A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

BY

W. D. HOWELLS

_Fifteenth Edition. _

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

I. 

As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow _calle_ or footwayleading from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, hepeered anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up thecalle, where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a gardengate; now running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast oneither hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible overheadwith the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; andnow glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless blackboats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his ownfootfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine inone of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots ofpinks and roses in the campo came softened to Don Ippolito's sense, andhe heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together and gossiped, with the canal between them, at the next gondola station. 

The first tenderness of spring was in the air though down in that callethere was yet enough of the wintry rawness to chill the tip of DonIppolito's sensitive nose, which he rubbed for comfort with ahandkerchief of dark blue calico, and polished for ornament with ahandkerchief of white linen. He restored each to a different pocket inthe sides of the ecclesiastical _talare_, or gown, reaching almostto his ankles, and then clutched the pocket in which he had replacedthe linen handkerchief, as if to make sure that something he prized wassafe within. He paused abruptly, and, looking at the doors he hadpassed, went back a few paces and stood before one over which hung, slightly tilted forward, an oval sign painted with the effigy of aneagle, a bundle of arrows, and certain thunderbolts, and bearing thelegend, CONSULATE OF THE UNITED STATES, in neat characters. DonIppolito gave a quick sigh, hesitated a moment, and then seized thebell-pull and jerked it so sharply that it seemed to thrust out, like apart of the mechanism, the head of an old serving-woman at the windowabove him. 

"Who is there?" demanded this head. 

"Friends, " answered Don Ippolito in a rich, sad voice. 

"And what do you command?" further asked the old woman. 

Don Ippolito paused, apparently searching for his voice, before heinquired, "Is it here that the Consul of America lives?"

"Precisely. "

"Is he perhaps at home?"

"I don't know. I will go ask him. "

"Do me that pleasure, dear, " said Don Ippolito, and remained knottinghis fingers before the closed door. Presently the old woman returned, and looking out long enough to say, "The consul is at home, " drew someinner bolt by a wire running to the lock, that let the door start open;then, waiting to hear Don Ippolito close it again, she called out fromher height, "Favor me above. " He climbed the dim stairway to the pointwhere she stood, and followed her to a door, which she flung open intoan apartment so brightly lit by a window looking on the sunny canal, that he blinked as he entered. "Signor Console, " said the old woman, "behold the gentleman who desired to see you;" and at the same time DonIppolito, having removed his broad, stiff, three-cornered hat, cameforward and made a beautiful bow. He had lost for the moment thetrepidation which had marked his approach to the consulate, and borehimself with graceful dignity. 

It was in the first year of the war, and from a motive of patriotismcommon at that time, Mr. Ferris (one of my many predecessors in officeat Venice) had just been crossing his two silken gondola flags abovethe consular bookcase, where with their gilt lance-headed staves, andtheir vivid stars and stripes, they made a very pretty effect. Hefilliped a little dust from his coat, and begged Don Ippolito to beseated, with the air of putting even a Venetian priest on a footing ofequality with other men under the folds of the national banner. Mr. Ferris had the prejudice of all Italian sympathizers against thepriests; but for this he could hardly have found anything in DonIppolito to alarm dislike. His face was a little thin, and the chin wasdelicate; the nose had a fine, Dantesque curve, but its final droopgave a melancholy cast to a countenance expressive of a gentle andkindly spirit; the eyes were large and dark and full of a dreamywarmth. Don Ippolito's prevailing tint was that transparent blueishnesswhich comes from much shaving of a heavy black beard; his forehead andtemples were marble white; he had a tonsure the size of a dollar. Hesat silent for a little space, and softly questioned the consul's facewith his dreamy eyes. Apparently he could not gather courage to speakof his business at once, for he turned his gaze upon the window andsaid, "A beautiful position, Signor Console. "

"Yes, it's a pretty place, " answered Mr. Ferris, warily. 

"So much pleasanter here on the Canalazzo than on the campos or thelittle canals. "

"Oh, without doubt. "

"Here there must be constant amusement in watching the boats: greatstir, great variety, great life. And now the fine season commences, andthe Signor Console's countrymen will be coming to Venice. Perhaps, "added Don Ippolito with a polite dismay, and an air of sudden anxietyto escape from his own purpose, "I may be disturbing or detaining theSignor Console?"

"No, " said Mr. Ferris; "I am quite at leisure for the present. In whatcan I have the honor of serving you?"

Don Ippolito heaved a long, ineffectual sigh, and taking his linenhandkerchief from his pocket, wiped his forehead with it, and rolled itupon his knee. He looked at the door, and all round the room, and thenrose and drew near the consul, who had officially seated himself at hisdesk. 

"I suppose that the Signor Console gives passports?" he asked. 

"Sometimes, " replied Mr. Ferris, with a clouding face. 

Don Ippolito seemed to note the gathering distrust and to be helplessagainst it. He continued hastily: "Could the Signor Console give apassport for America . .. To me?"

"Are you an American citizen?" demanded the consul in the voice of aman whose suspicions are fully roused. 

"American citizen?"

"Yes; subject of the American republic. "

"No, surely; I have not that happiness. I am an Austrian subject, "returned Don Ippolito a little bitterly, as if the last words were anunpleasant morsel in the mouth. 

"Then I can't give you a passport, " said Mr. Ferris, somewhat moregently. "You know, " he explained, "that no government can givepassports to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of thing. "

"But I thought that to go to America an American passport would beneeded. "

"In America, " returned the consul, with proud compassion, "they don'tcare a fig for passports. You go and you come, and nobody meddles. Tobe sure, " he faltered, "just now, on account of the secessionists, they_do_ require you to show a passport at New York; but, " hecontinued more boldly, "American passports are usually for Europe; andbesides, all the American passports in the world wouldn't get_you_ over the frontier at Peschiera. _You_ must have a passportfrom the Austrian Lieutenancy of Venice, "

Don Ippolito nodded his head softly several times, and said, "Precisely, " and then added with an indescribable weariness, "Patience!Signor Console, I ask your pardon for the trouble I have given, " and hemade the consul another low bow. 

Whether Mr. Ferris's curiosity was piqued, and feeling himself on thesafe side of his visitor he meant to know why he had come on such anerrand, or whether he had some kindlier motive, he could hardly havetold himself, but he said, "I'm very sorry. Perhaps there is somethingelse in which I could be of use to you. "

"Ah, I hardly know, " cried Don Ippolito. "I really had a kind of hopein coming to your excellency. "

"I am not an excellency, " interrupted Mr. Ferris, conscientiously. 

"Many excuses! But now it seems a mere bestiality. I was so ignorantabout the other matter that doubtless I am also quite deluded in this. "

"As to that, of course I can't say, " answered Mr. Ferris, "but I hopenot. "

"Why, listen, signore!" said Don Ippolito, placing his hand over thatpocket in which he kept his linen handkerchief. "I had something thatit had come into my head to offer your honored government for itsadvantage in this deplorable rebellion. "

"Oh, " responded Mr. Ferris with a falling countenance. He had receivedso many offers of help for his honored government from sympathizingforeigners. Hardly a week passed but a sabre came clanking up his dimstaircase with a Herr Graf or a Herr Baron attached, who appeared inthe spotless panoply of his Austrian captaincy or lieutenancy, toaccept from the consul a brigadier-generalship in the Federal armies, on condition that the consul would pay his expenses to Washington, orat least assure him of an exalted post and reimbursement of all outlaysfrom President Lincoln as soon as he arrived. They were beautiful men, with the complexion of blonde girls; their uniforms fitted like kidgloves; the pale blue, or pure white, or huzzar black of their coatswas ravishingly set off by their red or gold trimmings; and they werehard to make understand that brigadiers of American birth swarmed atWashington, and that if they went thither, they must go as soldiers offortune at their own risk. But they were very polite; they beggedpardon when they knocked their scabbards against the consul'sfurniture, at the door they each made him a magnificent obeisance, said"Servus!" in their great voices, and were shown out by the old Marina, abhorrent of their uniforms and doubtful of the consul's politicalsympathies. Only yesterday she had called him up at an unwonted hour toreceive the visit of a courtly gentleman who addressed him as Monsieurle Ministre, and offered him at a bargain ten thousand stand ofprobably obsolescent muskets belonging to the late Duke of Parma. Shabby, hungry, incapable exiles of all nations, religions, andpolitics beset him for places of honor and emolument in the service ofthe Union; revolutionists out of business, and the minions of banisheddespots, were alike willing to be fed, clothed, and dispatched toWashington with swords consecrated to the perpetuity of the republic. 

"I have here, " said Don Ippolito, too intent upon showing whatever itwas he had to note the change in the consul's mood, "the model of aweapon of my contrivance, which I thought the government of the Northcould employ successfully in cases where its batteries were in dangerof capture by the Spaniards. "

"Spaniards? Spaniards? We have no war with Spain!" cried the consul. 

"Yes, yes, I know, " Don Ippolito made haste to explain, "but those ofSouth America being Spanish by descent"--

"But we are not fighting the South Americans. We are fighting our ownSouthern States, I am sorry to say. "

"Oh! Many excuses. I am afraid I don't understand, " said Don Ippolitomeekly; whereupon Mr. Ferris enlightened him in a formula (of which hewas beginning to be weary) against European misconception of theAmerican situation. Don Ippolito nodded his head contritely, and whenMr. Ferris had ended, he was so much abashed that he made no motion toshow his invention till the other added, "But no matter; I suppose thecontrivance would work as well against the Southerners as the SouthAmericans. Let me see it, please;" and then Don Ippolito, with agratified smile, drew from his pocket the neatly finished model of abreech-loading cannon. 

"You perceive, Signor Console, " he said with new dignity, "that this isnothing very new as a breech-loader, though I ask you to observe thislittle improvement for restoring the breech to its place, which isoriginal. The grand feature of my invention, however, is this secretchamber in the breech, which is intended to hold an explosive of highpotency, with a fuse coming out below. The gunner, finding his piece indanger, ignites this fuse, and takes refuge in flight. At the momentthe enemy seizes the gun the contents of the secret chamber explode, demolishing the piece and destroying its captors. "

The dreamy warmth in Don Ippolito's deep eyes kindled to a flame; adark red glowed in his thin cheeks; he drew a box from the folds of hisdrapery and took snuff in a great whiff, as if inhaling the sulphurousfumes of battle, or titillating his nostrils with grains of gunpowder. He was at least in full enjoyment of the poetic power of his invention, and no doubt had before his eyes a vivid picture of a score ofsecessionists surprised and blown to atoms in the very moment oftriumph. "Behold, Signor Console!" he said. 

"It's certainly very curious, " said Mr. Ferris, turning the fearful toyover in his hand, and admiring the neat workmanship of it. "Did youmake this model yourself?"

"Surely, " answered the priest, with a joyous pride; "I have no money tospend upon artisans; and besides, as you might infer, signore, I am notvery well seen by my superiors and associates on account of theselittle amusements of mine; so keep them as much as I can to myself. "Don Ippolito laughed nervously, and then fell silent with his eyesintent upon the consul's face. "What do you think, signore?" hepresently resumed. "If this invention were brought to the notice ofyour generous government, would it not patronize my labors? I have readthat America is the land of enterprises. Who knows but your governmentmight invite me to take service under it in some capacity in which Icould employ those little gifts that Heaven "--He paused again, apparently puzzled by the compassionate smile on the consul's lips. "But tell me, signore, how this invention appears to you. " "Have you hadany practical experience in gunnery?" asked Mr. Ferris. 

"Why, certainly not. "

"Neither have I, " continued Mr. Ferris, "but I was wondering whetherthe explosive in this secret chamber would not become so heated by thefrequent discharges of the piece as to go off prematurely sometimes, and kill our own artillerymen instead of waiting for thesecessionists?"

Don Ippolito's countenance fell, and a dull shame displaced theexultation that had glowed in it. His head sunk on his breast, and hemade no attempt at reply, so that it was again Mr. Ferris who spoke. "You see, I don't really know anything more of the matter than you do, and I don't undertake to say whether your invention is disabled by thepossibility I suggest or not. Haven't you any acquaintances among themilitary, to whom you could show your model?"

"No, " answered Don Ippolito, coldly, "I don't consort with themilitary. Besides, what would be thought of a _priest_, " he askedwith a bitter stress on the word, "who exhibited such an invention asthat to an officer of our paternal government?"

"I suppose it would certainly surprise the lieutenant-governorsomewhat, " said Mr. Ferris with a laugh. "May I ask, " he pursued afteran interval, "whether you have occupied yourself with otherinventions?"

"I have attempted a great many, " replied Don Ippolito in a tone ofdejection. 

"Are they all of this warlike temper?" pursued the consul. 

"No, " said Don Ippolito, blushing a little, "they are nearly all ofpeaceful intention. It was the wish to produce something of utilitywhich set me about this cannon. Those good friends of mine who havedone me the honor of looking at my attempts had blamed me for theuselessness of my inventions; they allowed that they were ingenious, but they said that even if they could be put in operation, they wouldnot be what the world cared for. Perhaps they were right. I know verylittle of the world, " concluded the priest, sadly. He had risen to go, yet seemed not quite able to do so; there was no more to say, but if hehad come to the consul with high hopes, it might well have unnerved himto have all end so blankly. He drew a long, sibilant breath between hisshut teeth, nodded to himself thrice, and turning to Mr. Ferris with amelancholy bow, said, "Signor Console, I thank you infinitely for yourkindness, I beg your pardon for the disturbance, and I take my leave. "

"I am sorry, " said Mr. Ferris. "Let us see each other again. In regardto the inventions, --well, you must have patience. " He dropped into someproverbial phrases which the obliging Latin tongues supply soabundantly for the races who must often talk when they do not feel likethinking, and he gave a start when Don Ippolito replied in English, "Yes, but hope deferred maketh the heart sick. "

It was not that it was so uncommon to have Italians innocently come outwith their whole slender stock of English to him, for the sake ofpractice, as they told him; but there were peculiarities in DonIppolito's accent for which he could not account. "What, " he exclaimed, "do you know English?"

"I have studied it a little, by my myself, " answered Don Ippolito, pleased to have his English recognized, and then lapsing into thesafety of Italian, he added, "And I had also the help of an Englishecclesiastic who sojourned some months in Venice, last year, for hishealth, and who used to read with me and teach me the pronunciation. Hewas from Dublin, this ecclesiastic. "

"Oh!" said Mr. Ferris, with relief, "I see;" and he perceived that whathad puzzled him in Don Ippolito's English was a fine broguesuperimposed upon his Italian accent. 

"For some time I have had this idea of going to America, and I thoughtthat the first thing to do was to equip myself with the language. "

"Um!" said Mr. Ferris, "that was practical, at any rate, " and he musedawhile. By and by he continued, more kindly than he had yet spoken, "Iwish I could ask you to sit down again: but I have an engagement whichI must make haste to keep. Are you going out through the campo? Praywait a minute, and I will walk with you. "

Mr. Ferris went into another room, through the open door of which DonIppolito saw the paraphernalia of a painter's studio: an easel with ahalf-finished picture on it; a chair with a palette and brushes, andcrushed and twisted tubes of colors; a lay figure in one corner; on thewalls scraps of stamped leather, rags of tapestry, desultory sketcheson paper. 

Mr. Ferris came out again, brushing his hat. 

"The Signor Console amuses himself with painting, I see, " said DonIppolito courteously. 

"Not at all, " replied Mr. Ferris, putting on his gloves; "I am apainter by profession, and I amuse myself with consuling;" [Footnote:Since these words of Mr. Ferris were first printed, I have been toldthat a more eminent painter, namely Rubens, made very much the samereply to very much the same remark, when Spanish Ambassador in England. "The Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty, I see, amuses himself bypainting sometimes, " said a visitor who found him at his easel. "Iamuse myself by playing the ambassador sometimes, " answered Rubens. Inspite of the similarity of the speeches, I let that of Mr. Ferrisstand, for I am satisfied that he did not know how unhandsomely Rubenshad taken the words out of his mouth. ] and as so open a matter neededno explanation, he said no more about it. Nor is it quite necessary totell how, as he was one day painting in New York, it occurred to him tomake use of a Congressional friend, and ask for some Italian consulate, he did not care which. That of Venice happened to be vacant: the incomewas a few hundred dollars; as no one else wanted it, no question wasmade of Mr. Ferris's fitness for the post, and he presently foundhimself possessed of a commission requesting the Emperor of Austria topermit him to enjoy and exercise the office of consul of the ports ofthe Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, to which the President of the UnitedStates appointed him from a special trust in his abilities andintegrity. He proceeded at once to his post of duty, called upon theship's chandler with whom they had been left, for the consulararchives, and began to paint some Venetian subjects. 

He and Don Ippolito quitted the Consulate together, leaving Marina todigest with her noonday porridge the wonder that he should be walkingamicably forth with a priest. The same spectacle was presented to thegaze of the campo, where they paused in friendly converse, and wereseen to part with many politenesses by the doctors of the neighborhood, lounging away their leisure, as the Venetian fashion is, at the localpharmacy. 

The apothecary craned forward over his counter, and peered through theopen door. "What is that blessed Consul of America doing with apriest?"

"The Consul of America with a priest?" demanded a grave old man, aphysician with a beautiful silvery beard, and a most reverend andsenatorial presence, but one of the worst tongues in Venice. "Oh!" headded, with a laugh, after scrutiny of the two through his glasses, "it's that crack-brain Don Ippolito Rondinelli. He isn't priest enoughto hurt the consul. Perhaps he's been selling him a perpetual motionfor the use of his government, which needs something of the kind justnow. Or maybe he's been posing to him for a picture. He would make avery pretty Joseph, give him Potiphar's wife in the background, " saidthe doctor, who if not maligned would have needed much more to make aJoseph of him. 

II

Mr. Ferris took his way through the devious footways where the shadowwas chill, and through the broad campos where the sun was tenderlywarm, and the towers of the church rose against the speck-less azure ofthe vernal heaven. As he went along, he frowned in a helplessperplexity with the case of Don Ippolito, whom he had begun by doubtingfor a spy with some incomprehensible motive, and had ended by pityingwith a certain degree of amusement and a deep sense of the futility ofhis compassion. He presently began to think of him with a littledisgust, as people commonly think of one whom they pity and yet cannothelp, and he made haste to cast off the hopeless burden. He shruggedhis shoulders, struck his stick on the smooth paving-stones, and lethis eyes rove up and down the fronts of the houses, for the sake of thepretty faces that glanced out of the casements. He was a young man, andit was spring, and this was Venice. He made himself joyfully part ofthe city and the season; he was glad of the narrowness of the streets, of the good-humored jostling and pushing; he crouched into an archeddoorway to let a water-carrier pass with her copper buckets dripping atthe end of the yoke balanced on her shoulder, and he returned hersmiles and excuses with others as broad and gay; he brushed by theswelling hoops of ladies, and stooped before the unwieldy burdens ofporters, who as they staggered through the crowd with a thrust hero, and a shove there forgave themselves, laughing, with "We are in Venice, signori;" and he stood aside for the files of soldiers clanking heavilyover the pavement, then muskets kindling to a blaze in the sunlitcampos and quenched again in the damp shadows of the calles. His earwas taken by the vibrant jargoning of the boatmen as they pushed theircraft under the bridges he crossed, and the keen notes of the canariesand the songs of the golden-billed blackbirds whose cages hung atlattices far overhead. Heaps of oranges, topped by the fairest cut inhalves, gave their color, at frequent intervals, to the dusky cornersand recesses and the long-drawn cry of the venders, "Oranges ofPalermo!" rose above the clatter of feet and the clamor of othervoices. At a little shop where butter and eggs and milk abounded, together with early flowers of various sorts, he bought a bunch ofhyacinths, blue and white and yellow, and he presently stood smellingthese while he waited in the hotel parlor for the ladies to whom he hadsent his card. He turned at the sound of drifting drapery, and couldnot forbear placing the hyacinths in the hand of Miss Florida Vervain, who had come into the room to receive him. She was a girl of aboutseventeen years, who looked older; she was tall rather than short, andrather full, --though it could not be said that she erred in point ofsolidity. In the attitudes of shy hauteur into which she constantlyfell, there was a touch of defiant awkwardness which had a certainfascination. She was blonde, with a throat and hands of milkywhiteness; there was a suggestion of freckles on her regular face, where a quick color came and went, though her cheeks were habituallysomewhat pale; her eyes were very blue under their level brows, and thelashes were even lighter in color than the masses of her fair goldhair; the edges of the lids were touched with the faintest red. Thelate Colonel Vervain of the United States army, whose complexion hisdaughter had inherited, was an officer whom it would not have beenpeaceable to cross in any purpose or pleasure, and Miss Vervain seemedsometimes a little burdened by the passionate nature which he had lefther together with the tropical name he had bestowed in honor of theState where he had fought the Seminoles in his youth, and wherehe chanced still to be stationed when she was born; she had theair of being embarrassed in presence of herself, and of having ananxious watch upon her impulses. I do not know how otherwise todescribe the effort of proud, helpless femininity, which would havestruck the close observer in Miss Vervain. 

"Delicious!" she said, in a deep voice, which conveyed something ofthis anxiety in its guarded tones, and yet was not wanting in a kind offrankness. "Did you mean them for me, Mr. Ferris?"

"I didn't, but I do, " answered Mr. Ferris. "I bought them in ignorance, but I understand now what they were meant for by nature;" and in factthe hyacinths, with their smooth textures and their pure colors, harmonized well with Miss Vervain, as she bent her face over them andinhaled their full, rich perfume. 

"I will put them in water, " she said, "if you'll excuse me a moment. Mother will be down directly. "

Before she could return, her mother rustled into the parlor. 

Mrs. Vervain was gracefully, fragilely unlike her daughter. She enteredwith a gentle and gliding step, peering near-sightedly about throughher glasses, and laughing triumphantly when she had determined Mr. Ferris's exact position, where he stood with a smile shaping his fullbrown beard and glancing from his hazel eyes. She was dressed inperfect taste with reference to her matronly years, and the lingeringevidences of her widowhood, and she had an unaffected naturalness ofmanner which even at her age of forty-eight could not be called lessthan charming. She spoke in a trusting, caressing tone, to which no manat least could respond unkindly. 

"So very good of you, to take all this trouble, Mr. Ferris, " she said, giving him a friendly hand, "and I suppose you are letting us encroachupon very valuable time. I'm quite ashamed to take it. But isn't it aheavenly day? What _I_ call a perfect day, just right every way;none of those disagreeable extremes. It's so unpleasant to have it toohot, for instance. I'm the greatest person for moderation, Mr. Ferris, and I carry the principle into everything; but I do think thebreakfasts at these Italian hotels are too light altogether. I like ourAmerican breakfasts, don't you? I've been telling Florida I can't standit; we really must make some arrangement. To be sure, you oughtn't tothink of such a thing as eating, in a place like Venice, all poetry;but a sound mind in a sound body, _I_ say. We're perfectly wildover it. Don't you think it's a place that grows upon you very much, Mr. Ferris? All those associations, --it does seem too much; and thegondolas everywhere. But I'm always afraid the gondoliers cheat us; andin the stores I never feel safe a moment--not a moment. I do think theVenetians are lacking in truthfulness, a little. I don't believe theyunderstand our American fairdealing and sincerity. I shouldn't want todo them injustice, but I really think they take advantages inbargaining. Now such a thing even as corals. Florida is extremely fondof them, and we bought a set yesterday in the Piazza, and I _know_we paid too much for them. Florida, " said Mrs. Vervain, for herdaughter had reentered the room, and stood with some shawls and wrapsupon her arm, patiently waiting for the conclusion of the elder lady'sspeech, "I wish you would bring down that set of corals. I'd like Mr. Ferris to give an unbiased opinion. I'm sure we were cheated. "

"I don't know anything about corals, Mrs. Vervain, " interposed Mr. Ferris. 

"Well, but you ought to see this set for the beauty of the color;they're really exquisite. I'm sure it will gratify your artistictaste. "

Miss Vervain hesitated with a look of desire to obey, and of doubtwhether to force the pleasure upon Mr. Ferris. "Won't it do anothertime, mother?" she asked faintly; "the gondola is waiting for us. "

Mrs. Vervain gave a frailish start from the chair, into which she hadsunk, "Oh, do let us be off at once, then, " she said; and when theystood on the landing-stairs of the hotel: "What gloomy things thesegondolas are!" she added, while the gondolier with one foot on thegunwale of the boat received the ladies' shawls, and then crooked hisarm for them to rest a hand on in stepping aboard; "I wonder they don'tpaint them some cheerful color. "

"Blue, or pink, Mrs. Vervain?" asked Mr. Ferris. "I knew you werecoming to that question; they all do. But we needn't have the top on atall, if it depresses your spirits. We shall be just warm enough in theopen sunlight. "

"Well, have it off, then. It sends the cold chills over me to look atit. What _did_ Byron call it?"

"Yes, it's time for. Byron, now. It was very good of you not to mentionhim before, Mrs. Vervain. Bat I knew he had to come. He called it acoffin clapped in a canoe. "

"Exactly, " said Mrs. Vervain. "I always feel as if I were going to myown funeral when I get into it; and I've certainly had enough offunerals never to want to have anything to do with another, as long asI live. "

She settled herself luxuriously upon the feather-stuffed leatherncushions when the cabin was removed. Death had indeed been near hervery often; father and mother had been early lost to her, and thebrothers and sisters orphaned with her had faded and perished one afteranother, as they ripened to men and women; she had seen four of her ownchildren die; her husband had been dead six years. All thesebereavements had left her what they had found her. She had trulygrieved, and, as she said, she had hardly ever been out of black sinceshe could remember. 

"I never was in colors when I was a girl, " she went on, indulging manyobituary memories as the gondola dipped and darted down the canal, "andI was married in my mourning for my last sister. It did seem a littletoo much when she went, Mr. Ferris. I was too young to feel it so muchabout the others, but we were nearly of the same age, and that makes adifference, don't you know. First a brother and then a sister: it wasvery strange how they kept going that way. I seemed to break the charmwhen I got married; though, to be sure, there was no brother left afterMarian. "

Miss Vervain heard her mother's mortuary prattle with a face from whichno impatience of it could be inferred, and Mr. Ferris made no commenton what was oddly various in character and manner, for Mrs. Vervaintouched upon the gloomiest facts of her history with a certainimpersonal statistical interest. They were rowing across the lagoon tothe Island of San Lazzaro, where for reasons of her own she intended tovenerate the convent in which Byron studied the Armenian languagepreparatory to writing his great poem in it; if her pilgrimage had novery earnest motive, it was worthy of the fact which it was designed tohonor. The lagoon was of a perfect, shining smoothness, broken by theshallows over which the ebbing tide had left the sea-weed trailed likelong, disheveled hair. The fishermen, as they waded about staking theirnets, or stooped to gather the small shell-fish of the shallows, showedlegs as brown and tough as those of the apostles in Titian'sAssumption. Here and there was a boat, with a boy or an old man asleepin the bottom of it. The gulls sailed high, white flakes against theillimitable blue of the heavens; the air, though it was of earlyspring, and in the shade had a salty pungency, was here almostlanguorously warm; in the motionless splendors and rich colors of thescene there was a melancholy before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfullysilent. Now and then Ferris briefly spoke, calling Miss Vervain'snotice to this or that, and she briefly responded. As they passed themad-house of San Servolo, a maniac standing at an open window took hisblack velvet skull-cap from his white hair, bowed low three times, andkissed his hand to the ladies. The Lido in front of them stretched abrown strip of sand with white villages shining out of it; on theirleft the Public Gardens showed a mass of hovering green; far beyond andabove, the ghostlike snows of the Alpine heights haunted the mistyhorizon. 

It was chill in the shadow of the convent when they landed at SanLazzaro, and it was cool in the parlor where they waited for the monkwho was to show them through the place; but it was still and warm inthe gardened court, where the bees murmured among the crocuses andhyacinths under the noonday sun. Miss Vervain stood looking out of thewindow upon the lagoon, while her mother drifted about the room, peering at the objects on the wall through her eyeglasses. She waspraising a Chinese painting of fish on rice-paper, when a young monkentered with a cordial greeting in English for Mr. Ferris. She turnedand saw them shaking hands, but at the same moment her eyeglassesabandoned her nose with a vigorous leap; she gave an amiable laugh, andgroping for them over her dress, bowed at random as Mr. Ferrispresented Padre Girolamo. 

"I've been admiring this painting so much, Padre Girolamo, " she said, with instant good-will, and taking the monk into the easy familiarityof her friendship by the tone with which she spoke his name. "Some ofthe brothers did it, I suppose. "

"Oh no, " said the monk, "it's a Chinese painting. We hung it up therebecause it was given to us, and was curious. "

"Well, now, do you know, " returned Mrs. Vervain, "I _thought_ itwas Chinese! Their things _are_, so odd. But really, in anArmenian convent it's very misleading. I don't think you ought to leaveit there; it certainly does throw people off the track, " she added, subduing the expression to something very lady-like, by the winningappeal with which she used it. 

"Oh, but if they put up Armenian paintings in Chinese convents?" saidMr. Ferris. 

"You're joking!" cried Mrs. Vervain, looking at him with a graciouslyamused air. "There _are_ no Chinese convents. To be sure thoserebels are a kind of Christians, " she added thoughtfully, "but therecan't be many of them left, poor things, hundreds of them executed at atime, that way. It's perfectly sickening to read of it; and you can'thelp it, you know. But they say they haven't really so much feeling aswe have--not so nervous. "

She walked by the side of the young friar as he led the way to suchparts of the convent as are open to visitors, and Mr. Ferris came afterwith her daughter, who, he fancied, met his attempts at talk withsudden and more than usual hauteur. "What a fool!" he said to himself. "Is she afraid I shall be wanting to make love to her?" and he followedin rather a sulky silence the course of Mrs. Vervain and her guide. Thelibrary, the chapel, and the museum called out her friendliest praises, and in the last she praised the mummy on show there at the expense ofone she had seen in New York; but when Padre Girolamo pointed out thedesk in the refectory from which one of the brothers read while therest were eating, she took him to task. "Oh, but I can't think that'sat all good for the digestion, you know, --using the brain that waywhilst you're at table. I really hope you don't listen too attentively;it would be better for you in the long run, even in a religious pointof view. But now--Byron! You _must_ show me his cell!" The monkdeprecated the non-existence of such a cell, and glanced in perplexityat Mr. Ferris, who came to his relief. "You couldn't have seen hiscell, if he'd had one, Mrs. Vervain. They don't admit ladies to thecloister. "

"What nonsense!" answered Mrs. Vervain, apparently regarding this asanother of Mr. Ferris's pleasantries; but Padre Girolamo silentlyconfirmed his statement, and she briskly assailed the rule as adisrespect to the sex, which reflected even upon the Virgin, theobject, as he was forced to allow, of their high veneration. He smiledpatiently, and confessed that Mrs. Vervain had all the reasons on herside. At the polyglot printing-office, where she handsomely boughtevery kind of Armenian book and pamphlet, and thus repaid in the onlyway possible the trouble their visit had given, he did not offer totake leave of them, but after speaking with Ferris, of whom he seemedan old friend, he led them through the garden environing the convent, to a little pavilion perched on the wall that defends the island fromthe tides of the lagoon. A lay-brother presently followed them, bearinga tray with coffee, toasted rusk, and a jar of that conserve of rose-leaves which is the convent's delicate hospitality to favored guests. Mrs. Vervain cried out over the poetic confection when Padre Girolamotold her what it was, and her daughter suffered herself to express aguarded pleasure. The amiable matron brushed the crumbs of the_baicolo_ from her lap when the lunch was ended, and fitting onher glasses leaned forward for a better look at the monk's black-bearded face. "I'm perfectly delighted, " she said. "You must be veryhappy here. I suppose you are. "

"Yes, " answered the monk rapturously; "so happy that I should becontent never to leave San Lazzaro. I came here when I was very young, and the greater part of my life has been passed on this little island. It is my home--my country. "

"Do you never go away?"

"Oh yes; sometimes to Constantinople, sometimes to London and Paris. "

"And you've never been to America yet? Well now, I'll tell you; youought to go. You would like it, I know, and our people would give you avery cordial reception. "

"Reception?" The monk appealed once more to Ferris with a look. 

Ferris broke into a laugh. "I don't believe Padre Girolamo would comein quality of distinguished foreigner, Mrs. Vervain, and I don't thinkhe'd know what to do with one of our cordial receptions. "

"Well, he ought to go to America, any way. He can't really knowanything about us till he's been there. Just think how ignorant theEnglish are of our country! You _will_ come, won't you? I shouldbe delighted to welcome you at my house in Providence. Rhode Island isa small State, but there's a great deal of wealth there, and very goodsociety in Providence. It's quite New-Yorky, you know, " said Mrs. Vervain expressively. She rose as she spoke, and led the way back tothe gondola. She told Padre Girolamo that they were to be some weeks inVenice, and made him promise to breakfast with them at their hotel. Shesmiled and nodded to him after the boat had pushed off, and kept himbowing on the landing-stairs. 

"What a lovely place, and what a perfectly heavenly morning you_have_ given us, Mr. Ferris I We never can thank you enough forit. And now, do you know what I'm thinking of? Perhaps you can help me. It was Byron's studying there put me in mind of it. How soon do themosquitoes come?"

"About the end of June, " responded Ferris mechanically, staring withhelpless mystification at Mrs. Vervain. 

"Very well; then there's no reason why we shouldn't stay in Venice tillthat time. We are both very fond of the place, and we'd quiteconcluded, this morning, to stop here till the mosquitoes came. Youknow, Mr. Ferris, my daughter had to leave school much earlier than sheought, for my health has obliged me to travel a great deal since I lostmy husband; and I must have her with me, for we're all that there is ofus; we haven't a chick or a child that's related to us anywhere. Butwherever we stop, even for a few weeks, I contrive to get her some kindof instruction. I feel the need of it so much in my own case; for totell you the truth, Mr. Ferris, I married too young. I suppose I shoulddo the same thing over again if it was to be done over; but don't yousee, my mind wasn't properly formed; and then following my husbandabout from pillar to post, and my first baby born when I was nineteen--well, it wasn't education, at any rate, whatever else it was; and I'vedetermined that Florida, though we are such a pair of wanderers, shallnot have my regrets. I got teachers for her in England, --the Englishare not anything like so disagreeable at home as they are intraveling, and we stayed there two years, --and I did in France, and Idid in Germany. And now, Italian. Here we are in Italy, and I think weought to improve the time. Florida knows a good deal of Italianalready, for her music teacher in France was an Italian, and he taughther the language as well as music. What she wants now, I should say, isto perfect her accent and get facility. I think she ought to have someone come every day and read and converse an hour or two with her. "

Mrs. Vervain leaned back in her seat, and looked at Ferris, who said, feeling that the matter was referred to him, "I think--withoutpresuming to say what Miss Vervain's need of instruction is--that youridea is a very good one. " He mused in silence his wonder that so muchaddlepatedness as was at once observable in Mrs. Vervain should existalong with so much common-sense. "It's certainly very good in theabstract, " he added, with a glance at the daughter, as if the sensemust be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with animpatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmthwith which she was dressed, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist, showing its delicious whiteness, and letting her fingers trail throughthe cool water; she dried them on her handkerchief, and then bent hereyes full upon him as if challenging him to think this unlady-like. 

"No, clearly the sense does not come from her, " said Ferris to himself;it is impossible to think well of the mind of a girl who treats onewith tacit contempt. 

"Yes, " resumed Mrs. Vervain, "it's certainly very good in the abstract. But oh dear me! you've no idea of the difficulties in the way. I mayspeak frankly with you, Mr. Ferris, for you are here as therepresentative of the country, and you naturally sympathize with thedifficulties of Americans abroad; the teachers will fall in love withtheir pupils. "

"Mother!" began Miss Vervain; and then she checked herself. 

Ferris gave a vengeful laugh. "Really, Mrs. Vervain, though Isympathize with you in my official capacity, I must own that as a manand a brother, I can't help feeling a little sorry for those poorfellows, too. "

"To be sure, they are to be pitied, of course, and _I_ feel forthem; I did when I was a girl; for the same thing used to happen then. I don't know why Florida should be subjected to such embarrassments, too. It does seem sometimes as if it were something in the blood. Theyall get the idea that you have money, you know. "

"Then I should say that it might be something in the pocket, " suggestedFerris with a look at Miss Vervain, in whose silent suffering, as heimagined it, he found a malicious consolation for her scorn. 

"Well, whatever it is, " replied Mrs. Vervain, "it's too vexatious. Ofcourse, going to new places, that way, as we're always doing, and onlygoing to stay for a limited time, perhaps, you can't pick and choose. And even when you _do_ get an elderly teacher, they're as bad asany. It really is too trying. Now, when I was talking with that nicemonk of yours at the convent, there, I couldn't help thinking howperfectly delightful it would be if Florida could have _him_ for ateacher. Why couldn't she? He told me that he would come to takebreakfast or lunch with us, but not dinner, for he always had to be atthe convent before nightfall. Well, he might come to give the lessonssometime in the middle of the day. "

"You couldn't manage it, Mrs. Vervain, I know you couldn't, " answeredFerris earnestly. "I'm sure the Armenians never do anything of thekind. They're all very busy men, engaged in ecclesiastical or literarywork, and they couldn't give the time. "

"Why not? There was Byron. "

"But Byron went to them, and he studied Armenian, not Italian, withthem. Padre Girolamo speaks perfect Italian, for all that I can see;but I doubt if he'd undertake to impart the native accent, which iswhat you want. In fact, the scheme is altogether impracticable. "

"Well, " said Mrs. Vervain; "I'm exceedingly sorry. I had quite set myheart on it. I never took such a fancy to any one in such a short timebefore. "

"It seemed to be a case of love at first sight on both sides, " saidFerris. "Padre Girolamo doesn't shower those syruped rose-leavesindiscriminately upon visitors. "

"Thanks, " returned Mrs. Vervain; "it's very good of you to say so, Mr. Ferris, and it's very gratifying, all round; but don't you see, itdoesn't serve the present purpose. What teachers do you know of?"

She had been by marriage so long in the service of the United Statesthat she still regarded its agents as part of her own domestic economy. Consuls she everywhere employed as functionaries specially appointed tolook after the interests of American ladies traveling withoutprotection. In the week which had passed since her arrival in Venice, there had been no day on which she did not appeal to Ferris for help orsympathy or advice. She took amiable possession of him at once, and shehad established an amusing sort of intimacy with him, to which thehaughty trepidations of her daughter set certain bounds, but in whichthe demand that he should find her a suitable Italian teacher seemedtrivially matter of course. 

"Yes. I know several teachers, " he said, after thinking awhile; "butthey're all open to the objection of being human; and besides, they alldo things in a set kind of way, and I'm afraid they wouldn't enter intothe spirit of any scheme of instruction that departed very widely fromOllendorff. " He paused, and Mrs. Vervain gave a sketch of the differentprofessional masters whom she had employed in the various countries ofher sojourn, and a disquisition upon their several lives andcharacters, fortifying her statements by reference of doubtful pointsto her daughter. This occupied some time, and Ferris listened to it allwith an abstracted air. At last he said, with a smile, "There was anItalian priest came to see me this morning, who astonished me byknowing English--with a brogue that he'd learned from an English prieststraight from Dublin; perhaps _he_ might do, Mrs. Vervain? He'sprofessionally pledged, you know, not to give the kind of annoyanceyou've suffered from in teachers. He would do as well as PadreGirolamo, I suppose. "

"Do you really? Are you in earnest?"

"Well, no, I believe I'm not. I haven't the least idea he would do. Hebelongs to the church militant. He came to me with the model of abreech-loading cannon he's invented, and he wanted a passport to go toAmerica, so that he might offer his cannon to our government. "

"How curious!" said Mrs. Vervain, and her daughter looked frankly intoFerris's face. "But I know; it's one of your jokes. "

"You overpraise me, Mrs. Vervain. If I could make such jokes as thatpriest was, I should set up for a humorist at once. He had the touch ofpathos that they say all true pieces of humor ought to have, " he wenton instinctively addressing himself to Miss Vervain, who did notrepulse him. "He made me melancholy; and his face haunts me. I shouldlike to paint him. Priests are generally such a snuffy, common lot. AndI dare say, " he concluded, "he's sufficiently commonplace, too, thoughhe didn't look it. Spare your romance, Miss Vervain. "

The young lady blushed resentfully. "I see as little romance as joke init, " she said. 

"It was a cannon, " returned Ferris, without taking any notice of her, and with a sort of absent laugh, "that would make it very lively forthe Southerners--if they had it. Poor fellow! I suppose he came withhigh hopes of me, and expected me to receive his invention witheloquent praises. I've no doubt he figured himself furnished not onlywith a passport, but with a letter from me to President Lincoln, andforesaw his own triumphal entry into Washington, and his honorableinterviews with the admiring generals of the Union forces, to whom heshould display his wonderful cannon. Too bad; isn't it?"

"And why didn't you give him the passport and the letter?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"Oh, that's a state secret, " returned Ferris. 

"And you think he won't do for our purpose?"

"I don't indeed. "

"Well, I'm not so sure of it. Tell me something more about him. "

"I don't know anything more about him. Besides, there isn't time. "

The gondola had already entered the canal, and was swiftly approachingthe hotel. 

"Oh yes, there is, " pleaded Mrs. Vervain, laying her hand on his arm. "I want you to come in and dine with us. We dine early. "

"Thank you, I can't. Affairs of the nation, you know. Rebel privateeron the canal of the Brenta. "

"Really?" Mrs. Vervain leaned towards Ferris for sharper scrutiny ofhis face. Her glasses sprang from her nose, and precipitated themselvesinto his bosom. 

"Allow me, " he said, with burlesque politeness, withdrawing them fromthe recesses of his waistcoat and gravely presenting them. Miss Vervainburst into a helpless laugh; then she turned toward her mother with akind of indignant tenderness, and gently arranged her shawl so that itshould not drop off when she rose to leave the gondola. She did notlook again at Ferris, who resisted Mrs. Vervain's entreaties to remain, and took leave as soon as the gondola landed. 

The ladies went to their room, where Florida lifted from the table avase of divers-colored hyacinths, and stepping out upon the balconyflung the flowers into the canal. As she put down the empty vase, thelingering perfume of the banished flowers haunted the air of the room. 

"Why, Florida, " said her mother, "those were the flowers that Mr. Ferris gave you. Did you fancy they had begun to decay? The smell ofhyacinths when they're a little old is dreadful. But I can't imagine agentleman's giving you flowers that were at all old. "

"Oh, mother, don't speak to me!" cried Miss Vervain, passionately, clasping her hands to her face. 

"Now I see that I've been saying something to vex you, my darling, " andseating herself beside the young girl on the sofa, she fondly took downher hands. "Do tell me what it was. Was it about your teachers fallingin love with you? You know they did, Florida: Pestachiavi and Schulze, both; and that horrid old Fleuron. "

"Did you think I liked any better on that account to have you talk itover with a stranger?" asked Florida, still angrily. 

"That's true, my dear, " said Mrs. Vervain, penitently. "But if itworried you, why didn't you do something to stop me? Give me a hint, orjust a little knock, somewhere?"

"No, mother; I'd rather not. Then you'd have come out with the wholething, to prove that you were right. It's better to let it go, " saidFlorida with a fierce laugh, half sob. "But it's strange that you can'tremember how such things torment me. "

"I suppose it's my weak health, dear, " answered the mother. "I didn'tuse to be so. But now I don't really seem to have the strength to besensible. I know it's silly as well as you. The talk just seems to keepgoing on of itself, --slipping out, slipping out. But you needn't mind. Mr. Ferris won't think you could ever have done anything out of theway. I'm sure you don't act with _him_ as if you'd ever encouragedanybody. I think you're too haughty with him, Florida. And now, hisflowers. "

"He's detestable. He's conceited and presuming beyond all endurance. Idon't care what he thinks of me. But it's his manner towards you that Ican't tolerate. "

"I suppose it's rather free, " said Mrs. Vervain. "But then you know, mydear, I shall be soon getting to be an old lady; and besides, I alwaysfeel as if consuls were a kind of one of the family. He's been veryobliging since we came; I don't know what we should have done withouthim. And I don't object to a little ease of manner in the gentlemen; Inever did. "

"He makes fun of you, " cried Florida: "and there at the convent, ", shesaid, bursting into angry tears, "he kept exchanging glances with thatmonk as if he. .. . He's insulting, and I hate him!"

"Do you mean that he thought your mother ridiculous, Florida?" askedMrs. Vervain gravely. "You must have misunderstood his looks; indeedyou must. I can't imagine why he should. I remember that I talkedparticularly well during our whole visit; my mind was active, for Ifelt unusually strong, and I was interested in everything. It's nothingbut a fancy of yours; or your prejudice, Florida. But it's odd, nowI've sat down for a moment, how worn out I feel. And thirsty. "

Mrs. Vervain fitted on her glasses, but even then felt uncertainlyabout for the empty vase on the table before her. 

"It isn't a goblet, mother, " said Florida; "I'll get you some water. "

"Do; and then throw a shawl over me. I'm sleepy, and a nap beforedinner will do me good. I don't see why I'm so drowsy of late. Isuppose it's getting into the sea air here at Venice; though it'smountain air that makes you drowsy. But you're quite mistaken about Mr. Ferris. He isn't capable of anything really rude. Besides, therewouldn't have been any sense in it. "

The young girl brought the water and then knelt beside the sofa, onwhich she arranged the pillows under her mother, and covered her withsoft wraps. She laid her cheek against the thinner face. "Don't mindanything I've said, mother; let's talk of something else. "

The mother drew some loose threads of the daughter's hair through herslender fingers, but said little more, and presently fell into a deepslumber. Florida gently lifted her head away, and remained kneelingbefore the sofa, looking into the sleeping face with an expression ofstrenuous, compassionate devotion, mixed with a vague alarm and self-pity, and a certain wondering anxiety. 

III. 

Don Ippolito had slept upon his interview with Ferris, and now sat inhis laboratory, amidst the many witnesses of his inventive industry, with the model of the breech-loading cannon on the workbench beforehim. He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its completeness might dohim the greater credit with the consul when he should show it him, butthe carriage had been broken in his pocket, on the way home, by anunlucky thrust from the burden of a porter, and the poor toy lay theredisabled, as if to dramatize that premature explosion in the secretchamber. 

His heart was in these inventions of his, which had as yet sogrudgingly repaid his affection. For their sake he had stinted himselfof many needful things. The meagre stipend which he received from thepatrimony of his church, eked out with the money paid him for baptisms, funerals, and marriages, and for masses by people who had friends to beprayed out of purgatory, would at best have barely sufficed to supporthim; but he denied himself everything save the necessary decorums ofdress and lodging; he fasted like a saint, and slept hard as a hermit, that he might spend upon these ungrateful creatures of his brain. Theywere the work of his own hands, and so he saved the expense of theirconstruction; but there were many little outlays for materials and fortools, which he could not avoid, and with him a little was all. Theynot only famished him; they isolated him. His superiors in the church, and his brother priests, looked with doubt or ridicule upon the laborsfor which he shunned their company, while he gave up the other socialjoys, few and small, which a priest might know in the Venice of thatday, when all generous spirits regarded him with suspicion for hiscloth's sake, and church and state were alert to detect disaffection orindifference in him. But bearing these things willingly, and living asfrugally as he might, he had still not enough, and he had been fain toassume the instruction of a young girl of old and noble family incertain branches of polite learning which a young lady of that sortmight fitly know. The family was not so rich as it was old and noble, and Don Ippolito was paid from its purse rather than its pride. But theslender salary was a help; these patricians were very good to him; manya time he dined with them, and so spared the cost of his own pottage athome; they always gave him coffee when he came, and that was a saving;at the proper seasons little presents from them were not wanting. In aword, his condition was not privation. He did his duty as a teacherfaithfully, and the only trouble with it was that the young girl wasgrowing into a young woman, and that he could not go on teaching herforever. In an evil hour, as it seemed to Don Ippolito, that made theyears she had been his pupil shrivel to a mere pinch of time, therecame from a young count of the Friuli, visiting Venice, an offer ofmarriage; and Don Ippolito lost his place. It was hard, but he badehimself have patience; and he composed an ode for the nuptials of hislate pupil, which, together with a brief sketch of her ancestralhistory, he had elegantly printed, according to the Italian usage, anddistributed among the family friends; he also made a sonnet to thebridegroom, and these literary tributes were handsomely acknowledged. 

He managed a whole year upon the proceeds, and kept a cheerful spirittill the last soldo was spent, inventing one thing after another, andgiving much time and money to a new principle of steam propulsion, which, as applied without steam to a small boat on the canal before hisdoor, failed to work, though it had no logical excuse for itsdelinquency. He tried to get other pupils, but he got none, and hebegan to dream of going to America. He pinned his faith in all sorts ofmagnificent possibilities to the names of Franklin, Fulton, and Morse;he was so ignorant of our politics and geography as to suppose us atwar with the South American Spaniards, but he knew that English was thelanguage of the North, and he applied himself to the study of it. Heaven only knows what kind of inventor's Utopia, our poor, patent-ridden country appeared to him in these dreams of his, and I can butdimly figure it to myself. But he might very naturally desire to cometo a land where the spirit of invention is recognized and fostered, andwhere he could hope to find that comfort of incentive and companionshipwhich our artists find in Italy. 

The idea of the breech-loading cannon had occurred to him suddenly oneday, in one of his New-World-ward reveries, and he had made haste torealize it, carefully studying the form and general effect of theAustrian cannon under the gallery of the Ducal Palace, to the highembarrassment of the Croat sentry who paced up and down there, and whodid not feel free to order off a priest as he would a civilian. DonIppolito's model was of admirable finish; he even painted the carriageyellow and black, because that of the original was so, and colored thepiece to look like brass; and he lost a day while the paint was drying, after he was otherwise ready to show it to the consul. 

He had parted from Ferris with some gleams of comfort, caught chieflyfrom his kindly manner, but they had died away before nightfall, andthis morning he could not rekindle them. 

He had had his coffee served to him on the bench, as his frequentcustom was, but it stood untasted in the little copper pot beside thedismounted cannon, though it was now ten o'clock, and it was full timehe had breakfasted, for he had risen early to perform the matin servicefor three peasant women, two beggars, a cat, and a paralytic nobleman, in the ancient and beautiful church to which he was attached. He hadtried to go about his wonted occupations, but he was still sitting idlebefore his bench, while his servant gossiped from her balcony to themistress of the next house, across a calle so deep and narrow that itopened like a mountain chasm beneath them. "It were well if the masterread his breviary a little more, instead of always maddening himselfwith those blessed inventions, that eat more soldi than a Christian, and never come to anything. There he sits before his table, as if hewere nailed to his chair, and lets his coffee cool--and God knows I wasready to drink it warm two hours ago--and never looks at me if I openthe door twenty times to see whether he has finished. Holy patience!You have not even the advantage of fasting to the glory of God in thishouse, though you keep Lent the year round. It's the Devil's Lent, _I_ say. Eh, Diana! There goes the bell. Who now? Adieu, Lusetta. To meet again, dear. Farewell!"

She ran to another window, and admitted the visitor. It was Ferris, andshe went to announce him to her master by the title he had given, whilehe amused his leisure in the darkness below by falling over a cistern-top, with a loud clattering of his cane on the copper lid, after whichhe heard the voice of the priest begging him to remain at hisconvenience a moment till he could descend and show him the way up-stairs. His eyes were not yet used to the obscurity of the narrow entryin which he stood, when he felt a cold hand laid on his, and passivelyyielded himself to its guidance. He tried to excuse himself forintruding upon Don Ippolito so soon, but the priest in far supplerItalian overwhelmed him with lamentations that he should be so unworthythe honor done him, and ushered his guest into his apartment. Heplainly took it for granted that Ferris had come to see his inventions, in compliance with the invitation he had given him the day before, andhe made no affectation of delay, though after the excitement of thegreetings was past, it was with a quiet dejection that he rose andoffered to lead his visitor to his laboratory. 

The whole place was an outgrowth of himself; it was his history as wellas his character. It recorded his quaint and childish tastes, hisrestless endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The ante-room inwhich he had paused with Ferris was painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellisedwalls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting leaf, displayed theirlavish clusters of white and purple all over the ceiling. It touchedFerris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been thedistraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was like certaingrape-arbors he had seen in remote corners of Venice before the doorsof degenerate palaces, or forming the entrances of open-airrestaurants, and did not seem at all to have been studied from grape-arbors in the country. He perceived the archaic striving for exacttruth, and he successfully praised the mechanical skill and love ofreality with which it was done; but he was silenced by a collection ofpaintings in Don Ippolito's parlor, where he had been made to sit downa moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque incolor, these copies of famous masterpieces, --saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, martyrdoms, and what not, --and they were notquite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made themfrom such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored themafter his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the gloryof the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet morecomically pathetic than the frescoed grape-arbor; he stared about himfor some sort of escape from the pictures, and his eye fell upon apiano and a melodeon placed end to end in a right angle. Don Ippolito, seeing his look of inquiry, sat down and briefly played the same airwith a hand upon each instrument. 

Ferris smiled. "Don Ippolito, you are another Da Vinci, a universalgenius. "

"Bagatelles, bagatelles, " said the priest pensively; but he rose withgreater spirit than he had yet shown, and preceded the consul into thelittle room that served him for a smithy. It seemed from somepeculiarities of shape to have once been an oratory, but it was nowbegrimed with smoke and dust from the forge which Don Ippolito had setup in it; the embers of a recent fire, the bellows, the pincers, thehammers, and the other implements of the trade, gave it a sinistereffect, as if the place of prayer had been invaded by mocking imps, oras if some hapless mortal in contract with the evil powers were heresearching, by the help of the adversary, for the forbidden secrets ofthe metals and of fire. In those days, Ferris was an uncompromisingenemy of the theatricalization of Italy, or indeed of anything; but thefancy of the black-robed young priest at work in this place appealed tohim all the more potently because of the sort of tragic innocence whichseemed to characterize Don Ippolito's expression. He longed intenselyto sketch the picture then and there, but he had strength to rebuke thefancy as something that could not make itself intelligible without thehelp of such accessories as he despised, and he victoriously followedthe priest into his larger workshop, where his inventions, complete andincomplete, were stored, and where he had been seated when his visitorarrived. The high windows and the frescoed ceiling were festooned withdusty cobwebs; litter of shavings and whittlings strewed the floor;mechanical implements and contrivances were everywhere, and DonIppolito's listlessness seemed to return upon him again at the sight ofthe familiar disorder. Conspicuous among other objects lay theillogically unsuccessful model of the new principle of steampropulsion, untouched since the day when he had lifted it out of thecanal and carried it indoors through the ranks of grinning spectators. From a shelf above it he took down models of a flying-machine and aperpetual motion. "Fantastic researches in the impossible. I neverexpected results from these experiments, with which I nevertheless oncepleased myself, " he said, and turned impatiently to various pieces ofportable furniture, chairs, tables, bedsteads, which by folding uptheir legs and tops condensed themselves into flat boxes, developinghandles at the side for convenience in carrying. They were painted andvarnished, and were in all respects complete; they had indeed wonfavorable mention at an exposition of the Provincial Society of Artsand Industries, and Ferris could applaud their ingenuity sincerely, though he had his tacit doubts of their usefulness. He fell silentagain when Don Ippolito called his notice to a photographic camera, socontrived with straps and springs that you could snatch by its helpwhatever joy there might be in taking your own photograph; and he didnot know what to say of a submarine boat, a four-wheeled water-velocipede, a movable bridge, or the very many other principles andideas to which Don Ippolito's cunning hand had given shape, more orless imperfect. It seemed to him that they all, however perfect orimperfect, had some fatal defect: they were aspirations toward theimpossible, or realizations of the trivial and superfluous. Yet, forall this, they strongly appealed to the painter as the stunted fruit ofa talent denied opportunity, instruction, and sympathy. As he lookedfrom them at last to the questioning face of the priest, and consideredout of what disheartened and solitary patience they must have come inthis city, --dead hundreds of years to all such endeavor, --he could notutter some glib phrases of compliment that he had on his tongue. If DonIppolito had been taken young, he might perhaps have amounted tosomething, though this was questionable; but at thirty--as he lookednow, --with his undisciplined purposes, and his head full of vagaries ofwhich these things were the tangible witness. .. . Ferris let his eyesdrop again. They fell upon the ruin of the breech-loading cannon, andhe said, "Don Ippolito, it's very good of you to take the trouble ofshowing me these matters, and I hope you'll pardon the ungratefulreturn, if I cannot offer any definite opinion of them now. They arerather out of my way, I confess. I wish with all my heart I could orderan experimental, life-size copy of your breech-loading cannon here, fortrial by my government, but I can't; and to tell you the truth, it wasnot altogether the wish to see these inventions of yours that broughtme here to-day. "

"Oh, " said Don Ippolito, with a mortified air, "I am afraid that I havewearied the Signor Console. "

"Not at all, not at all, " Ferris made haste to answer, with a frown athis own awkwardness. "But your speaking English yesterday; . .. Perhapswhat I was thinking of is quite foreign to your tastes andpossibilities. ". .. He hesitated with a look of perplexity, while DonIppolito stood before him in an attitude of expectation, pressing thepoints of his fingers together, and looking curiously into his face. "The case is this, " resumed Ferris desperately. "There are two Americanladies, friends of mine, sojourning in Venice, who expect to be heretill midsummer. They are mother and daughter, and the young lady wantsto read and speak Italian with somebody a few hours each day. Thequestion is whether it is quite out of your way or not to give herlessons of this kind. I ask it quite at a venture. I suppose no harm isdone, at any rate, " and he looked at Don Ippolito with apologeticperturbation. 

"No, " said the priest, "there is no harm. On the contrary, I am at thismoment in a position to consider it a great favor that you do me inoffering me this employment. I accept it with the greatest pleasure. Oh!" he cried, breaking by a sudden impulse from the composure withwhich he had begun to speak, "you don't know what you do for me; youlift me out of despair. Before you came, I had reached one of thosepasses that seem the last bound of endeavor. But you give me new life. Now I can go on with my experiment. I can at test my gratitude bypossessing your native country of the weapon I had designed for it--Iam sure of the principle: some slight improvement, perhaps the use ofsome different explosive, would get over that difficulty yousuggested, " he said eagerly. "Yes, something can be done. God blessyou, my dear little son--I mean--perdoni!--my dear sir. ". .. 

"Wait--not so fast, " said Ferris with a laugh, yet a little annoyedthat a question so purely tentative as his should have met at once sucha definite response. "Are you quite sure you can do what they want?" Heunfolded to him, as fully as he understood it, Mrs. Vervain's scheme. 

Don Ippolito entered into it with perfect intelligence. He said that hehad already had charge of the education of a young girl of noblefamily, and he could therefore the more confidently hope to be usefulto this American lady. A light of joyful hope shone in his dreamy eyes, the whole man changed, he assumed the hospitable and caressing host. Heconducted Ferris back to his parlor, and making him sit upon the hardsofa that was his hard bed by night, he summoned his servant, and badeher serve them coffee. She closed her lips firmly, and waved her fingerbefore her face, to signify that there was no more coffee. Then he badeher fetch it from the caffè: and he listened with a sort of raptinattention while Ferris again returned to the subject and explainedthat he had approached him without first informing the ladies, and thathe must regard nothing as final. It was at this point that DonIppolito, who had understood so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted, appeared a little slow to understand; and Ferris had a doubt whether itwas from subtlety or from simplicity that the priest seemed not tocomprehend the impulse on which he had acted. He finished his coffee inthis perplexity, and when he rose to go, Don Ippolito followed him downto the street-door, and preserved him from a second encounter with thecistern-top. 

"But, Don Ippolito--remember! I make no engagement for the ladies, whomyou must see before anything is settled, " said Ferris. 

"Surely, --surely!" answered the priest, and he remained smiling at thedoor till the American turned the next corner. Then he went back to hiswork-room, and took up the broken model from the bench. But he couldnot work at it now, he could not work at anything; he began to walk upand down the floor. 

"Could he really have been so stupid because his mind was on hisridiculous cannon?" wondered Ferris as he sauntered frowning away; andhe tried to prepare his own mind for his meeting with the Vervains, towhom he must now go at once. He felt abused and victimized. Yet it wasan amusing experience, and he found himself able to interest both ofthe ladies in it. The younger had received him as coldly as the formsof greeting would allow; but as he talked she drew nearer him with areluctant haughtiness which he noted. He turned the more conspicuouslytowards Mrs. Vervain. "Well, to make a long story short, " he said, "Icouldn't discourage Don Ippolito. He refused to be dismayed--as Ishould have been at the notion of teaching Miss Vervain. I didn'tarrange with him not to fall in love with her as his secularpredecessors have done--it seemed superfluous. But you can mention itto him if you like. In fact, " said Ferris, suddenly addressing thedaughter, "you might make the stipulation yourself, Miss Vervain. "

She looked at him a moment with a sort of defenseless pain that madehim ashamed; and then walked away from him towards the window, with afrank resentment that made him smile, as he continued, "But I supposeyou would like to have some explanation of my motive in precipitatingDon Ippolito upon you in this way, when I told you only yesterday thathe wouldn't do at all; in fact I think myself that I've behaved ratherfickle-mindedly--for a representative of the country. But I'll tellyou; and you won't be surprised to learn that I acted from mixedmotives. I'm not at all sure that he'll do; I've had awful misgivingsabout it since I left him, and I'm glad of the chance to make a cleanbreast of it. When I came to think the matter over last night, the factthat he had taught himself English--with the help of an Irishman forthe pronunciation--seemed to promise that he'd have the right sort ofsympathy with your scheme, and it showed that he must have somethingpractical about him, too. And here's where the selfish admixture comesin. I didn't have your interests solely in mind when I went to see DonIppolito. I hadn't been able to get rid of him; he stuck in my thought. I fancied he might be glad of the pay of a teacher, and--I had half anotion to ask him to let me paint him. It was an even chance whether Ishould try to secure him for Miss Vervain, or for Art--as they call it. Miss Vervain won because she could pay him, and I didn't see how Artcould. I can bring him round any time; and that's the wholeinconsequent business. My consolation is that I've left you perfectlyfree. There's nothing decided. "

"Thanks, " said Mrs. Vervain; "then it's all settled. You can bring himas soon as you like, to our new place. We've taken that apartment welooked at the other day, and we're going into it this afternoon. Here'sthe landlord's letter, " she added, drawing a paper out of her pocket. "If he's cheated us, I suppose you can see justice done. I didn't wantto trouble you before. "

"You're a woman of business, Mrs. Vervain, " said Ferris. "The man's aperfect Jew--or a perfect Christian, one ought to say in Venice; wetrue believers do gouge so much, more infamously here--and you let himget you in black and white before you come to me. Well, " he continued, as he glanced at the paper, "you've done it! He makes you pay one halftoo much. However, it's cheap enough; twice as cheap as your hotel. "

"But I don't care for cheapness. I hate to be imposed upon. What's tobe done about it?"

"Nothing; if he has your letter as you have his. It's a bargain, andyou must stand to it. "

"A bargain? Oh nonsense, now, Mr. Ferris. This is merely a note ofmutual understanding. "

"Yes, that's one way of looking at it. The Civil Tribunal would call ita binding agreement of the closest tenure, --if you want to go to lawabout it. "

"I _will_ go to law about it. "

"Oh no, you won't--unless you mean to spend your remaining days and allyour substance in Venice. Come, you haven't done so badly, Mrs. Vervain. I don't call four rooms, completely furnished forhousekeeping, with that lovely garden, at all dear at eleven francs aday. Besides, the landlord is a man of excellent feeling, sympatheticand obliging, and a perfect gentleman, though he is such an outrageousscoundrel. He'll cheat you, of course, in whatever he can; you mustlook out for that; but he'll do you any sort of little neighborlykindness. Good-by, " said Ferris, getting to the door before Mrs. Vervain could intercept him. "I'll come to your new place this eveningto see how you are pleased. "

"Florida, " said Mrs. Vervain, "this is outrageous. "

"I wouldn't mind it, mother. We pay very little, after all. "

"Yes, but we pay too much. That's what I can't bear. And as you saidyesterday, I don't think Mr. Ferris's manners are quite respectful tome. "

"He only told you the truth; I think he advised you for the best. Thematter couldn't be helped now. "

"But I call it a want of feeling to speak the truth so bluntly. "

"We won't have to complain of that in our landlord, it seems, " saidFlorida. "Perhaps not in our priest, either, " she added. 

"Yes, that _was_ kind of Mr. Ferris, " said Mrs. Vervain. "It wasthoroughly thoughtful and considerate--what I call an instance of truedelicacy. I'm really quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito! How veryodd to call a priest _Don_! I should have said Padre. Don alwaysmakes you think of a Spanish cavalier. Don Rodrigo: something likethat. "

They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, and what he mightbe like. In speaking of him the day before, Ferris had hinted at somemysterious sadness in him; and to hint of sadness in a man alwaysinterests women in him, whether they are old or young: the old havesuffered, the young forebode suffering. Their interest in Don Ippolitohad not been diminished by what Ferris had told them of his visit tothe priest's house and of the things he had seen there; for there hadalways been the same strain of pity in his laughing account, and he hadimparted none of his doubts to them. They did not talk as if it werestrange that Ferris should do to-day what he had yesterday said hewould not do; perhaps as women they could not find such a thingstrange; but it vexed him more and more as he went about all afternoonthinking of his inconsistency, and wondering whether he had not actedrashly. 

IV. 

The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an apartment fronted on abroad campo, and hung its empty marble balconies from gothic windowsabove a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice. The localpharmacy, the caffè, the grocery, the fruiterer's, the other shops withwhich every Venetian campo is furnished, had each a certain life aboutit, but it was a silent life, and at midday a frowsy-headed womanclacking across the flags in her wooden-heeled shoes made echoes whosegarrulity was interrupted by no other sound. In the early morning, whenthe lid of the public cistern in the centre of the campo was unlocked, there was a clamor of voices and a clangor of copper vessels, as thehousewives of the neighborhood and the local force of strong-backedFrinlan water-girls drew their day's supply of water; and on that sortof special parochial holiday, called a _sagra_, the campo hummedand clattered and shrieked with a multitude celebrating the day aroundthe stands where pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisette-waterwere sold, and before the movable kitchen where cakes were fried incaldrons of oil, and uproariously offered to the crowd by the cook, whodid not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the rival drama ofadjoining puppet-shows, but continued to bellow forth his bargains allday long and far into the night, when the flames under his kettlespainted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra once over, however, thecampo relapsed into its habitual silence, and no one looking at thefront of the palace would have thought of it as a place fordistraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But it was not on this sidethat the landlord tempted his tenants; his principal notice of lodgingsto let was affixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened on asmaller channel so near the Grand Canal that no wandering eye couldfail to see it. The portal was a tall arch of Venetian gothic tippedwith a carven flame; steps of white Istrian stone descended to thelevel of the lowest ebb, irregularly embossed with barnacles, anddabbling long fringes of soft green sea-mosses in the rising andfalling tide. Swarms of water-bugs and beetles played over the edges ofthe steps, and crabs scuttled side-wise into deeper water at theapproach of a gondola. A length of stone-capped brick wall, to whichpatches of stucco still clung, stretched from the gate on either handunder cover of an ivy that flung its mesh of shining green from within, where there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for Venice, andfull of a delicious, half-sad surprise for whoso opened upon it. In themidst it had a broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on ashell, and looking saucier than the sculptor meant, from having lostthe point of her nose, nymphs and fauns, and shepherds andshepherdesses, her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery inflirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture of an arm, or thecasting of a leg or so; one lady had no head, but she was the boldestof all. In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate trees, several of which hung about the fountain with seats in their shade, andfor the rest there seemed to be mostly roses and oleanders, with othershrubs of a kind that made the greatest show of blossom and cost theleast for tendance. A wide terrace stretched across the rear of thepalace, dropping to the garden path by a flight of balustraded steps, and upon this terrace opened the long windows of Mrs. Vervain's parlorand dining-room. Her landlord owned only the first story and thebasement of the palace, in some corner of which he cowered with hisservants, his taste for pictures and _bric-à-brac_, and his littlebranch of inquiry into Venetian history, whatever it was, ready to lethimself or anything he had for hire at a moment's notice, but verypleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive; a cheat and a liar, but of a kindheart and sympathetic manners. Under his protection Mrs. Vervain set upher impermanent household gods. The apartment was taken only from weekto week, and as she freely explained to the _padrone_ hoveringabout with offers of service, she knew herself too well ever to unpackanything that would not spoil by remaining packed. She made her trunksyield all the appliances necessary for an invalid's comfort, and thenleft them in a state to be strapped and transported to the stationwithin half a day after the desire of change or the exigencies of herfeeble health caused her going. Everything for housekeeping wasfurnished with the rooms. There was a gondolier and a sort of house-servant in the employ of the landlord, of whom Mrs. Vervain hired them, and she caressingly dismissed the padrone at an early moment after herarrival, with the charge to find a maid for herself and daughter. As ifshe had been waiting at the next door this maid appeared promptly, andbeing Venetian, and in domestic service, her name was of course Nina. Mrs. Vervain now said to Florida that everything was perfect, andcontentedly began her life in Venice by telling Mr. Ferris, when hecame in the evening, that he could bring Don Ippolito the day after themorrow, if he liked. 

She and Florida sat on the terrace waiting for them on the morningnamed, when Ferris, with the priest in his clerical best, came up thegarden path in the sunny light. Don Ippolito's best was a littlepoverty-stricken; he had faltered a while, before leaving home, overthe sad choice between a shabby cylinder hat of obsolete fashion andhis well-worn three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put onthe latter with a sigh. He had made his servant polish the buckles ofhis shoes, and instead of a band of linen round his throat, he wore astrip ot cloth covered with small white beads, edged above and belowwith a single row of pale blue ones. 

As he mounted the steps with Ferris, Mrs. Vervain came forward a littleto meet them, while Florida rose and stood beside her chair in a sortof proud suspense and timidity. The elder lady was in that black fromwhich she had so seldom been able to escape; but the daughter wore adress of delicate green, in which she seemed a part of the young seasonthat everywhere clothed itself in the same tint. The sunlight fell uponher blonde hair, melting into its light gold; her level brows frownedsomewhat with the glance of scrutiny which she gave the dark youngpriest, who was making his stately bow to her mother, and trying toanswer her English greetings in the same tongue. 

"My daughter, " said Mrs. Vervain, and Don Ippolito made another lowbow, and then looked at the girl with a sort of frank and melancholywonder, as she turned and exchanged a few words with Ferris, who wasassailing her seriousness and hauteur with unabashed levity ofcompliment. A quick light flashed and fled in her cheek as she talked, and the fringes of her serious, asking eyes swept slowly up and down asshe bent them upon him a moment before she broke abruptly, notcoquettishly, away from him, and moved towards her mother, while Ferriswalked off to the other end of the terrace, with a laugh. Mrs. Vervainand the priest were trying each other in French, and not making greatadvance; he explained to Florida in Italian, and she answered himhesitatingly; whereupon he praised her Italian in set phrase. 

"Thank you, " said the girl sincerely, "I have tried to learn. I hope, "she added as before, "you can make me see how little I know. " Thedeprecating wave of the hand with which Don Ippolito appealed to herfrom herself, seemed arrested midway by his perception of some novelquality in her. He said gravely that he should try to be of use, andthen the two stood silent. 

"Come, Mr. Ferris, " called out Mrs. Vervain, "breakfast is ready, and Iwant you to take me in. "

"Too much honor, " said the painter, coming forward and offering hisarm, and Mrs. Vervain led the way indoors. 

"I suppose I ought to have taken Don Ippolito's arm, " she confided inunder-tone, "but the fact is, our French is so unlike that we don'tunderstand each other very well. "

"Oh, " returned Ferris, "I've known Italians and Americans whomFrenchmen themselves couldn't understand. "

"You see it's an American breakfast, " said Mrs. Vervain with a criticalglance at the table before she sat down. "All but hot bread;_that_ you _can't_ have, " and Don Ippolito was for the firsttime in his life confronted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak, eggs andtoast, fried potatoes, and coffee with milk, with a choice of tea. Hesubdued all signs of the wonder he must have felt, and beyond cuttinghis meat into little bits before eating it, did nothing to betray hisstrangeness to the feast. 

The breakfast had passed off very pleasantly, with occasional lapses. "We break down under the burden of so many languages, " said Ferris. "Itis an _embarras de richesses_. Let us fix upon a common maccheronic. May I trouble you for a poco piú di sugar dans mon café, Mrs. Vervain?What do you think of the bellazza de ce weather magnifique, Don Ippolito?"

"How ridiculous!" said Mrs. Vervain in a tone of fond admiration asideto Don Ippolito, who smiled, but shrank from contributing to the newtongue. 

"Very well, then, " said the painter. "I shall stick to my nativeBergamask for the future; and Don Ippolito may translate for theforeign ladies. "

He ended by speaking English with everybody; Don Ippolito eked out hisspeeches to Mrs. Vervain in that tongue with a little French; Florida, conscious of Ferris's ironical observance, used an embarrassed butdefiant Italian with the priest. 

"I'm so pleased!" said Mrs. Vervain, rising when Ferris said that hemust go, and Florida shook hands with both guests. 

"Thank you, Mrs. Vervain; I could have gone before, if I'd thought youwould have liked it, " answered the painter. 

"Oh nonsense, now, " returned the lady. "You know what I mean. I'mperfectly delighted with him, " she continued, getting Ferris to oneside, "and I _know_ he must have a good accent. So very kind ofyou. Will you arrange with him about the pay?--such a _shame_!Thanks. Then I needn't say anything to him about that. I'm so glad Ihad him to breakfast the first day; though Florida thought not. Ofcourse, one needn't keep it up. But seriously, it isn't an ordinarycase, you know. "

Ferris laughed at her with a sort of affectionate disrespect, and saidgood-by. Don Ippolito lingered for a while to talk over the proposedlessons, and then went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs. Vervainremained thoughtful a moment before she said:--

"That was rather droll, Florida. "

"What, mother?"

"His cutting his meat into small bites, before he began to eat. Butperhaps it's the Venetian custom. At any rate, my dear, he's agentleman in virtue of his profession, and I couldn't do less than askhim to breakfast. He has beautiful manners; and if he must take snuff, I suppose it's neater to carry two handkerchiefs, though it does lookodd. I wish he wouldn't take snuff. "

"I don't see why we need care, mother. At any fate, we cannot help it. "

"That's true, my dear. And his nails. Now when they're spread out on abook, you know, to keep it open, --won't it be unpleasant?"

"They seem to have just such fingernails all over Europe--except inEngland. "

"Oh, yes; I know it. I dare say we shouldn't care for it in him, if hedidn't seem so very nice otherwise. How handsome he is!"

V. 

It was understood that Don Ippolito should come every morning at teno'clock, and read and talk with Miss Vervain for an hour or two; butMrs. Vervain's hospitality was too aggressive for the letter of theagreement. She oftener had him to breakfast at nine, for, as sheexplained to Ferris, she could not endure to have him feel that it wasa mere mercenary transaction, and there was no limit fixed for thelessons on these days. When she could, she had Ferris come, too, andshe missed him when he did not come. "I like that bluntness of his, "she professed to her daughter, "and I don't mind his making light ofme. You are so apt to be heavy if you're not made light ofoccasionally. I certainly shouldn't want a _son_ to be sorespectful and obedient as you are, my dear. "

The painter honestly returned her fondness, and with not much greaterreason. He saw that she took pleasure in his talk, and enjoyed it evenwhen she did not understand it; and this is a kind of flattery not easyto resist. Besides, there was very little ladies' society in Venice inthose times, and Ferris, after trying the little he could get at, hadgladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted with the young menhe met at the caffè's, or in the Piazza. But when the Vervains came, they recalled to him the younger days in which he had delighted in thecompanionship of women. After so long disuse, it was charming to bewith a beautiful girl who neither regarded him with distrust norexpected him to ask her in marriage because he sat alone with her, rodeout with her in a gondola, walked with her, read with her. All youngmen like a house in which no ado is made about their coming and going, and Mrs. Vervain perfectly understood the art of letting him makehimself at home. He perceived with amusement that this amiable lady, who never did an ungraceful thing nor wittingly said an ungracious one, was very much of a Bohemian at heart, --the gentlest and most blamelessof the tribe, but still lawless, --whether from her campaigning marriedlife, or the rovings of her widowhood, or by natural disposition; andthat Miss Vervain was inclined to be conventionally strict, but withher irregular training was at a loss for rules by which to check hermother's little waywardnesses. Her anxious perplexity, at times, together with her heroic obedience and unswerving loyalty to her motherhad something pathetic as well as amusing in it. He saw her triedalmost to tears by her mother's helpless frankness, --for Mrs. Vervainwas apparently one of those ladies whom the intolerable surprise ofhaving anything come into their heads causes instantly to say or doit, --and he observed that she never tried to pass off her endurancewith any feminine arts; but seemed to defy him to think what he wouldof it. Perhaps she was not able to do otherwise: he thought of her attimes as a person wholly abandoned to the truth. Her pride was on thealert against him; she may have imagined that he was covertly smilingat her, and she no doubt tasted the ironical flavor of much of his talkand behavior, for in those days he liked to qualify his devotion to theVervains with a certain nonchalant slight, which, while the motheropenly enjoyed it, filled the daughter with anger and apprehension. Quite at random, she visited points of his informal manner withunmeasured reprisal; others, for which he might have blamed himself, she passed over with strange caprice. Sometimes this attitude of hersprovoked him, and sometimes it disarmed him; but whether they were atfeud, or keeping an armed truce, or, as now and then happened, were inan _entente cordiale_ which he found very charming, the thing thathe always contrived to treat with silent respect and forbearance inMiss Vervain was that sort of aggressive tenderness with which shehastened to shield the foibles of her mother. That was something verygood in her pride, he finally decided. At the same time, he did notpretend to understand the curious filial self-sacrifice which itinvolved. 

Another thing in her that puzzled him was her devoutness. Mrs. Vervaincould with difficulty be got to church, but her daughter missed noservice of the English ritual in the old palace where the British andAmerican tourists assembled once a week with their guide-books in onepocket and their prayer-books in the other, and buried the tomahawkunder the altar. Mr. Ferris was often sent with her; and then histhoughts, which were a young man's, wandered from the service to thebeautiful girl at his side, --the golden head that punctiliously boweditself at the proper places in the liturgy: the full lips that murmuredthe responses; the silken lashes that swept her pale cheeks as sheperused the morning lesson. He knew that the Vervains were notEpiscopalians when at home, for Mrs. Vervain had told him so, and thatFlorida went to the English service because there was no other. Heconjectured that perhaps her touch of ritualism came from mere love ofany form she could make sure of. 

The servants in Mrs. Vervain's lightly ordered household, with thesympathetic quickness of the Italians, learned to use him as the nextfriend of the family, and though they may have had their decoroussurprise at his untrammeled footing, they probably excused the wholerelation as a phase of that foreign eccentricity to which their nationis so amiable. If they were not able to cast the same mantle of charityover Don Ippolito's allegiance, --and doubtless they had their reservesconcerning such frankly familiar treatment of so dubious a character aspriest, --still as a priest they stood somewhat in awe of him; they hadthe spontaneous loyalty of their race to the people they served, andthey never intimated by a look that they found it strange when DonIppolito freely came and went. Mrs. Vervain had quite adopted him intoher family; while her daughter seemed more at ease with him than withFerris, and treated him with a grave politeness which had somethingalso of compassion and of child-like reverence in it. Ferris observedthat she was always particularly careful of his supposablesensibilities as a Roman Catholic, and that the priest was oddlyindifferent to this deference, as if it would have mattered very littleto him whether his church was spared or not. He had a way of lightlyavoiding, Ferris fancied, not only religious points on which they coulddisagree, but all phases of religion as matters of indifference. Atsuch times Miss Vervain relaxed her reverential attitude, and used himwith something like rebuke, as if it did not please her to have therepresentative of even an alien religion slight his office; as if herrespect were for his priesthood and her compassion for him personally. That was rather hard for Don Ippolito, Ferris thought, and waited tosee him snubbed outright some day, when he should behave withoutsufficient gravity. 

The blossoms came and went upon the pomegranate and almond trees in thegarden, and some of the earliest roses were in their prime; everywherewas so full leaf that the wantonest of the strutting nymphs was forcedinto a sort of decent seclusion, but the careless naiad of the fountainburnt in sunlight that subtly increased its fervors day by day, and itwas no longer beginning to be warm, it was warm, when one morningFerris and Miss Vervain sat on the steps of the terrace, waiting forDon Ippolito to join them at breakfast. 

By this time the painter was well on with the picture of Don Ippolitowhich the first sight of the priest had given him a longing to paint, and he had been just now talking of it with Miss Vervain. 

"But why do you paint him simply as a priest?" she asked. "I shouldthink you would want to make him the centre of some famous or romanticscene, " she added, gravely looking into his eyes as he sat with hishead thrown back against the balustrade. 

"No, I doubt if you _think_, " answered Ferris, "or you'd see thata Venetian priest doesn't need any tawdry accessories. What do youwant? Somebody administering the extreme unction to a victim of theCouncil of Ten? A priest stepping into a confessional at the Frari--tomb of Canova in the distance, perspective of one of the naves, and soforth--with his eye on a pretty devotee coming up to unburden herconscience? I've no patience with the follies people, think and sayabout Venice!"

Florida stared in haughty question at the painter. 

"You're no worse than the rest, " he continued with indifference to heranger at his bluntness. "You all think that there can be no picture ofVenice without a gondola or a Bridge of Sighs in it. Have you ever readthe Merchant of Venice, or Othello? There isn't a boat nor a bridge nora canal mentioned in either of them; and yet they breathe and pulsatewith the very life of Venice. I'm going to try to paint a Venetianpriest so that you'll know him without a bit of conventional Venicenear him. "

"It was Shakespeare who wrote those plays, " said Florida. Ferris bowedin mock suffering from her sarcasm. "You'd better have some sort ofsymbol in your picture of a Venetian priest, or people will wonder whyyou came so far to paint Father O'Brien. "

"I don't say I shall succeed, " Ferris answered. "In fact I've made onefailure already, and I'm pretty well on with a second; but theprinciple is right, all the same. I don't expect everybody to see thedifference between Don Ippolito and Father O'Brien. At any rate, whatI'm going to paint _at_ is the lingering pagan in the man, therenunciation first of the inherited nature, and then of a personalitythat would have enjoyed the world. I want to show that baffledaspiration, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which you catenin his face When he's off his guard, and that suppressed look which isthe characteristic expression of all Austrian Venice. Then, " saidFerris laughing, "T must work in that small suspicion of Jesuit whichthere is in every priest. But it's quite possible I may make a FatherO'Brien of him. "

"You won't make a Don Ippolito of him, " said Florida, after seriousconsideration of his face to see whether he was quite in earnest, "ifyou put all that into him. He has the simplest and openest look in theworld, " she added warmly, "and there's neither pagan, nor martyr, norrebel in it. "

Ferris laughed again. "Excuse me; I don't think you know. I canconvince you. ". .. 

Florida rose, and looking down the garden path said, "He's coming;" andas Don Ippolito drew near, his face lighting up with a joyous andinnocent smile, she continued absently, "he's got on new stockings, anda different coat and hat. "

The stockings were indeed new and the hat was not the accustomed_nicchio_, but a new silk cylinder with a very worldly, curlingbrim. Don Ippolito's coat, also, was of a more mundane cut than thetalare; he wore a waistcoat and small-clothes, meeting the stockings atthe knee with a sprightly buckle. His person showed no traces of thesnuff with which it used to be so plentifully dusted; in fact, he nolonger took snuff in the presence of the ladies. The first week he hadnoted an inexplicable uneasiness in them when he drew forth that bluecotton handkerchief after the solace of a pinch shortly afterwards, being alone with Florida, he saw her give a nervous start at itsappearance. He blushed violently, and put it back into the pocket fromwhich he had half drawn it, and whence it never emerged again in herpresence. The contessina his former pupil had not shown any aversion toDon Ippolito's snuff or his blue handkerchief; but then the contessinahad never rebuked his finger-nails by the tints of rose and ivory withwhich Miss Vervain's hands bewildered him. It was a little droll howanxiously he studied the ways of these Americans, and conformed to themas far as he knew. His English grew rapidly in their society, and ithappened sometimes that the only Italian in the day's lesson was whathe read with Florida, for she always yielded to her mother's wish totalk, and Mrs. Vervain preferred the ease of her native tongue. He wasAmericanizing in that good lady's hands as fast as she could transformhim, and he listened to her with trustful reverence, as to a woman ofstriking though eccentric mind. Yet he seemed finally to refer everypoint to Florida, as if with an intuition of steadier and strongercharacter in her; and now, as he ascended the terrace steps in hismodified costume, he looked intently at her. She swept him from head tofoot with a glance, and then gravely welcomed him with unchangedcountenance. 

At the same moment Mrs. Vervain came out through one of the longwindows, and adjusting her glasses, said with a start, "Why, my dearDon Ippolito, I shouldn't have known you!"

"Indeed, madama?" asked the priest--with a painful smile. "Is it sogreat a change? We can wear this dress as well as the other, if weplease. "

"Why, of course it's very becoming and all that; but it does look soout of character, " Mrs. Vervain said, leading the way to the breakfast-room. "It's like seeing a military man in a civil coat. "

"It must be a great relief to lay aside the uniform now and then, mother, " said Florida, as they sat down. "I can remember that papa usedto be glad to get out of his. "

"Perfectly wild, " assented Mrs. Vervain. "But he never seemed the sameperson. Soldiers and--clergymen--are so much more stylish in their owndress--not stylish, exactly, but taking; don't you know?"

"There, Don Ippolito, " interposed Ferris, "you had better put on yourtalare and your nicchio again. Your _abbate's_ dress isn'tacceptable, you see. "

The painter spoke in Italian, but Don Ippolito answered--with certainblunders which it would be tedious to reproduce--in his patient, conscientious English, half sadly, half playfully, and glancing atFlorida, before he turned to Mrs. Vervain, "You are as rigid as therest of the world, madama. I thought you would like this dress, but itseems that you think it a masquerade. As madamigella says, it is arelief to lay aside the uniform, now and then, for us who fight thespiritual enemies as well as for the other soldiers. There was onetime, when I was younger and in the subdiaconate orders, that I put offthe priest's dress altogether, and wore citizen's clothes, not anabbate's suit like this. We were in Padua, another young priest and I, my nearest and only friend, and for a whole night we walked about thestreets in that dress, meeting the students, as they strolled singingthrough the moonlight; we went to the theatre and to the caffè, --wesmoked cigars, all the time laughing and trembling to think of thetonsure under our hats. But in the morning we had to put on thestockings and the talare and the nicchio again. "

Don Ippolito gave a melancholy laugh. He had thrust the corner of hisnapkin into his collar; seeing that Ferris had not his so, he twitchedit out, and made a feint of its having been all the time in his lap. Every one was silent as if something shocking had been said; Floridalooked with grave rebuke at Don Ippolito, whose story affected Ferrislike that of some girl's adventure in men's clothes. He was in terrorlest Mrs. Vervain should be going to say it was like that; she wasgoing to say something; he made haste to forestall her, and turn thetalk on other things. 

The next day the priest came in his usual dress, and he did not againtry to escape from it. 

VI. 

One afternoon, as Don Ippolito was posing to Perris for his picture ofA Venetian Priest, the painter asked, to make talk, "Have you hit uponthat new explosive yet, which is to utilize your breech-loading cannon?Or are you engaged upon something altogether new?"

"No, " answered the other uneasily, "I have not touched the cannon sincethat day you saw it at my house; and as for other things, I have notbeen able to put my mind to them. I have made a few trifles which Ihave ventured to offer the ladies. "

Ferris had noticed the ingenious reading-desk which Don Ippolito hadpresented to Florida, and the footstool, contrived with springs andhinges so that it would fold up into the compass of an ordinaryportfolio, which Mrs. Vervain carried about with her. 

An odd look, which the painter caught at and missed, came into thepriest's face, as he resumed: "I suppose it is the distraction of mynew occupation, and of the new acquaintances--so very strange to me inevery way--that I have made in your amiable country-women, whichhinders me from going about anything in earnest, now that theirmunificence has enabled me to pursue my aims with greater advantagesthan ever before. But this idle mood will pass, and in the mean time Iam very happy. They are real angels, and madama is a true original. "

"Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar, " said the painter, retiring a fewpaces from his picture, and quizzing it through his half-closed eyes. "She is a woman who has had affliction enough to turn a stronger headthan hers could ever have been, " he added kindly. "But she has the bestheart in the world. In fact, " he burst forth, "she is the mostextraordinary combination of perfect fool and perfect lady I ever saw. "

"Excuse me; I don't understand, " blankly faltered Don Ippolito. 

"No; and I'm afraid I couldn't explain to you, " answered Ferris. 

There was a silence for a time, broken at last by Don Ippolito, whoasked, "Why do you not marry madamigella?"

He seemed not to feel that there was anything out of the way in thequestion, and Ferris was too well used to the childlike directness ofthe most maneuvering of races to be surprised. Yet he was displeased, as he would not have been if Don Ippolito were not a priest. He was notof the type of priests whom the American knew from the prejudice anddistrust of the Italians; he was alienated from his clerical fellows byall the objects of his life, and by a reciprocal dislike. About otherpriests there were various scandals; but Don Ippolito was like thatpretty match-girl of the Piazza of whom it was Venetianly answered, when one asked if so sweet a face were not innocent, "Oh yes, she ismad!" He was of a purity so blameless that he was reputed crack-brainedby the caffè-gossip that in Venice turns its searching light uponwhomever you mention; and from his own association with the man Ferrisperceived in him an apparent single-heartedness such as no man can havebut the rarest of Italians. He was the albino of his species; a graycrow, a white fly; he was really this, or he knew how to seem it withan art far beyond any common deceit. It was the half expectation ofcoming sometime upon the lurking duplicity in Don Ippolito, thatcontinually enfeebled the painter in his attempts to portray hisVenetian priest, and that gave its undecided, unsatisfactory characterto the picture before him--its weak hardness, its provokingsuperficiality. He expressed the traits of melancholy and loss that heimagined in him, yet he always was tempted to leave the picture with atouch of something sinister in it, some airy and subtle shadow ofselfish design. 

He stared hard at Don Ippolito while this perplexity filled his mind, for the hundredth time; then he said stiffly, "I don't know. I don'twant to marry anybody. Besides, " he added, relaxing into a smile ofhelpless amusement, "it's possible that Miss Vervain might not want tomarry me. "

"As to that, " replied Don Ippolito, "you never can tell. All younggirls desire to be married, I suppose, " he continued with a sigh. "Sheis very beautiful, is she not? It is seldom that we see such a blondein Italy. Our blondes are dark; they have auburn hair and blue eyes, but their complexions are thick. Miss Vervain is blonde as the morninglight; the sun's gold is in her hair, his noonday whiteness in herdazzling throat; the flush of his coming is on her lips; she mightutter the dawn!"

"You're a poet, Don Ippolito, " laughed the painter. "What property ofthe sun is in her angry-looking eyes?"

"His fire! Ah, that is her greatest charm! Those strange eyes of hers, they seem full of tragedies. She looks made to be the heroine of somestormy romance; and yet how simply patient and good she is!"

"Yes, " said Ferris, who often responded in English to the priest'sItalian; and he added half musingly in his own tongue, after a moment, "but I don't think it would be safe to count upon her. I'm afraid shehas a bad temper. At any rate, I always expect to see smoke somewherewhen I look at those eyes of hers. She has wonderful self-control, however; and I don't exactly understand why. Perhaps people of strongimpulses have strong wills to overrule them; it seems no more thanfair. "

"Is it the custom, " asked Don Ippolito, after a moment, "for theAmerican young ladies always to address their mammas as _mother_?"

"No; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss Vervain's. It's a littleformality that I should say served to hold Mrs. Vervain in check. "

"Do you mean that it repulses her?"

"Not at all. I don't think I could explain, " said Ferris with a certainair of regretting to have gone so far in comment on the Vervains. Headded recklessly, "Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes does andsays things that embarrass her daughter, and that Miss Vervain seems totry to restrain her?"

"I thought, " returned Don Ippolito meditatively, "that the signorinawas always very tenderly submissive to her mother. "

"Yes, so she is, " said the painter dryly, and looked in annoyance fromthe priest to the picture, and from the picture to the priest. 

After a minute Don Ippolito said, "They must be very rich to live asthey do. "

"I don't know about that, " replied Ferris. "Americans spend and save inways different from the Italians. I dare say the Vervains find Venicevery cheap after London and Paris and Berlin. "

"Perhaps, " said Don Ippolito, "if they were rich you would be in aposition to marry her. "

"I should not marry Miss Vervain for her money, " answered the painter, sharply. 

"No, but if you loved her, the money would enable you to marry her. "

"Listen to me, Don Ippolito. I never said that I loved Miss Vervain, and I don't know how you feel warranted in speaking to me about thematter. Why do you do so?"

"I? Why? I could not but imagine that you must love her. Is thereanything wrong in speaking of such things? Is it contrary to theAmerican custom? I ask pardon from my heart if I have done anythingamiss. "

"There is no offense, ' said the painter, with a laugh, " and I don'twonder you thought I ought to be in love with Miss Vervain. She_is_ beautiful, and I believe she's good. But if men had to marrybecause women were beautiful and good, there isn't one of us could livesingle a day. Besides, I'm the victim of another passion, --I'm laboringunder an unrequited affection for Art. "

"Then you do _not_ love her?" asked Don Ippolito, eagerly. 

"So far as I'm advised at present, no, I don't. "

"It is strange!" said the priest, absently, but with a glowing face. 

He quitted the painter's and walked swiftly homeward with a triumphantbuoyancy of step. A subtle content diffused itself over his face, and ajoyful light burnt in his deep eyes. He sat down before the piano andorgan as he had arranged them, and began to strike their keys inunison; this seemed to him for the first time childish. Then he playedsome lively bars on the piano alone; they sounded too light andtrivial, and he turned to the other instrument. As the plaint of thereeds arose, it filled his sense like a solemn organ-music, andtransfigured the place; the notes swelled to the ample vault of achurch, and at the high altar he was celebrating the mass in hissacerdotal robes. He suddenly caught his fingers away from the keys;his breast heaved, he hid his face in his hands. 

VII. 

Ferris stood cleaning his palette, after Don Ippolito was gone, scraping the colors together with his knife and neatly buttering themon the palette's edge, while he wondered what the priest meant bypumping him in that way. Nothing, he supposed, and yet it was odd. Ofcourse she had a bad temper. .. . 

He put on his hat and coat and strolled vaguely forth, and in an houror two came by a roundabout course to the gondola station nearest hisown house. There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation of theboats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring for his custom, hestepped into one and ordered the man to row him to a gate on a smallcanal opposite. The gate opened, at his ringing, into the garden of theVervains. 

Florida was sitting alone on a bench near the fountain. It was nolonger a ruined fountain; the broken-nosed naiad held a pipe above herhead, and from this rose a willowy spray high enough to catch somecolors of the sunset then striking into the garden, and fell again in amist around her, making her almost modest. 

"What does this mean?" asked Ferris, carelessly taking the young girl'shand. "I thought this lady's occupation was gone. "

"Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the landlord, and he agreed topay for filling the tank that feeds it, " said Florida. "He seems tothink it a hard bargain, for he only lets it play about half an hour aday. But he says it's very ingeniously mended. He didn't believe itcould be done. It _is_ pretty. 

"It is, indeed, " said the painter, with a singular desire, goingthrough him like a pang, likewise to do something for Miss Vervain. "Did you go to Don Ippolito's house the other day, to see his traps?"

"Yes; we were very much interested. I was sorry that I knew so littleabout inventions. Do you think there are many practical ideas amongsthis things? I hope there are--he seemed so proud and pleased to showthem. Shouldn't you think he had some real inventive talent?"

"Yes, I think he has; but I know as little about the matter as you do. "He sat down beside her, and picking up a twig from the gravel, pulledthe bark off in silence. Then, "Miss Vervain, " he said, knitting hisbrows, as he always did when he had something on his conscience andmeant to ease it at any cost, "I'm the dog that fetches a bone andcarries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over with you, the other day, andnow I've been talking you over with him. But I've the grace to say thatI'm ashamed of myself. "

"Why need you be ashamed?" asked Florida. "You said no harm of him. Didyou of us?"

"Not exactly; but I don't think it was quite my business to discuss youat all. I think you can't let people alone too much. For my part, if Itry to characterize my friends, I fail to do them perfect justice, ofcourse; and yet the imperfect result remains representative of them inmy mind; it limits them and fixes them; and I can't get them back againinto the undefined and the ideal where they really belong. One oughtnever to speak of the faults of one's friends: it mutilates them; theycan never be the same afterwards. "

"So you have been talking of my faults, " said Florida, breathingquickly. "Perhaps you could tell me of them to my face. "

"I should have to say that unfairness was one of them. But that iscommon to the whole sex. I never said I was talking of your faults. Ideclared against doing so, and you immediately infer that my motive isremorse. I don't know that you have any faults. They may be virtues indisguise. There is a charm even in unfairness. Well, I did Bay that Ithought you had a quick temper, "--

Florida colored violently. 

--"but now I see that I was mistaken, " said Ferris with a laugh. 

"May I ask what else you said?" demanded the young girl haughtily. 

"Oh, that would be a betrayal of confidence, " said Ferris, unaffectedby her hauteur. 

"Then why have you mentioned the matter to me at all?"

"I wanted to clear my conscience, I suppose, and sin again. I wanted totalk with you about Don Ippolito. "

Florida looked with perplexity at Ferris's face, while her own slowlycooled and paled. 

"What did you want to say of him?" she asked calmly. 

"I hardly know how to put it: that he puzzles me, to begin with. Youknow I feel somewhat responsible for him. "

"Yes. "

"Of course, I never should have thought of him, if it hadn't been foryour mother's talk that morning coming back from San Lazzaro. "

"I know, " said Florida, with a faint blush. 

"And yet, don't you see, it was as much a fancy of mine, a weakness forthe man himself, as the desire to serve your mother, that prompted meto bring him to you. "

"Yes, I see, " answered the young girl. 

"I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian prejudice against priests. All my friends here--they're mostly young men with the modern Italianideas, or old liberals--hate and despise the priests They believe thatpriests are full of guile and deceit, that they are spies for theAustrians, and altogether evil. "

"Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most secret thoughts to thepolice, " said Florida, whose look of rising alarm relaxed into a smile. 

"Oh, " cried the painter, "how you leap to conclusions! I neverintimated that Don Ippolito was a spy. On the contrary, it was hisdifference from other priests that made me think of him for a moment. He seems to be as much cut off from the church as from the world. Andyet he is a priest, with a priest's education. What if I should havebeen altogether mistaken? He is either one of the openest souls in theworld, as you have insisted, or he is one of the closest. "

"I should not be afraid of him in any case, " said Florida; "but I can'tbelieve any wrong of him. "

Ferris frowned in annoyance. "I don't want you to; I don't, myself. I've bungled the matter as I might have known I would. I was trying toput into words an undefined uneasiness of mine, a quite formless desireto have you possessed of the whole case as it had come up in my mind. I've made a mess of it, " said Ferris rising, with a rueful air. "Besides, I ought to have spoken to Mrs. Vervain. "

"Oh no, " cried Florida, eagerly, springing to her feet beside him. "Don't! Little things wear upon my mother, so. I'm glad you didn'tspeak to her. I don't misunderstand you, I think; I expressed myselfbadly, " she added with an anxious face. "I thank you very much. What doyou want me to do?"

By Ferris's impulse they both began to move down the garden path towardthe water-gate. The sunset had faded out of the fountain, but it stilllit the whole heaven, in whose vast blue depths hung light whiffs ofpinkish cloud, as ethereal as the draperies that floated after MissVervain as she walked with a splendid grace beside him, no awkwardness, now, or self-constraint in her. As she turned to Ferris, and asked inher deep tones, to which some latent feeling imparted a slight tremor, "What do you want me to do?" the sense of her willingness to be biddenby him gave him a delicious thrill. He looked at the superb creature, so proud, so helpless; so much a woman, so much a child; and he caughthis breath before he answered. Her gauzes blew about his feet in thelight breeze that lifted the foliage; she was a little near-sighted, and in her eagerness she drew closer to him, fixing her eyes full uponhis with a bold innocence. "Good heavens! Miss Vervain, " he cried, witha sudden blush, "it isn't a serious matter. I'm a fool to have spokento you. Don't do anything. Let things go on as before. It isn't for meto instruct you. "

"I should have been very glad of your advice, " she said with adisappointed, almost wounded manner, keeping her eyes upon him. "Itseems to me we are always going wrong"--

She stopped short, with a flush and then a pallor. 

Ferris returned her look with one of comical dismay. This apparentreadiness of Miss Vervain's to be taken command of, daunted him, onsecond thoughts. "I wish you'd dismiss all my stupid talk from yourmind, " he said. "I feel as if I'd been guiltily trying to set youagainst a man whom I like very much and have no reason not to trust, and who thinks me so much his friend that he couldn't dream of mymaking any sort of trouble for him. It would break his heart, I'mafraid, if you treated him in a different way from that in which you'vetreated him till now. It's really touching to listen to his gratitudeto you and your mother. It's only conceivable on the ground that he hasnever had friends before in the world. He seems like another man, orthe same man come to life. And it isn't his fault that he's a priest. Isuppose, " he added, with a sort of final throe, "that a Venetian familywouldn't use him with the frank hospitality you've shown, not becausethey distrusted him at all, perhaps, but because they would be afraidof other Venetian tongues. "

This ultimate drop of venom, helplessly distilled, did not seem torankle in Miss Vervain's mind. She walked now with her face turned fromhis, and she answered coldly, "We shall not be troubled. We don't carefor Venetian tongues. "

They were at the gate. "Good-by, " said Ferris, abruptly, "I'm going. "

"Won't you wait and see my mother?" asked Florida, with her awkwardself-constraint again upon her. 

"No, thanks, " said Ferris, gloomily. "I haven't time. I just dropped infor a moment, to blast an innocent man's reputation, and destroy ayoung lady's peace of mind. "

"Then you needn't go, yet, " answered Florida, coldly, "for you haven'tsucceeded. "

"Well, I've done my worst, " returned Ferris, drawing the bolt. 

He went away, hanging his head in amazement and disgust at himself forhis clumsiness and bad taste. It seemed to him a contemptible part, first to embarrass them with Don Ippolito's acquaintance, if it was anembarrassment, and then try to sneak out of his responsibility by thesetardy cautions; and if it was not going to be an embarrassment, it wasfolly to have approached the matter at all. 

What had he wanted to do, and with what motive? He hardly knew. As hebattled the ground over and over again, nothing comforted him save thethought that, bad as it was to have spoken to Miss Vervain, it musthave been infinitely worse to speak to her mother. 

VIII. 

It was late before Ferris forgot his chagrin in sleep, and when he wokethe next morning, the sun was making the solid green blinds at hiswindow odorous of their native pine woods with its heat, and thrustinga golden spear at the heart of Don Ippolito's effigy where he had leftit on the easel. 

Marina brought a letter with his coffee. The letter was from Mrs. Vervain, and it entreated him to come to lunch at twelve, and then jointhem on an excursion, of which they had all often talked, up the Canalof the Brenta. "Don Ippolito has got his permission--think of his notbeing able to go to the mainland without the Patriarch's leave! and cango with us to-day. So I try to make this hasty arrangement. You_must_ come--it all depends upon you. "

"Yes, so it seems, " groaned the painter, and went. 

In the garden he found Don Ippolito and Florida, at the fountain wherehe had himself parted with her the evening before; and he observed witha guilty relief that Don Ippolito was talking to her in the happyunconsciousness habitual with him. 

Florida cast at the painter a swift glance of latent appeal andintelligence, which he refused, and in the same instant she met himwith another look, as if she now saw him for the first time, and gavehim her hand in greeting. It was a beautiful hand; he could not helpworshipping its lovely forms, and the lily whiteness and softness ofthe back, the rose of the palm and finger-tips. 

She idly resumed the great Venetian fan which hung from her waist by achain. "Don Ippolito has been talking about the vitteggiatura on theBrenta in the old days, " she explained. 

"Oh, yes, " said the painter, "they used to have merry times in thevillas then, and it was worth while being a priest, or at least anabbate di casa. I should think you would sigh for a return of thosegood old days, Don Ippolito. Just imagine, if you were abbate di casawith some patrician family about the close of the last century, youmight be the instructor, companion, and spiritual adviser ofIllustrissima at the theatres, card-parties, and masquerades, allwinter; and at this season, instead of going up the Brenta for a day'spleasure with us barbarous Yankees, you might be setting out withIllustrissima and all the 'Strissimi and 'Strissime, big and little, for a spring villeggiatura there. You would be going in a gilded barge, with songs and fiddles and dancing, instead of a common gondola, andyou would stay a month, walking, going to parties and caffès, drinkingchocolate and lemonade gaming, sonneteering, and butterflying aboutgenerally. "

"It was doubtless a beautiful life, " answered the priest, with simpleindifference. "But I never have thought of it with regret, because Ihave been preoccupied with other ideas than those of social pleasures, though perhaps they were no wiser. "

Florida had watched Don Ippolito's face while Ferris was speaking, andshe now asked gravely, "But don't you think their life nowadays is morebecoming to the clergy?"

"Why, madamigella? What harm was there in those gayeties? I suppose thebad features of the old life are exaggerated to us. "

"They couldn't have been worse than the amusements of the hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-swearing, fox-hunting English parsons aboutthe same time, " said Ferris. "Besides, the abbate di casa had a charm ofhis own, the charm of all _rococo_ things, which, whatever you maysay of them, are somehow elegant and refined, or at least refer toelegance and refinement. I don't say they're ennobling, but they'refascinating. I don't respect them, but I love them. When I think aboutthe past of Venice, I don't care so much to see any of the heroicallyhistorical things; but I should like immensely to have looked in at theRidotto, when the place was at its gayest with wigs and masks, hoopsand small-clothes, fans and rapiers, bows and courtesies, whispers andglances. I dare say I should have found Don Ippolito there in somebecoming disguise. "

Florida looked from the painter to the priest and back to the painter, as Ferris spoke, and then she turned a little anxiously toward theterrace, and a shadow slipped from her face as her mother came rustlingdown the steps, catching at her drapery and shaking it into place. Theyoung girl hurried to meet her, lifted her arms for what promised anembrace, and with firm hands set the elder lady's bonnet straight withher forehead. 

"I'm always getting it on askew, " Mrs. Vervain said for greeting toFerris. "How do you do, Don Ippolito? But I suppose you think I've keptyou long enough to get it on straight for once. So I have. I _am_a fuss, and I don't deny it. At my time of life, it's much harder tomake yourself shipshape than it is when you're younger. I tell Floridathat anybody would take _her_ for the _old_ lady, she does seemto give so little care to getting up an appearance. "

"And yet she has the effect of a stylish young person in the bloom ofyouth, " observed Ferris, with a touch of caricature. 

"We had better lunch with our things on, " said Mrs. Vervain, "and thenthere needn't be any delay in starting. I thought we would have ithere, " she added, as Nina and the house-servant appeared with trays ofdishes and cups. "So that we can start in a real picnicky spirit. Iknew you'd think it a womanish lunch, Mr. Ferris--Don Ippolito likeswhat we do--and so I've provided you with a chicken salad; and I'mgoing to ask you for a taste of it; I'm really hungry. "

There was salad for all, in fact; and it was quite one o'clock beforethe lunch was ended, and wraps of just the right thickness and thinnesswere chosen, and the party were comfortably placed under the stripedlinen canopy of the gondola, which they had from a public station, thehouse-gondola being engaged that day. They rowed through the narrowcanal skirting the garden out into the expanse before the Giudecca, andthen struck across the lagoon towards Fusina, past the island-church ofSan Giorgio in Alga, whose beautiful tower has flushed and darkened inso many pictures of Venetian sunsets, and past the Austrian lagoonforts with their coronets of guns threatening every point, and theCroatian sentinels pacing to and fro on their walls. They stopped longenough at one of the customs barges to declare to the swarthy, amiableofficers the innocence of their freight, and at the mouth of the Canalof the Brenta they paused before the station while a policeman came outand scanned them. He bowed to Don Ippolito's cloth, and then they beganto push up the sluggish canal, shallow and overrun with weeds andmosses, into the heart of the land. 

The spring, which in Venice comes in the softening air and theperpetual azure of the heavens, was renewed to their senses in all itsmiraculous loveliness. The garden of the Vervains had indeed confessedit in opulence of leaf and bloom, but there it seemed somehow only likea novel effect of the artifice which had been able to create a gardenin that city of stone and sea. Here a vernal world suddenly openedbefore them, with wide-stretching fields of green under a dome ofperfect blue; against its walls only the soft curves of far-off hillswere traced, and near at hand the tender forms of full-foliaged trees. The long garland of vines that festoons all Italy seemed to begin inthe neighboring orchards; the meadows waved their tall grasses in thesun, and broke in poppies as the sea-waves break in iridescent spray;the well-grown maize shook its gleaming blades in the light; thepoplars marched in stately procession on either side of the straight, white road to Padua, till they vanished in the long perspective. Theblossoms had fallen from the trees many weeks before, but the air wasfull of the vague sweetness of the perfect spring, which here and theregathered and defined itself as the spicy odor of the grass cut on theshore of the canal, and drying in the mellow heat of the sun. 

The voyagers spoke from time to time of some peculiarity of the villasthat succeeded each other along the canal. Don Ippolito knew a few ofthem, the gondoliers knew others; but after all, their names werenothing. These haunts of old-time splendor and idleness weary ofthemselves, and unable to escape, are sadder than anything in Venice, and they belonged, as far as the Americans were concerned, to a worldas strange as any to which they should go in another life, --the worldof a faded fashion and an alien history. Some of the villas were keptin a sort of repair; some were even maintained in the state of old; butthe most showed marks of greater or less decay, and here and there onewas falling to ruin. They had gardens about them, tangled and wild-grown; a population of decrepit statues in the rococo taste strolled intheir walks or simpered from their gates. Two or three houses seemed tobe occupied; the rest stood empty, each

 "Close latticed to the brooding heat, And silent in its dusty vines. "

The pleasure-party had no fixed plan for the day further than to ascendthe canal, and by and by take a carriage at some convenient village anddrive to the famous Villa Pisani at Strà. 

"These houses are very well, " said Don Ippolito, who had visited thevilla once, and with whom it had remained a memory almost as signal asthat night in Padua when he wore civil dress, "but it is at Strà yousee something really worthy of the royal splendor of the patricians ofVenice. Royal? The villa is now one of the palaces of the ex-Emperor ofAustria, who does not find it less imperial than his other palaces. "Don Ippolito had celebrated the villa at Strà in this strain ever sincethey had spoken of going up the Brenta: now it was the magnificentconservatories and orangeries that he sang, now the vast garden withits statued walks between rows of clipt cedars and firs, now thestables with their stalls for numberless horses, now the palace itselfwith its frescoed halls and treasures of art and vertu. His enthusiasmfor the villa at Strà had become an amiable jest with the Americans. Ferris laughed at his fresh outburst he declared himself tired of thegondola, and he asked Florida to disembark with him and walk under thetrees of a pleasant street running on one side between the villas andthe canal. "We are going to find something much grander than theVilla Pisani, " he boasted, with a look at Don Ippolito. 

As they sauntered along the path together, they came now and then to astately palace like that of the Contarini, where the lions, that givetheir name to one branch of the family, crouch in stone before thegrand portal; but most of the houses were interesting only from theirunstoried possibilities to the imagination. They were generally ofstucco, and glared with fresh whitewash through the foliage of theirgardens. When a peasant's cottage broke their line, it gave, with itsbarns and straw-stacks and its beds of pot-herbs, a homely relief fromthe decaying gentility of the villas. 

"What a pity, Miss Vervain, " said the painter, "that the blessings ofthis world should be so unequally divided! Why should all thissketchable adversity be lavished upon the neighborhood of a city thatis so rich as Venice in picturesque dilapidation? It's pretty hard onus Americans, and forces people of sensibility into exile. Whatwouldn't cultivated persons give for a stretch of this street in thesuburbs of Boston, or of your own Providence? I suppose the New Yorkerswill be setting up something of the kind one of these days, and givingit a French name--they'll call it _Aux bords du Brenta_. There wasone of them carried back a gondola the other day to put on a pond intheir new park. But the worst of it is, you can't take home thesentiment of these things. "

"I thought it was the business of painters to send home the sentimentof them in pictures, " said Florida. 

Ferris talked to her in this way because it was his way of talking; italways surprised him a little that she entered into the spirit of it;he was not quite sure that she did; he sometimes thought she waitedtill she could seize upon a point to turn against him, and so giveherself the air of having comprehended the whole. He laughed: "Oh yes, a poor little fragmentary, faded-out reproduction of their sentiment--which is 'as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine, ' whencompared with the real thing. Suppose I made a picture of this verybit, ourselves in the foreground, looking at the garden over therewhere that amusing Vandal of an owner has just had his statues paintedwhite: would our friends at home understand it? A whole history must beleft unexpressed. I could only hint at an entire situation. Of course, people with a taste for olives would get the flavor; but even theywould wonder that I chose such an unsuggestive bit. Why, it is just themost maddeningly suggestive thing to be found here! And if I may put itmodestly, for my share in it, I think we two young Americans looking onat this supreme excess of the rococo, are the very essence of thesentiment of the scene; but what would the honored connoisseurs--thegood folks who get themselves up on Ruskin and try so honestly hard tohave some little ideas about art--make of us? To be sure they mightjustifiably praise the grace of your pose, if I were so lucky as tocatch it, and your way of putting your hand under the elbow of the armthat holds your parasol, "--Florida seemed disdainfully to keep herattitude, and the painter smiled, --"but they wouldn't know what it allmeant, and couldn't imagine that we were inspired by this rascallylittle villa to sigh longingly over the wicked past. "

"Excuse me, " interrupted Florida, with a touch of trouble in her proudmanner, "I'm not sighing over it, for one, and I don't want it back. I'm glad that I'm American and that there is no past for me. I can'tunderstand how you and Don Ippolito can speak so tolerantly of what noone can respect, " she added, in almost an aggrieved tone. 

If Miss Vervain wanted to turn the talk upon Don Ippolito, Ferris by nomeans did; he had had enough of that subject yesterday; he got aslightly away from it as he could. 

"Oh, Don Ippolito's a pagan, I tell you; and I'm a painter, and therococo is my weakness. I wish I could paint it, but I can't; I'm ahundred years too late. I couldn't even paint myself in the act ofsentimentalizing it. "

While he talked, he had been making a few lines in a small pocketsketch-book, with a furtive glance or two at Florida. When theyreturned to the boat, he busied himself again with the book, andpresently he handed it to Mrs. Vervain. 

"Why, it's Florida!" cried the lady. "How very nicely you do sketch, Mr. Ferris. "

"Thanks, Mrs. Vervain; you're always flattering me. "

"No, but seriously. I _wish_ that I had paid more attention to mydrawing when I was a girl. And now, Florida--she won't touch a pencil. I wish you'd talk to her, Mr. Ferris. "

"Oh, people who are pictures needn't trouble themselves to bepainters, " said Ferris, with a little burlesque. 

Mrs. Vervain began to look at the sketch through her tubed hand; thepainter made a grimace. "But you've made her too proud, Mr. Ferris. Shedoesn't look like that. "

"Yes she does--to those unworthy of her kindness. I have taken MissVervain in the act of scorning the rococo, and its humble admirer, me, with it. "

"I'm sure _I_ don't know what you mean, Mr. Ferris; but I can'tthink that this proud look is habitual with Florida; and I've heardpeople say--very good judges--that an artist oughtn't to perpetuate atemporary expression. Something like that. "

"It can't be helped now, Mrs. Vervain: the sketch is irretrievablyimmortal. I'm sorry, but it's too late. "

"Oh, stuff! As if you couldn't turn up the corners of the mouth alittle. Or something. "

"And give her the appearance of laughing at me? Never!"

"Don Ippolito, " said Mrs. Vervain, turning to the priest, who had beenlistening intently to all this trivial talk, "what do you think of thissketch?"

He took the book with an eager hand, and perused the sketch as iftrying to read some secret there. After a minute he handed it back witha light sigh, apparently of relief, but said nothing. 

"Well?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"Oh! I ask pardon. No, it isn't my idea of madamigella. It seems to methat her likeness must be sketched in color. Those lines are true, butthey need color to subdue them; they go too far, they are more thantrue. "

"You're quite right, Don Ippolito, " said Ferris. 

"Then _you_ don't think she always has this proud look?" pursuedMrs. Vervain. The painter fancied that Florida quelled in herself amovement of impatience; he looked at her with an amused smile. 

"Not always, no, " answered Don Ippolito. 

"Sometimes her face expresses the greatest meekness in the world. "

"But not at the present moment, " thought Ferris, fascinated by thestare of angry pride which the girl bent upon the unconscious priest. 

"Though I confess that I should hardly know how to characterize herhabitual expression, " added Don Ippolito. 

"Thanks, " said Florida, peremptorily. "I'm tired of the subject; itisn't an important one. "

"Oh yes it is, my dear, " said Mrs. Vervain. "At least it's important tome, if it isn't to you; for I'm your mother, and really, if I thoughtyou looked like this, as a general thing, to a casual observer, Ishould consider it a reflection upon myself. " Ferris gave a provokinglaugh, as she continued sweetly, "I must insist, Don Ippolito: now didyou ever see Florida look so?"

The girl leaned back, and began to wave her fan slowly to and frobefore her face. 

"I never saw her look so with you, dear madama, " said the priest withan anxious glance at Florida, who let her fan fall folded into her lap, and sat still. He went on with priestly smoothness, and a touch ofsomething like invoked authority, such as a man might show who coulddispense indulgences and inflict penances. "No one could help seeingher devotedness to you, and I have admired from the first an obedienceand tenderness that I have never known equaled. In all her relations toyou, madamigella has seemed to me"--

Florida started forward. "You are not asked to comment on my behaviorto my mother; you are not invited to speak of my conduct at all!" sheburst out with sudden violence, her visage flaming, and her blue eyesburning upon Don Ippolito, who shrank from the astonishing rudeness asfrom a blow in the face. "What is it to you how I treat my mother?"

She sank back again upon the cushions, and opening the fan with a clashswept it swiftly before her. 

"Florida!" said her mother gravely. 

Ferris turned away in cold disgust, like one who has witnessed acruelty done to some helpless thing. Don Ippolito's speech was notfortunate at the best, but it might have come from a foreigner'smisapprehension, and at the worst it was good-natured and well-meant. "The girl is a perfect brute, as I thought in the beginning, " thepainter said to himself. "How could I have ever thought differently? Ishall have to tell Don Ippolito that I'm ashamed of her, and disclaimall responsibility. Pah! I wish I was out of this. "

The pleasure of the day was dead. It could not rally from that stroke. They went on to Strà, as they had planned, but the glory of the VillaPisani was eclipsed for Don Ippolito. He plainly did not know what todo. He did not address Florida again, whose savagery he would notprobably have known how to resent if he had wished to resent it. Mrs. Vervain prattled away to him with unrelenting kindness; Ferris keptnear him, and with affectionate zeal tried to make him talk of thevilla, but neither the frescoes, nor the orangeries, nor the green-houses, nor the stables, nor the gardens could rouse him from thelistless daze in which he moved, though Ferris found them all aswonderful as he had said. Amidst this heavy embarrassment no one seemedat ease but the author of it. She did not, to be sure, speak to DonIppolito, but she followed her mother as usual with her assiduouscares, and she appeared tranquilly unconscious of the sarcasticcivility with which Ferris rendered her any service. It was late in theafternoon when they got back to their boat and began to descend thecanal towards Venice, and long before they reached Fusina the day hadpassed. A sunset of melancholy red, streaked with level lines of murkycloud, stretched across the flats behind them, and faintly tinged withits reflected light the eastern horizon which the towers and domes ofVenice had not yet begun to break. The twilight came, and then throughthe overcast heavens the moon shone dim; a light blossomed here andthere in the villas, distant voices called musically; a cow lowed, adog barked; the rich, sweet breath of the vernal land mingled its odorswith the sultry air of the neighboring lagoon. The wayfarers spokelittle; the time hung heavy on all, no doubt; to Ferris it was a burdenalmost intolerable to hear the creak of the oars and the breathing ofthe gondoliers keeping time together. At last the boat stopped in frontof the police-station in Fusina; a soldier with a sword at his side anda lantern in his hand came out and briefly parleyed with thegondoliers; they stepped ashore, and he marched them into the stationbefore him. 

"We have nothing left to wish for now, " said Ferris, breaking into anironical laugh. 

"What does it all mean?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"I think I had better go see. "

"We will go with you, " said Mrs. Vervain. 

"Pazienza!" replied Ferris. 

The ladies rose; but Don Ippolito remained seated. "Aren't you goingtoo, Don Ippolito?" asked Mrs. Vervain. 

"Thanks, madama; but I prefer to stay here. "

Lamentable cries and shrieks, as if the prisoners had immediately beenput to the torture, came from the station as Ferris opened the door. Alamp of petroleum lighted the scene, and shone upon the figures of twofishermen, who bewailed themselves unintelligibly in the vibrantaccents of Chiozza, and from time to time advanced upon the gondoliers, and shook their heads and beat their breasts at them, A few police-guards reclined upon benches about the room, and surveyed the spectaclewith mild impassibility. 

Ferris politely asked one of them the cause of the detention. 

"Why, you see, signore, " answered the guard amiably, "these honest menaccuse your gondoliers of having stolen a rope out of their boat atDolo. "

"It was my blood, you know!" howled the elder of the fishermen, tossinghis arms wildly abroad, "it was my own heart, " he cried, letting thelast vowel die away and rise again in mournful refrain, while he staredtragically into Ferris's face. 

"What _is_ the matter?" asked Mrs. Vervain, putting up herglasses, and trying with graceful futility to focus the melodrama. 

"Nothing, " said Ferris; "our gondoliers have had the heart's blood ofthis respectable Dervish; that is to say, they have stolen a ropebelonging to him. "

"_Our_ gondoliers! I don't believe it. They've no right to keep ushere all night. Tell them you're the American consul. "

"I'd rather not try my dignity on these underlings, Mrs. Vervain;there's no American squadron here that I could order to bombard Fusina, if they didn't mind me. But I'll see what I can do further in qualityof courteous foreigner. Can you perhaps tell me how long you will beobliged to detain us here?" he asked of the guard again. 

"I am very sorry to detain you at all, signore. But what can I do? Thecommissary is unhappily absent. He may be here soon. "

The guard renewed his apathetic contemplation of the gondoliers, whodid not speak a word; the windy lamentation of the fishermen rose andfell fitfully. Presently they went out of doors and poured forth theirwrongs to the moon. 

The room was close, and with some trouble Ferris persuaded Mrs. Vervainto return to the gondola, Florida seconding his arguments with gentlegood sense. 

It seemed a long time till the commissary came, but his cominginstantly simplified the situation. Perhaps because he had never beenable to befriend a consul in trouble before, he befriended Ferris tothe utmost. He had met him with rather a browbeating air; but after aglance at his card, he gave a kind of roar of deprecation and apology. He had the ladies and Don Ippolito in out of the gondola, and led themto an upper chamber, where he made them all repose their honoredpersons upon his sofas. He ordered up his housekeeper to make themcoffee, which he served with his own hands, excusing its hurriedfeebleness, and he stood by, rubbing his palms together and smiling, while they refreshed themselves. 

"They need never tell me again that the Austrians are tyrants, " saidMrs. Vervain in undertone to the consul. 

It was not easy for Ferris to remind his host of the malefactors; buthe brought himself to this ungraciousness. The commissary beggedpardon, and asked him to accompany him below, where he confronted theaccused and the accusers. The tragedy was acted over again with blood-curdling effectiveness by the Chiozzotti; the gondoliers maintainingthe calm of conscious innocence. 

Ferris felt outraged by the trumped-up charge against them. 

"Listen, you others the prisoners, " said the commissary. "Your padroneis anxious to return to Venice, and I wish to inflict no furtherdispleasures upon him. Restore their rope to these honest men, and goabout your business. "

The injured gondoliers spoke in low tones together; then one of themshrugged his shoulders and went out. He came back in a moment and laida rope before the commissary. 

"Is that the rope?" he asked. "We found it floating down the canal, andpicked it up that we might give it to the rightful owner. But now Iwish to heaven we had let it sink to the bottom of the sea. "

"Oh, a beautiful story!" wailed the Chiozzoti. They flung themselvesupon the rope, and lugged it off to their boat; and the gondoliers wentout, too. 

The commissary turned to Ferris with an amiable smile. "I am sorry thatthose rogues should escape, " said the American. 

"Oh, " said the Italian, "they are poor fellows it is a little matter; Iam glad to have served you. "

He took leave of his involuntary guests with effusion, following themwith a lantern to the gondola. 

Mrs. Vervain, to whom Ferris gave an account of this trial as they setout again on their long-hindered return, had no mind save for themagical effect of his consular quality upon the commissary, and accusedhim of a vain and culpable modesty. 

"Ah, " said the diplomatist, "there's nothing like knowing just when toproduce your dignity. There are some officials who know too little, --like those guards; and there are some who know too much, --like thecommissary's superiors. But he is just in that golden mean of ignorancewhere he supposes a consul is a person of importance. "

Mrs. Vervain disputed this, and Ferris submitted in silence. Presently, as they skirted the shore to get their bearings for the route acrossthe lagoon, a fierce voice in Venetian shouted from the darkness, "Indrio, indrio!" (Back, back!) and a gleam of the moon through thepale, watery clouds revealed the figure of a gendarme on the nearestpoint of land. The gondoliers bent to their oars, and sent the boatswiftly out into the lagoon. 

"There, for example, is a person who would be quite insensible to mygreatness, even if I had the consular seal in my pocket. To him we arepossible smugglers; [Footnote: Under the Austrians, Venice was a freeport but everything carried there to the mainland was liable to duty. ]and I must say, " he continued, taking out his watch, and staring hardat it, "that if I were a disinterested person, and heard his suspicionmet with the explanation that we were a little party out here forpleasure at half past twelve P. M. , I should say he was right. At anyrate we won't engage him in controversy. Quick, quick!" he added to thegondoliers, glancing at the receding shore, and then at the first ofthe lagoon forts which they were approaching. A dim shape moved alongthe top of the wall, and seemed to linger and scrutinize them. As theydrew nearer, the challenge, "_Wer da?_" rang out. 

The gondoliers eagerly answered with the one word of German known totheir craft, "_Freunde_, " and struggled to urge the boat forward;the oar of the gondolier in front slipped from the high rowlock, andfell out of his hand into the water. The gondola lurched, and thensuddenly ran aground on the shallow. The sentry halted, dropped his gunfrom his shoulder, and ordered them to go on, while the gondoliersclamored back in the high key of fear, and one of them screamed out tohis passengers to do something, saying that, a few weeks before, asentinel had fired upon a fisherman and killed him. 

"What's that he's talking about?" demanded Mrs. Vervain. "If we don'tget on, it will be that man's duty to fire on us; he has no choice, "she said, nerved and interested by the presence of this danger. 

The gondoliers leaped into the water and tried to push the boat off. Itwould not move, and without warning, Don Ippolito, who had sat silentsince they left Fusina, stepped over the side of the gondola, andthrusting an oar under its bottom lifted it free of the shallow. 

"Oh, how very unnecessary!" cried Mrs. Vervain, as the priest and thegondoliers clambered back into the boat. "He will take his death ofcold. "

"It's ridiculous, " said Ferris. "You ought to have told these worthlessrascals what to do, Don Ippolito. You've got yourself wet for nothing. It's too bad!"

"It's nothing, " said Don Ippolito, taking his seat on the little prowdeck, and quietly dripping where the water would not incommode theothers. 

"Oh, here!" cried Mrs. Vervain, gathering some shawls together, "makehim wrap those about him. He'll die, I know he will--with that reekingskirt of his. If you must go into the water, I wish you had worn yourabbate's dress. How _could_ you, Don Ippolito?"

The gondoliers set their oars, but before they had given a stroke, theywere arrested by a sharp "Halt!" from the fort. Another figure hadjoined the sentry, and stood looking at them. 

"Well, " said Ferris, "_now_ what, I wonder? That's an officer. IfI had a little German about me, I might state the situation to him. "

He felt a light touch on his arm. "I can speak German, " said Floridatimidly. 

"Then you had better speak it now, " said Ferris. 

She rose to her feet, and in a steady voice briefly explained the wholeaffair. The figures listened motionless; then the last comer politelyreplied, begging her to be in no uneasiness, made her a shadowy salute, and vanished. The sentry resumed his walk, and took no further noticeof them. 

"Brava!" said Ferris, while Mrs. Vervain babbled her satisfaction, "Iwill buy a German Ollendorff to-morrow. The language is indispensableto a pleasure excursion in the lagoon. "

Florida made no reply, but devoted herself to restoring her mother tothat state of defense against the discomforts of the time and place, which the common agitation had impaired. She seemed to have no sense ofthe presence of any one else. Don Ippolito did not speak again save toprotect himself from the anxieties and reproaches of Mrs. Vervain, renewed and reiterated at intervals. She drowsed after a while, andwhenever she woke she thought they had just touched her own landing. Byfits it was cloudy and moonlight; they began to meet peasants' boatsgoing to the Rialto market; at last, they entered the Canal of theZattere, then they slipped into a narrow way, and presently stopped atMrs. Vervain's gate; this time she had not expected it. Don Ippolitogave her his hand, and entered the garden with her, while Ferrislingered behind with Florida, helping her put together the wraps strewnabout the gondola. 

"Wait!" she commanded, as they moved up the garden walk. "I want tospeak with you about Don Ippolito. What shall I do to him for myrudeness? You _must_ tell me--you _shall_, " she said in a fiercewhisper, gripping the arm which Ferris had given to help her upthe landing-stairs. "You are--older than I am!"

"Thanks. I was afraid you were going to say wiser. I should think yourown sense of justice, your own sense of"--

"Decency. Say it, say it!" cried the girl passionately; "it wasindecent, indecent--that was it!"

--"would tell you what to do, " concluded the painter dryly. 

She flung away the arm to which she had been clinging, and ran to wherethe priest stood with her mother at the foot of the terrace stairs. "Don Ippolito, " she cried, "I want to tell you that I am sorry; I wantto ask your pardon--how can you ever forgive me?--for what I said. "

She instinctively stretched her hand towards him. 

"Oh!" said the priest, with an indescribable long, trembling sigh. Hecaught her hand in his held it tight, and then pressed it for aninstant against his breast. 

Ferris made a little start forward. 

"Now, that's right, Florida, " said her mother, as the four stood in thepale, estranging moonlight. "I'm sure Don Ippolito can't cherish anyresentment. If he does, he must come in and wash it out with a glass ofwine--that's a good old fashion. I want you to have the wine at anyrate, Don Ippolito; it'll keep you from taking cold. You really must. "

"Thanks, madama; I cannot lose more time, now; I must go home at once. Good night. "

Before Mrs. Vervain could frame a protest, or lay hold of him, he bowedand hurried out of the land-gate. 

"How perfectly absurd for him to get into the water in that way, " shesaid, looking mechanically in the direction in which he had vanished. 

"Well, Mrs. Vervain, it isn't best to be too grateful to people, " saidFerris, "but I think we must allow that if we were in any danger, sticking there in the mud, Don Ippolito got us out of it by putting hisshoulder to the oar. "

"Of course, " assented Mrs. Vervain. 

"In fact, " continued Ferris, "I suppose we may say that, underProvidence, we probably owe our lives to Don Ippolito's self-sacrificeand Miss Vervain's knowledge of German. At any rate, it's what I shallalways maintain. "

"Mother, don't you think you had better go in?" asked Florida, gently. Her gentleness ignored the presence, the existence of Ferris. "I'mafraid you will be sick after all this fatigue. "

"There, Mrs. Vervain, it'll be no use offering _me_ a glass ofwine. I'm sent away, you see, " said Ferris. "And Miss Vervain is quiteright. Good night. "

"Oh--_good_ night, Mr. Ferris, " said Mrs. Vervain, giving herhand. "Thank you so much. "

Florida did not look towards him. She gathered her mother's shawl abouther shoulders for the twentieth time that day, and softly urged her indoors, while Ferris let himself out into the campo. 

IX. 

Florida began to prepare the bed for her mother's lying down. 

"What are you doing that for, my dear?" asked Mrs. Vervain. "I can't goto bed at once. "

"But mother"--

"No, Florida. And I mean it. You are too headstrong. I should think youwould see yourself how you suffer in the end by giving way to yourviolent temper. What a day you have made for us!"

"I was very wrong, " murmured the proud girl, meekly. 

"And then the mortification of an apology; you might have sparedyourself that. "

"It didn't mortify me; I didn't care for it. "

"No, I really believe you are too haughty to mind humbling yourself. And Don Ippolito had been so uniformly kind to us. I begin to believethat Mr. Ferris caught your true character in that sketch. But yourpride will be broken some day, Florida. "

"Won't you let me help you undress, mother? You can talk to me whileyou're undressing. You must try to get some rest. "

"Yes, I am all unstrung. Why couldn't you have let him come in and talkawhile? It would have been the best way to get me quieted down. But no;you must always have your own way Don't twitch me, my dear; I'd ratherundress myself. You pretend to be very careful of me. I wonder if youreally care for me. "

"Oh, mother, you are all I have in the world!"

Mrs. Vervain began to whimper. "You talk as if I were any better off. Have I anybody besides you? And I have lost so many. "

"Don't think of those things now, mother. "

Mrs. Vervain tenderly kissed the young girl. "You are good to yourmother. Don Ippolito was right; no one ever saw you offer me disrespector unkindness. There, there! Don't cry, my darling. I think I_had_ better lie down, and I'll let you undress me. "

She suffered herself to be helped into bed, and Florida went softlyabout the room, putting it in order, and drawing the curtains closer tokeep out the near dawn. Her mother talked a little while, and presentlyfell from incoherence to silence, and so to sleep. 

Florida looked hesitatingly at her for a moment, and then set hercandle on the floor and sank wearily into an arm-chair beside the bed. Her hands fell into her lap; her head drooped sadly forward; the lightflung the shadow of her face grotesquely exaggerated and foreshortenedupon the ceiling. 

By and by a bird piped in the garden; the shriek of a swallow madeitself heard from a distance; the vernal day was beginning to stir fromthe light, brief drowse of the vernal night. A crown of angry redformed upon the candle wick, which toppled over in the socket andguttered out with a sharp hiss. 

Florida started from her chair. A streak of sunshine pierced shutterand curtain. Her mother was supporting herself on one elbow in the bed, and looking at her as if she had just called to her. 

"Mother, did you speak?" asked the girl. 

Mrs. Vervain turned her face away; she sighed deeply, stretched herthin hands on the pillow, and seemed to be sinking, sinking downthrough the bed. She ceased to breathe and lay in a dead faint. 

Florida felt rather than saw it all. She did not cry out nor call forhelp. She brought water and cologne, and bathed her mother's face, andthen chafed her hands. Mrs. Vervain slowly revived; she opened hereyes, then closed them; she did not speak, but after a while she beganto fetch her breath with the long and even respirations of sleep. 

Florida noiselessly opened the door, and met the servant with a tray ofcoffee. She put her finger to her lip, and motioned her not to enter, asking in a whisper: "What time is it, Nina? I forgot to wind mywatch. "

"It's nine o'clock, signorina; and I thought you would be tired thismorning, and would like your coffee in bed. Oh, misericordia!" criedthe girl, still in whisper, with a glance through the doorway, "youhaven't been in bed at all!"

"My mother doesn't seem well. I sat down beside her, and fell asleep inmy chair without knowing it. "

"Ah, poor little thing! Then you must drink your coffee at once. Itrefreshes. "

"Yes, yes, " said Florida, closing the door, and pointing to a table inthe next room, "put it down here. I will serve myself, Nina. Go callthe gondola, please. I am going out, at once, and I want you to go withme. Tell Checa to come here and stay with my mother till I come back. "

She poured out a cup of coffee with a trembling hand, and hastily drankit; then bathing her eyes, she went to the glass and bestowed a touchor two upon yesterday's toilet, studied the effect a moment, and turnedaway. She ran back for another look, and the next moment she waswalking down to the water-gate, where she found Nina waiting her in thegondola. 

A rapid course brought them to Ferris's landing. "Ring, " she said tothe gondolier, "and say that one of the American ladies wishes to seethe consul. "

Ferris was standing on the balcony over her, where he had been watchingher approach in mute wonder. "Why, Miss Vervain, " he called down, "whatin the world is the matter?"

"I don't know. I want to see you, " said Florida, looking up with awistful face. 

"I'll come down. "

"Yes, please. Or no, I had better come up. Yes, Nina and I will comeup. "

Ferris met them at the lower door and led them to his apartment. Ninasat down in the outer room, and Florida followed the painter into hisstudio. Though her face was so wan, it seemed to him that he had neverseen it lovelier, and he had a strange pride in her being there, thoughthe disorder of the place ought to have humbled him. She looked over itwith a certain childlike, timid curiosity, and something of that loftycompassion with which young ladies regard the haunts of men when theycome into them by chance; in doing this she had a haughty, slow turn ofthe head that fascinated him. 

"I hope, " he said, "you don't mind the smell, " which was a mingled oneof oil-colors and tobacco-smoke. "The woman's putting my office torights, and it's all in a cloud of dust. So I have to bring you inhere. "

Florida sat down on a chair fronting the easel, and found herselflooking into the sad eyes of Don Ippolito. Ferris brusquely turned theback of the canvas toward her. "I didn't mean you to see that. It isn'tready to show, yet, " he said, and then he stood expectantly before her. He waited for her to speak, for he never knew how to take Miss Vervain;he was willing enough to make light of her grand moods, but now she wastoo evidently unhappy for mocking; at the same time he did not care toinvoke a snub by a prematurely sympathetic demeanor. His mind ran onthe events of the day before, and he thought this visit probablyrelated somehow to Don Ippolito. But his visitor did not speak, and atlast he said: "I hope there's nothing wrong at home, Miss Vervain. It'srather odd to have yesterday, last night, and next morning all runtogether as they have been for me in the last twenty-four hours. Itrust Mrs. Vervain is turning the whole thing into a good solidoblivion. "

"It's about--it's about--I came to see you"--said Florida, hoarsely. "Imean, " she hurried on to say, "that I want to ask you who is the bestdoctor here?"

Then it was not about Don Ippolito. "Is your mother sick?" askedFerris, eagerly. "She must have been fearfully tired by that unluckyexpedition of ours. I hope there's nothing serious?"

"No, no! But she is not well. She is very frail, you know. You musthave noticed how frail she is, " said Florida, tremulously. 

Ferris had noticed that all his countrywomen, past their girlhood, seemed to be sick, he did not know how or why; he supposed it was allright, it was so common. In Mrs. Vervain's case, though she talked agreat deal about her ill-health, he had noticed it rather less thanusual, she had so great spirit. He recalled now that he _had_thought her at times rather a shadowy presence, and that occasionallyit had amused him that so slight a structure should hang together as itdid--not only successfully, but triumphantly. 

He said yes, he knew that Mrs. Vervain was not strong, and Floridacontinued: "It's only advice that I want for her, but I think we hadbetter see some one--or know some one that we could go to in need. Weare so far from any one we know, or help of any kind. " She seemed to betrying to account to herself, rather than to Ferris, for what she wasdoing. "We mustn't let anything pass unnoticed". .. . She looked at himentreatingly, but a shadow, as of some wounding memory, passed over herface, and she said no more. 

"I'll go with you to a doctor's, " said Ferris, kindly. 

"No, please, I won't trouble you. "

"It's no trouble. "

"I don't _want_ you to go with me, please. I'd rather go alone. "Ferris looked at her perplexedly, as she rose. "Just give me theaddress, and I shall manage best by myself. I'm used to doing it. "

"As you like. Wait a moment. " Ferris wrote the address. "There, " hesaid, giving it to her; "but isn't there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, " answered Florida with awkward hesitation, and a half-defiant, half-imploring look at him. "You must have all sorts of people applyingto you, as a consul; and you look after their affairs--and try toforget them"--

"Well?" said Ferris. 

"I wish you wouldn't remember that I've asked this favor of you; thatyou'd consider it a"--

"Consular service? With all my heart, " answered Ferris, thinking forthe third or fourth time how very young Miss Vervain was. 

"You are very good; you are kinder than I have any right, " saidFlorida, smiling piteously. "I only mean, don't speak of it to mymother. Not, " she added, "but what I want her to know everything I do;but it would worry her if she thought I was anxious about her. Oh! Iwish I wouldn't. "

She began a hasty search for her handkerchief; he saw her lips trembleand his soul trembled with them. 

In another moment, "Good-morning, " she said briskly, with a sort ofairy sob, "I don't want you to come down, please. "

She drifted out of the room and down the stairs, the servant-maidfalling into her wake. 

Ferris filled his pipe and went out on his balcony again, and stoodwatching the gondola in its course toward the address he had given, andsmoking thoughtfully. It was really the same girl who had given poorDon Ippolito that cruel slap in the face, yesterday. But that seemed nomore out of reason than her sudden, generous, exaggerated remorse bothwere of a piece with her coming to him for help now, holding him at adistance, flinging herself upon his sympathy, and then trying to snubhim, and breaking down in the effort. It was all of a piece, and thepiece was bad; yes, she had an ugly temper; and yet she had magnanimoustraits too. These contradictions, which in his reverie he felt ratherthan formulated, made him smile, as he stood on his balcony bathed bythe morning air and sunlight, in fresh, strong ignorance of the wholemystery of women's nerves. These caprices even charmed him. Hereflected that he had gone on doing the Vervains one favor afteranother in spite of Florida's childish petulancies; and he resolvedthat he would not stop now; her whims should be nothing to him, as theyhad been nothing, hitherto. It is flattering to a man to beindispensable to a woman so long as he is not obliged to it; MissVervain's dependent relation to himself in this visit gave her a gracein Ferris's eyes which she had wanted before. 

In the mean time he saw her gondola stop, turn round, and come back tothe canal that bordered the Vervain garden. 

"Another change of mind, " thought Ferris, complacently; and risingsuperior to the whole fitful sex, he released himself from uneasinesson Mrs. Vervain's account. But in the evening he went to ask after her. He first sent his card to Florida, having written on it, "I hope Mrs. Vervain is better. Don't let me come in if it's any disturbance. " Helooked for a moment at what he had written, dimly conscious that it waspatronizing, and when he entered he saw that Miss Vervain stood on thedefensive and from some willfulness meant to make him feel that he waspresumptuous in coming; it did not comfort him to consider that she wasvery young. "Mother will be in directly, " said Florida in a tone thatrelegated their morning's interview to the age of fable. 

Mrs. Vervain came in smiling and cordial, apparently better and notworse for yesterday's misadventures. 

"Oh, I pick up quickly, " she explained. "I'm an old campaigner, youknow. Perhaps a little _too_ old, now. Years do make a difference;and you'll find it out as you get on, Mr. Ferris. "

"I suppose so, " said Ferris, not caring to have Mrs. Vervain treat himso much like a boy. "Even at twenty-six I found it pleasant to take anap this afternoon. How does one stand it at seventeen, Miss Vervain?"he asked. 

"I haven't felt the need of sleep, " replied Florida, indifferently, andhe felt shelved, as an old fellow. 

He had an empty, frivolous visit, to his thinking. Mrs. Vervain askedif he had seen Don Ippolito, and wondered that the priest had not comeabout, al day. She told a long story, and at the end tapped herself onthe mouth with her fan to punish a yawn. 

Ferris rose to go. Mrs. Vervain wondered again in the same words whyDon Ippolito had not been near them all day. 

"Because he's a wise man, " said Ferris with bitterness, "and knows whento time his visits. " Mrs. Vervain did not notice his bitterness, butsomething made Florida follow him to the outer door. 

"Why, it's moonlight!" she exclaimed; and she glanced at him as thoughshe had some purpose of atonement in her mind. 

But he would not have it. "Yes, there's a moon, " he said moodily. "Good-night. "

"Good night, " answered Florida, and she impulsively offered him herhand. He thought that it shook in his, but it was probably theagitation of his own nerves. 

A soreness that had been lifted from his heart, came back; he walkedhome disappointed and defeated, he hardly knew why or in what. He didnot laugh now to think how she had asked him that morning to forget hercoming to him for help; he was outraged that he should have been repaidin this sort, and the rebuff with which his sympathy had just been metwas vulgar; there was no other name for it but vulgarity. Yet he couldnot relate this quality to the face of the young girl as he constantlybeheld it in his homeward walk. It did not defy him or repulse him; itlooked up at him wistfully as from the gondola that morning. Nevertheless he hardened his heart. The Vervains should see him nextwhen they had sent for him. After all, one is not so very old attwenty-six. 

X. 

"Don Ippolito has come, signorina, " said Nina, the next morning, approaching Florida, where she sat in an attitude of listless patience, in the garden. 

"Don Ippolito!" echoed the young girl in a weary tone. She rose andwent into the house, and they met with the constraint which was but toonatural after the events of their last parting. It is hard to tellwhich has most to overcome in such a case, the forgiver or theforgiven. Pardon rankles even in a generous soul, and the memory ofhaving pardoned embarrasses the sensitive spirit before the object ofits clemency, humbling and making it ashamed. It would be well, Isuppose, if there need be nothing of the kind between human creatures, who cannot sustain such a relation without mutual distrust. It is notso ill with them when apart, but when they meet they must be cold andshy at first. 

"Now I see what you two are thinking about, " said Mrs. Vervain, and afaint blush tinged the cheek of the priest as she thus paired him offwith her daughter. "You are thinking about what happened the other day;and you had better forget it. There is no use brooding over thesematters. Dear me! if _I_ had stopped to brood over every littleunpleasant thing that happened, I wonder where I should be now? By theway, where were _you_ all day yesterday, Don Ippolito?"

"I did not come to disturb you because I thought you must be verytired. Besides I was quite busy. "

"Oh yes, those inventions of yours. I think you are _so_ingenious! But you mustn't apply too closely. Now really, yesterday, --after all you had been through, it was too much for the brain. " Shetapped herself on the forehead with her fan. 

"I was not busy with my inventions, madama, " answered Don Ippolito, whosat in the womanish attitude priests get from their drapery, andfingered the cord round his three-cornered hat. "I have scarcelytouched them of late. But our parish takes part in the procession ofCorpus Domini in the Piazza, and I had my share of the preparations. "

"Oh, to be sure! When is it to be? We must all go. Our Nina has beentelling Florida of the grand sights, --little children dressed up likeJohn the Baptist, leading lambs. I suppose it's a great event withyou. "

The priest shrugged his shoulders, and opened both his hands, so thathis hat slid to the floor, bumping and tumbling some distance away. Herecovered it and sat down again. "It's an observance, " he said coldly. 

"And shall you be in the procession?"

"I shall be there with the other priests of my parish. "

"Delightful!" cried Mrs. Vervain. "We shall be looking out for you. Ishall feel greatly honored to think I actually know some one in theprocession. I'm going to give you a little nod. You won't think it verywrong?"

She saved him from the embarrassment he might have felt in replying, byan abrupt lapse from all apparent interest in the subject. She turnedto her daughter, and said with a querulous accent, "I wish you wouldthrow the afghan over my feet, Florida, and make me a littlecomfortable before you begin your reading this morning. " At the sametime she feebly disposed herself among the sofa cushions on which shereclined, and waited for some final touches from her daughter. Then shesaid, "I'm just going to close my eyes, but I shall hear every word. You are getting a beautiful accent, my dear, I know you are. I shouldthink Goldoni must have a very smooth, agreeable style; hasn't he now, in Italian?"

They began to read the comedy; after fifteen or twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and said, "But before you commence, Florida, Iwish you'd play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so veryflighty. I suppose it's this sirocco. And I believe I'll lie down inthe next room. "

Florida followed her to repeat the arrangements for her comfort. Thenshe returned, and sitting down at the piano struck with a sort of softfirmness a few low, soothing chords, out of which a lulling melodygrew. With her fingers still resting on the keys she turned her statelyhead, and glanced through the open door at her mother. 

"Don Ippolito, " she asked softly, "is there anything in the air ofVenice that makes people very drowsy?"

"I have never heard that, madamigella. "

"I wonder, " continued the young girl absently, "why my mother wants tosleep so much. "

"Perhaps she has not recovered from the fatigues of the other night, "suggested the priest. 

"Perhaps, " said Florida, sadly looking toward her mother's door. 

She turned again to the instrument, and let her fingers wander over thekeys, with a drooping head. Presently she lifted her face, and smoothedback from her temples some straggling tendrils of hair. Without lookingat the priest she asked with the child-like bluntness thatcharacterized her, "Why don't you like to walk in the procession ofCorpus Domini?"

Don Ippolito's color came and went, and he answered evasively, "I havenot said that I did not like to do so. "

"No, that is true, " said Florida, letting her fingers drop again on thekeys. 

Don Ippolito rose from the sofa where he had been sitting beside herwhile they read, and walked the length of the room. Then he cametowards her and said meekly, "Madamigella, I did not mean to repel anyinterest you feel in me. But it was a strange question to ask a priest, as I remembered I was when you asked it. "

"Don't you always remember that?" demanded the girl, still withoutturning her head. 

"No; sometimes I am suffered to forget it, " he said with a tentativeaccent. 

She did not respond, and he drew a long breath, and walked away insilence. She let her hands fall into her lap, and sat in an attitude ofexpectation. As Don Ippolito came near her again he paused a secondtime. 

"It is in this house that I forget my priesthood, " he began, "and it isthe first of your kindnesses that you suffer me to do so, your goodmother, there, and you. How shall I repay you? It cut me to the heartthat you should ask forgiveness of me when you did, though I was hurtby your rebuke. Oh, had you not the right to rebuke me if I abused thedelicate unreserve with which you had always treated me? But believeme, I meant no wrong, then. "

His voice shook, and Florida broke in, "You did nothing wrong. It was Iwho was cruel for no cause. "

"No, no. You shall not say that, " he returned. "And why should I havecared for a few words, when all your acts had expressed a trust of methat is like heaven to my soul?"

She turned now and looked at him, and he went on. "Ah, I see you do notunderstand! How could you know what it is to be a priest in this mostunhappy city? To be haunted by the strict espionage of all your ownclass, to be shunned as a spy by all who are not of it! But you twohave not put up that barrier which everywhere shuts me out from mykind. You have been willing to see the man in me, and to let me forgetthe priest. "

"I do not know what to say to you, Don Ippolito. I am only a foreigner, a girl, and I am very ignorant of these things, " said Florida with aslight alarm. "I am afraid that you may be saying what you will besorry for. "

"Oh never! Do not fear for me if I am frank with you. It is my refugefrom despair. "

The passionate vibration of his voice increased, as if it must break intears. She glanced towards the other room with a little movement orstir. 

"Ah, you needn't be afraid of listening to me!" cried the priestbitterly. 

"I will not wake her, " said Florida calmly, after an instant. 

"See how you speak the thing you mean, always, always, always! Youcould not deny that you meant to wake her, for you have the life-longhabit of the truth. Do you know what it is to have the life-long habitof a lie? It is to be a priest. Do you know what it is to seem, to say, to do, the thing you are not, think not, will not? To leave what youbelieve unspoken, what you will undone, what you are unknown? It is tobe a priest!"

Don Ippolito spoke in Italian, and he uttered these words in a voicecarefully guarded from every listener but the one before his face. "Doyou know what it is when such a moment as this comes, and you wouldfling away the whole fabric of falsehood that has clothed your life--doyou know what it is to keep still so much of it as will help you tounmask silently and secretly? It is to be a priest!"

His voice had lost its vehemence, and his manner was strangely subduedand cold. The sort of gentle apathy it expressed, together with acertain sad, impersonal surprise at the difference between his own andthe happier fortune with which he contrasted it, was more touching thanany tragic demonstration. 

As if she felt the fascination of the pathos which she could not fullyanalyze, the young girl sat silent. After a time, in which she seemedto be trying to think it all out, she asked in a low, deep murmur: "Whydid you become a priest, then?"

"It is a long story, " said Don Ippolito. "I will not trouble you withit now. Some other time. "

"No; now, " answered Florida, in English. "If you hate so to be apriest, I can't understand why you should have allowed yourself tobecome one. We should be very unhappy if we could not respect you, --nottrust you as we have done; and how could we, if we knew you were nottrue to yourself in being what you are?"

"Madamigella, " said the priest, "I never dared believe that I was inthe smallest thing necessary to your happiness. Is it true, then, thatyou care for my being rather this than that? That you are in the leastgrieved by any wrong of mine?"

"I scarcely know what you mean. How could we help being grieved by whatyou have said to me?"

"Thanks; but why do you care whether a priest of my church loves hiscalling or not, --you, a Protestant? It is that you are sorry for me asan unhappy man, is it not?"

"Yes; it is that and more. I am no Catholic, but we are bothChristians"--

Don Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his shoulders. 

--"and I cannot endure to think of your doing the things you must do asa priest, and yet hating to be a priest. It is terrible!"

"Are all the priests of your faith devotees?"

"They cannot be. But are none of yours so?"

"Oh, God forbid that I should say that. I have known real saints amongthem. That friend of mine in Padua, of whom I once told you, becamesuch, and died an angel fit for Paradise. And I suppose that my pooruncle is a saint, too, in his way. "

"Your uncle? A priest? You have never mentioned him to us. "

"No, " said Don Ippolito. After a certain pause he began abruptly, "Weare of the people, my family, and in each generation we have sought tohonor our blood by devoting one of the race to the church. When I was achild, I used to divert myself by making little figures out of wood andpasteboard, and I drew rude copies of the pictures I saw at church. Welived in the house where I live now, and where I was born, and mymother let me play in the small chamber where I now have my forge; itwas anciently the oratory of the noble family that occupied the wholepalace. I contrived an altar at one end of it; I stuck my picturesabout the walls, and I ranged the puppets in the order of worshipperson the floor; then I played at saying mass, and preached to them allday long. 

"My mother was a widow. She used to watch me with tears in her eyes. Atlast, one day, she brought my uncle to see me: I remember it all farbetter than yesterday. 'Is it not the will of God?' she asked. My unclecalled me to him, and asked me whether I should like to be a priest ingood earnest, when I grew up? 'Shall I then be able to make as manylittle figures as I like, and to paint pictures, and carve an altarlike that in your church?' I demanded. My uncle answered that I shouldhave real men and women to preach to, as he had, and would not that bemuch finer? In my heart I did not think so, for I did not care for thatpart of it; I only liked to preach to my puppets because I had madethem. But said, 'Oh yes, ' as children do. I kept on contriving the toysthat I played with, and I grew used to hearing it told among my matesand about the neighborhood that I was to be a priest; I cannot rememberany other talk with my mother, and I do not know how or when it wasdecided. Whenever I thought of the matter, I thought, 'That will bevery well. The priests have very little to do, and they gain a greatdeal of money with their masses; and I shall be able to make whatever Ilike. ' I only considered the office then as a means to gratify thepassion that has always filled my soul for inventions and works ofmechanical skill and ingenuity. My inclination was purely secular, butI was as inevitably becoming a priest as if I had been born to be one. "

"But you were not forced? There was no pressure upon you?"

"No, there was merely an absence, so far as they were concerned, of anyother idea. I think they meant justly, and assuredly they meant kindlyby me. I grew in years, and the time came when I was to begin mystudies. It was my uncle's influence that placed me in the Seminary ofthe Salute, and there I repaid his care by the utmost diligence. But itwas not the theological studies that I loved, it was the mathematicsand their practical application, and among the classics I loved bestthe poets and the historians. Yes, I can see that I was always amundane spirit, and some of those in charge of me at once divined it, Ithink. They used to take us to walk, --you have seen the littlecreatures in their priest's gowns, which they put on when they enterthe school, with a couple of young priests at the head of the file, --and once, for an uncommon pleasure, they took us to the Arsenal, andlet us see the shipyards and the museum. You know the wonderful thingsthat are there: the flags and the guns captured from the Turks; thestrange weapons of all devices; the famous suits of armor. I came backhalf-crazed; I wept that I must leave the place. But I set to work thebest I could to carve out in wood an invention which the model of oneof the antique galleys had suggested to me. They found it, --nothing canbe concealed outside of your own breast in such a school, --and theycarried me with my contrivance before the superior. He looked kindlybut gravely at me: 'My son, ' said he, 'do you wish to be a priest?''Surely, reverend father, ' I answered in alarm, 'why not?' 'Becausethese things are not for priests. Their thoughts must be upon otherthings. Consider well of it, my son, while there is yet time, ' he said, and he addressed me a long and serious discourse upon the life on whichI was to enter. He was a just and conscientious and affectionate man;but every word fell like burning fire in my heart. At the end, he tookmy poor plaything, and thrust it down among the coals of his_scaldino_. It made the scaldino smoke, and he bade me carry itout with me, and so turned again to his book. 

"My mother was by this time dead, but I could hardly have gone to her, if she had still been living. 'These things are not for priests!' keptrepeating itself night and day in my brain. I was in despair, I was ina fury to see my uncle. I poured out my heart to him, and tried to makehim understand the illusions and vain hopes in which I had lived. Hereceived coldly my sorrow and the reproaches which I did not spare him;he bade me consider my inclinations as so many temptations to beovercome for the good of my soul and the glory of God. He warned meagainst the scandal of attempting to withdraw now from the path markedout for me. I said that I never would be a priest. 'And what will youdo?' he asked. Alas! what could I do? I went back to my prison, and indue course I became a priest. 

"It was not without sufficient warning that I took one order afteranother, but my uncle's words, 'What will you do?' made me deaf tothese admonitions. All that is now past. I no longer resent nor hate; Iseem to have lost the power; but those were days when my soul wasfilled with bitterness. Something of this must have showed itself tothose who had me in their charge. I have heard that at one time mysuperiors had grave doubts whether I ought to be allowed to takeorders. My examination, in which the difficulties of the sacerdotallife were brought before me with the greatest clearness, was severe; Ido not know how I passed it; it must have been in grace to my uncle. Ispent the next ten days in a convent, to meditate upon the step I wasabout to take. Poor helpless, friendless wretch! Madamigella, even yetI cannot see how I was to blame, that I came forth and received thefirst of the holy orders, and in their time the second and the third. 

"I was a priest, but no more a priest at heart than those Venetianconscripts, whom you saw carried away last week, are Austrian soldiers. I was bound as they are bound, by an inexorable and inevitable law. 

"You have asked me why I became a priest. Perhaps I have not told youwhy, but I have told you how--I have given you the slight outwardevents, not the processes of my mind--and that is all that I can do. Ifthe guilt was mine, I have suffered for it. If it was not mine, still Ihave suffered for it. Some ban seems to have rested upon whatever Ihave attempted. My work, --oh, I know it well enough!--has all beencursed with futility; my labors are miserable failures or contemptiblesuccesses. I have had my unselfish dreams of blessing mankind by somegreat discovery or invention; but my life has been barren, barren, barren; and save for the kindness that I have known in this house, andthat would not let me despair, it would now be without hope. "

He ceased, and the girl, who had listened with her proud lookstransfigured to an aspect of grieving pity, fetched a long sigh. "Oh, Iam sorry for you!" she said, "more sorry than I know how to tell. Butyou must not lose courage, you must not give up!"

Don Ippolito resumed with a melancholy smile. "There are doubtlesstemptations enough to be false under the best of conditions in thisworld. But something--I do not know what or whom; perhaps no more myuncle or my mother than I, for they were only as the past had madethem--caused me to begin by living a lie, do you not see?"

"Yes, yes, " reluctantly assented the girl. 

"Perhaps--who knows?--that is why no good has come of me, nor can come. My uncle's piety and repute have always been my efficient help. He isthe principal priest of the church to which I am attached, and he hashad infinite patience with me. My ambition and my attempted inventionsare a scandal to him, for he is a priest of those like the Holy Father, who believe that all the wickedness of the modern world has come fromthe devices of science; my indifference to the things of religion is aterror and a sorrow to him which he combats with prayers and penances. He starves himself and goes cold and faint that God may have mercy andturn my heart to the things on which his own is fixed. He loves mysoul, but not me, and we are scarcely friends. "

Florida continued to look at him with steadfast, compassionate eyes. "It seems very strange, almost like some dream, " she murmured, "thatyou should be saying all this to me, Don Ippolito, and I do not knowwhy I should have asked you anything. "

The pity of this virginal heart must have been very sweet to the man onwhom she looked it. His eyes worshipped her, as he answered herdevoutly, "It was due to the truth in you that I should seem to youwhat I am. "

"Indeed, you make me ashamed!" she cried with a blush. "It was selfishof me to ask you to speak. And now, after what you have told me, I amso helpless and I know so very little that I don't understand how tocomfort or encourage you. But surely you can somehow help yourself. Aremen, that seem so strong and able, just as powerless as women, afterall, when it comes to real trouble? Is a man"--

"I cannot answer. I am only a priest, " said Don Ippolito coldly, letting his eyes drop to the gown that fell about him like a woman'sskirt. 

"Yes, but a priest should be a man, and so much more; a priest"--

Don Ippolito shrugged his shoulders. 

"No, no!" cried the girl. "Your own schemes have all failed, you say;then why do you not think of becoming a priest in reality, and gettingthe good there must be in such a calling? It is singular that I shouldventure to say such a thing to you, and it must seem presumptuous andridiculous for me, a Protestant--but our ways are so different. ". .. Shepaused, coloring deeply, then controlled herself, and added with gravecomposure, "If you were to pray"--

"To what, madamigella?" asked the priest, sadly. 

"To what!" she echoed, opening her eyes full upon him. "To God!"

Don Ippolito made no answer. He let his head fall so low upon hisbreast that she could see the sacerdotal tonsure. 

"You must excuse me, " she said, blushing again. "I did not mean towound your feelings as a Catholic. I have been very bold and intrusive. I ought to have remembered that people of your church have differentideas--that the saints"--

Don Ippolito looked up with pensive irony. 

"Oh, the poor saints!"

"I don't understand you, " said Florida, very gravely. 

"I mean that I believe in the saints as little as you do. "

"But you believe in your Church?"

"I have no Church. "

There was a silence in which Don Ippolito again dropped his head uponhis breast. Florida leaned forward in her eagerness, and murmured, "Youbelieve in God?"

The priest lifted his eyes and looked at her beseechingly. "I do notknow, " he whispered. She met his gaze with one of dumb bewilderment. Atlast she said: "Sometimes you baptize little children and receive theminto the church in the name of God?"

"Yes. "

"Poor creatures come to you and confess their sins, and you absolvethem, or order them to do penances?"

"Yes. "

"And sometimes when people are dying, you must stand by their death-beds and give them the last consolations of religion?"

"It is true. "

"Oh!" moaned the girl, and fixed on Don Ippolito a long look of wonderand reproach, which he met with eyes of silent anguish. 

"It is terrible, madamigella, " he said, rising. "I know it. I wouldfain have lived single-heartedly, for I think I was made so; but nowyou see how black and deadly a lie my life is. It is worse than youcould have imagined, is it not? It is worse than the life of thecruelest bigot, for he at least believes in himself. "

"Worse, far worse!"

"But at least, dear young lady, " he went on piteously, "believe me thatI have the grace to abhor myself. It is not much, it is very, verylittle, but it is something. Do not wholly condemn me!"

"Condemn? Oh, I am sorry for you with my whole heart. Only, why mustyou tell me all this? No, no; you are not to blame. I made you speak; Imade you put yourself to shame. "

"Not that, dearest madamigella. I would unsay nothing now, if I could, unless to take away the pain I have given you. It has been more arelief than a shame to have all this known to you; and even if youshould despise me"--

"I don't despise you; that isn't for me; but oh, I wish that I couldhelp you!"

Don Ippolito shook his head. "You cannot help me; but I thank you foryour compassion; I shall never forget it. " He lingered irresolutelywith his hat in his hand. "Shall we go on with the reading, madamigella?"

"No, we will not read any more to-day, " she answered. 

"Then I relieve you of the disturbance, madamigella, " he said; andafter a moment's hesitation he bowed sadly and went. 

She mechanically followed him to the door, with some little gesturesand movements of a desire to keep him from going, yet let him go, andso turned back and sat down with her hands resting noiseless on thekeys of the piano. 

XI. 

The next morning Don Ippolito did not come, but in the afternoonthe postman brought a letter for Mrs. Vervain, couched in the priest'sEnglish, begging her indulgence until after the day of Corpus Christi, up to which time, he said, he should be too occupied for his visits ofordinary. 

This letter reminded Mrs. Vervain that they had not seen Mr. Ferris forthree days, and she sent to ask him to dinner. But he returned anexcuse, and he was not to be had to breakfast the next morning for theasking. He was in open rebellion. Mrs. Vervain had herself rowed to theconsular landing, and sent up her gondolier with another invitation todinner. 

The painter appeared on the balcony in the linen blouse which he woreat his work, and looked down with a frown on the smiling face of Mrs. Vervain for a moment without speaking. Then, "I'll come, " he saidgloomily. 

"Come with me, then, " returned Mrs. Vervain, "I shall have to keep you waiting. "

"I don't mind that. You'll be ready in five minutes. "

Florida met the painter with such gentleness that he felt hisresentment to have been a stupid caprice, for which there was no groundin the world. He tried to recall his fading sense of outrage, but hefound nothing in his mind but penitence. The sort of distraughthumility with which she behaved gave her a novel fascination. 

The dinner was good, as Mrs. Vervain's dinners always were, and therewas a compliment to the painter in the presence of a favorite dish. When he saw this, "Well, Mrs. Vervain, what is it?" he asked. "Youneedn't pretend that you're treating me so well for nothing. You wantsomething. "

"We want nothing but that you should not neglect your friends. We havebeen utterly deserted for three or four days. Don Ippolito has not beenhere, either; but _he_ has some excuse; he has to get ready forCorpus Christi. He's going to be in the procession. "

"Is he to appear with his flying machine, or his portable dining-table, or his automatic camera?"

"For shame!" cried Mrs. Vervain, beaming reproach. Florida's faceclouded, and Ferris made haste to say that he did not know theseinventions were sacred, and that he had no wish to blaspheme them. 

"You know well enough what I meant, " answered Mrs. Vervain. "And now, we want you to get us a window to look out on the procession. "

"Oh, _that's_ what you want, is it? I thought you merely wanted menot to neglect my friends. "

"Well, do you call that neglecting them?"

"Mrs. Vervain, Mrs. Vervain! What a mind you have! Is there anythingelse you want? Me to go with you, for example?"

"We don't insist. You can take us to the window and leave us, if youlike. "

"This clemency is indeed unexpected, " replied Ferris. "I'm really quiteunworthy of it. "

He was going on with the badinage customary between Mrs. Vervain andhimself, when Florida protested, --

"Mother, I think we abuse Mr. Ferris's kindness. "

"I know it, my dear--I know it, " cheerfully assented Mrs. Vervain. "It's perfectly shocking. But what are we to do? We must abuse_somebody's_ kindness. "

"We had better stay at home. I'd much rather not go, " said the girl, tremulously. 

"Why, Miss Vervain, " said Ferris gravely, "I'm very sorry if you'vemisunderstood my joking. I've never yet seen the procession toadvantage, and I'd like very much to look on with you. "

He could not tell whether she was grateful for his words, or annoyed. She resolutely said no more, but her mother took up the strain anddiscoursed long upon it, arranging all the particulars of their meetingand going together. Ferris was a little piqued, and began to wonder whyMiss Vervain did not stay at home if she did not want to go. To besure, she went everywhere with her mother but it was strange, with herhabitual violent submissiveness, that she should have said anything inopposition to her mother's wish or purpose. 

After dinner, Mrs. Vervain frankly withdrew for her nap, and Floridaseemed to make a little haste to take some sewing in her hand, and satdown with the air of a woman willing; to detain her visitor. Ferris wasnot such a stoic as not to be dimly flattered by this, but he was toomuch of a man to be fully aware how great an advance it might seem. 

"I suppose we shall see most of the priests of Venice, and what theyare like, in the procession to-morrow, " she said. "Do you rememberspeaking to me about priests, the other day, Mr. Ferris?"

"Yes, I remember it very well. I think I overdid it; and I couldn'tperceive afterwards that I had shown any motive but a desire to maketrouble for Don Ippolito. "

"I never thought that, " answered Florida, seriously. "What you said wastrue, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was and it wasn't, and I don't know that it differed fromanything else in the world, in that respect. It is true that there is agreat distrust of the priests amongst the Italians. The young men hatethem--or think they do--or say they do. Most educated men in middlelife are materialists, and of course unfriendly to the priests. Thereare even women who are skeptical about religion. But I suspect that thelargest number of all those who talk loudest against the priests arereally subject to them. You must consider how very intimately they arebound up with every family in the most solemn relations of life. "

"Do you think the priests are generally bad men?" asked the young girlshyly. 

"I don't, indeed. I don't see how things could hang together if it wereso. There must be a great basis of sincerity and goodness in them, whenall is said and done. It seems to me that at the worst they're merelyprofessional people--poor fellows who have gone into the church for aliving. You know it isn't often now that the sons of noble familiestake orders; the priests are mostly of humble origin; not that they'renecessarily the worse for that; the patricians used to be just as badin another way. "

"I wonder, " said Florida, with her head on one side, considering herseam, "why there is always something so dreadful to us in the idea of apriest. "

"They _do_ seem a kind of alien creature to us Protestants. Ican't make out whether they seem so to Catholics, or not. But we have arepugnance to all doomed people, haven't we? And a priest is a manunder sentence of death to the natural ties between himself and thehuman race. He is dead to us. That makes him dreadful. The spectre ofour dearest friend, father or mother, would be terrible. And yet, "added Ferris, musingly, "a nun isn't terrible. "

"No, " answered the girl, "that's because a woman's life even in theworld seems to be a constant giving up. No, a nun isn't unnatural, buta priest is. "

She was silent for a time, in which she sewed swiftly; then shesuddenly dropped her work into her lap, and pressing it down with bothhands, she asked, "Do you believe that priests themselves are everskeptical about religion?"

"I suppose it must happen now and then. In the best days of the churchit was a fashion to doubt, you know. I've often wanted to ask ourfriend Don Ippolito something about these matters, but I didn't see howit could be managed. " Ferris did not note the change that passed overFlorida's face, and he continued. "Our acquaintance hasn't become sointimate as I hoped it might. But you only get to a certain point withItalians. They like to meet you on the street; maybe they haven't anyindoors. "

"Yes, it must sometimes happen, as you say, " replied Florida, with aquick sigh, reverting to the beginning of Ferris's answer. "But is itany worse for a false priest than for a hypocritical minister?"

"It's bad enough for either, but it's worse for the priest. You seeMiss Vervain, a minister doesn't set up for so much. He doesn't pretendto forgive us our sins, and he doesn't ask us to confess them; hedoesn't offer us the veritable body and blood in the sacrament, and hedoesn't bear allegiance to the visible and tangible vicegerent ofChrist upon earth. A hypocritical parson may be absurd; but a skepticalpriest is tragical. "

"Yes, oh yes, I see, " murmured the girl, with a grieving face. "Arethey always to blame for it? They must be induced, sometimes, to enterthe church before they've seriously thought about it, and then don'tknow how to escape from the path that has been marked out for them fromtheir childhood. Should you think such a priest as that was to blamefor being a skeptic?" she asked very earnestly. 

"No, " said Ferris, with a smile at her seriousness, "I should thinksuch a skeptic as that was to blame for being a priest. "

"Shouldn't you be very sorry for him?" pursued Florida still moresolemnly. 

"I should, indeed, if I liked him. If I didn't, I'm afraid Ishouldn't, " said Ferris; but he saw that his levity jarred upon her. "Come, Miss Vervain, you're not going to look at those fat monks andsleek priests in the procession to-morrow as so many incorporatetragedies, are you? You'll spoil my pleasure if you do. I dare saythey'll be all of them devout believers, accepting everything, down tothe animalcula in the holy water. "

"If _you_ were that kind of a priest, " persisted the girl, withoutheeding his jests, "what should you do?"

"Upon my word, I don't know. I can't imagine it. Why, " he continued, "think what a helpless creature a priest is in everything but hispriesthood--more helpless than a woman, even. The only thing he coulddo would be to leave the church, and how could he do that? He's in theworld, but he isn't of it, and I don't see what he could do with it, orit with him. If an Italian priest were to leave the church, even theliberals, who distrust him now, would despise him still more. Do youknow that they have a pleasant fashion of calling the Protestantconverts apostates? The first thing for such a priest would be exile. But I'm not supposably the kind of priest you mean, and I don't thinkjust such a priest supposable. I dare say if a priest found himselfdrifting into doubt, he'd try to avoid the disagreeable subject, and, if he couldn't, he'd philosophize it some way, and wouldn't let hisskepticism worry him. "

"Then you mean that they haven't consciences like us?"

"They have consciences, but not like us. The Italians are kinder peoplethan we are, but they're not so just, and I should say that they don'tthink truth the chief good of life. They believe there are pleasanterand better things. Perhaps they're right. "

"No, no; you don't believe that, you know you don't, " said Florida, anxiously. "And you haven't answered my question. "

"Oh yes, I have. I've told you it wasn't a supposable case. "

"But suppose it was. "

"Well, if I must, " answered Ferris with a laugh. "With my unfortunatebringing up, I couldn't say less than that such a man ought to get outof his priesthood at any hazard. He should cease to be a priest, if itcost him kindred, friends, good fame, country, everything. I don't seehow there can be any living in such a lie, though I know there is. Inall reason, it ought to eat the soul out of a man, and leave himhelpless to do or be any sort of good. But there seems to be something, I don't know what it is, that is above all reason of ours, somethingthat saves each of us for good in spite of the bad that's in us. It'svery good practice, for a man who wants to be modest, to come and livein a Latin country. He learns to suspect his own topping virtues, andto be lenient to the novel combinations of right and wrong that hesees. But as for our insupposable priest--yes, I should say decidedlyhe ought to get out of it by all means. "

Florida fell back in her chair with an aspect of such relief as comesto one from confirmation on an important point. She passed her handover the sewing in her lap, but did not speak. 

Ferris went on, with a doubting look at her, for he had been shy ofintroducing Don Ippolito's name since the day on the Brenta, and he didnot know what effect a recurrence to him in this talk might have. "I'veoften wondered if our own clerical friend were not a little shaky inhis faith. I don't think nature meant him for a priest. He alwaysstrikes me as an extremely secular-minded person. I doubt if he's everput the question whether he is what he professes to be, squarely tohimself--he's such a mere dreamer. "

Florida changed her posture slightly, and looked down at her sewing. She asked, "But shouldn't you abhor him if he were a skeptical priest?"

Ferris shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't find it such an easy matterto abhor people. It would be interesting, " he continued musingly, "tohave such a dreamer waked up, once, and suddenly confronted with whathe recognized as perfect truthfulness, and couldn't help contrastinghimself with. But it would be a little cruel. "

"Would you rather have him left as he was?" asked Florida, lifting hereyes to his. 

"As a moralist, no; as a humanitarian, yes, Miss Vervain. He'd be muchhappier as he was. "

"What time ought we to be ready for you tomorrow?" demanded the girl ina tone of decision, "We ought to be in the Piazza by nine o'clock, " said Ferris, carelesslyaccepting the change of subject; and he told her of his plan for seeingthe procession from a window of the Old Procuratie. 

When he rose to go, he said lightly, "Perhaps, after all, we may seethe type of tragical priest we've been talking about. Who can tell? Isay his nose will be red. "

"Perhaps, " answered Florida, with unheeding gravity. 

XII. 

The day was one of those which can come to the world only in early Juneat Venice. The heaven was without a cloud, but a blue haze made mysteryof the horizon where the lagoon and sky met unseen. The breath of thesea bathed in freshness the city at whose feet her tides sparkled andslept. 

The great square of St. Mark was transformed from a mart, from a_salon_, to a temple. The shops under the colonnades that incloseit upon three sides were shut; the caffès, before which the circles ofidle coffee-drinkers and sherbet-eaters ordinarily spread out into thePiazza, were repressed to the limits of their own doors; the stands ofthe water-venders, the baskets of those that sold oranges of Palermoand black cherries of Padua, had vanished from the base of the churchof St. Mark, which with its dim splendor of mosaics and its carvenluxury of pillar and arch and finial rose like the high-altar, ineffably rich and beautiful, of the vaster temple whose inclosure itcompleted. Before it stood the three great red flag-staffs, likepainted tapers before an altar, and from them hung the Austrian flagsof red and white, and yellow and black. 

In the middle of the square stood the Austrian military band, motionless, encircling their leader with his gold-headed staffuplifted. During the night a light colonnade of wood, roofed with bluecloth, had been put up around the inside of the Piazza, and under thisnow paused the long pomp of the ecclesiastical procession--the priestsof all the Venetian churches in their richest vestments, followed intheir order by facchini, in white sandals and gay robes, with caps ofscarlet, white, green, and blue, who bore huge painted candles andsilken banners displaying the symbol or the portrait of the titularsaints of the several churches, and supported the canopies under whichthe host of each was elevated. Before the clergy went a company ofAustrian soldiers, and behind the facchini came a long array ofreligious societies, charity-school boys in uniforms, old paupers inholiday dress, little naked urchins with shepherds' crooks and bits offleece about their loins like John the Baptist in the Wilderness, little girls with angels' wings and crowns, the monks of the variousorders, and civilian penitents of all sorts in cloaks or dress-coats, hooded or bareheaded, and carrying each a lighted taper. The corridorsunder the Imperial Palace and the New and Old Procuratie were packedwith spectators; from every window up and down the fronts of the palaces, gay stuffs were flung; the startled doves of St. Mark perched upon thecornices, or fluttered uneasily to and fro above the crowd. The batonof the band leader descended with a crash of martial music, the priestschanted, the charity-boys sang shrill, a vast noise of shuffling feetarose, mixed with the foliage-like rustling of the sheets of tinselattached to the banners and candles in the procession: the wholestrange, gorgeous picture came to life. 

After all her plans and preparations, Mrs. Vervain had not felt wellenough that morning to come to the spectacle which she had counted somuch upon seeing, but she had therefore insisted the more that herdaughter should go, and Ferris now stood with Florida alone at a windowin the Old Procuratie. 

"Well, what do you think, Miss Vervain?" he asked, when their senseshad somewhat accustomed themselves to the noise of the procession; "doyou say now that Venice is too gloomy a city to have ever had anypossibility of gayety in her?"

"I never said that, " answered Florida, opening her eyes upon him. 

"Neither did I, " returned Ferris, "but I've often thought it, and I'mnot sure now but I'm right. There's something extremely melancholy tome in all this. I don't care so much for what one may call thedeplorable superstition expressed in the spectacle, but the meresplendid sight and the music are enough to make one shed tears. I don'tknow anything more affecting except a procession of lantern-litgondolas and barges on the Grand Canal. It's phantasmal. It's thespectral resurrection of the old dead forms into the present. It's noteven the ghost, it's the corpse, of other ages that's haunting Venice. The city ought to have been destroyed by Napoleon when he destroyed theRepublic, and thrown overboard----St. Mark, Winged Lion, Bucentaur, andall. There is no land like America for true cheerfulness and light-heartedness. Think of our Fourth of Julys and our State Fairs. Selah!"

Ferris looked into the girl's serious face with twinkling eyes. Heliked to embarrass her gravity with his antic speeches, and enjoyed herendeavors to find an earnest meaning in them, and her evident troublewhen she could find none. 

"I'm curious to know how our friend will look, " he began again, as hearranged the cushion on the window-sill for Florida's greater comfortin watching the spectacle, "but it won't be an easy matter to pick himout in this masquerade, I fancy. Candle-carrying, as well as the otheracts of devotion, seems rather out of character with Don Ippolito, andI can't imagine his putting much soul into it. However, very few of theclergy appear to do that. Look at those holy men with their eyes to thewind! They are wondering who is the _bella bionda_ at the windowhere. "

Florida listened to his persiflage with an air of sad distraction. Shewas intent upon the procession as it approached from the other side ofthe Piazza, and she replied at random to his comments on the differentbodies that formed it. 

"It's very hard to decide which are my favorites, " he continued, surveying the long column through an opera-glass. "My religiousdisadvantages have been such that I don't care much for priests ormonks, or young John the Baptists, or small female cherubim, but I dolike little charity-boys with voices of pins and needles and hair cut_à la_ dead-rabbit. I should like, if it were consistent with theconsular dignity, to go down and rub their heads. I'm fond, also, of_old_ charity-boys, I find. Those paupers make one in love withdestitute and dependent age, by their aspect of irresponsibleenjoyment. See how briskly each of them topples along on the leg thathe hasn't got in the grave! How attractive likewise are the civiliandevotees in those imperishable dress-coats of theirs! Observe theirhigh collars of the era of the Holy Alliance: they and their fathersand their grandfathers before them have worn those dress-coats; in ahundred years from now their posterity will keep holiday in them. Ishould like to know the elixir by which the dress-coats of civilemployees render themselves immortal. Those penitents in the cloaks andcowls are not bad, either, Miss Vervain. Come, they add a very prettytouch of mystery to this spectacle. They're the sort of thing thatpainters are expected to paint in Venice--that people sigh over as sopeculiarly Venetian. If you've a single sentiment about you, MissVervain, now is the time to produce it. "

"But I haven't. I'm afraid I have no sentiment at all, " answered thegirl ruefully. "But this makes me dreadfully sad. "

"Why that's just what I was saying a while ago. Excuse me, MissVervain, but your sadness lacks novelty; it's a sort of plagiarism. "

"Don't, please, " she pleaded yet more earnestly. "I was just thinking--I don't know why such an awful thought should come to me--that it mightall be a mistake after all; perhaps there might not be any other world, and every bit of this power and display of the church--_our_church as well as the rest--might be only a cruel blunder, a dreadfulmistake. Perhaps there isn't even any God! Do you think there is?"

"I don't _think _it, " said Ferris gravely, "I _know_ it. ButI don't wonder that this sight makes you doubt. Great God! How far itis from Christ! Look there, at those troops who go before the followersof the Lamb: their trade is murder. In a minute, if a dozen men calledout, 'Long live the King of Italy!' it would be the duty of thosesoldiers to fire into the helpless crowd. Look at the silken and gildedpomp of the servants of the carpenter's son! Look at those miserablemonks, voluntary prisoners, beggars, aliens to their kind! Look atthose penitents who think that they can get forgiveness for their sinsby carrying a candle round the square! And it is nearly two thousandyears since the world turned Christian! It is pretty slow. But Isuppose God lets men learn Him from their own experience of evil. Iimagine the kingdom of heaven is a sort of republic, and that God drawsmen to Him only through their perfect freedom. "

"Yes, yes, it must be so, " answered Florida, staring down on the crowdwith unseeing eyes, "but I can't fix my mind on it. I keep thinking thewhole time of what we were talking about yesterday. I never could havedreamed of a priest's disbelieving; but now I can't dream of anythingelse. It seems to me that none of these priests or monks can believeanything. Their faces look false and sly and bad--_all_ of them!"

"No, no, Miss Vervain, " said Ferris, smiling at her despair, "you pushmatters a little beyond--as a woman has a right to do, of course. Idon't think their faces are bad, by any means. Some of them are dulland torpid, and some are frivolous, just like the faces of otherpeople. But I've been noticing the number of good, kind, friendlyfaces, and they're in the majority, just as they are amongst otherpeople; for there are very few souls altogether out of drawing, in myopinion. I've even caught sight of some faces in which there was a realrapture of devotion, and now and then a very innocent one. Here, forinstance, is a man I should like to bet on, if he'd only look up. "

The priest whom Ferris indicated was slowly advancing toward the spaceimmediately under their window. He was dressed in robes of highceremony, and in his hand he carried a lighted taper. He moved with agentle tread, and the droop of his slender figure intimated a sort ofdespairing weariness. While most of his fellows stared carelessly orcuriously about them, his face was downcast and averted. 

Suddenly the procession paused, and a hush fell upon the vast assembly. Then the silence was broken by the rustle and stir of all thosethousands going down upon their knees, as the cardinal-patriarch liftedhis hands to bless them. 

The priest upon whom Ferris and Florida had fixed their eyes faltered amoment, and before he knelt his next neighbor had to pluck him by theskirt. Then he too knelt hastily, mechanically lifting his head, andglancing along the front of the Old Procuratie. His face had thatweariness in it which his figure and movement had suggested, and it wasvery pale, but it was yet more singular for the troubled innocencewhich its traits expressed. 

"There, " whispered Ferris, "that's what I call an uncommonly goodface. "

Florida raised her hand to silence him, and the heavy gaze of thepriest rested on them coldly at first. Then a light of recognition shotinto his eyes and a flush suffused his pallid visage, which seemed togrow the more haggard and desperate. His head fell again, and hedropped the candle from his hand. One of those beggars who went by theside of the procession, to gather the drippings of the tapers, restoredit to him. 

"Why, " said Ferris aloud, "it's Don Ippolito! Did you know him atfirst?"

XIII. 

The ladies were sitting on the terrace when Don Ippolito came nextmorning to say that he could not read with Miss Vervain that day norfor several days after, alleging in excuse some priestly duties properto the time. Mrs. Vervain began to lament that she had not been able togo to the procession of the day before. "I meant to have kept a sharplookout for you; Florida saw you, and so did Mr. Ferris. But it isn'tat all the same thing, you know. Florida has no faculty for describing;and now I shall probably go away from Venice without seeing you in yourreal character once. "

Don Ippolito suffered this and more in meek silence. He waited hisopportunity with unfailing politeness, and then with gentle punctiliotook his leave. 

"Well, come again as soon as your duties will let you, Don Ippolito, "cried Mrs. Vervain. "We shall miss you dreadfully, and I begrudge everyone of your readings that Florida loses. "

The priest passed, with the sliding step which his impeding draperyimposed, down the garden walk, and was half-way to the gate, whenFlorida, who had stood watching him, said to her mother, "I must speakto him again, " and lightly descended the steps and swiftly glided inpursuit. 

"Don Ippolito!" she called. 

He already had his hand upon the gate, but he turned, and rapidly wentback to meet her. 

She stood in the walk where she had stopped when her voice arrestedhim, breathing quickly. Their eyes met; a painful shadow overcast theface of the young girl, who seemed to be trying in vain to speak. 

Mrs. Vervain put on her glasses and peered down at the two with good-natured curiosity. 

"Well, madamigella, " said the priest at last, "what do you command me?"He gave a faint, patient sigh. 

The tears came into her eyes. "Oh, " she began vehemently, "I wish therewas some one who had the right to speak to you!"

"No one, " answered Don Ippolito, "has so much the right as you. "

"I saw you yesterday, " she began again, "and I thought of what you hadtold me, Don Ippolito. "

"Yes, I thought of it, too, " answered the priest; "I have thought of itever since. "

"But haven't you thought of any hope for yourself? Must you still go onas before? How can you go back now to those things, and pretend tothink them holy, and all the time have no heart or faith in them? It'sterrible!"

"What would you, madamigella?" demanded Don Ippolito, with a moodyshrug. "It is my profession, my trade, you know. You might say to theprisoner, " he added bitterly, "'It is terrible to see you chainedhere. ' Yes, it is terrible. Oh, I don't reject your compassion! Butwhat can I do?"

"Sit down with me here, " said Florida in her blunt, child-like way, andsank upon the stone seat beside the walk. She clasped her handstogether in her lap with some strong, bashful emotion, while DonIppolito, obeying her command, waited for her to speak. Her voice wasscarcely more than a hoarse whisper when she began. 

"I don't know how to begin what I want to say. I am not fit to adviseany one. I am so young, and so very ignorant of the world. "

"I too know little of the world, " said the priest, as much to himselfas to her. 

"It may be all wrong, all wrong. Besides, " she said abruptly, "how do Iknow that you are a good man, Don Ippolito? How do I know that you'vebeen telling me the truth? It may be all a kind of trap"--

He looked blankly at her. 

"This is in Venice; and you may be leading me on to say things to youthat will make trouble for my mother and me. You may be a spy"--

"Oh no, no, no!" cried the priest, springing to his feet with a kind ofmoan, and a shudder, "God forbid!" He swiftly touched her hand with thetips of his fingers, and then kissed them: an action of inexpressiblehumility. "Madamigella, I swear to you by everything you believe goodthat I would rather die than be false to you in a single breath orthought. "

"Oh, I know it, I know it, " she murmured. "I don't see how I could saysuch a cruel thing. "

"Not cruel; no, madamigella, not cruel, " softly pleaded Don Ippolito. 

"But--but is there _no_ escape for you?"

They looked steadfastly at each other for a moment, and then DonIppolito spoke. 

"Yes, " he said very gravely, "there is one way of escape. I have oftenthought of it, and once I thought I had taken the first step towardsit; but it is beset with many great obstacles, and to be a priest makesone timid and insecure. "

He lapsed into his musing melancholy with the last words; but she wouldnot suffer him to lose whatever heart he had begun to speak with. "That's nothing, " she said, "you must think again of that way ofescape, and never turn from it till you have tried it. Only take thefirst step and you can go on. Friends will rise up everywhere, and makeit easy for you. Come, " she implored him fervently, "you must promise. "

He bent his dreamy eyes upon her. 

"If I should take this only way of escape, and it seemed desperate toall others, would you still be my friend?"

"I should be your friend if the whole world turned against you. "

"Would you be my friend, " he asked eagerly in lower tones, and withsigns of an inward struggle, "if this way of escape were for me to beno longer a priest?"

"Oh yes, yes! Why not?" cried the girl; and her face glowed with heroicsympathy and defiance. It is from this heaven-born ignorance in womenof the insuperable difficulties of doing right that men take fire andaccomplish the sublime impossibilities. Our sense of details, our fatalhabits of reasoning paralyze us; we need the impulse of the pure idealwhich we can get only from them. These two were alike children asregarded the world, but he had a man's dark prevision of the means, andshe a heavenly scorn of everything but the end to be achieved. 

He drew a long breath. "Then it does not seem terrible to you?"

"Terrible? No! I don't see how you can rest till it is done!"

"Is it true, then, that you urge me to this step, which indeed I haveso long desired to take?"

"Yes, it is true! Listen, Don Ippolito: it is the very thing that Ihoped you would do, but I wanted you to speak of it first. You musthave all the honor of it, and I am glad you thought of it before. Youwill never regret it!"

She smiled radiantly upon him, and he kindled at her enthusiasm. Inanother moment his face darkened again. "But it will cost much, " hemurmured. 

"No matter, " cried Florida. "Such a man as you ought to leave thepriesthood at any risk or hazard. You should cease to be a priest, ifit cost you kindred, friends, good fame, country, everything!" Sheblushed with irrelevant consciousness. "Why need you be downhearted?With your genius once free, you can make country and fame and friendseverywhere. Leave Venice! There are other places. Think how inventorssucceed in America"--

"In America!" exclaimed the priest. "Ah, how long I have desired to bethere!"

"You must go. You will soon be famous and honored there, and you shallnot be a stranger, even at the first. Do you know that we are goinghome very soon? Yes, my mother and I have been talking of it to-day. Weare both homesick, and you see that she is not well. You shall come tous there, and make our house your home till you have formed some plansof your own. Everything will be easy. God _is_ good, " she said ina breaking voice, "and you may be sure he will befriend you. "

"Some one, " answered Don Ippolito, with tears in his eyes, "has alreadybeen very good to me. I thought it was you, but I will call it God!"

"Hush! You mustn't say such things. But you must go, now. Take time tothink, but not too much time. Only, --be true to yourself. "

They rose, and she laid her hand on his arm with an instinctive gestureof appeal. He stood bewildered. Then, "Thanks, madamigella, thanks!" hesaid, and caught her fragrant hand to his lips. He loosed it and liftedboth his arms by a blind impulse in which he arrested himself with aburning blush, and turned away. He did not take leave of her with hiswonted formalities, but hurried abruptly toward the gate. 

A panic seemed to seize her as she saw him open it. She ran after him. "Don Ippolito, Don Ippolito, " she said, coming up to him; and stammeredand faltered. "I don't know; I am frightened. You must do nothing fromme; I cannot let you; I'm not fit to advise you. It must be wholly fromyour own conscience. Oh no, don't look so! I _will_ be yourfriend, whatever happens. But if what you think of doing has seemed soterrible to you, perhaps it _is_ more terrible than I canunderstand. If it is the only way, it is right. But is there no other?What I mean is, have you no one to talk all this over with? I mean, can't you speak of it to--to Mr. Ferris? He is so true and honest andjust. "

"I was going to him, " said Don Ippolito, with a dim trouble in hisface. 

"Oh, I am so glad of that! Remember, I don't take anything back. Nomatter what happens, I will be your friend. But he will tell you justwhat to do. "

Don Ippolito bowed and opened the gate. 

Florida went back to her mother, who asked her, "What in the world haveyou and Don Ippolito been talking about so earnestly? What makes you sopale and out of breath?"

"I have been wanting to tell you, mother, " said Florida. She drew herchair in front of the elder lady, and sat down. 

XIV. 

Don Ippolito did not go directly to the painter's. He walked toward hishouse at first, and then turned aside, and wandered out through thenoisy and populous district of Canaregio to the Campo di Marte. A squadof cavalry which had been going through some exercises there wasmoving off the parade ground; a few infantry soldiers were strollingabout under the trees. Don Ippolito walked across the field to theborder of the lagoon, where he began to pace to and fro, with his headsunk in deep thought. He moved rapidly, but sometimes he stopped andstood still in the sun, whose heat he did not seem to feel, though aperspiration bathed his pale face and stood in drops on his foreheadunder the shadow of his nicchio. Some little dirty children of thepoor, with which this region swarms, looked at him from the slopingshore of the Campo di Giustizia, where the executions used to takeplace, and a small boy began to mock his movements and pauses, but wasarrested by one of the girls, who shook him and gesticulated warningly. 

At this point the long railroad bridge which connects Venice with themainland is in full sight, and now from the reverie in which hecontinued, whether he walked or stood still, Don Ippolito was roused bythe whistle of an outward train. He followed it with his eye as itstreamed along over the far-stretching arches, and struck out into theflat, salt marshes beyond. When the distance hid it, he put on his hat, which he had unknowingly removed, and turned his rapid steps toward therailroad station. Arrived there, he lingered in the vestibule for halfan hour, watching the people as they bought their tickets fordeparture, and had their baggage examined by the customs officers, andweighed and registered by the railroad porters, who passed it throughthe wicket shutting out the train, while the passengers gathered uptheir smaller parcels and took their way to the waiting-rooms. Hefollowed a group of English people some paces in this direction, andthen returned to the wicket, through which he looked long and wistfullyat the train. The baggage was all passed through; the doors of thewaiting-rooms were thrown open with harsh proclamation by the guards, and the passengers flocked into the carriages. Whistles and bells weresounded, and the train crept out of the station. 

A man in the company's uniform approached the unconscious priest, andstriking his hands softly together, said with a pleasant smile, "Yourservant, Don Ippolito. Are you expecting some one?"

"Ah, good day!" answered the priest, with a little start. "No, " headded, "I was not looking for any one. "

"I see, " said the other. "Amusing yourself as usual with the machinery. Excuse the freedom, Don Ippolito; but you ought to have been of ourprofession, --ha, ha! When you have the leisure, I should like to showyou the drawing of an American locomotive which a friend of mine hassent me from Nuova York. It is very different from ours, very curious. But monstrous in size, you know, prodigious! May I come with it to yourhouse, some evening?"

"You will do me a great pleasure, " said Don Ippolito. He gazed dreamilyin the direction of the vanished train. "Was that the train for Milan?"he asked presently. 

"Exactly, " said the man. 

"Does it go all the way to Milan?"

"Oh, no! it stops at Peschiera, where the passengers have theirpassports examined; and then another train backs down from Desenzanoand takes them on to Milan. And after that, " continued the man withanimation, "if you are on the way to England, for example, anothertrain carries you to Susa, and there you get the diligence over themountain to St. Michel, where you take railroad again, and so on upthrough Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and then by steamer to Folkestone, and then by railroad to London and to Liverpool. It is at Liverpoolthat you go on board the steamer for America, and piff! in ten days youare in Nuova York. My friend has written me all about it. "

"Ah yes, your friend. Does he like it there in America?"

"Passably, passably. The Americans have no manners; but they are gooddevils. They are governed by the Irish. And the wine is dear. But helikes America; yes, he likes it. Nuova York is a fine city. Butimmense, you know! Eight times as large as Venice!"

"Is your friend prosperous there?"

"Ah heigh! That is the prettiest part of the story. He has made himselfrich. He is employed by a large house to make designs for mantlepieces, and marble tables, and tombs; and he has--listen!--six hundred francs amonth!"

"Oh per Bacco!" cried Don Ippolito. 

"Honestly. But you spend a great deal there. Still, it is magnificent, is it not? If it were not for that blessed war there, now, that wouldbe the place for you, Don Ippolito. He tells me the Americans areactually mad for inventions. Your servant. Excuse the freedom, youknow, " said the man, bowing and moving away. 

"Nothing, dear, nothing, " answered the priest. He walked out of thestation with a light step, and went to his own house, where he soughtthe room in which his inventions were stored. He had not touched themfor weeks. They were all dusty and many were cobwebbed. He blew thedust from some, and bringing them to the light, examined themcritically, finding them mostly disabled in one way or other, exceptthe models of the portable furniture which he polished with hishandkerchief and set apart, surveying them from a distance with a lookof hope. He took up the breech-loading cannon and then suddenly put itdown again with a little shiver, and went to the threshold of theperverted oratory and glanced in at his forge. Veneranda had carelesslyleft the window open, and the draught had carried the ashes about thefloor. On the cinder-heap lay the tools which he had used in mendingthe broken pipe of the fountain at Casa Vervain, and had not usedsince. The place seemed chilly even on that summer's day. He stood inthe doorway with clenched hands. Then he called Veneranda, chid her forleaving the window open, and bade her close it, and so quitted thehouse and left her muttering. 

Ferris seemed surprised to see him when he appeared at the consulatenear the middle of the afternoon, and seated himself in the place wherehe was wont to pose for the painter. 

"Were you going to give me a sitting?" asked the latter, hesitating. "The light is horrible, just now, with this glare from the canal. Notthat I manage much better when it's good. I don't get on with you, DonIppolito. There are too many of you. I shouldn't have known you in theprocession yesterday. "

Don Ippolito did not respond. He rose and went toward his portrait onthe easel, and examined it long, with a curious minuteness. Then hereturned to his chair, and continued to look at it. "I suppose that itresembles me a great deal, " he said, "and yet I do not _feel_ likethat. I hardly know what is the fault. It is as I should be if I werelike other priests, perhaps?"

"I know it's not good, " said the painter. "It _is_ conventional, in spite of everything. But here's that first sketch I made of you. "

He took up a canvas facing the wall, and set it on the easel. Thecharacter in this charcoal sketch was vastly sincerer and sweeter. 

"Ah!" said Don Ippolito, with a sigh and smile of relief, "that isimmeasurably better. I wish I could speak to you, dear friend, in amood of yours as sympathetic as this picture records, of some mattersthat concern me very nearly. I have just come from the railroadstation. "

"Seeing some friends off?" asked the painter, indifferently, hoveringnear the sketch with a bit of charcoal in his hand, and hesitatingwhether to give it a certain touch. He glanced with half-shut eyes atthe priest. 

Don Ippolito sighed again. "I hardly know. I was seeing off my hopes, my desires, my prayers, that followed the train to America!"

The painter put down his charcoal, dusted his fingers, and looked atthe priest without saying anything. 

"Do you remember when I first came to you?" asked Don Ippolito. 

"Certainly, " said Ferris. "Is it of that matter you want to speak tome? I'm very sorry to hear it, for I don't think it practical. "

"Practical, practical!" cried the priest hotly. "Nothing is practicaltill it has been tried. And why should I not go to America?"

"Because you can't get your passport, for one thing, " answered thepainter dryly. 

"I have thought of that, " rejoined Don Ippolito more patiently. "I canget a passport for France from the Austrian authorities here, and atMilan there must be ways in which I could change it for one from my ownking"--it was by this title that patriotic Venetians of those daysspoke of Victor Emmanuel--"that would carry me out of France intoEngland. "

Ferris pondered a moment. "That is quite true, " he said. "Why hadn'tyou thought of that when you first came to me?"

"I cannot tell. I didn't know that I could even get a passport forFrance till the other day. "

Both were silent while the painter filled his pipe. "Well, " he saidpresently, "I'm very sorry. I'm afraid you're dooming yourself to manybitter disappointments in going to America. What do you expect to dothere?"

"Why, with my inventions"--

"I suppose, " interrupted the other, putting a lighted match to hispipe, "that a painter must be a very poor sort of American: _his_first thought is of coming to Italy. So I know very little directlyabout the fortunes of my inventive fellow-countrymen, or whether aninventor has any prospect of making a living. But once when I was atWashington I went into the Patent Office, where the models of theinventions are deposited; the building is about as large as the DucalPalace, and it is full of them. The people there told me nothing wascommoner than for the same invention to be repeated over and over againby different inventors. Some few succeed, and then they have lawsuitswith the infringers of their patents; some sell out their inventionsfor a trifle to companies that have capital, and that grow rich uponthem; the great number can never bring their ideas to the public noticeat all. You can judge for yourself what your chances would be. You haveasked me why you should not go to America. Well, because I think youwould starve there. "

"I am used to that, " said Don Ippolito; "and besides, until some of myinventions became known, I could give lessons in Italian. "

"Oh, bravo!" said Ferris, "you prefer instant death, then?"

"But madamigella seemed to believe that my success as an inventor wouldbe assured, there. "

Ferris gave a very ironical laugh. "Miss Vervain must have been abouttwelve years old when she left America. Even a lady's knowledge ofbusiness, at that age, is limited. When did you talk with her about it?You had not spoken of it to me, of late, and I thought you were morecontented than you used to be. "

"It is true, " said the priest. "Sometimes within the last two months Ihave almost forgotten it. "

"And what has brought it so forcibly to your mind again?"

"That is what I so greatly desire to tell you, " replied Don Ippolito, with an appealing look at the painter's face. He moistened his parchedlips a little, waiting for further question from the painter, to whomhe seemed a man fevered by some strong emotion and at that moment notquite wholesome. Ferris did not speak, and Don Ippolito began again:"Even though I have not said so in words to you, dear friend, has itnot appeared to you that I have no heart in my vocation?"

"Yes, I have sometimes fancied that. I had no right to ask you why. "

"Some day I will tell you, when I have the courage to go all over itagain. It is partly my own fault, but it is more my miserable fortune. But wherever the wrong lies, it has at last become intolerable to me. Icannot endure it any longer and live. I must go away, I must fly fromit. "

Ferris shrank from him a little, as men instinctively do from one whohas set himself upon some desperate attempt. "Do you mean, DonIppolito, that you are going to renounce your priesthood?"

Don Ippolito opened his hands and let his priesthood drop, as it were, to the ground. 

"You never spoke of this before, when you talked of going to America. Though to be sure"--

"Yes, yes!" replied Don Ippolito with vehemence, "but now an angel hasappeared and shown me the blackness of my life!"

Ferris began to wonder if he or Don Ippolito were not perhaps mad. 

"An angel, yes, " the priest went on, rising from his chair, "an angelwhose immaculate truth has mirrored my falsehood in all its vilenessand distortion--to whom, if it destroys me, I cannot devote less than atruthfulness like hers!"

"Hers--hers?" cried the painter, with a sudden pang. "Whose? Don'tspeak in these riddles. Whom do you mean?"

"Whom can I mean but only one?--madamigella!"

"Miss Vervain? Do you mean to say that Miss Vervain has advised you torenounce your priesthood?"

"In as many words she has bidden me forsake it at any risk, --at thecost of kindred, friends, good fame, country, everything. "

The painter passed his hand confusedly over his face. These were hisown words, the words he had used in speaking with Florida of thesupposed skeptical priest. He grew very pale. "May I ask, " he demandedin a hard, dry voice, "how she came to advise such a step?"

"I can hardly tell. Something had already moved her to learn from methe story of my life--to know that I was a man with neither faith norhope. Her pure heart was torn by the thought of my wrong and of myerror. I had never seen myself in such deformity as she saw me evenwhen she used me with that divine compassion. I was almost glad to bewhat I was because of her angelic pity for me!"

The tears sprang to Don Ippolito's eyes, but Ferris asked in the sametone as before, "Was it then that she bade you be no longer a priest?"

"No, not then, " patiently replied the other; "she was too greatlyoverwhelmed with my calamity to think of any cure for it. To-day it wasthat she uttered those words--words which I shall never forget, whichwill support and comfort me, whatever happens!"

The painter was biting hard upon the stem of his pipe. He turned awayand began ordering the color-tubes and pencils on a table against thewall, putting them close together in very neat, straight rows. Presently he said: "Perhaps Miss Vervain also advised you to go toAmerica?"

"Yes, " answered the priest reverently. "She had thought of everything. She has promised me a refuge under her mother's roof there, until I canmake my inventions known; and I shall follow them at once. "

"Follow them?"

"They are going, she told me. Madama does not grow better. They arehomesick. They--but you must know all this already?"

"Oh, not at all, not at all, " said the painter with a very bittersmile. "You are telling me news. Pray go on. "

"There is no more. She made me promise to come to you and listen toyour advice before I took any step. I must not trust to her alone, shesaid; but if I took this step, then through whatever happened she wouldbe my friend. Ah, dear friend, may I speak to you of the hope thatthese words gave me? You have seen--have you not?--you must have seenthat"--

The priest faltered, and Ferris stared at him helpless. When the nextwords came he could not find any strangeness in the fact which yet gavehim so great a shock. He found that to his nether consciousness it hadbeen long familiar--ever since that day when he had first jestinglyproposed Don Ippolito as Miss Vervain's teacher. Grotesque, tragic, impossible--it had still been the under-current of all his reveries; orso now it seemed to have been. 

Don Ippolito anxiously drew nearer to him and laid an imploring touchupon his arm, --"I love her!"

"What!" gasped the painter. "You? You I A priest?"

"Priest! priest!" cried Don Ippolito, violently. "From this day I am nolonger a priest! From this hour I am a man, and I can offer her thehonorable love of a man, the truth of a most sacred marriage, andfidelity to death!"

Ferris made no answer. He began to look very coldly and haughtily atDon Ippolito, whose heat died away under his stare, and who at last metit with a glance of tremulous perplexity. His hand had dropped fromFerris's arm, and he now moved some steps from him. "What is it, dearfriend?" he besought him. "Is there something that offends you? I cameto you for counsel, and you meet me with a repulse little short ofenmity. I do not understand. Do I intend anything wrong without knowingit? Oh, I conjure you to speak plainly!"

"Wait! Wait a minute, " said Ferris, waving his hand like a mantormented by a passing pain. "I am trying to think. What you say is. .. . I cannot imagine it!"

"Not imagine it? Not imagine it? And why? Is she not beautiful?"

"Yes. "

"And good?"

"Without doubt. "

"And young, and yet wise beyond her years? And true, and yetangelically kind?"

"It is all as you say, God knows. But. .. . A priest"--

"Oh! Always that accursed word! And at heart, what is a priest, then, but a man?--a wretched, masked, imprisoned, banished man! Has he notblood and nerves like you? Has he not eyes to see what is fair, andears to hear what is sweet? Can he live near so divine a flower and notknow her grace, not inhale the fragrance of her soul, not adore herbeauty? Oh, great God! And if at last he would tear off his stiflingmask, escape from his prison, return from his exile, would you gainsayhim?"

"No!" said the painter with a kind of groan. He sat down in a tall, carven gothic chair, --the furniture of one of his pictures, --and restedhis head against its high back and looked at the priest across theroom. "Excuse me, " he continued with a strong effort. "I am ready tobefriend you to the utmost of my power. What was it you wanted to askme? I have told you truly what I thought of your scheme of going toAmerica; but I may very well be mistaken. Was it about that MissVervain desired you to consult me?" His voice and manner hardened againin spite of him. "Or did she wish me to advise you about therenunciation of your priesthood? You must have thought that carefullyover for yourself. "

"Yes, I do not think you could make me see that as a greater difficultythan it has appeared to me. " He paused with a confused and daunted air, as if some important point had slipped his mind. "But I must take thestep; the burden of the double part I play is unendurable, is it not?"

"You know better than I. "

"But if you were such a man as I, with neither love for your vocationnor faith in it, should you not cease to be a priest?"

"If you ask me in that way, --yes, " answered the painter. "But I adviseyou nothing. I could not counsel another in such a case. "

"But you think and feel as I do, " said the priest, "and I am right, then. "

"I do not say you are wrong. "

Ferris was silent while Don Ippolito moved up and down the room, withhis sliding step, like some tall, gaunt, unhappy girl. Neither couldput an end to this interview, so full of intangible, inconclusivemisery. Ferris drew a long breath, and then said steadily, "DonIppolito, I suppose you did not speak idly to me of your--your feelingfor Miss Vervain, and that I may speak plainly to you in return. "

"Surely, " answered the priest, pausing in his walk and fixing his eyesupon the painter. "It was to you as the friend of both that I spoke ofmy love, and my hope--which is oftener my despair. "

"Then you have not much reason to believe that she returns your--feeling?"

"Ah, how could she consciously return it? I have been hitherto a priestto her, and the thought of me would have been impurity. But hereafter, if I can prove myself a man, if I can win my place in the world. .. . No, even now, why should she care so much for my escape from these bonds, if she did not care for me more than she knew?"

"Have you ever thought of that extravagant generosity of Miss Vervain'scharacter?"

"It is divine!"

"Has it seemed to you that if such a woman knew herself to have oncewrongly given you pain, her atonement might be as headlong andexcessive as her offense? That she could have no reserves in herreparation?"

Don Ippolito looked at Ferris, but did not interpose. 

"Miss Vervain is very religious in her way, and she is truth itself. Are you sure that it is not concern for what seems to her your terribleposition, that has made her show so much anxiety on your account?"

"Do I not know that well? Have I not felt the balm of her most heavenlypity?"

"And may she not be only trying to appeal to something in you as highas the impulse of her own heart?"

"As high!" cried Don Ippolito, almost angrily. "Can there be any higherthing in heaven or on earth than love for such a woman?"

"Yes; both in heaven and on earth, " answered Ferris. 

"I do not understand you, " said Don Ippolito with a puzzled stare. 

Ferris did not reply. He fell into a dull reverie in which he seemed toforget Don Ippolito and the whole affair. At last the priest spokeagain: "Have you nothing to say to me, signore?"

"I? What is there to say?" returned the other blankly. 

"Do you know any reason why I should not love her, save that I am--havebeen--a priest?"

"No, I know none, " said the painter, wearily. 

"Ah, " exclaimed Don Ippolito, "there is something on your mind that youwill not speak. I beseech you not to let me go wrong. I love her sowell that I would rather die than let my love offend her. I am a manwith the passions and hopes of a man, but without a man's experience, or a man's knowledge of what is just and right in these relations. Ifyou can be my friend in this so far as to advise or warn me; if you canbe her friend"--

Ferris abruptly rose and went to his balcony, and looked out upon theGrand Canal. The time-stained palace opposite had not changed in thelast half-hour. As on many another summer day, he saw the black boatsgoing by. A heavy, high-pointed barge from the Sile, with the captain'sfamily at dinner in the shade of a matting on the roof, movedsluggishly down the middle current. A party of Americans in a gondola, with their opera-glasses and guide-books in their hands, pointed out toeach other the eagle on the consular arms. They were all like sights ina mirror, or things in a world turned upside down. 

Ferris came back and looked dizzily at the priest trying to believethat this unhuman, sacerdotal phantasm had been telling him that itloved a beautiful young girl of his own race, faith, and language. 

"Will you not answer me, signore?" meekly demanded Don Ippolito. 

"In this matter, " replied the painter, "I cannot advise or warn you. The whole affair is beyond my conception. I mean no unkindness, but Icannot consult with you about it. There are reasons why I should not. The mother of Miss Vervain is here with her, and I do not feel that herinterests in such a matter are in my hands. If they come to me forhelp, that is different. What do you wish? You tell me that you areresolved to renounce the priesthood and go to America; and I haveanswered you to the best of my power. You tell me that you are in lovewith Miss Vervain. What can I have to say about that?"

Don Ippolito stood listening with a patient, and then a wounded air. "Nothing, " he answered proudly. "I ask your pardon for troubling youwith my affairs. Your former kindness emboldened me too much. I shallnot trespass again. It was my ignorance, which I pray you to excuse. Itake my leave, signore. "

He bowed, and moved out of the room, and a dull remorse filled thepainter, as he heard the outer door close after him. But he could donothing. If he had given a wound to the heart that trusted him, it wasin an anguish which he had not been able to master, and whose causes hecould not yet define. It was all a shapeless torment; it held him likethe memory of some hideous nightmare prolonging its horror beyondsleep. It seemed impossible that what had happened should havehappened. 

It was long, as he sat in the chair from which he had talked with DonIppolito, before he could reason about what had been said; and then theworst phase presented itself first. He could not help seeing that thepriest might have found cause for hope in the girl's behavior towardhim. Her violent resentments, and her equally violent repentances; herfervent interest in his unhappy fortunes, and her anxiety that heshould at once forsake the priesthood; her urging him to go to America, and her promising him a home under her mother's roof there: why mightit not all be in fact a proof of her tenderness for him? She might havefound it necessary to be thus coarsely explicit with him, for a man inDon Ippolito's relation to her could not otherwise have imagined herinterest in him. But her making use of Ferris to confirm her ownpurposes by his words, her repeating them so that they should come backto him from Don Ippolito's lips, her letting another man go with her tolook upon the procession in which her priestly lover was to appear inhis sacerdotal panoply; these things could cot be accounted for exceptby that strain of insolent, passionate defiance which he had noted illher from the beginning. Why should she first tell Don Ippolito of theirgoing away? "Well, I wish him joy of his bargain, " said Ferris aloud, and rising, shrugged his shoulders, and tried to cast off all care of amatter that did not concern him. But one does not so easily cast off amatter that does not concern one. He found himself haunted by certaintones and looks and attitudes of the young girl, wholly alien to thecharacter he had just constructed for her. They were child-like, trusting, unconscious, far beyond anything he had yet known in women, and they appealed to him now with a maddening pathos. She was standingthere before Don Ippolito's picture as on that morning when she came toFerris, looking anxiously at him, her innocent beauty, troubled withsome hidden care, hallowing the place. Ferris thought of the youngfellow who told him that he had spent three months in a dull Germantown because he had the room there that was once occupied by the girlwho had refused him; the painter remembered that the young fellow saidhe had just read of her marriage in an American newspaper. 

Why did Miss Vervain send Don Ippolito to him? Was it some scheme ofher secret love for the priest; or mere coarse resentment of thecautions Ferris had once hinted, a piece of vulgar bravado? But if shehad acted throughout in pure simplicity, in unwise goodness of heart?If Don Ippolito were altogether self-deceived, and nothing but herunknowing pity had given him grounds of hope? He himself had suggestedthis to the priest, and how with a different motive he looked at it inhis own behalf. A great load began slowly to lift itself from Ferris'sheart, which could ache now for this most unhappy priest. But if hisconjecture were just, his duty would be different. He must not coldlyacquiesce and let things take their course. He had introduced DonIppolito to the Vervains; he was in some sort responsible for him; hemust save them if possible from the painful consequences of thepriest's hallucination. But how to do this was by no means clear. Heblamed himself for not having been franker with Don Ippolito and triedto make him see that the Vervains might regard his passion as apresumption upon their kindness to him, an abuse of their hospitablefriendship; and yet how could he have done this without outrage to asensitive and right-meaning soul? For a moment it seemed to him that hemust seek Don Ippolito, and repair his fault; but they had hardlyparted as friends, and his action might be easily misconstrued. If heshrank from the thought of speaking to him of the matter again, itappeared yet more impossible to bring it before the Vervains. Like aman of the imaginative temperament as he was, he exaggerated theprobable effect, and pictured their dismay in colors that made hisinterference seem a ludicrous enormity; in fact, it would have been anawkward business enough for one not hampered by his intricateobligations. He felt bound to the Vervains, the ignorant young girl, and the addle-pated mother; but if he ought to go to them and tell themwhat he knew, to which of them ought he to speak, and how? In ananguish of perplexity that made the sweat stand in drops upon hisforehead, he smiled to think it just possible that Mrs. Vervain mighttake the matter seriously, and wish to consider the propriety ofFlorida's accepting Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to the daughter, howshould he approach the subject? "Don Ippolito tells me he loves you, and he goes to America with the expectation that when he has made hisfortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you will marry him. "Should he say something to this purport? And in Heaven's name whatright had he, Ferris, to say anything at all? The horrible absurdity, the inexorable delicacy of his position made him laugh. 

On the other hand, besides, he was bound to Don Ippolito, who had cometo him as the nearest friend of both, and confided in him. Heremembered with a tardy, poignant intelligence how in their first talkof the Vervains Don Ippolito had taken pains to inform himself thatFerris was not in love with Florida. Could he be less manly andgenerous than this poor priest, and violate the sanctity of hisconfidence? Ferris groaned aloud. No, contrive it as he would, call itby what fair name he chose, he could not commit this treachery. It wasthe more impossible to him because, in this agony of doubt as to whathe should do, he now at least read big own heart clearly, and had nolonger a doubt what was in it. He pitied her for the pain she mustsuffer. He saw how her simple goodness, her blind sympathy with DonIppolito, and only this, must have led the priest to the mistaken passat which he stood. But Ferris felt that the whole affair had beenfatally carried beyond his reach; he could do nothing now but wait andendure. There are cases in which a man must not protect the woman heloves. This was one. 

The afternoon wore away. In the evening he went to the Piazza, anddrank a cup of coffee at Florian's. Then he walked to the PublicGardens, where he watched the crowd till it thinned in the twilight andleft him alone. He hung upon the parapet, looking off over the lagoonthat at last he perceived to be flooded with moonlight. He desperatelycalled a gondola, and bade the man row him to the public landingnearest the Vervains', and so walked up the calle, and entered thepalace from the campo, through the court that on one side opened intothe garden. 

Mrs. Vervain was alone in the room where he had always been accustomedto find her daughter with her, and a chill as of the impending changefell upon him. He felt how pleasant it had been to find them together;with a vain, piercing regret he felt how much like home the place hadbeen to him. Mrs. Vervain, indeed, was not changed; she was even morethan ever herself, though all that she said imported change. She seemedto observe nothing unwonted in him, and she began to talk in her way ofthings that she could not know were so near his heart. 

"Now, Mr. Ferris, I have a little surprise for you. Guess what it is!"

"I'm not good at guessing. I'd rather not know what it is than have toguess it, " said Ferris, trying to be light, under his heavy trouble. 

"You won't try once, even? Well, you're going to be rid of us soon I Weare going away. "

"Yes, I knew that, " said Ferris quietly. "Don Ippolito told me so to-day. "

"And is that all you have to say? Isn't it rather sad? Isn't it sudden?Come, Mr. Ferris, do be a little complimentary, for once!"

"It's sudden, and I can assure you it's sad enough for me, " replied thepainter, in a tone which could not leave any doubt of his sincerity. 

"Well, so it is for us, " quavered Mrs. Vervain. "You have been very, very good to us, " she went on more collectedly, "and we shall neverforget it. Florida has been speaking of it, too, and she's extremelygrateful, and thinks we've quite imposed upon you. "

"Thanks. "

"I suppose we have, but as I always say, you're the representative ofthe country here. However, that's neither here nor there. We have norelatives on the face of the earth, you know; but I have a good manyold friends in Providence, and we're going back there. We both think Ishall be better at home; for I'm sorry to say, Mr. Ferns, that though Idon't complain of Venice, --it's really a beautiful place, and all that;not the least exaggerated, --still I don't think it's done my healthmuch good; or at least I don't seem to gain, don't you know, I don'tseem to gain. "

"I'm very sorry to hear it, Mrs. Vervain. "

"Yes, I'm sure you are; but you see, don't you, that we must go? We aregoing next week. When we've once made up our minds, there's no objectin prolonging the agony. "

Mrs. Vervain adjusted her glasses with the thumb and finger of herright hand, and peered into Ferris's face with a gay smile. "But thegreatest part of the surprise is, " she resumed, lowering her voice alittle, "that Don Ippolito is going with us. "

"Ah!" cried Ferris sharply. 

"I _knew_ I should surprise you, " laughed Mrs. Vervain. "We'vebeen having a regular confab--_clave_, I mean--about it here, andhe's all on fire to go to America; though it must be kept a greatsecret on his account, poor fellow. He's to join us in France, and thenhe can easily get into England, with us. You know he's to give up beinga priest, and is going to devote himself to invention when ho gets toAmerica. Now, what _do_ you think of it, Mr. Ferris? Quite strikesyou dumb, doesn't it?" triumphed Mrs. Vervain. "I suppose it's what youwould call a wild goose chase, --I used to pick up all those phrases, --but we shall carry it through. "

Ferris gasped, as though about to speak, but said nothing. 

"Don Ippolito's been here the whole afternoon, " continued Mrs. Vervain, "or rather ever since about five o'clock. He took dinner with us, andwe've been talking it over and over. He's _so_ enthusiastic aboutit, and yet he breaks down every little while, and seems quite todespair of the undertaking. But Florida won't let him do that; andreally it's funny, the way he defers to her judgment--you know _I_always regard Florida as such a mere child--and seems to take everyword she says for gospel. But, shedding tears, now: it's dreadful in aman, isn't it? I wish Don Ippolito wouldn't do that. It makes onecreep. I can't feel that it's manly; can you?"

Ferris found voice to say something about those things being differentwith the Latin races. 

"Well, at any rate, " said Mrs. Vervain, "I'm glad that _Americans_don't shed tears, as a general _rule_. Now, Florida: you'd thinkshe was the man all through this business, she's so perfectly heroicabout it; that is, outwardly: for I can see--women can, in each other, Mr. Ferris--just where she's on the point of breaking down, all thewhile. Has she ever spoken to you about Don Ippolito? She does think sohighly of your opinion, Mr. Ferris. "

"She does me too much honor, " said Ferris, with ghastly irony. 

"Oh, I don't think so, " returned Mrs. Vervain. "She told me thismorning that she'd made Don Ippolito promise to speak to you about it;but he didn't mention having done so, and--I hated, don't you know, toask him. .. . In fact, Florida had told me beforehand that I mustn't. Shesaid he must be left entirely to himself in that matter, and"--Mrs. Vervain looked suggestively at Ferris. 

"He spoke to me about it, " said Ferris. 

"Then why in the world did you let me run on? I suppose you advised himagainst it. "

"I certainly did. "

"Well, there's where I think woman's intuition is better than man'sreason. "

The painter silently bowed his head. 

"Yes, I'm quite woman's rights in that respect, " said Mrs. Vervain. 

"Oh, without doubt, " answered Ferris, aimlessly. 

"I'm perfectly delighted, " she went on, "at the idea of Don Ippolito'sgiving up the priesthood, and I've told him he must get married to somegood American girl. You ought to have seen how the poor fellow blushed!But really, you know, there are lots of nice girls that would_jump_ at him--so handsome and sad-looking, and a genius. "

Ferris could only stare helplessly at Mrs. Vervain, who continued:--

"Yes, I think he's a genius, and I'm determined that he shall have achance. I suppose we've got a job on our hands; but I'm not sorry. I'llintroduce him into society, and if he needs money he shall have it. What does God give us money for, Mr. Ferris, but to help our fellow-creatures?"

So miserable, as he was, from head to foot, that it seemed impossiblehe could endure more, Ferris could not forbear laughing at this burstof piety. 

"What are you laughing at?" asked Mrs. Vervain, who had cheerfullyjoined him. "Something I've been saying. Well, you won't have me tolaugh at much longer. I do wonder whom you'll have next. "

Ferris's merriment died away in something like a groan, and when Mrs. Vervain again spoke, it was in a tone of sudden querulousness. "I_wish_ Florida would come! She went to bolt the land-gate afterDon Ippolito, --I wanted her to, --but she ought to have been back longago. It's odd you didn't meet them, coming in. She must be in thegarden Somewhere; I suppose she's sorry to be leaving it. But I needher. Would you be so very kind, Mr. Ferris, as to go and ask her tocome to me?"

Ferris rose heavily from the chair in which he seemed to have grown tenyears older. He had hardly heard anything that he did not know already, but the clear vision of the affair with which he had come to theVervains was hopelessly confused and darkened. He could make nothing ofany phase of it. He did not know whether he cared now to see Florida ornot. He mechanically obeyed Mrs. Vervain, and stepping out upon theterrace, slowly descended the stairway. 

The moon was shining brightly into the garden. 

XV. 

Florida and Don Ippolito had paused in the pathway which parted at thefountain and led in one direction to the water-gate, and in the otherout through the palace-court into the campo. 

"Now, you must not give way to despair again, " she said to him. "Youwill succeed, I am sure, for you will deserve success. "

"It is all your goodness, madamigella, " sighed the priest, "and at thebottom of my heart I am afraid that all the hope and courage I have arealso yours. "

"You shall never want for hope and courage then. We believe in you, andwe honor your purpose, and we will be your steadfast friends. But nowyou must think only of the present--of how you are to get away fromVenice. Oh, I can understand how you must hate to leave it! What abeautiful night! You mustn't expect such moonlight as this in America, Don Ippolito. "

"It _is_ beautiful, is it not?" said the priest, kindling fromher. "But I think we Venetians are never so conscious of the beauty ofVenice as you strangers are. "

"I don't know. I only know that now, since we tave made up our minds togo, and fixed the day and hour, it is more like leaving my own countrythan anything else I've ever felt. This garden, I seem to have spent mywhole life in it; and when we are settled in Providence, I'm going tohave mother send back for some of these statues. I suppose SignorCavaletti wouldn't mind our robbing his place of them if he were paidenough. At any rate we must have this one that belongs to the fountain. You shall be the first to set the fountain playing over there, DonIppolito, and then we'll sit down on this stone bench before it, andimagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervain at Venice. "

"No, no; let me be the last to set it playing here, " said the priest, quickly stooping to the pipe at the foot of the figure, "and then wewill sit down here, and imagine ourselves in the garden of Casa Vervainat Providence. "

Florida put her hand on his shoulder. "You mustn't do it, " she saidsimply. "The padrone doesn't like to waste the water. "

"Oh, we'll pray the saints to rain it back on him some day, " cried DonIppolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlightand seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shallI shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, lookingruefully at the floating threads of splendor. 

"Oh, I will shut it off before I go, " answered Don Ippolito. "Let itplay a moment, " he continued, gazing rapturously upon it, while themoon painted his lifted face with a pallor that his black robesheightened. He fetched a long, sighing breath, as if he inhaled withthat respiration all the rich odors of the flowers, blanched like hisown visage in the white lustre; as if he absorbed into his heart atonce the wide glory of the summer night, and the beauty of the younggirl at his side. It seemed a supreme moment with him; he looked as aman might look who has climbed out of lifelong defeat into a singleinstant of release and triumph. 

Florida sank upon the bench before the fountain, indulging his capricewith that sacred, motherly tolerance, some touch of which is in allwomanly yielding to men's will, and which was perhaps present ingreater degree in her feeling towards a man more than ordinarilyorphaned and unfriended. 

"Is Providence your native city?" asked Don Ippolito, abruptly, after alittle silence. 

"Oh no; I was born at St. Augustine in Florida. "

"Ah yes, I forgot; madama has told me about it; Providence is_her_ city. But the two are near together?"

"No, " said Florida, compassionately, "they are a thousand miles apart. "

"A thousand miles? What a vast country!"

"Yes, it's a whole world. "

"Ah, a world, indeed!" cried the priest, softly. "I shall nevercomprehend it. "

"You never will, " answered the young girl gravely, "if you do not thinkabout it more practically. "

"Practically, practically!" lightly retorted the priest. "What a wordwith you Americans; That is the consul's word: _practical_. "

"Then you have been to see him to-day?" asked Florida, with eagerness. "I wanted to ask you"--

"Yes, I went to consult the oracle, as you bade me. "

"Don Ippolito"--

"And he was averse to my going to America. He said it was notpractical. "

"Oh!" murmured the girl. 

"I think, " continued the priest with vehemence, "that Signor Ferris isno longer my friend. "

"Did he treat you coldly--harshly?" she asked, with a note ofindignation in her voice. "Did he know that I--that you came"--

"Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I shall indeed go to ruin there. Ruin, ruin! Do I not _live_ ruin here?"

"What did he say--what did he tell you?"

"No, no; not now, madamigella! I do not want to think of that man, now. I want you to help me once more to realize myself in America, where Ishall never have been a priest, where I shall at least battle even-handed with the world. Come, let us forget him; the thought of himpalsies all my hope. He could not see me save in this robe, in thisfigure that I abhor. "

"Oh, it was strange, it was not like him, it was cruel! What did hesay?"

"In everything but words, he bade me despair; he bade me look upon allthat makes life dear and noble as impossible to me!"

"Oh, how? Perhaps he did not understand you. No, he did not understandyou. What did you say to him, Don Ippolito? Tell me!" She leanedtowards him, in anxious emotion, as she spoke. 

The priest rose, and stretched out his arms, as if he would gathersomething of courage from the infinite space. In his visage were thesublimity and the terror of a man who puts everything to the risk. 

"How will it really be with me, yonder?" he demanded. "As it is withother men, whom their past life, if it has been guiltless, does notfollow to that new world of freedom and justice?"

"Why should it not be so?" demanded Florida. "Did _he_ say itwould not?"

"Need it be known there that I have been a priest? Or if I tell it, will it make me appear a kind of monster, different from other men?"

"No, no!" she answered fervently. "Your story would gain friends andhonor for you everywhere in America. Did _he_"--

"A moment, a moment!" cried Don Ippolito, catching his breath. "Will itever be possible for me to win something more than honor and friendshipthere?"

She looked up at him askingly, confusedly. 

"If I am a man, and the time should ever come that a face, a look, avoice, shall be to me what they are to other men, will _she_remember it against me that I have been a priest, when I tell her--sayto her, madamigella--how dear she is to me, offer her my life'sdevotion, ask her to be my wife?". .. 

Florida rose from the seat, and stood confronting him, in a helplesssilence, which he seemed not to notice. 

Suddenly he clasped his hands together, and desperately stretched themtowards her. 

"Oh, my hope, my trust, my life, if it were you that I loved?". .. 

"What!" shuddered the girl, recoiling, with almost a shriek. "_You_? _A priest_!"

Don Ippolito gave a low cry, half sob:--

"His words, his words! It is true, I cannot escape, I am doomed, I mustdie as I have lived!"

He dropped his face into his hands, and stood with his head bowedbefore her; neither spoke for a long time, or moved. 

Then Florida said absently, in the husky murmur to which her voice fellwhen she was strongly moved, "Yes, I see it all, how it has been, " andwas silent again, staring, as if a procession of the events and scenesof the past months were passing before her; and presently she moaned toherself "Oh, oh, oh!" and wrung her hands. The foolish fountain keptcapering and babbling on. All at once, now, as a flame flashes up andthen expires, it leaped and dropped extinct at the foot of the statue. 

Its going out seemed somehow to leave them in darkness, and under coverof that gloom she drew nearer the priest, and by such approaches as onemakes toward a fancied apparition, when his fear will not let him fly, but it seems better to suffer the worst from it at once than to live interror of it ever after, she lifted her hands to his, and gently takingthem away from his face, looked into his hopeless eyes. 

"Oh, Don Ippolito, " she grieved. "What shall I say to you, what can Ido for you, now?"

But there was nothing to do. The whole edifice of his dreams, his wildimaginations, had fallen into dust at a word; no magic could rebuildit; the end that never seems the end had come. He let her keep his coldhands, and presently he returned the entreaty of her tears with hiswan, patient smile. 

"You cannot help me; there is no help for an error like mine. Sometime, if ever the thought of me is a greater pain than it is at this moment, you can forgive me. Yes, you can do that for me. "

"But who, _who_ will ever forgive me" she cried, "for myblindness! Oh, you must believe that I never thought, I never dreamt"--

"I know it well. It was your fatal truth that did it; truth too highand fine for me to have discerned save through such agony as. .. . Youtoo loved my soul, like the rest, and you would have had me no priestfor the reason that they would have had me a priest--I see it. But youhad no right to love my soul and not me--you, a woman. A woman must notlove only the soul of a man. "

"Yes, yes!" piteously explained the girl, "but you were a priest tome!"

"That is true, madamigella. I was always a priest to you; and now I seethat I never could be otherwise. Ah, the wrong began many years beforewe met. I was trying to blame you a little"--

"Blame me, blame me; do!"

--"but there is no blame. Think that it was another way of asking yourforgiveness. .. . O my God, my God, my God!"

He released his hands from her, and uttered this cry under his breath, with his face lifted towards the heavens. When he looked at her again, he said: "Madamigella, if my share of this misery gives me the right toask of you"--

"Oh ask anything of me! I will give everything, do everything!"

He faltered, and then, "You do not love me, " he 8aid abruptly; "isthere some one else that you love?"

She did not answer. 

"Is it . .. He?"

She hid her face. 

"I knew it, " groaned the priest, "I knew that too!" and he turned away. 

"Don Ippolito, Don Ippolito--oh, poor, poor Don Ippolito!" cried thegirl, springing towards him. "Is _this_ the way you leave me?Where are you going? What will you do now?"

"Did I not say? I am going to die a priest. "

"Is there nothing that you will let me be to you, hope for you?"

"Nothing, " said Don Ippolito, after a moment. "What could you?" Heseized the hands imploringly extended towards him, and clasped themtogether and kissed them both. "Adieu!" he whispered; then he openedthem, and passionately kissed either palm; "adieu, adieu!"

A great wave of sorrow and compassion and despair for him swept throughher. She flung her arms about his neck, and pulled his head down uponher heart, and held it tight there, weeping and moaning over him asover some hapless, harmless thing that she had unpurposely bruised orkilled. Then she suddenly put her hands against his breast, and thrusthim away, and turned and ran. 

Ferris stepped back again into the shadow of the tree from which he hadjust emerged, and clung to its trunk lest he should fall. Anotherseemed to creep out of the court in his person, and totter across thewhite glare of the campo and down the blackness of the calle. In theintersected spaces where the moonlight fell, this alien, miserable mansaw the figure of a priest gliding on before him. 

XVI. 

Florida swiftly me anted the terrace steps, but she stopped with herhand on the door, panting, and turned and walked slowly away to the endof the terrace, drying her eyes with dashes of her handkerchief, andordering her hair, some coils of which had been loosened by her flight. Then she went back to the door, waited, and softly opened it, Hermother was not in the parlor where she had left her, and she passednoiselessly into her own room, where some trunks stood open and half-packed against the wall. She began to gather up the pieces of dressthat lay upon the bed and chairs, and to fold them with mechanicalcarefulness and put them in the boxes. Her mother's voice called fromthe other chamber, "Is that you, Florida?"

"Yes, mother, " answered the girl, but remained kneeling before one ofthe boxes, with that pale green robe in her hand which she had worn onthe morning when Ferris had first brought Don Ippolito to see them. Shesmoothed its folds and looked down at it without making any motion topack it away, and so she lingered while her mother advanced with onequestion after another; "What are you doing, Florida? Where are you?Why didn't you come to me?" and finally stood in the doorway. "Oh, you're packing. Do you know, Florida, I'm getting very impatient aboutgoing. I wish we could be off at once. "

A tremor passed over the young girl and she started from her languidposture, and laid the dress in the trunk. "So do I, mother. I wouldgive the world if we could go to-morrow!"

"Yes, but we can't, you see. I'm afraid we've undertaken a great deal, my dear. It's quite a weight upon _my_ mind, already; and I don'tknow what it _will_ be. If we were free, now, I should say, go to-morrow, by all means. But we couldn't arrange it with Don Ippolito onour hands. "

Florida waited a moment before she replied. Then she said coldly, "DonIppolito is not going with us, mother. "

"Not going with us? Why"--

"He is not going to America. He will not leave Venice; he is to remaina priest, " said Florida, doggedly. 

Mrs. Vervain sat down in the chair that stood beside the door. "Notgoing to America; not leave Venice; remain a priest? Florida, youastonish me! But I am not the least surprised, not the least in theworld. I thought Don Ippolito would give out, all along. He is not whatI should call fickle, exactly, but he is weak, or timid, rather. He isa good man, but he lacks courage, resolution. I always doubted if hewould succeed in America; he is too much of a dreamer. But this, really, goes a little beyond anything. I never expected this. What didhe say, Florida? How did he excuse himself?"

"I hardly know; very little. What was there to say?"

"To be sure, to be sure. Did you try to reason with him, Florida?"

"No, " answered the girl, drearily. 

"I am glad of that. I think you had said quite enough already. You owedit to yourself not to do so, and he might have misinterpreted it. Theseforeigners are very different from Americans. No doubt we should havehad a time of it, if he had gone with us. It must be for the best. I'msure it was ordered so. But all that doesn't relieve Don Ippolito fromthe charge of black ingratitude, and want of consideration for us. He'squite made fools of us. "

"He was not to blame. It was a very great step for him. And if". .. . 

"I know that. But he ought not to have talked of it. He ought to haveknown his own mind fully before speaking; that's the only safe way. Well, then, there is nothing to prevent our going to-morrow. "

Florida drew a long breath, and rose to go on with the work of packing. 

"Have you been crying, Florida? Well, of course, you can't help feelingsorry for such a man. There's a great deal of good in Don Ippolito, agreat deal. But when you come to my age you won't cry so easily, mydear. It's very trying, " said Mrs. Vervain. She sat awhile in silencebefore she asked: "Will he come here to-morrow morning?"

Her daughter looked at her with a glance of terrified inquiry. 

"Do have your wits about you, my dear! We can't go away without sayinggood-by to him, and we can't go away without paying him. "

"Paying him?"

"Yes, paying him--paying him for your lessons. It's always been veryawkward. He hasn't been like other teachers, you know: more like aguest, or friend of the family. He never seemed to want to take themoney, and of late, I've been letting it run along, because I hated soto offer it, till now, it's quite a sum. I suppose he needs it, poorfellow. And how to get it to him is the question. He may not come to-morrow, as usual, and I couldn't trust it to the padrone. We might sendit to him in a draft from Paris, but I'd rather pay him before we go. Besides, it would be rather rude, going away without seeing him again. "Mrs. Vervain thought a moment; then, "I'll tell you, " she resumed. "Ifhe doesn't happen to come here to-morrow morning, we can stop on ourway to the station and give him the money. "

Florida did not answer. 

"Don't you think that would be a good plan?"

"I don't know, " replied the girl in a dull way. 

"Why, Florida, if you think from anything Don Ippolito said that hewould rather not see us again--that it would be painful to him--why, wecould ask Mr. Ferris to hand him the money. "

"Oh no, no, no, mother!" cried Florida, hiding her face, "that would betoo horribly indelicate!"

"Well, perhaps it wouldn't be quite good taste, " said Mrs. Vervainperturbedly, "but you needn't express yourself so violently, my dear. It's not a matter of life and death. I'm sure I don't know what to do. We must stop at Don Ippolito's house, I suppose. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, " faintly assented the daughter. 

Mrs. Vervain yawned. "Well I can't think anything more about it to-night; I'm too stupid. But that's the way we shall do. Will you help meto bed, my dear? I shall be good for nothing to-morrow. "

She went on talking of Don Ippolito's change of purpose till her headtouched the pillow, from which she suddenly lifted it again, and calledout to her daughter, who had passed into the next room: "But Mr. Ferris----why didn't he come back with you?"

"Come back with me?"

"Why yes, child. I sent him out to call you, just before you came in. This Don Ippolito business put him quite out of my head. Didn't you seehim? . .. Oh! What's that?"

"Nothing: I dropped my candle. "

"You're sure you didn't set anything on fire?"

"No! It went dead out. "

"Light it again, and do look. Now is everything right?"

"Yes. "

"It's queer he didn't come back to _say_ he couldn't find you. What do you suppose became of him?"

"I don't know, mother. "

"It's very perplexing. I wish Mr. Ferris were not so odd. It quiteborders on affectation. I don't know what to make of it. We must sendword to him the very first thing to-morrow morning, that we're going, and ask him to come to see us. "

Florida made no reply. She sat staring at the black space of the door-way into her mother's room. Mrs. Vervain did not speak again. After awhile her daughter softly entered her chamber, shading the candle withher hand; and seeing that she slept, softly withdrew, closed the door, and went about the work of packing again. When it was all done, sheflung herself upon her bed and hid her face in the pillow. 

 * * * * *

The next morning was spent in bestowing those interminable last toucheswhich the packing of ladies' baggage demands, and in taking leave withlargess (in which Mrs. Vervain shone) of all the people in the houseand out of it, who had so much as touched a hat to the Vervains duringtheir sojourn. The whole was not a vast sum; nor did the sundryextortions of the padrone come to much, though the honest man rackedhis brain to invent injuries to his apartments and furniture. Beingunmurmuringly paid, he gave way to his real goodwill for his tenants inmany little useful offices. At the end he persisted in sending them tothe station in his own gondola and could with difficulty be kept fromgoing with them. 

Mrs. Vervain had early sent a message to Ferris, but word came back afirst and a second time that he was not at home, and the forenoon woreaway and he had not appeared. A certain indignation sustained her tillthe gondola pushed out into the canal, and then it yielded to anintolerable regret that she should not see him. 

"I _can't_ go without saying good-by to Mr. Ferris, Florida, " shesaid at last, "and it's no use asking me. He may have been wanting alittle in politeness, but he's been _so_ good all along; and weowe him too much not to make an effort to thank him before we go. Wereally must stop a moment at his house. "

Florida, who had regarded her mother's efforts to summon Ferris to themwith passive coldness, turned a look of agony upon her. But in a momentshe bade the gondolier stop at the consulate, and dropping her veilover her face, fell back in the shadow of the tenda-curtains. 

Mrs. Vervain sentimentalized their departure a little, but her daughtermade no comment on the scene they were leaving. 

The gondolier rang at Ferris's door and returned with the answer thathe was not at home. 

Mrs. Vervain gave way to despair. "Oh dear, oh dear! This is too bad!What shall we do?"

"We'll lose the train, mother, if we loiter in this way, " said Florida. 

"Well, wait. I _must_ leave a message at least. " "_How could yoube away_, " she wrote on her card, "_when we called to say good-by?We've changed our plans and we're going to-day. I shall write you anice scolding letter from Verona--we're going over the Brenner--foryour behavior last night. Who will keep you straight when I'm gone?You've been very, very kind. Florida joins me in a thousand thanks, regrets, and good-byes. _"

"There, I haven't said anything, after all, " she fretted, with tears inher eyes. 

The gondolier carried the card again to the door, where Ferris'sservant let down a basket by a string and fished it up. 

"If Don Ippolito shouldn't be in, " said Mrs. Vervain, as the boat movedon again, "I don't know what I _shall_ do with this money. It willbe awkward beyond anything. "

The gondola slipped from the Canalazzo into the network of the smallercanals, where the dense shadows were as old as the palaces that castthem and stopped at the landing of a narrow quay. The gondolierdismounted and rang at Don Ippolito's door. There was no response; herang again and again. At last from a window of the uppermost story thehead of the priest himself peered out. The gondolier touched his hatand said, "It is the ladies who ask for you, Don Ippolito. "

It was a minute before the door opened, and the priest, bare-headed andblinking in the strong light, came with a stupefied air across the quayto the landing-steps. 

"Well, Don Ippolito!" cried Mrs. Vervain, rising and giving him herhand, which she first waved at the trunks and bags piled up in thevacant space in the front of the boat, "what do you think of this? Weare really going, immediately; _we_ can change our minds too; andI don't think it would have been too much, " she added with a friendlysmile, "if we had gone without saying good-by to you. What in the worlddoes it all mean, your giving up that grand project of yours sosuddenly?"

She sat down again, that she might talk more at her ease, and seemedthoroughly happy to have Don Ippolito before her again. 

"It finally appeared best, madama, " he said quietly, after a quick, keen glance at Florida, who did not lift her veil. 

"Well, perhaps you're partly right. But I can't help thinking that youwith your talent would have succeeded in America. Inventors do get onthere, in the most surprising way. There's the Screw Company ofProvidence. It's such a simple thing; and now the shares are wortheight hundred. Are you well to-day, Don Ippolito?"

"Quite well, madama. "

"I thought you looked rather pale. But I believe you're always a littlepale. You mustn't work too hard. We shall miss you a great deal, DonIppolito. "

"Thanks, madama. "

"Yes, we shall be quite lost without you. And I wanted to say this toyou, Don Ippolito, that if ever you change your mind again, andconclude to come to America, you must write to me, and let me help youjust as I had intended to do. "

The priest shivered, as if cold, and gave another look at Florida'sveiled face. 

"You are too good, " he said. 

"Yes, I really think I am, " replied Mrs. Vervain, playfully. "Considering that you were going to let me leave Venice without eventrying to say good-by to me, I think I'm very good indeed. "

Mrs. Vervain's mood became overcast, and her eyes filled with tears: "Ihope you're sorry to have us going, Don Ippolito, for you know how veryhighly I prize your acquaintance. It was rather cruel of you, I think. "

She seemed not to remember that he could not have known of their changeof plan. Don Ippolito looked imploringly into her face, and made atouching gesture of deprecation, but did not speak. 

"I'm really afraid you're _not_ well, and I think it's too bad ofus to be going, " resumed Mrs. Vervain; "but it can't be helped now: weare all packed, don't you see. But I want to ask one favor of you, DonIppolito; and that is, " said Mrs. Vervain, covertly taking a little_rouleau_ from her pocket, "that you'll leave these inventions ofyours for a while, and give yourself a vacation. You need rest of mind. Go into the country, somewhere, do. That's what's preying upon you. Butwe must really be off, now. Shake hands with Florida--I'm going to bethe last to part with you, " she said, with a tearful smile. 

Don Ippolito and Florida extended their hands. Neither spoke, and asshe sank back upon the seat from which she had half risen, she drewmore closely the folds of the veil which she had not lifted from herface. 

Mrs. Vervain gave a little sob as Don Ippolito took her hand and kissedit; and she had some difficulty in leaving with him the rouleau, whichshe tried artfully to press into his palm. "Good-by, good-by, " shesaid, "don't drop it, " and attempted to close his fingers over it. 

But he let it lie carelessly in his open hand, as the gondola movedoff, and there it still lay as he stood watching the boat slip under abridge at the next corner, and disappear. While he stood there gazingat the empty arch, a man of a wild and savage aspect approached. It wassaid that this man's brain had been turned by the death of his brother, who was betrayed to the Austrians after the revolution of '48, by hiswife's confessor. He advanced with swift strides, and at the moment hereached Don Ippolito's side he suddenly turned his face upon him andcursed him through his clenched teeth: "Dog of a priest!"

Don Ippolito, as if his whole race had renounced him in the maniac'swords, uttered a desolate cry, and hiding his face in his hands, tottered into his house. 

The rouleau had dropped from his palm; it rolled down the shelvingmarble of the quay, and slipped into the water. 

The young beggar who had held Mrs. Vervain's gondola to the shore whileshe talked, looked up and down the deserted quay, and at the doors andwindows. Then he began to take off his clothes for a bath. 

XVII. 

Ferris returned at nightfall to his house, where he had not been sincedaybreak, and flung himself exhausted upon the bed. His face was burntred with the sun, and his eyes were bloodshot. He fell into a doze anddreamed that he was still at Malamocco, whither he had gone thatmorning in a sort of craze, with some fishermen, who were to cast theirnets there; then he was rowing back to Venice across the lagoon, thatseemed a molten fire under the keel. He woke with a heavy groan, andbade Marina fetch him a light. 

She set it on the table, and handed him the card Mrs. Vervain had left. He read it and read it again, and then he laid it down, and putting onhis hat, he took his cane and went out. "Do not Wait for me, Marina, "he said, "I may be late. Go to bed. "

He returned at midnight, and lighting his candle took up the card andread it once more. He could not tell whether to be glad or sorry thathe had failed to see the Vervains again. He took it for granted thatDon Ippolito was to follow; he would not ask himself what motive hadhastened their going. The reasons were all that he should never morelook upon the woman so hatefully lost to him, but a strong instinct ofhis heart struggled against them. 

He lay down in his clothes, and began to dream almost before he beganto sleep. He woke early, and went out to walk. He did not rest all day. Once he came home, and found a letter from Mrs. Vervain, postmarkedVerona, reiterating her lamentations and adieux, and explaining thatthe priest had relinquished his purpose, and would not go to America atall. The deeper mystery in which this news left him was not lesssinister than before. 

In the weeks that followed, Ferris had no other purpose than to reducethe days to hours, the hours to minutes. The burden that fell upon himwhen he woke lay heavy on his heart till night, and oppressed him farinto his sleep. He could not give his trouble certain shape; what wasmostly with him was a formless loss, which he could not resolve intoany definite shame or wrong. At times, what he had seen seemed to himsome baleful trick of the imagination, some lurid and foolish illusion. 

But he could do nothing, he could not ask himself what the end was tobe. He kept indoors by day, trying to work, trying to read, marvelingsomewhat that he did not fall sick and die. At night he set out on longwalks, which took him he cared not where, and often detained him tillthe gray lights of morning began to tremble through the nocturnal blue. But even by night he shunned the neighborhood in which the Vervains hadlived. Their landlord sent him a package of trifles they had leftbehind, but he refused to receive them, sending back word that he didnot know where the ladies were. He had half expected that Mrs. Vervain, though he had not answered her last letter, might write to him againfrom England, but she did not. The Vervains had passed out of hisworld; he knew that they had been in it only by the torment they hadleft him. 

He wondered in a listless way that he should see nothing of DonIppolito. Once at midnight he fancied that the priest was comingtowards him across a campo he had just entered; he stopped and turnedback into the calle: when the priest came up to him, it was not DonIppolito. 

In these days Ferris received a dispatch from the Department of State, informing him that his successor had been appointed, and directing himto deliver up the consular flags, seals, archives, and other propertyof the United States. No reason for his removal was given; but as therehad never been any reason for his appointment, he had no right tocomplain; the balance was exactly dressed by this simple device of ourcivil service. He determined not to wait for the coming of hissuccessor before giving up the consular effects, and he placed them atonce in the keeping of the worthy ship-chandler who had so oftentransferred them from departing to arriving consuls. Then being quiteready at any moment to leave Venice, he found himself in nowise eagerto go; but he began in a desultory way to pack up his sketches andstudies. 

One morning as he sat idle in his dismantled studio, Marina came totell him that an old woman, waiting at the door below, wished to speakwith him. 

"Well, let her come up, " said Ferris wearily, and presently Marinareturned with a very ill-favored beldam, who stared hard at him whilehe frowningly puzzled himself as to where he had seen that malignvisage before. 

"Well?" he said harshly. 

"I come, " answered the old woman, "on the part of Don IppolitoRondinelli, who desires so much to see your excellency. "

Ferris made no response, while the old woman knotted the fringe of hershawl with quaking hands, and presently added with a tenderness in hervoice which oddly discorded with the hardness of her face: "He has beenvery sick, poor thing, with a fever; but now he is in his senses again, and the doctors say he will get well. I hope so. But he is still veryweak. He tried to write two lines to you, but he had not the strength;so he bade me bring you this word: That he had something to say whichit greatly concerned you to hear, and that he prayed you to forgive hisnot coming to revere you, for it was impossible, and that you shouldhave the goodness to do him this favor, to come to find him thequickest you could. "

The old woman wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl, and her chinwobbled pathetically while she shot a glance of baleful dislike atFerris, who answered after a long dull stare at her, "Tell him I'llcome. "

He did not believe that Don Ippolito could tell him anything thatgreatly concerned him; but he was worn out with going round in the samecircle of conjecture, and so far as he could be glad, he was glad ofthis chance to face his calamity. He would go, but not at once; hewould think it over; he would go to-morrow, when he had got some graspof the matter. 

The old woman lingered. 

"Tell him I'll come, " repeated Ferris impatiently. 

"A thousand excuses; but my poor master has been very sick. The doctorssay he will get well. I hope so. But he is very weak indeed; a littleshock, a little disappointment. .. . Is the signore very, _very_much occupied this morning? He greatly desired, --he prayed that if sucha thing were possible in the goodness of your excellency . .. . But I amoffending the signore!"

"What do you want?" demanded Ferris. 

The old wretch set up a pitiful whimper, and tried to possess herselfof his hand; she kissed his coat-sleeve instead. "That you will returnwith me, " she besought him. 

"Oh, I'll go!" groaned the painter. "I might as well go first as last, "he added in English. "There, stop that! Enough, enough, I tell you!Didn't I say I was going with you?" he cried to the old woman. 

"God bless you!" she mumbled, and set off before him down the stairsand out of the door. She looked so miserably old and weary that hecalled a gondola to his landing and made her get into it with him. 

It tormented Don Ippolito's idle neighborhood to see Veneranda arrivein such state, and a passionate excitement arose at the caffè, wherethe person of the consul was known, when Ferris entered the priest'shouse with her. 

He had not often visited Don Ippolito, but the quaintness of the placehad been so vividly impressed upon him, that he had a certainfamiliarity with the grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings of theparlor, and the puerile arrangement of the piano and melodeon. Veneranda led him through these rooms to the chamber where Don Ippolitohad first shown him his inventions. They were all removed now, and on abed, set against the wall opposite the door, lay the priest, with hishands on his breast, and a faint smile on his lips, so peaceful, soserene, that the painter stopped with a sudden awe, as if he hadunawares come into the presence of death. 

"Advance, advance, " whispered the old woman. 

Near the head of the bed sat a white-haired priest wearing the redstockings of a canonico; his face was fanatically stern; but he rose, and bowed courteously to Ferris. 

The stir of his robes roused Don Ippolito. He slowly and weakly turnedhis head, and his eyes fell upon the painter. He made a helplessgesture of salutation with his thin hand, and began to excuse himself, for the trouble he had given, with a gentle politeness that touched thepainter's heart through all the complex resentments that divided them. It was indeed a strange ground on which the two men met. Ferris couldnot have described Don Ippolito as his enemy, for the priest hadwittingly done him no wrong; he could not have logically hated him as arival, for till it was too late he had not confessed to his own heartthe love that was in it; he knew no evil of Don Ippolito, he could notaccuse him of any betrayal of trust, or violation of confidence. Hefelt merely that this hapless creature, lying so deathlike before him, had profaned, however involuntarily, what was sacredest in the world tohim; beyond this all was chaos. He had heard of the priest's sicknesswith a fierce hardening of the heart; yet as he beheld him now, hebegan to remember things that moved him to a sort of remorse. Herecalled again the simple loyalty with which Don Ippolito had firstspoken to him of Miss Vervain and tried to learn his own feeling towardher; he thought how trustfully at their last meeting the priest haddeclared his love and hope, and how, when he had coldly received hisconfession, Don Ippolito had solemnly adjured him to be frank with him;and Ferris could not. That pity for himself as the prey offantastically cruel chances, which he had already vaguely felt, begannow also to include the priest; ignoring all but that compassion, hewent up to the bed and took the weak, chill, nerveless hand in his own. 

The canonico rose and placed his chair for Ferris beside the pillow, onwhich lay a brass crucifix, and then softly left the room, exchanging aglance of affectionate intelligence with the sick man. 

"I might have waited a little while, " said Don Ippolito weakly, speaking in a hollow voice that was the shadow of his old deep tones, "but you will know how to forgive the impatience of a man not yet quitemaster of himself. I thank you for coming. I have been very sick, asyou see; I did not think to live; I did not care. .. . I am very weak, now; let me say to you quickly what I want to say. Dear friend, "continued Don Ippolito, fixing his eyes upon the painter's face, "Ispoke to her that night after I had parted from you. "

The priest's voice was now firm; the painter turned his face away. 

"I spoke without hope, " proceeded Don Ippolito, "and because I must. Ispoke in vain; all was lost, all was past in a moment. "

The coil of suspicions and misgivings and fears in which Ferris hadlived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallidvisage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtleexpression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; DonIppolito went on. 

"Even if I had never been a priest, I would still have been impossibleto her. She". .. . 

He stopped as if for want of strength to go on. All at once he cried, "Listen!" and he rapidly recounted the story of his life, ending withthe fatal tragedy of his love. When it was told, he said calmly, "Butnow everything is over with me on earth. I thank the InfiniteCompassion for the sorrows through which I have passed. I, also, haveproved the miraculous power of the church, potent to save in all ages. "He gathered the crucifix in his spectral grasp, and pressed it to hislips. "Many merciful things have befallen me on this bed of sickness. My uncle, whom the long years of my darkness divided from me, is oncemore at peace with me. Even that poor old woman whom I sent to callyou, and who had served me as I believed with hate for me as a falsepriest in her heart, has devoted herself day and night to myhelplessness; she has grown decrepit with her cares and vigils. Yes, Ihave had many and signal marks of the divine pity to be grateful for. "He paused, breathing quickly, and then added, "They tell me that thedanger of this sickness is past. But none the less I have died in it. When I rise from this bed it shall be to take the vows of a Carmelitefriar. "

Ferris made no answer, and Don Ippolito resumed:--

"I have told you how when I first owned to her the falsehood in which Ilived, she besought me to try if I might not find consolation in theholy life to which I had been devoted. When you see her, dear friend, will you not tell her that I came to understand that this comfort, thisrefuge, awaited me in the cell of the Carmelite? I have brought so muchtrouble into her life that I would fain have her know I have foundpeace where she bade me seek it, that I have mastered my affliction byreconciling myself to it. Tell her that but for her pity and fear forme, I believe that I must have died in my sins. "

It was perhaps inevitable from Ferris's Protestant association of monksand convents and penances chiefly with the machinery of fiction, thatall this affected him as unreally as talk in a stage-play. His heartwas cold, as he answered: "I am glad that your mind is at restconcerning the doubts which so long troubled you. Not all men are soeasily pacified; but, as you say, it is the privilege of your church towork miracles. As to Miss Vervain, I am sorry that I cannot promise togive her your message. I shall never see her again. Excuse me, " hecontinued, "but your servant said there was something you wished to saythat concerned me?"

"You will never see her again!" cried the priest, struggling to lifthimself upon his elbow and falling back upon the pillow. "Oh, bereft!Oh, deaf and blind! It was _you_ that she loved! She confessed itto me that night. "

"Wait!" said Ferris, trying to steady his voice, and failing; "I waswith Mrs. Vervain that night; she sent me into the garden to call herdaughter, and I saw how Miss Vervain parted from the man she did notlove! I saw". .. . 

It was a horrible thing to have said it, he felt now that he hadspoken; a sense of the indelicacy, the shamefulness, seemed to alienatehim from all high concern in the matter, and to leave him a mere self-convicted eavesdropper. His face flamed; the wavering hopes, thewavering doubts alike died in his heart. He had fallen below thedignity of his own trouble. 

"You saw, you saw, " softly repeated the priest, without looking at him, and without any show of emotion; apparently, the convalescence that hadbrought him perfect clearness of reason had left his sensibilitiesstill somewhat dulled. He closed his lips and lay silent. At last, heasked very gently, "And how shall I make you believe that what you sawwas not a woman's love, but an angel's heavenly pity for me? Does itseem hard to believe this of her?"

"Yes, " answered the painter doggedly, "it is hard. "

"And yet it is the very truth. Oh, you do not know her, you never knewher! In the same moment that she denied me her love, she divined theanguish of my soul, and with that embrace she sought to console me forthe friendlessness of a whole life, past and to come. But I know that Iwaste my words on you, " he cried bitterly. "You never would see me as Iwas; you would find no singleness in me, and yet I had a heart as fullof loyalty to you as love for her. In what have I been false to you?"

"You never were false to me, " answered Ferris, "and God knows I havebeen true to you, and at what cost. We might well curse the day we met, Don Ippolito, for we have only done each other harm. But I never meantyou harm. And now I ask you to forgive me if I cannot believe you. Icannot--yet. I am of another race from you, slow to suspect, slow totrust. Give me a little time; let me see you again. I want to go awayand think. I don't question your truth. I'm afraid you don't know. I'mafraid that the same deceit has tricked us both. I must come to you to-morrow. Can I?"

He rose and stood beside the couch. 

"Surely, surely, " answered the priest, looking into Ferris's troubledeyes with calm meekness. "You will do me the greatest pleasure. Yes, come again to-morrow. You know, " he said with a sad smile, referring tohis purpose of taking vows, "that my time in the world is short. Adieu, to meet again!"

He took Ferris's hand, hanging weak and hot by his side, and drew himgently down by it, and kissed him on either bearded cheek. "It is ourcustom, you know, among _friends_. Farewell. "

The canonico in the anteroom bowed austerely to him as he passedthrough; the old woman refused with a harsh "Nothing!" the money heoffered her at the door. 

He bitterly upbraided himself for the doubts he could not banish, andhe still flushed with shame that he should have declared his knowledgeof a scene which ought, at its worst, to have been inviolable by hisspeech. He scarcely cared now for the woman about whom these miseriesgrouped themselves; he realized that a fantastic remorse may bestronger than a jealous love. 

He longed for the morrow to come, that he might confess his shame andregret; but a reaction to this violent repentance came before the nightfell. As the sound of the priest's voice and the sight of his wastedface faded from the painter's sense, he began to see everything in theold light again. Then what Don Ippolito had said took a character ofludicrous, of insolent improbability. 

After dark, Ferris set out upon one of his long, rambling walks. Hewalked hard and fast, to try if he might not still, by mere fatigue ofbody, the anguish that filled his soul. But whichever way he went hecame again and again to the house of Don Ippolito, and at last hestopped there, leaning against the parapet of the quay, and staring atthe house, as though he would spell from the senseless stones the truthof the secret they sheltered. Far up in the chamber, where he knew thatthe priest lay, the windows were dimly lit. 

As he stood thus, with his upturned face haggard in the moonlight, thesoldier commanding the Austrian patrol which passed that way halted hissquad, and seemed about to ask him what he wanted there. 

Ferris turned and walked swiftly homeward; but he did not even liedown. His misery took the shape of an intent that would not suffer himto rest. He meant to go to Don Ippolito and tell him that his story hadfailed of its effect, that he was not to be fooled so easily, and, without demanding anything further, to leave him in his lie. 

At the earliest hour when he might hope to be admitted, he went, andrang the bell furiously. The door opened, and he confronted thepriest's servant. "I want to see Don Ippolito, " said Ferris abruptly. 

"It cannot be, " she began. 

"I tell you I must, " cried Ferris, raising his voice. "I tell you. ". .. . 

"Madman!" fiercely whispered the old woman, shaking both her open handsin his face, "he's dead! He died last night!"

XVIII. 

The terrible stroke sobered Ferris, he woke from his long debauch ofhate and jealousy and despair; for the first time since that night inthe garden, he faced his fate with a clear mind. Death had set his sealforever to a testimony which he had been able neither to refuse nor toaccept; in abject sorrow and shame he thanked God that he had been keptfrom dealing that last cruel blow; but if Don Ippolito had come backfrom the dead to repeat his witness, Ferris felt that the miracle couldnot change his own passive state. There was now but one thing in theworld for him to do: to see Florida, to confront her with his knowledgeof all that had been, and to abide by her word, whatever it was. At theworst, there was the war, whose drums had already called to him, for arefuge. 

He thought at first that he might perhaps overtake the Vervains beforethey sailed for America, but he remembered that they had left Venicesix weeks before. It seemed impossible that he could wait, but when helanded in New York, he was tormented in his impatience by a strangereluctance and hesitation. A fantastic light fell upon his plans; asense of its wildness enfeebled his purpose. What was he going to do?Had he come four thousand miles to tell Florida that Don Ippolito wasdead? Or was he going to say, "I have heard that you love me, but Idon't believe it: is it true?"

He pushed on to Providence, stifling these antic misgivings as hemight, and without allowing himself time to falter from his intent, heset out to find Mrs. Vervain's house. He knew the street and thenumber, for she had often given him the address in her invitationsagainst the time when he should return to America. As he drew near thehouse a tender trepidation filled him and silenced all other senses inhim; his heart beat thickly; the universe included only the fact thathe was to look upon the face he loved, and this fact had neither pastnor future. 

But a terrible foreboding as of death seized him when he stood beforethe house, and glanced up at its close-shuttered front, and round uponthe dusty grass-plots and neglected flower-beds of the door-yard. Witha cold hand he rang and rang again, and no answer came. At last a manlounged up to the fence from the next house-door. "Guess you won't makeanybody hear, " he said, casually. 

"Doesn't Mrs. Vervain live in this house?" asked Ferris, finding ahusky voice in his throat that sounded to him like some other's voicelost there. 

"She used to, but she isn't at home. Family's in Europe. "

They had not come back yet. 

"Thanks, " said Ferris mechanically, and he went away. He laughed tohimself at this keen irony of fortune; he was prepared for theconfirmation of his doubts; he was ready for relief from them, Heavenknew; but this blank that the turn of the wheel had brought, thisNothing!

The Vervains were as lost to him as if Europe were in another planet. How should he find them there? Besides, he was poor; he had no money toget back with, if he had wanted to return. 

He took the first train to New York, and hunted up a young fellow ofhis acquaintance, who in the days of peace had been one of thegovernor's aides. He was still holding this place, and was an ardentrecruiter. He hailed with rapture the expression of Ferris's wish to gointo the war. "Look here!" he said after a moment's thought, "didn'tyou have some rank as a consul?"

"Yes, " replied Ferris with a dreary smile, "I have been equivalent to acommander in the navy and a colonel in the army--I don't mean both, buteither. "

"Good!" cried his friend. "We must strike high. The colonelcies arerather inaccessible, just at present, and so are the lieutenant-colonelcies, but a majorship, now". .. . 

"Oh no; don't!" pleaded Ferris. "Make me a corporal--or a cook. I shallnot be so mischievous to our own side, then, and when the other fellowsshoot me, I shall not be so much of a loss. "

"Oh, they won't _shoot_ you, " expostulated his friend, high-heartedly. He got Ferris a commission as second lieutenant, and lenthim money to buy a uniform. 

Ferris's regiment was sent to a part of the southwest, where he saw agood deal of fighting and fever and ague. At the end of two years, spent alternately in the field and the hospital, he was riding out nearthe camp one morning in unusual spirits, when two men in butternutfired at him: one had the mortification to miss him; the bullet of theother struck him in the arm. There was talk of amputation at first, butthe case was finally managed without. In Ferris's state of health itwas quite the same an end of his soldiering. 

He came North sick and maimed and poor. He smiled now to think ofconfronting Florida in any imperative or challenging spirit; but thecurrent of his hopeless melancholy turned more and more towards her. Hehad once, at a desperate venture, written to her at Providence, but hehad got no answer. He asked of a Providence man among the artists inNew York, if he knew the Vervains; the Providence man said that he didknow them a little when he was much younger; they had been abroad agreat deal; he believed in a dim way that they were still in Europe. The young one, he added, used to have a temper of her own. 

"Indeed!" said Ferris stiffly. 

The one fast friend whom he found in New York was the governor'sdashing aide. The enthusiasm of this recruiter of regiments had notceased with Ferris's departure for the front; the number of disabledofficers forbade him to lionize any one of them, but he befriendedFerris; he made a feint of discovering the open secret of his poverty, and asked how he could help him. 

"I don't know, " said Ferris, "it looks like a hopeless case, to me. "

"Oh no it isn't, " retorted his friend, as cheerfully and confidently ashe had promised him that he should not be shot. "Didn't you bring backany pictures from Venice with you?"

"I brought back a lot of sketches and studies. I'm sorry to say that Iloafed a good deal there; I used to feel that I had eternity before me;and I was a theorist and a purist and an idiot generally. There arenone of them fit to be seen. "

"Never mind; let's look at them. "

They hunted out Ferris's property from a catch-all closet in the studioof a sculptor with whom he had left them, and who expressed a politepleasure in handing them over to Ferris rather than to his heirs andassigns. 

"Well, I'm not sure that I share your satisfaction, old fellow, " saidthe painter ruefully; but he unpacked the sketches. 

Their inspection certainly revealed a disheartening condition of half-work. "And I can't do anything to help the matter for the present, "groaned Ferris, stopping midway in the business, and making as if toshut the case again. 

"Hold on, " said his friend. "What's this? Why, this isn't so bad. " Itwas the study of Don Ippolito as a Venetian priest, which Ferris beheldwith a stupid amaze, remembering that he had meant to destroy it, andwondering how it had got where it was, but not really caring much. "It's worse than you can imagine, " said he, still looking at it withthis apathy. 

"No matter; I want you to sell it to me. Come!"

"I can't!" replied Ferris piteously. "It would be flat burglary. "

"Then put it into the exhibition. "

The sculptor, who had gone back to scraping the chin of the famouspublic man on whose bust he was at work, stabbed him to the heart withhis modeling-tool, and turned to Ferris and his friend. He slanted hisbroad red beard for a sidelong look at the picture, and said: "I knowwhat you mean, Ferris. It's hard, and it's feeble in some ways and itlooks a little too much like experimenting. But it isn't so_infernally_ bad. "

"Don't be fulsome, " responded Ferris, jadedly. He was thinking in athoroughly vanquished mood what a tragico-comic end of the wholebusiness it was that poor Don Ippolito should come to his rescue inthis fashion, and as it were offer to succor him in his extremity. Heperceived the shamefulness of suffering such help; it would be muchbetter to starve; but he felt cowed, and he had not courage to takearms against this sarcastic destiny, which had pursued him with amocking smile from one lower level to another. He rubbed his foreheadand brooded upon the picture. At least it would be some comfort to berid of it; and Don Ippolito was dead; and to whom could it mean morethan the face of it?

His friend had his way about framing it, and it was got into theexhibition. The hanging-committee offered it the hospitalities of anobscure corner; but it was there, and it stood its chance. Nobodyseemed to know that it was there, however, unless confronted with it byFerris's friend, and then no one seemed to care for it, much less wantto buy it. Ferris saw so many much worse pictures sold all around it, that he began gloomily to respect it. At first it had shocked him tosee it on the Academy's wall; but it soon came to have no otherrelation to him than that of creatureship, like a poem in which a poetcelebrates his love or laments his dead, and sells for a price. Hispride as well as his poverty was set on having the picture sold; he hadnothing to do, and he used to lurk about, and see if it would notinterest somebody at last. But it remained unsold throughout May, andwell into June, long after the crowds had ceased to frequent theexhibition, and only chance visitors from the country straggled in bytwos and threes. 

One warm, dusty afternoon, when he turned into the Academy out ofFourth Avenue, the empty hall echoed to no footfall but his own. Agroup of weary women, who wore that look of wanting lunch whichcharacterizes all picture-gallery-goers at home and abroad, stood faintbefore a certain large Venetian subject which Ferris abhorred, and thevery name of which he spat out of his mouth with loathing for itsunreality. He passed them with a sombre glance, as he took his waytoward the retired spot where his own painting hung. 

A lady whose crapes would have betrayed to her own sex the latest touchof Paris stood a little way back from it, and gazed fixedly at it. Thepose of her head, her whole attitude, expressed a quiet dejection;without seeing her face one could know its air of pensive wistfulness. Ferris resolved to indulge himself in a near approach to this unwontedspectacle of interest in his picture; at the sound of his steps thelady slowly turned a face of somewhat heavily molded beauty, and fromlow-growing, thick pale hair and level brows, stared at him with thesad eyes of Florida Vervain. She looked fully the last two years older. 

As though she were listening to the sound of his steps in the darkinstead of having him there visibly before her, she kept her eyes uponhim with a dreamy unrecognition. 

"Yes, it is I, " said Ferris, as if she had spoken. 

She recovered herself, and with a subdued, sorrowful quiet in her olddirectness, she answered, "I supposed you must be in New York, " and sheindicated that she had supposed so from seeing this picture. 

Ferris felt the blood mounting to his head. "Do you think it is like?"he asked. 

"No, " she said, "it isn't just to him; it attributes things that didn'tbelong to him, and it leaves out a great deal. "

"I could scarcely have hoped to please you in a portrait of DonIppolito. " Ferris saw the red light break out as it used on the girl'spale cheeks, and her eyes dilate angrily. He went on recklessly: "Hesent for me after you went away, and gave me a message for you. I neverpromised to deliver it, but I will do so now. He asked me to tell youwhen we met, that he had acted on your desire, and had tried toreconcile himself to his calling and his religion; he was going toenter a Carmelite convent. "

Florida made no answer, but she seemed to expect him to go on, and hewas constrained to do so. 

"He never carried out his purpose, " Ferris said, with a keen glance ather; "he died the night after I saw him. "

"Died?" The fan and the parasol and the two or three light packages shehad been holding slid down one by one, and lay at her feet. "Thank youfor bringing me his last words, " she said, but did not ask him anythingmore. 

Ferris did not offer to gather up her things; he stood irresolute;presently he continued with a downcast look: "He had had a fever, butthey thought he was getting well. His death must have been sudden. " Hestopped, and resumed fiercely, resolved to have the worst out: "I wentto him, with no good-will toward him, the next day after I saw him; butI came too late. That was God's mercy to me. I hope you have yourconsolation, Miss Vervain. "

It maddened him to see her so little moved, and he meant to make hershare his remorse. 

"Did he blame me for anything?" she asked. 

"No!" said Ferris, with a bitter laugh, "he praised you. "

"I am glad of that, " returned Florida, "for I have thought it all overmany times, and I know that I was not to blame, though at first Iblamed myself. I never intended him anything but good. That is_my_ consolation, Mr. Ferris. But you, " she added, "you seem tomake yourself my judge. Well, and what do _you_ blame me for? Ihave a right to know what is in your mind. "

The thing that was in his mind had rankled there for two years; in manya black reverie of those that alternated with his moods of abject self-reproach and perfect trust of her, he had confronted her and flung itout upon her in one stinging phrase. But he was now suddenly at a loss;the words would not come; his torment fell dumb before her; in herpresence the cause was unspeakable. Her lips had quivered a little inmaking that demand, and there had been a corresponding break in hervoice. 

"Florida! Florida!" Ferris heard himself saying, "I loved you all thetime!"

"Oh indeed, did you love me?" she cried, indignantly, while the tearsshone in her eyes. "And was that why you left a helpless young girl tomeet that trouble alone? Was that why you refused me your advice, andturned your back on me, and snubbed me? Oh, many thanks for your love!"She dashed the gathered tears angrily away, and went on. "Perhaps youknew, too, what that poor priest was thinking of?"

"Yes, " said Ferris, stolidly, "I did at last: he told me. "

"Oh, then you acted generously and nobly to let him go on! It was kindto him, and very, very kind to me!"

"What could I do?" demanded Ferris, amazed and furious to find himselfon the defensive. "His telling me put it out of my power to act. "

"I'm glad that you can satisfy yourself with such a quibble! But Iwonder that you can tell _me_--_any_ woman of it!"

"By Heavens, this is atrocious!" cried Ferris. "Do you think . .. Lookhere!" he went on rudely. "I'll put the case to you, and you shalljudge it. Remember that I was such a fool as to be in love with you. Suppose Don Ippolito had told me that he was going to risk everything--going to give up home, religion, friends--on the ten thousandth part ofa chance that you might some day care for him. I did not believe he hadeven so much chance as that; but he had always thought me his friend, and he trusted me. Was it a quibble that kept me from betraying him? Idon't know what honor is among women; but no _man_ could have doneit. I confess to my shame that I went to your house that night longingto betray him. And then suppose your mother sent me into the garden tocall you, and I saw . .. What has made my life a hell of doubt for thelast two years; what . .. No, excuse me! I can't put the case to youafter all. "

"What do you mean?" asked Florida. "I don't understand you!"

"What do I mean? You don't understand? Are you so blind as that, or areyou making a fool of me? What could I think but that you had playedwith that priest's heart till your own". .. . 

"Oh!" cried Florida with a shudder, starting away from him, "did youthink I was such a wicked girl as that?"

It was no defense, no explanation, no denial; it simply left the casewith Ferris as before. He stood looking like a man who does not knowwhether to bless or curse himself, to laugh or blaspheme. 

She stooped and tried to pick up the things she had let fall upon thefloor; but she seemed not able to find them. He bent over, and, gathering them together, returned them to her with his left hand, keeping the other in the breast of his coat. 

"Thanks, " she said; and then after a moment, "Have you been hurt?" sheasked timidly. 

"Yes, " said Ferris in a sulky way. "I have had my share. " He glanceddown at his arm askance. "It's rather conventional, " he added. "Itisn't much of a hurt; but then, I wasn't much of a soldier. "

The girl's eyes looked reverently at the conventional arm; those werethe days, so long past, when women worshipped men for such things. Butshe said nothing, and as Ferris's eyes wandered to her, he received anovel and painful impression. He said, hesitatingly, "I have not askedbefore: but your mother, Miss Vervain--I hope she is well?"

"She is dead, " answered Florida, with stony quiet. 

They were both silent for a time. Then Ferris said, "I had a greataffection for your mother. "

"Yes, " said the girl, "she was fond of you, too. But you never wrote orsent her any word; it used to grieve her. "

Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long preoccupied with its owntroubles; he recalled with a tender remorse the old Venetian days andthe kindliness of the gracious, silly woman who had seemed to like himso much; he remembered the charm of her perfect ladylikeness, and ofher winning, weak-headed desire to make every one happy to whom shespoke; the beauty of the good-will, the hospitable soul that in animaginably better world than this will outvalue a merely intellectualor aesthetic life. He humbled himself before her memory, and as keenlyreproached himself as if he could have made her hear from him at anytime during the past two years. He could only say, "I am sorry that Igave your mother pain; I loved her very truly. I hope that she did notsuffer much before"--

"No, " said Florida, "it was a peaceful end; but finally it was verysudden. She had not been well for many years, with that sort ofdecline; I used sometimes to feel troubled about her before we came toVenice; but I was very young. I never was really alarmed till that dayI went to you. "

"I remember, " said Ferris contritely. 

"She had fainted, and I thought we ought to see a doctor; butafterwards, because I thought that I ought not to do so withoutspeaking to her, I did not go to the doctor; and that day we made upour minds to get home as soon as we could; and she seemed so muchbetter, for a while; and then, everything seemed to happen at once. When we did start home, she could not go any farther than Switzerland, and in the fall we went back to Italy. We went to Sorrento, where theclimate seemed to do her good. But she was growing frailer, the wholetime. She died in March. I found some old friends of hers in Naples, and came home with them. "

The girl hesitated a little over the words, which she neverthelessuttered unbroken, while the tears fell quietly down her face. Sheseemed to have forgotten the angry words that had passed between herand Ferris, to remember him only as one who had known her mother, whileshe went on to relate some little facts in the history of her mother'slast days; and she rose into a higher, serener atmosphere, inaccessibleto his resentment or his regret, as she spoke of her loss. The simpletale of sickness and death inexpressibly belittled his passionate woes, and made them look theatrical to him. He hung his head as they turnedat her motion and walked away from the picture of Don Ippolito, anddown the stairs toward the street-door; the people before the otherVenetian picture had apparently yielded to their craving for lunch, andhad vanished. 

"I have very little to tell you of my own life, " Ferris beganawkwardly. "I came home soon after you started, and I went toProvidence to find you, but you had not got back. "

Florida stopped him and looked perplexedly into his face, and thenmoved on. 

"Then I went into the army. I wrote once to you. "

"I never got your letter, " she said. 

They were now in the lower hall, and near the door. 

"Florida, " said Ferris, abruptly, "I'm poor and disabled; I've no moreright than any sick beggar in the street to say it to you; but I lovedyou, I must always love you. I--Good-by!"

She halted him again, and "You said, " she grieved, "that you doubtedme; you said that I had made your life a"--

"Yes, I said that; I know it, " answered Ferris. 

"You thought I could be such a false and cruel girl as that!"

"Yes, yes: I thought it all, God help me!"

"When I was only sorry for him, when it was you that I"--

"Oh, I know it, " answered Ferris in a heartsick, hopeless voice. "Heknew it, too. He told me so the day before he died. "

"And didn't you believe him?"

Ferris could not answer. 

"Do you believe him now?"

"I believe anything you tell me. When I look at you, I can't believe Iever doubted you. "

"Why?"

"Because--because--I love you. "

"Oh! That's no reason. "

"I know it; but I'm used to being without a reason. "

Florida looked gravely at his penitent face, and a brave red colormantled her own, while she advanced an unanswerable argument: "Thenwhat are you going away for?"

The world seemed to melt and float away from between them. It returnedand solidified at the sound of the janitor's steps as he came towardsthem on his round through the empty building. Ferris caught her hand;she leaned heavily upon his arm as they walked out into the street. Itwas all they could do at the moment except to look into each other'sfaces, and walk swiftly on. 

At last, after how long a time he did not know, Ferris cried: "Whereare we going, Florida?"

"Why, I don't know!" she replied. "I'm stopping with those friends ofours at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We _were_ going on to Providenceto-morrow. We landed yesterday; and we stayed to do some shopping"--

"And may I ask why you happened to give your first moments in Americato the fine arts?"

"The fine arts? Oh! I thought I might find something of yours, there!"

At the hotel she presented him to her party as a friend whom her motherand she had known in Italy; and then went to lay aside her hat. TheProvidence people received him with the easy, half-southern warmth ofmanner which seems to have floated northward as far as their city onthe Gulf Stream bathing the Rhode Island shores. The matron of theparty had, before Florida came back, an outline history of theiracquaintance, which she evolved from him with so much tact that he wasnot conscious of parting with information; and she divined indefinitelymore when she saw them together again. She was charming; but toFerris's thinking she had a fault, she kept him too much from Florida, though she talked of nothing else, and at the last she was discreetlymerciful. 

"Do you think, " whispered Florida, very close against his face, whenthey parted, "that I'll have a bad temper?"

"I hope you will--or I shall be killed with kindness, " he replied. 

She stood a moment, nervously buttoning his coat across his breast. "You mustn't let that picture be sold, Henry, " she said, and by thistouch alone did she express any sense, if she had it, of his want offeeling in proposing to sell it. He winced, and she added with a softpity in her voice, "He did bring us together, after all. I wish you hadbelieved him, dear!"

"So do I, " said Ferris, most humbly. 

 * * * * *

People are never equal to the romance of their youth in after life, except by fits, and Ferris especially could not keep himself at what hecalled the operatic pitch of their brief betrothal and the early daysof their marriage. With his help, or even his encouragement, his wifemight have been able to maintain it. She had a gift for idealizing him, at least, and as his hurt healed but slowly, and it was a good whilebefore he could paint with his wounded arm, it was an easy matter forher to believe in the meanwhile that he would have been the greatestpainter of his time, but for his honorable disability; to hear her, youwould suppose no one else had ever been shot in the service of hiscountry. 

It was fortunate for Ferris, since he could not work, that she hadmoney; in exalted moments he had thought this a barrier to theirmarriage; yet he could not recall any one who had refused the hand of abeautiful girl because of the accident of her wealth, and in the end hesilenced his scruples. It might be said that in many other ways he wasnot her equal; but one ought to reflect how very few men are worthy oftheir wives in any sense. After his fashion he certainly loved heralways, --even when she tried him most, for it must be owned that shereally had that hot temper which he had dreaded in her from the first. Not that her imperiousness directly affected him. For a long time aftertheir marriage, she seemed to have no other desire than to lose heroutwearied will in his. There was something a little pathetic in this;there was a kind of bewilderment in her gentleness, as though therelaxed tension of her long self-devotion to her mother left herwithout a full motive; she apparently found it impossible to giveherself with a satisfactory degree of abandon to a man who could do somany things for himself. When her children came they filled thisvacancy, and afforded her scope for the greatest excesses of self-devotion. Ferris laughed to find her protecting them and serving themwith the same tigerish tenderness, the same haughty humility, as thatwith which she used to care for poor Mrs. Vervain; and he perceivedthat this was merely the direction away from herself of that intensearrogance of nature which, but for her power and need of loving, wouldhave made her intolerable. What she chiefly exacted from them in returnfor her fierce devotedness was the truth in everything; she was contentthat they should be rather less fond of her than of their father, whomindeed they found much more amusing. 

The Ferrises went to Europe some years after their marriage, revisitingVenice, but sojourning for the most part in Florence. Ferris had onceimagined that the tragedy which had given him his wife would alwaysinvest her with the shadow of its sadness, but in this he was mistaken. There is nothing has really so strong a digestion as love, and this isvery lucky, seeing what manifold experiences love has to swallow andassimilate; and when they got back to Venice, Ferris found that thecustoms of their joint life exorcised all the dark associations of theplace. These simply formed a sombre background, against which theirwedded happiness relieved itself. They talked much of the past, withfree minds, unashamed and unafraid. If it is a little shocking, it isnevertheless true, and true to human nature, that they spoke of DonIppolito as if he were a part of their love. 

Ferris had never ceased to wonder at what he called the unfathomableinnocence of his wife, and he liked to go over all the points of theirformer life in Venice, and bring home to himself the utter simplicityof her girlish ideas, motives, and designs, which both confounded anddelighted him. 

"It's amazing, Florida, " he would say, "it's perfectly amazing that youshould have been willing to undertake the job of importing into Americathat poor fellow with his whole stock of helplessness, dreamery, andunpracticality. What _were_ you about?"

"Why, I've often told you, Henry. I thought he oughtn't to continue apriest. "

"Yes, yes; I know. " Then he would remain lost in thought, softlywhistling to himself. On one of these occasions he asked, "Do you thinkhe was really very much troubled by his false position?"

"I can't tell, now. He seemed to be so. "

"That story he told you of his childhood and of how he became a priest;didn't it strike you at the time like rather a made-up, melodramatichistory?"

"No, no! How can you say such things, Henry? It was too simple not tobe true. "

"Well, well. Perhaps so. But he baffles me. He always did, for thatmatter. "

Then came another pause, while Ferris lay back upon the gondolacushions, getting the level of the Lido just under his hat-brim. 

"Do you think he was very much of a skeptic, after all, Florida?"

Mrs. Ferris turned her eyes reproachfully upon her husband. "Why, Henry, how strange you are! You said yourself, once, that you used towonder if he were not a skeptic. "

"Yes; I know. But for a man who had lived in doubt so many years, hecertainly slipped back into the bosom of mother church pretty suddenly. Don't you think he was a person of rather light feelings?"

"I can't talk with you, my dear, if you go on in that way. "

"I don't mean any harm. I can see how in many things he was the soul oftruth and honor. But it seems to me that even the life he lived waslargely imagined. I mean that he was such a dreamer that once havingfancied himself afflicted at being what he was, he could go on andsuffer as keenly as if he really were troubled by it. Why mightn't itbe that all his doubts came from anger and resentment towards those whomade him a priest, rather than from any examination of his own mind? Idon't say it _was_ so. But I don't believe he knew quite what hewanted. He must have felt that his failure as an inventor went deeperthan the failure of his particular attempts. I once thought thatperhaps he had a genius in that way, but I question now whether he had. If he had, it seems to me he had opportunity to prove it--certainly, asa priest he had leisure to prove it. But when that sort of sub-consciousness of his own inadequacy came over him, it was perfectlynatural for him to take refuge in the supposition that he had beenbaffled by circumstances. "

Mrs. Ferris remained silently troubled. "I don't know how to answeryou, Henry; but I think that you're judging him narrowly and harshly. "

"Not harshly. I feel very compassionate towards him. But now, even asto what one might consider the most real thing in his life, --his caringfor you, --it seems to me there must have been a great share of imaginedsentiment in it. It was not a passion; it was a gentle nature's dreamof a passion. "

"He didn't die of a dream, " said the wife. 

"No, he died of a fever. "

"He had got well of the fever. "

"That's very true, my dear. And whatever his head was, he had anaffectionate and faithful heart. I wish I had been gentler with him. Imust often have bruised that sensitive soul. God knows I'm sorry forit. But he's a puzzle, he's a puzzle!"

Thus lapsing more and more into a mere problem as the years havepassed, Don Ippolito has at last ceased to be even the memory of a manwith a passionate love and a mortal sorrow. Perhaps this final effectin the mind of him who has realized the happiness of which the poorpriest vainly dreamed is not the least tragic phase of the tragedy ofDon Ippolito.