The Bravo | Page 4

drowned, nor any Jew hanged?"
"Nothing of that much interest--except the calamity which befell Pietro.
Thou rememberest Pietrello? 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 lachryma 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 Giudecca, 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 follow 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