University of Virginia Library

1. THE BRAVO.
—
CHAPTER I.

The sun had disappeared behind the summits of
the Tyrolean Alps, and the moon was already risen
above the low barrier of the Lido. Hundreds of
pedestrians were pouring out of the narrow streets
of Venice into the square of St. Mark, like water
gushing through some strait aqueduct, into a broad
and bubbling basin. Gallant cavalieri and grave
cittadini; soldiers of Dalmatia, and seamen of the
galleys; dames of the city, and females of lighter
manners; jewellers of the Rialto, and traders from
the Levant; Jew, Turk, and Christian; traveller,
adventurer, podestà, valet, avvocato and gondolier,
held their way alike to the common centre of amusement.
The hurried air and careless eye; the measured
step and jealous glance; the jest and laugh;
the song of the cantatrice, and the melody of the
flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic
frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque,
the compelled and melancholy smile of the
harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of monks,
plumage of warriors, hum of voices, and the universal
movement and bustle, added to the more permanent

objects of the place, rendered the scene the
most remarkable of Christendom.

On the very confines of that line which separates
western from eastern Europe, and in constant communication
with the latter, Venice possessed a
greater admixture of character and costume, than
any other of the numerous ports of that region. A
portion of this peculiarity is still to be observed,
under the fallen fortunes of the place; but at the period
of our tale, the city of the isles, though no
longer mistress of the Mediterranean, nor even of
the Adriatic, was still rich and powerful. Her influence
was felt in the councils of the civilized
world, and her commerce, though waning, was yet
sufficient to uphold the vast possessions of those
families, whose ancestors had become rich in the
day of her prosperity. Men lived among her islands
in that state of incipient lethargy, which marks the
progress of a downward course, whether the decline
be of a moral or of a physical decay.

At the hour we have named, the vast parallelogram
of the piazza was filling fast, the cafés and
casinos within the porticoes, which surround three
of its sides, being already thronged with company.
While all beneath the arches was gay and brilliant
with the flare of torch and lamp, the noble range
of edifices called the Procuratories, the massive
pile of the Ducal Palace, the most ancient Christian
church, the granite columns of the piazzetta, the
triumphal masts of the great square, and the giddy
tower of the campanile, were slumbering in the
more mellow glow of the moon.

Facing the wide area of the great square stood the
quaint and venerable cathedral of San Marco. A
temple of trophies, and one equally proclaiming the
prowess and the piety of its founders, this remarkable
structure presided over the other fixtures of the
place, like a monument of the republic's antiquity

and greatness. Its Saracenic architecture, the rows
of precious but useless little columns that load its
front, the low Asiatic domes which rest upon its
walls in the repose of a thousand years, the rude and
gaudy mosaics, and above all the captured horses
of Corinth which start from out the sombre mass in
the glory of Grecian art, received from the solemn
and appropriate light, a character of melancholy
and mystery, that well comported with the thick recollections
which crowd the mind as the eye gazes
at this rare relic of the past.

As fit companions to this edifice, the other peculiar
ornaments of the place stood at hand. The
base of the campanile lay in shadow, but a hundred
feet of its gray summit received the full rays of the
moon along its eastern face. The masts destined
to bear the conquered ensigns of Candia, Constantinople,
and the Morea, cut the air by its side, in
dark and fairy lines, while at the extremity of the
smaller square, and near the margin of the sea, the
forms of the winged lion and the patron saint of
the city, each on his column of African granite,
were distinctly traced against the back-ground of
the azure sky.

It was near the base of the former of these massive
blocks of stone, that one stood who seemed to gaze
at the animated and striking scene, with the listlessness
and indifference of satiety. A multitude, some
in masques and others careless of being known, had
poured along the quay into the piazzetta, on their
way to the principal square, while this individual had
scarce turned a glance aside, or changed a limb in
weariness. His attitude was that of patient, practised,
and obedient waiting on another's pleasure.
With folded arms, a body poised on one leg, and a
vacant though good-humored eye, he appeared to
attend some beck of authority ere he quitted the
spot. A silken jacket, in whose tissue flowers of

the gayest colors were interwoven, the falling collar
of scarlet, the bright velvet cap with armorial
bearings embroidered on its front, proclaimed him
to be a gondolier in private service.

Wearied at length with the antics of a distant
group of tumblers, whose pile of human bodies had
for a time arrested his look, this individual turned
away, and faced the light air from the water. Recognition
and pleasure shot into his countenance,
and in a moment his arms were interlocked with
those of a swarthy mariner, who wore the loose attire
and Phrygian cap of men of his calling. The
gondolier was the first to speak, the words flowing
from him in the soft accents of his native islands.

“Is it thou, Stefano! They said thou hadst fallen
into the gripe of the devils of Barbary, and that thou
wast planting flowers for an infidel with thy hands,
and watering them with thy tears!”

The answer was in the harsher dialect of Calabria,
and it was given with the rough familiarity of
a seaman.

“La Bella Sorrentina is no housekeeper of a curato!
She is not a damsel to take a siesta with a
Tunisian rover prowling about in her neighborhood.
Hadst ever been beyond the Lido, thou
wouldst have known the difference between chasing
the felucca and catching her.”

“Kneel down, and thank San Teodoro for his
care. There was much praying on thy decks that
hour, caro Stefano, though none is bolder among
the mountains of Calabria when thy felucca is once
safely drawn upon the beach!”

The mariner cast a half-comic, half-serious glance
upward at the image of the patron saint, ere he replied.

“There was more need of the wings of thy lion
than of the favor of thy saint. I never come further

north for aid than San Gennaro, even when it
blows a hurricane.”

“So much the worse for thee, caro, since the
good bishop is better at stopping the lava than at
quieting the winds. But there was danger, then, of
losing the felucca and her brave people among the
Turks?”

“There was, in truth, a Tunis-man prowling
about, between Stromboli and Sicily; but, Ali di
San Michele! he might better have chased the cloud
above the volcano, than run after the felucca in a
sirocco!”

“Thou wast chicken-hearted, Stefano?”

“I!—I was more like thy lion, here, with some
small additions of chains and muzzles.”

“As was seen by thy felucca's speed?”

“Cospetto! I wished myself a knight of San Giovanni
a thousand times during the chase, and La
Bella Sorrentina a brave Maltese galley, if it were
only for the cause of Christian honor! The miscreant
hung upon my quarter for the better part of
three glasses; so near, that I could tell which of the
knaves wore dirty cloth in his turban, and which
clean. It was a sore sight to a Christian, Stefano,
to see the right thus borne upon by an infidel.”

“And thy feet warmed with the thought of the
bastinado, caro mio?”

“I have run too often barefoot over our Calabrian
mountains, to tingle at the sole with every fancy of
that sort.”

“Every man has his weak spot, and I know thine
to be dread of a Turk's arm. Thy native hills have
their soft as well as their hard ground, but it is said
the Tunisian chooses a board knotty as his own
heart, when he amuses himself with the wailings of
a Christian.”

“Well, the happiest of us all must take such as
fortune brings. If my soles are to be shod with

blows, the honest priest of Sant' Agata will be
cheated of a penitent. I have bargained with the
good curato, that all such accidental calamities shall
go in the general account of penance. But how
fares the world of Venice?—and what dost thou
among the canals at this season, to keep the flowers
of thy jacket from wilting?”

“To-day as yesterday, and to-morrow will be as
to-day. I row the gondola from the Rialto to the
Guidecca; from San Giorgio to San Marco; from
San Marco to the Lido, and from the Lido home.
There are no Tunis-men by the way, to chill the
heart or warm the feet.”

“Enough of friendship. And is there nothing
stirring in the republic?—no young noble drowned,
nor any Jew hanged?”

“Nothing of that much interest—except the
calamity which befell Pietro. Thou rememberest
Pietrillo? he who crossed into Dalmatia with thee
once, as a supernumerary, the time he was suspected
of having aided the young Frenchman in running
away with a senator's daughter?”

“Do I remember the last famine? The rogue
did nothing but eat maccaroni, and swallow the
lachrymæ christi, which the Dalmatian count had
on freight.”

“Poverino! His gondola has been run down by
an Ancona man, who passed over the boat, as if it
were a senator stepping on a fly.”

“So much for little fish coming into deep water.”

“The honest fellow was crossing the Guidecca,
with a stranger who had occasion to say his prayers
at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in the
canopy, and broke up the gondola as if it had been
a bubble left by the Bucentaur.”

“The padrone should have been too generous to
complain of Pietro's clumsiness, since it met with
its own punishment.”

“Madre di Dio! He went to sea that hour, or he
might be feeding the fishes of the Lagunes! There
is not a gondolier in Venice who did not feel the
wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain
justice for an insult, as well as our masters.”

“Well, a gondola is mortal, as well as a felucca,
and both have their time; better die by the prow
of a brig, than fall into the gripe of a Turk.—How
is thy young master, Gino? and is he likely to obtain
his claims of the senate?”

“He cools himself in the Giudecca in the morning;
and if thou would'st know what he does at
evening, thou hast only to look among the nobles in
the Broglio.”

As the gondolier spoke, he glanced an eye aside,
at a group of patrician rank, who paced the gloomy
arcades which supported the superior walls of the
doge's palace, a spot sacred, at times, to the uses of
the privileged.

“I am no stranger to the habit thy Venetian nobles
have of coming to that low colonnade at this
hour, but I never before heard of their preferring
the waters of the Giudecca for their baths.”

“Were even the doge to throw himself out of a
gondola, he must sink or swim, like a meaner Christian.”

“Acqua dell' Adriatico! Was the young duca
going to the Redentore, too, to say his prayers?”

“He was coming back after having—but what
matters it in what canal a young noble sighs away
the night! We happened to be near when the Ancona-man
performed his feat: while Giorgio and I
were boiling with rage at the awkwardness of the
stranger, my master, who never had much taste or
knowledge in gondolas, went into the water to save
the young lady from sharing the fate of her uncle.”

“Diavolo! This is the first syllable thou hast uttered

concerning any young lady, or of the death
of her uncle!”

“Thou wert thinking of thy Tunis-man, and hast
forgotten. I must have told thee how near the
beautiful signora was to sharing the fate of the gondola,
and how the loss of the Roman marchese
weighs, in addition, on the soul of the padrone.”

“Santo Padre! That a Christian should die the
death of a hunted dog by the carelessness of a gondolier!”

“It may have been lucky for the Ancona-man that
it so fell out, for they say the Roman was one of influence
enough to make a senator cross the Bridge
of Sighs, at need.”

“The devil take all careless watermen, say I!—
And what became of the awkward rogue?”

“I tell thee he went outside the Lido, that very
hour, or—”

“Pietrello?”

“He was brought up by the oar of Giorgio, for
both of us were active in saving the cushions and
other valuables.”

“Could'st thou do nothing for the poor Roman?
Ill luck may follow that brig on account of his
death!”

“Ill luck fellow her, say I, till she lays her bones
on some rock that is harder than the heart of
her padrone. As for the stranger, we could do no
more than offer up a prayer to San Teodoro, since
he never rose after the blow. But what has brought
thee to Venice, caro mio? for thy ill-fortune with
the oranges, in the last voyage, caused thee to denounce
the place.”

The Calabrian laid a finger on one cheek, and
drew the skin down, in a manner to give a droll
expression to his dark, comic eye, while the whole
of his really fine Grecian face was charged with an
expression of coarse humor.

“Look you, Gino—thy master sometimes calls
for his gondola between sunset and morning?”

“An owl is not more wakeful than he has been of
late. This head of mine has not been on a pillow
before the sun has come above the Lido, since the
snows melted from Monselice.”

“And when the sun of thy master's countenance
sets in his own palazzo, thou hastenest off to the
bridge of the Rialto, among the jewellers and butchers,
to proclaim the manner in which he passed the
night?”

“Diamine! 'Twould be the last night I served
the Duca di Sant' Agata, were my tongue so limber!
The gondolier and the confessor are the two privy-councillors
of a noble, Master Stefano, with this
small difference—that the last only knows what the
sinner wishes to reveal, while the first sometimes
knows more. I can find a safer, if not a more
honest employment, than to be running about with
my master's secrets in the air.”

“And I am wiser than to let every Jew broker
in San Marco, here, have a peep into my charter-party.”

“Nay, old acquaintance, there is some difference
between our occupations, after all. A padrone of a
felucca cannot, in justice, be compared to the most
confidential gondolier of a Neapolitan duke, who
has an unsettled right to be admitted to the council
of three hundred.”

“Just the difference between smooth water and
rough—you ruffle the surface of a canal with a lazy
oar, while I run the channel of Piombino in a mistral,
shoot the Faro of Messina in a white squall,
double Santa Maria de Leuca in a breathing Levanter,
and come skimming up the Adriatic, before
a sirocco that is hot enough to cook my maccaroni,
and which sets the whole sea boiling worse than the
caldrons of Scylla.”

“Hist!” eagerly interrupted the gondolier, who
had indulged, with Italian humor, in the controversy
for pre-eminence, though without any real feeling;
“here comes one who may think, else, we shall
have need of his hand to settle the dispute—Eccolo!”

The Calabrian recoiled apace, in silence, and
stood regarding the individual who had caused this
hurried remark, with a gloomy but steady air. The
stranger moved slowly past. His years were under
thirty, though the calm gravity of his countenance
imparted to it a character of more mature age.
The cheeks were bloodless, but they betrayed rather
the pallid hue of mental than of bodily disease. The
perfect condition of the physical man was sufficiently
exhibited in the muscular fullness of a body,
which, though light and active, gave every indication
of strength. His step was firm, assured, and
even; his carriage erect and easy, and his whole
mien was strongly characterized by a self-possession
that could scarcely escape observation. And
yet his attire was that of an inferior class. A
doublet of common velvet, a dark Montero cap,
such as was then much used in the southern countries
of Europe, with other vestments of a similar
fashion, composed his dress. The face was melancholy
rather than sombre, and its perfect repose accorded
well with the striking calmness of the body.
The lineaments of the former, however, were bold
and even noble, exhibiting that strong and manly
outline which is so characteristic of the finer class
of the Italian countenance. Out of this striking array
of features gleamed an eye, that was full of
brilliancy, meaning, and passion.

As the stranger passed, his glittering organs rolled
over the persons of the gondolier and his companion,
but the look, though searching, was entirely
without interest. 'Twas the wandering but wary

glance, which men, who have much reason to distrust,
habitually cast on a multitude. It turned, with
the same jealous keenness, on the face of the next it
encountered, and by the time the steady and well-balanced
form was lost in the crowd, that quick and
glowing eye had gleamed, in the same rapid and
uneasy manner, on twenty others.

Neither the gondolier nor the mariner of Calabria
spoke, until their riveted gazes after the retiring
figure, became useless. Then the former simply
ejaculated, with a strong respiration—

“Jacopo!”

His companion raised three of his fingers, with
an occult meaning, towards the palace of the doges.

“Do they let him take the air, even in San Marco?”
he asked, in unfeigned surprise.

“It is not easy, caro amico, to make water run
up stream, or to stop the downward current. It is
said that most of the senators would sooner lose
their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him. Jacopo!
He knows more family secrets than the good
Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor man, is
half his time in the confessional.”

“Ay, they are afraid to put him in an iron jacket,
lest awkward secrets should be squeezed out.”

“Corpo di Bacco! there would be little peace in
Venice, if the Council of Three should take it into
their heads to loosen the tongue of yonder man in
that rude manner.”

“But they say, Gino, that thy Council of Three
has a fashion of feeding the fishes of the Lagunes,
which might throw the suspicion of his death on
some unhappy Ancona-man, were the body ever to
come up again.”

“Well, no need of bawling it aloud, as if thou
wert hailing a Sicilian through thy trumpet, though
the fact should be so. To say the truth, there are
few men in business who are thought to have more

custom than he who has just gone up the piazzetta.”

“Two sequins!” rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing
his meaning by a significant grimace.

“Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that
not even the confessor has any trouble with a job
in which he has been employed. Not a caratano
less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art.
Your blows, for two sequins, leave a man leisure
to tell tales, or even to say his prayers half the
time.”

“Jacopo!” ejaculated the other, with an emphasis
which seemed to be a sort of summing up of all
his aversion and horror.

The gondolier shrugged his shoulders, with quite
as much meaning as a man born on the shores of
the Baltic could have conveyed by words; but he,
too, appeared to think the matter exhausted.

“Stefano Milano,” he added, after a moment of
pause, “there are things in Venice which he, who
would eat his maccaroni in peace, would do well to
forget. Let thy errand in port be what it may, thou
art in good season to witness the regatta which will
be given by the state, itself, to-morrow.”

“Hast thou an oar for that race?”

“Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San
Teodoro. The prize will be a silver gondola to him
who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and then we
shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic.”

“Thy nobles had best woo the bride well, for
there are heretics who lay claim to her good-will.
I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous fleetness,
in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who
seemed to have half a mind to follow the felucca in
her path towards the Lagunes.”

“Did the sight warm thee at the soles of thy feet,
Gino dear?”

“There was not a turbaned head on his deck, but

every sea-cap set upon a well-covered poll and a
shorn chin. Thy Bucentaur is no longer the bravest
craft that floats between Dalmatia and the islands,
though her gilding may glitter brightest. There are
men beyond the pillars of Hercules who are not
satisfied with doing all that can be done on their own
coasts, but who are pretending to do much of that
which can be done on ours.”

“The republic is a little aged, caro, and years
need rest. The joints of the Bucentaur are racked
by time and many voyages to the Lido. I have
heard my master say that the leap of the winged
lion is not as far as it was, even in his young days.”

“Don Camillo has the reputation of talking boldly
of the foundation of this city of piles, when he has
the roof of old Sant' Agata safely over his head.
Were he to speak more reverently of the horned
bonnet, and of the Council of Three, his pretensions
to succeed to the rights of his forefathers might seem
juster in the eyes of his judges. But distance is a
great mellower of colors, and softener of fears. My
own opinion of the speed of the felucca, and of
the merits of a Turk, undergo changes of this sort
between port and the open sea; and I have known
thee, good Gino, forget San Teodoro, and bawl as
lustily to San Gennaro, when at Naples, as if thou
really fancied thyself in danger from the mountain.”

“One must speak to those at hand, in order to be
quickest heard,” rejoined the gondolier, casting a
glance that was partly humorous, and not without
superstition, upwards at the image which crowned
the granite column against whose pedestal he still
leaned. “A truth which warns us to be prudent,
for yonder Jew cast a look this way, as if he felt a
conscientious scruple in letting any irreverend remark
of ours go without reporting. The bearded
old rogue is said to have other dealings with the
Three Hundred besides asking for the moneys he

has lent to their sons. And so, Stefano, thou thinkest
the republic will never plant another mast of triumph
in San Marco, or bring more trophies to the
venerable church?”

“Napoli herself, with her constant change of
masters, is as likely to do a great act on the sea, as
thy winged beast, just now! Thou art well enough
to row a gondola in the canals, Gino, or to follow
thy master to his Calabrian castle; but if thou
would'st know what passes in the wide world, thou
must be content to listen to mariners of the long
course. The day of San Marco has gone by, and
that of the heretics more north has come.”

“Thou hast been much, of late, among the lying
Genoese, Stefano, that thou comest hither with these
idle tales of what a heretic can do. Genova la Superba!
What has a city of walls to compare with
one of canals and islands, like this?—and what has
that Apennine republic performed, to be put in comparison
with the great deeds of the Queen of the
Adriatic? Thou forgettest that Venezia has been—”

“Zitto, zitto! that has been, caro mio, is a great
word with all Italy. Thou art as proud of the
past, as a Roman of the Trastevere.”

“And the Roman of the Trastevere is right. Is
it nothing, Stefano Milano, to be descended from a
great and victorious people?”

“It is better, Gino Monaldi, to be one of a people
which is great and victorious just now. The enjoyment
of the past is like the pleasure of the fool
who dreams of the wine he drank yesterday.”

“This is well for a Neapolitan, whose country
never was a nation,” returned the gondolier, angrily.
“I have heard Don Camillo, who is one educated
as well as born in the land, often say that half of the
people of Europe have ridden the horse of Sicily,
and used the legs of thy Napoli, except those who
had the best right to the services of both.”

“Even so; and yet the figs are as sweet as ever,
and the beccafichi as tender! The ashes of the
volcano cover all!”

“Gino,” said a voice of authority, near the gondolier.

“Signore.”

He who interrupted the dialogue pointed to the
boat, without saying more.

“A rivederti,” hastily muttered the gondolier.
His friend squeezed his hand in perfect amity—for,
in truth, they were countrymen by birth, though
chance had trained the former on the canals—and,
at the next instant, Gino was arranging the cushions
for his master, having first aroused his subordinate
brother of the oar from a profound sleep.