Chapter 11

"Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?"
SHAKSPEARE.

The evening of such a day, in a city with the habits of Venice, was not
likely to be spent in the dulness of retirement. The great square of St.
Mark was again filled with its active and motley crowd, and the scenes
already described in the opening chapters of this work were resumed, if
possible, with more apparent devotion to the levities of the hour, than
on the occasion mentioned. The tumblers and jugglers renewed their
antics, the cries of the fruit-sellers and other venders of light
luxuries were again mingled with the tones of the flute and the notes of
the guitar and harp; while the idle and the busy, the thoughtless and
the designing, the conspirator and the agent of the police, once more
met in privileged security.

The night had advanced, beyond its turn, when a gondola came gliding
through the shipping of the port with that easy and swan-like motion
which is peculiar to its slow movement, and touched the quay with its
beak, at the point where the canal of St. Mark forms its junction with
the bay.

"Thou art welcome, Antonio," said one, who approached the solitary
individual that had directed the gondola, when the latter had thrust the
iron spike of his painter between the crevices of the stones, as
gondoliers are accustomed to secure their barges; "thou art welcome,
Antonio, though late."

"I begin to know the sounds of that voice, though they come from a
masked face," said the fisherman. "Friend, I owe my success to-day to
thy kindness, and though it has not had the end for which I had both
hoped and prayed, I ought not to thank thee less. Thou hast thyself been
borne hard upon by the world, or thou would'st not have bethought thee
of an old and despised man, when the shouts of triumph were ringing in
thy ear, and when thy own young blood was stirred with the feelings of
pride and victory."

"Nature gives thee strong language, fisherman. I have not passed the
hours, truly, in the games and levities of my years. Life has been no
festa to me--but no matter. The senate was not pleased to hear of
lessening the number of the galleys' crew, and thou wilt bethink thee of
some other reward. I have here the chain and golden oar in the hope that
it will still be welcome."

Antonio looked amazed, but, yielding to a natural curiosity, he gazed a
moment with a longing at the prize. Then recoiling with a shudder, he
uttered moodily, and with the tones of one whose determination was made:
"I should think the bauble coined of my grandchild's blood! Keep it;
they have trusted it to thee, for it is thine of right, and now that
they refuse to hear my