The Bravo | Page 3

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 up on 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 by 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 Giudecca; 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