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TALL CTHE WORLD WAS HAVING s

and tricd again —feeling my eyelids becoming heavier with cach number T told — The 1()()t— steps of the guard holding watch under the colonnade fell ever duller and famter on my cars. Now and then one of the pigeons from the Place of St Mark whirred past over my head, hastening to scek refuge from the glow- ing heat under the caves of the dnn(h It was so still) that T could hear the httle wave- lets as they broke against the bows of the condolas. All the world was having its stesta, and T was in a good way to follow suit, when the %h()ut “Hi! Antoncllo, up there A\ league’s row on the canal ! “startled me out of my doze.

“I'he shout proceeded from Count Orazio Memmo —the most amiable good-for-nothing in all Venice. Three-and-twenty years old, tall and slim, a well-cut pale face, with the blackest and most brilliant cyes in the world:; as clever as daring, as rich as generous, a bold gamester, a passionate worshipper of women—such was my patron.

“ Mistrustful of the gondoliers of his uncle, the Councillor, in whom, not without ground,

STRAND

SLESTAL

Jar

MAGAZINI,.

he suspected spics on his gomgs and comings, theyoung callant needed on his adventures a quick-witted, fear- less fellow, a silent, perfeetly rehable assistant—and 1 me he had found his man. Ah, when 1 think of those old wild times, thosc bril- hant Carnivals, those mghtlyrevel- ries and serenades, those mysterious rendezvous in the vardensof the Giu- lecca ! Ifathers and lovers cursed Orazio Memmo worse than the Grand Turk, and many a handful of

! ‘rl“l‘”'l{'“'\u ; silver coimn has

pourcd into my

wo ot cap when my swift AT condola has dis-

tanced thecnraged pursuer, and have landed the happy lover, un- discovered, on the marble steps of the Casa Memmo.

“Quick as thought did T spring to my legs at the sound of the well-known voice, then loosed the chain from the stake, and when his Iixeellency had scated himsclf on the luxurious cushions, pushed off vigorously from the land.

“The boat may have been ghding gently over the water for about a half-hour. In- audibly fell the oar into the green waves- but there was no huwrry, and my patron had no aim but to drecam away an hour n dole niente. Presently, however, a foreign gondola rushed up with hasty strokes of the oars behind us, and then shot quickly past. The deck was covered with a silver carpet streaked o red, and the heavy silk tassels that hung from the gunwales trailed along the surface of the water. The two rowers were clothed na rich stuff of the same design. In front of the cabin sat on a brocaded cushion a Moorish boy, with a broad golden neck-band, a dagger hanging

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from glittering chains by his side, and balanc-