University of Virginia Library

1. CHAP. 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 labarynth of alleys and bridges

between the Rialto and St. Marc'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 Mary's;
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 wold 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 regczza 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 holiday 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 oarblades,
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 gaily 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, shonè
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
day 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 similie 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 Adriatick, 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. Marc'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 Donna 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 favourite 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 afterwards befell will be seen in the
more melancholy sequel.