ettes, I shared them with the pallid, long youth, by way of soothing him. Do you, oh most affable reader, know what it feels like when your bowels of compassion yearn? He was so ravenously hungry that he wolfed down my two dry, uninteresting lumps of bread before I had time to scratch up enough selfishness to refrain me from pressing them upon him. Then we stood on the bridge a minute or two, looking at the dark water. Up the Rio di San Trovaso, the old squero silhouetted itself in dark black on pale black. And suddenly, from nowhere in particular, but from somewhere quite near, came an unmistakable indrawn breath with the out-shot breath which follows it and is a groan. It was quite ghastly. I coursed wildly off the bridge and along the fondamenta on the right side of the little Rio, undoing my remaining buttons, and preparing such pluck as I possessed for doing an inviting though distinct deed. But the voice of the frightened boy on the bridge called me back. A staggering portent was sloppily passing him, trailing seaweed and oozing moisture, and humped together like some monstrous glistening antediluvian snail, whom the Nocturnal Guard instantly required to decline his generalities. Most straightforward these were. Arcangelo Zabajon, called Bon, aged 27, a "casalirgo," ie., a casalirgo," ie., a lingerer-at-home (which seems to be a recognised profession in Venice), had sat on the steps of

un

the doctor's watergate at the west end of the bridge for a purpose, and, accidentally, had cascaded into the canal, whence he immediately retracted himself: but, hearing voices near, and not having the courage to face criticism (which seems to be recognised as a perfectly legitimate excuse for many faults in Venice), he had hidden in the shadow till the cold and the wet struck him as being intolerable. Whereupon he emerged, intending to go to his home in the Earthed River of the Catechumens · Rio Terrà dei Catecumeni, — and So, Siori, buona notte." And that was all about that.

The fifth happened in June. It was full summer; and the victim was an English artist, whom I was obliged to serve as gondogliere. We set out to make a day of it on the lagoon, lunching at the island of Saint George among the seaweeds, and then passing under the railway bridge, right round by the Fondamenta Nuova to the

Arsenal. And, near this last, but I will not indicate precisely where (nor would it be much good if I did, seeing that the spot is now entirely obliterated by the new naval dry dock), we found a deep and unobserved place, which simply sang to us to come and bathe. I went in first, to demonstrate how headers must be taken off a dancing barcheta, and how one has to heave oneself inboard again. Next, my employer enacted an atrocious belly-flopper, and wallowed in the sportful brine. It was all

quite all right. After we were dressed, the plan being to return slowly to Palazzo del Angelo via Castello and the Riva degli Schiavoni, I took my poop-oar and began again to row. Wind, here, was against me, current was fiercely against me, progress was very slow. At the now-covered corner of the Arsenal it was awful. I, sweating, swore beneath my breath. "Get over to that palo there, and tie up and rest a bit," says my merciful master to his beast. I thankfully obeyed. He rose, with the cord in his hand, ready to take a turn round the indicated post when I reached it. Slowly I forged across the flood. The palo appeared near. The barcheta touched it, and I glided her along it. My paron seized it, embraced it, began to encircle it with the cord. Pudet referre quæ sequuntur, but the appalling catastrophe suddenly occurred thus. My master (a robust piece of man, with the port and aspect of the Erastian curate who plays cricket with hooligans on Sundays and boxes them every night of the week), hung on to the post with his arms embracing it, his legs in the vanishing boat, and the most touching expression of innocence mingled with devotion which I ever have seen on any human countenance excepting the infant Samuel's. His knees crooked. Away whirled the barcheta, twisted by wind and tide, both shrieking with laughter. And, with puffy cheeks, shut eyes, and a meek splosh, my employer cascaded

Of course I

into the canal. got the naughty craft alongside of the site of his disappearance, and, when his head popped up, I told him to hang on to the gunwale till I could draw him. into water sufficiently shallow for him (weighted with his wet clethes) to crawl in. Another barcheta, rowed by friars minor from San Francesco del Deserto, went by with unctuous and most unfranciscan disgust. Blessed Brother Francis would have joined in our merriment; they did not even proffer Extreme Unction. Ensued a wildly fantastic toilette. I hung my paron's wet garments on the peak of the porcola to drain, while I lent him my spare sweater (fearfully and wonderfully décolleté it was on him), and my spare sandals (Pompeian pattern and vermilion), and my white linen hat, in place of which last I wound a white-silk neck-square round my head, making myself look like an erudite but otherwise honest Jesuit posing as one of Brangwyn's brigandsso my master declared. You are not to think, however, that he (amiable, placid man) pervaded the rii of Venice vested solely in the airy fashion just described. Beside my sweater and sandals and hat, he embellished his manly torso with a dry dust-coat of his own, while an old burberry weatherproof of mine piously veiled his chubby knees. And, in this garb, he demanded his tea-a hilarious repast consisting of egg-and-cucumber sandwiches, with red wine and cigarettes

us.

after which we turned and went back with the tide, passing through small canals, which extend inward from the Rio dei Mendicanti, It was a voyage richly punctuated with chuckles on the part of both of I know that we exposed a spectacle as startling as a carnival, but the Venetians understand that we English (though rolling in gold, and therefore admirable) are stark staring mad; and the sight of one in two coats, a low-necked sweater, vermilion sandals, and a white linen hat, and of another coifed like a pirate and doing gondogliere, simply struck them stiff and speechless. No one even spat over a bridge on us. No one even tittered when we reached the palace, and my paron had to skip pink-leggedly over a barge of ice-blocks moored to his own watergate. But all ended well, and I did not lose my situation. I suppose we English do not habitually blame where blame is not actually due. My master did not. And I'm sure I don't. I was thrown out of my own barcheta by my own gondogliere last November, and I did not fire the boy for it.

It was bleak and misty autumn, late in a cheerless afternoon. I had been writing at the Club "Bucintoro," and I decided to freshen myself up with a turn on the water before going home to tea. My gondogliere then was a certain Emilio Sacripan, naturally called "Emily," a very fine fellow indeed, magnificently breasted and throated, and

He

quite picturesque poised on pointed feet on my lofty poop. He was, however, an unpunctual, untrustworthy little devil, and had been in disgrace with me so often that I seriously told him to beware of erring again before the month's end, on penalty of having either to take such a thrashing modo Inglese as would prevent him from sitting comfortably for a fortnight, or else to receive licence to quit my service. was dismal in consequence, not liking the idea of being whipped by what he called a "forester," and going in the bluest of funks of the tipsy father who lived on his earnings, and certainly would beat him senseless if he lost his situation. So he was on his best behaviour when we set forth that dull cold afternoon on the top of a high tide and a flowing sea, from the Club, up Canal Grande past La Salute, turning off the Duchess of Madrid's red and yellow posted palace with the gilded Florentine lilies, to go up Rio di San Vio. [By the bye, why mix gilding with yellow paint in an heraldic achievement, when Or is signified? And why Florentine lilies instead of Bourbon? For surely Don Carlos was a Bourbon.] And then, just after you pass the Erastian temple, the Rio di San Vio narrows, and is crossed by a bridge, before it widens again into a very decent canal with quays for pedestrians on both sides of it. We had swirled through the narrow part and under the bridge, when the calamity oo