Two Florentine Balconies

Prince Padema sat desolately on his lofty balcony at Florence, and cursed things generally. Fate had indeed dealt hardly with the young man.

The Prince had been misled by the apparent reasonableness of the adage, that if you want a thing well done you should do it yourself. In committing a murder it is always advisable to have some one else to do it for you, but the Prince's plans had been several times interfered with by the cowardice or inefficiency of his emissaries, so on one unfortunate occasion he had determined to remove an objectionable man with his own hand, and realised then how easily mistakes may occur.

He had met the man face to face under a corner lamp in Venice. The recognition was mutual, and the man, fearing his noble enemy, had fled. The Prince pursued, and the man apparently tried to double upon him, and, with his cloak over his face, endeavoured to sneak past along the dark wall. When the Prince deftly ran the dagger into his vitals, he was surprised that the man made no resistance or outcry, made no effort to ward off the blow, but sunk lifeless at the Prince's feet with a groan.

Alarmed at this, the Prince bade his servant drag the body to a spot where a votive lamp set in the wall threw dim yellow rays to the pavement. Then his Highness was appalled to see that he had assassinated a scion of one of the noblest families of Venice, which was a very different thing from murdering a man of low degree whose life the law took little note of.

So the Prince had to flee from Venice, and he took up his residence in a narrow street in an obscure part of Florence.

Seldom had fate played a man so scurvy a trick, and the Prince was fully justified in his cursing, for the unfortunate episode had interrupted a most absorbing amour which, at that moment, was rapidly approaching an interesting climax.

Prince Padema had been several weeks in Florence, and those weeks had been deadly dull. "The women of Florence," he said to himself bitterly, "are not to be compared with those of Venice." But even if they had been, the necessity of keeping quiet, for a time at least, would have prevented the Prince from taking advantage of his enforced sojourn in the fair city.

On this particular evening, the Prince's sombre meditations were interrupted by a song. The song apparently came from the same building in which his suite of rooms were situated, and from an open window some distance below him. What caught his attention was the fact that the song was Venetian, and the voice that sang it was the rich mellow voice of Venice.

There were other exiles, then, beside himself. He peered over the edge of the balcony perched like an eagle's nest high above the narrow stone street, and endeavoured to locate the open window from which the song came, or, better still, to catch a glimpse of the singer.

For a time he was unsuccessful, but at last his