The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales | Page 9

up I go, To climb yon
light balcony's height While thou keep'st watch below. Ah! if high
Heaven had tongues as well As starry eyes to see-- O, think what tales
'twould hate to tell Of wandering youths like me.
MOORE.
The traveller of to-day who visits Venice sees in that once splendid city
nothing but a mass of mouldering palaces, the melancholy remains of
former grandeur and magnificence; but few tokens to remind him that
she was once the queen of the Adriatic, the emporium of Europe. But at
the period of which we write the "sea Cybele" was in the very zenith of
her brilliancy and power.
It was the season of carnival, and nowhere else in Italy were the
holidays celebrated with such zest and magnificence. By night millions
of lamps burned in the palace windows, rivalling the splendors of the
firmament, and reflected in the still waters of the lagoons like myriads
of stars. Night and day music was resounding. There were regattas,
balls, and festas, and the entire population seemed to have gone mad
with gayety, and to have lost all thought of the Council of Ten, the
Bridge of Signs, and the poniards of the bravoes.
On a bright morning of this holiday season, a group of young
gondoliers, attired in their gayest costume, were sitting at the head of a
flight of marble steps that led up from one of the canals, waiting for
their fares. A cavalier and lady, both gayly attired, and both masked,
had just alighted from a gondola and passed the boatman on their way

to some rendezvous.
The gondolier who had conducted them, an old, gray-headed,
hard-looking fellow, had pocketed his fee, nodded his thanks, and
pushed off again from the landing.
"There goes old Beppo," said one of the gondoliers on shore. "He will
make a good day's work of it. I can swear I saw the glitter of gold in his
hand just now."
"Yes, yes!" said another. "Let him alone for making his money. And
what he makes, he keeps. He's a close-fisted old hunks."
"And what is he so scrimping and saving for?" asked a third. "He is
unmarried--he has no children."
"No--but he is to be married," said the first.
"How! the man's past sixty."
"Yes, comrade, but he will not be the first old fellow who has taken a
young wife in his dotage. Have you never heard that he has a young
ward, beautiful as an angel, whom he keeps cooped up as tenderly as a
brooding dove in his tumble-down old house on the Canal Orfano?
Nobody but himself has ever set eyes on her to my knowledge."
"There you're mistaken, Stefano," said a young man, who had not
hitherto spoken. He was a fine, dashing, handsome young fellow of
twenty-six, in a holiday suit of crimson and gold, with a fiery eye, long,
curling locks, and a mustache as black as jet.
"Let's hear what Antonio Giraldo has to say about the matter!" cried his
companions.
"Simply this," said the young man. "I have seen the imprisoned fair
one--the peerless Zanetta--for such is her name. She is lovely as the day;
and for her voice--why--Corpo di Bacco! La Gianina, the prima donna,
is a screechowl to my nightingale."

"Your nightingale! Bravo!" cried Stefano, in a tone of mocking irony.
"What can you know about her voice?"
"Simply this, Master Stefano," replied the young gondolier. "When
floating beneath her window in my gondola, I have addressed her in
such rude strains of melody as I best knew how to frame. She has
replied in tones so liquid and pure that the angels might have listened."
"By Heaven! the fellow's in love!" cried Stefano.
"Long live music and love!" cried Antonio. "What were life worth
without them?"
"You're in excellent spirits!" cried Stefano.
"And why shouldn't a man be, on his wedding day?"
"Mad as a march hare," cried Stefano.
"Mark me," said Antonio. "That girl shall never marry old Beppo--my
word for it. She hates him."
"She'll elope with some noble, then."
"To be cast off to wither when he is tired of her charms? No! the
bridegroom for Zanetta is a gondolier."
"With all my heart," said Stefano. "But come, comrades, it is no use
waiting here. Let us to our gondolas, and row for St. Marks. You'll
come with us, Antonio."
"Not I--my occupation's gone."
"How so?"
"I have sold my gondola."
"Sold your gondola."

"Ay--that was my word."
"But why?"
"I wanted money."
"Your gondola was the means of earning it."
"Very true--but I had occasion for a certain sum at once."
"And why not have recourse to our purses, Antonio? Light as they are,
we would have made it up by contributions among us."
"I doubted not your kindness--but