowing the day warm as April, and the sky
without a cloud. The widening circles of an occasional
drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the
bubbles bursting after a passing oar, or perhaps the last
flies of summer. Pasquali swore it was weather to win
down a peri.

As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced
her eyes over the way and saw Turturilla, with a face
as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at her
window. Her lap was full of work, and it was quite
evident that she had not thought of being at the festa.
Fiametta's heart was already warm, and it melted quite
at the view of the poor girl's loneliness.

“Pasquali mio!” she said, in a deprecating tone,
as if she were uncertain how the proposition would
be received, “I think we could make room for poor
Turturilla!”

A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding
sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali.

“Eh! diavolo!” he replied, so loud that the sorrowful
seamstress heard, and hung down her head
still lower; “must you take pity on every cheese-paring
of a regezza who happens to have no lover!
Have reason! have reason! The gondola is narrower
than your brave heart my fine Fiametta!” And away
he pushed from the water-steps.

Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out upon
the rusty gratings of the balcony to see them depart.
Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of his oar, and
between that and some other embarrassments, the
gondola was suffered to float directly under her
window. The compliment to the generous nature
of Fiametta, was, meantime, working, and as she was
compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla
while her husband was getting his oar into the socket,
it resulted (as he thought it very probable it would),
in the good wife's renewing her proposition, and making
a point of sending the deserted girl for her holyday
bonnet. Pasquali swore through all the saints
and angels by the time she had made herself ready,
though she was but five minutes gone from the window,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that she must consider
it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the steps of
old Donna Bentoccata, helped in her daughter with a
better grace than could have been expected, and with
one or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the
grand canal with the velocity of a lance-fly.

A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the
broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the
gondolas with their gay colored freights all hastening
in one direction, and with swift track to the festa.
Far up and down they rippled the smooth water, here
gliding out from below a palace-arch, there from a narrow
and unseen canal, the steel beaks curved and flashing,
the water glancing on the oar-blades, the curtains
moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning out and
touching hands as they neared neighbor or acquaintance
in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beautiful
sight, indeed, and three of the happiest hearts in
that swift gliding company were in Pasquali's gondola,
though the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say,
was entirely owing to the bandage with which love is
so significantly painted. Ah! poor Fiametta!

From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge
of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all
points of the floating city of Venice, streamed the flying
gondolas to the Giudecca. The narrow walk
along the edge of the long and close-built island was
thronged with booths and promenaders, and the black
barks by hundreds bumped their steel noses against
the pier as the agitated water rose and fell beneath
them. The gondolas intended for the race pulled
slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibiting
their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly dressed
gondoliers to the crowds on land and water; the
bands of music, attached to different parties, played
here and there a strain; the criers of holy pictures
and gingerbread made the air vocal with their lisping
and soft Venetian; and all over the scene, as if it was
the light of the sky or some other light as blessed but
less common, shone glowing black eyes, black as
night, and sparkling as the stars on night's darkest
bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty
should have seen the women of Venice on St. Antonio's
day '32, or on any or at any hour when their
pulses are beating high and their eyes alight — for they
are neither one nor the other always. The women
of that fair clime, to borrow the simile of Moore, are
like lava-streams, only bright when the volcano kindles.
Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their blood
shows dully through the cheek in common and listless
hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which
the delicate graces of colder climes find their element
are to them a torpor of the heart when the blood scarce
seems to flow. They are wakeful only to the energetic,
the passionate, the joyous movements of the
soul.

Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and
stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he pointed
away with his finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fiametta;
but Fiametta was happy and unsuspicious.
Only when now and then the wind came up chilly
from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered and sat
closer to Turturilla, who in her plainer but thicker
dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more comfortably
on the black cushion and thought less about
the weather. An occasional drop of rain fell on the
nose of poor Fiametta, but if she did not believe it was
the spray from Pasquali's oar, she at least did her best
to believe so; and the perfidious tailor swore by St.
Anthony that the clouds were as dry as her eyelashes.
I never was very certain that Turturilla was not in the
secret of this day's treacheries.

The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and
the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali
ranged his gondola with those of the other spectators,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on
the other side of Turturilla as a punishment for their
malapropos invitation, he placed himself on the small
remainder of the deep cushion on the farthest side
from his now penitent spouse, and while he complained
almost rudely of the narrowness of his seat, he
made free to hold on by Turturilla's waist which no
doubt made the poor girl's mind more easy on the
subject of her intrusion.

Who won and who lost the race, what was the
device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes
changed owners by the result, no personage of this
tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked on
eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French say,
trouvaient autress chats á frottér.

After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio
being the protector, more particularly of the humble
(“patron of pigs” in the saints' calendar), the seignoria
and the grand people generally, pulled away for St.
Mark's, leaving the crowded Giudecca to the people.
Pasquali, as was said before, had some renown as a
gondolier. Something what would be called in other
countries a scrub race, followed the departure of the

winning boat, and several gondolas, holding each one
person only, took their places for the start. The
tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile
that had first stirred the heart and the sequins of
Fiametta, begged her to gratify his love by acting as
his make-weight while he turned an oar for the pig of
St. Antonio. The prize roasted to an appetizing
crisp, stood high on a platter in front of one of the
booths on shore, and Fiametta smacked her lips,
overcame her tears with an effort, and told him, in
accents as little as possible like the creak of a dry oar
in the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore.

A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gunwale,
reconciled Bonna Bentoccata's fair daughter to
this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly figure
of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened out his
fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a style that
drew applause from even his competitors. As a mark
of their approbation, they offered him an outside place
where his fair dame would be less likely to be spattered
with the contending oars; but he was too generous
to take advantage of this considerate offer, and crying
out as he took the middle, “ben pronto, signori!” gave
Fiametta a confident look and stood like a hound in
the leash.

Off they went at the tap of the drum, poor Fiametta
holding her breath and clinging to the sides of the
gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and muscle —
not for Fiametta's eyes only. It was a short, sharp
race, without jockeying or management, all fair play
and main strength, and the tailor shot past the end of
the Giudecca a boat's length ahead. Much more applauded
than a king at a coronation or a lord-mayor
taking water at London stairs, he slowly made his way
back to Turturilla, and it was only when that demure
damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in two inches
of water, that he discovered how the disturbed element
had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion
and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta.
She was as well watered, as a favorite plant in a flower-garden.

“Pasquali mio!” she said in an imploring tone,
holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her
thumb and finger, “could you just take me home
while I change my dress.”

“One moment, Fiametta cara! they are bringing
the pig!”

The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly placed
in the prow of the victor's gondola, and preparation
was made to convoy him home with a triumphant
procession. A half hour before it was in order to
move — an hour in first making the circuit of the grand
canal, and an hour more in drinking a glass and exchanging
good wishes at the stairs of the Rialto, and
Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours and a
half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What
afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy
sequel.