The Bravo (2 page)

"Kneel down and thank San Teodoro for his care. There was much praying
on thy decks that hour, caro Stefano, though none is bolder among the
mountains of Calabria when thy felucca is once safely drawn up on the
beach!"

The mariner cast a half-comic, half-serious glance upward at the image
of the patron saint, ere he replied.

"There was more need of the wings of thy lion than of the favor of thy
saint. I never come further north for aid than San Gennaro, even when it
blows a hurricane."

"So much the worse for thee, caro, since the good bishop is better at
stopping the lava than at quieting the winds. But there was danger,
then, of losing the felucca and her brave people among the Turks?"

"There was, in truth, a Tunis-man prowling about, between Stromboli and
Sicily; but, Ali di San Michele! he might better have chased the cloud
above the volcano than run after the felucca in a sirocco!"

"Thou wast chicken-hearted, Stefano!"

"I!—I was more like thy lion here, with some small additions of chains
and muzzles."

"As was seen by thy felucca's speed?"

"Cospetto! I wished myself a knight of San Giovanni a thousand times
during the chase, and La Bella Sorrentina a brave Maltese galley, if it
were only for the cause of Christian honor! The miscreant hung upon my
quarter for the better part of three glasses; so near, that I could tell
which of the knaves wore dirty cloth in his turban, and which clean. It
was a sore sight to a Christian, Stefano, to see the right thus borne
upon by an infidel."

"And thy feet warmed with the thought of the bastinado, caro mio?"

"I have run too often barefoot over our Calabrian mountains, to tingle
at the sole with every fancy of that sort."

"Every man has his weak spot, and I know thine to be dread of a Turk's
arm. Thy native hills have their soft as well as their hard ground, but
it is said the Tunisian chooses a board knotty as his own heart, when he
amuses himself with the wailings of a Christian."

"Well, the happiest of us all must take such as fortune brings. If my
soles are to be shod with blows, the honest priest of Sant' Agata will
be cheated by a penitent. I have bargained with the good curato, that
all such accidental calamities shall go in the general account of
penance. But how fares the world of Venice?—and what dost thou among
the canals at this season, to keep the flowers of thy jacket from
wilting?"

"To-day, as yesterday, and to-morrow will be as to-day I row the
gondola from the Rialto to the Giudecca; from San Giorgio to San Marco;
from San Marco to the Lido, and from the Lido home. There are no
Tunis-men by the way, to chill the heart or warm the feet."

"Enough of friendship. And is there nothing stirring in the
republic?—no young noble drowned, nor any Jew hanged?"

"Nothing of that much interest—except the calamity which befell Pietro.
Thou rememberest Pietrello? he who crossed into Dalmatia with thee once,
as a supernumerary, the time he was suspected of having aided the young
Frenchman in running away with a senator's daughter?"

"Do I remember the last famine? The rogue did nothing but eat maccaroni,
and swallow the lachryma christi, which the Dalmatian count had on
freight."

"Poverino! His gondola has been run down by an Ancona-man, who passed
over the boat as if it were a senator stepping on a fly."

"So much for little fish coming into deep water."

"The honest fellow was crossing the Giudecca, with a stranger, who had
occasion to say his prayers at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in
the canopy, and broke up the gondola, as if it had been a bubble left by
the Bucentaur."

"The padrone should have been too generous to complain of Pietro's
clumsiness, since it met with its own punishment."

"Madre di Dio! He went to sea that hour, or he might be feeding the
fishes of the Lagunes! There is not a gondolier in Venice who did not
feel the wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain justice for an
insult, as well as our masters."

"Well, a gondola is mortal, as well as a felucca, and both have their
time; better die by the prow of a brig than fall into the gripe of a
Turk. How is thy young master, Gino; and is he likely to obtain his
claims of the senate?"

"He cools himself in the Giudecca in the morning; and if thou would'st
know what he does at evening, thou hast only to look among the nobles in
the Broglio."

As the gondolier spoke he glanced an eye aside at a group of patrician
rank, who paced the gloomy arcades which supported the superior walls of
the doge's palace, a spot sacred, at times, to the uses of the
privileged.

"I am no stranger to the habit thy Venetian nobles have of coming to
that low colonnade at this hour, but I never before heard of their
preferring the waters of the Giudecca for their baths."

"Were even the doge to throw himself out of a gondola, he must sink or
swim, like a meaner Christian."

"Acqua dell' Adriatico! Was the young duca going to the Redentore, too,
to say his prayers?"

"He was coming back after having; but what matters it in what canal a
young noble sighs away the night! We happened to be near when the
Ancona-man performed his feat; while Giorgio and I were boiling with
rage at the awkwardness of the stranger, my master, who never had much
taste or knowledge in gondolas, went into the water to save the young
lady from sharing the fate of her uncle."

"Diavolo! This is the first syllable thou hast uttered concerning any
young lady, or of the death of her uncle!"

"Thou wert thinking of thy Tunis-man, and hast forgotten. I must have
told thee how near the beautiful signora was to sharing the fate of the
gondola, and how the loss of the Roman marchese weighs, in addition, on
the soul of the padrone."

"Santo Padre! That a Christian should die the death of a hunted dog by
the carelessness of a gondolier!"

"It may have been lucky for the Ancona-man that it so fell out; for they
say the Roman was one of influence enough to make a senator cross the
Bridge of Sighs, at need."

"The devil take all careless watermen, say I! And what became of the
awkward rogue?"

"I tell thee he went outside the Lido that very hour, or—"

"Pietrello?"

"He was brought up by the oar of Giorgio, for both of us were active in
saving the cushions and other valuables."

"Could'st thou do nothing for the poor Roman? Ill-luck may follow that
brig on account of his death!"

"Ill-luck follow her, say I, till she lays her bones on some rock that
is harder than the heart of her padrone. As for the stranger, we could
do no more than offer up a prayer to San Teodoro, since he never rose
after the blow. But what has brought thee to Venice, caro mio? for thy
ill-fortune with the oranges, in the last voyage, caused thee to
denounce the place."

The Calabrian laid a finger on one cheek, and drew the skin down in a
manner to give a droll expression to his dark, comic eye, while the
whole of his really fine Grecian face was charged with an expression of
coarse humor.

"Look you, Gino—thy master sometimes calls for his gondola between
sunset and morning?"

"An owl is not more wakeful than he has been of late. This head of mine
has not been on a pillow before the sun has come above the Lido, since
the snows melted from Monselice."

"And when the sun of thy master's countenance sets in his own palazzo,
thou hastenest off to the bridge of the Rialto, among the jewellers and
butchers, to proclaim the manner in which he passed the night?"

"Diamine! 'Twould be the last night I served the Duca di Sant' Agata,
were my tongue so limber! The gondolier and the confessor are the two
privy-councillors of a noble, Master Stefano, with this small
difference—that the last only knows what the sinner wishes to reveal,
while the first sometimes knows more. I can find a safer, if not a more
honest employment, than to be running about with my master's secrets in
the air."

"And I am wiser than to let every Jew broker in San Marco, here, have a
peep into my charter-party."

"Nay, old acquaintance, there is some difference between our
occupations, after all. A padrone of a felucca cannot, in justice, be
compared to the most confidential gondolier of a Neapolitan duke, who
has an unsettled right to be admitted to the Council of Three Hundred."

"Just the difference between smooth water and rough—you ruffle the
surface of a canal with a lazy oar, while I run the channel of Piombino
in a mistral, shoot the Faro of Messina in a white squall, double Santa
Maria di Leuca in a breathing Levanter, and come skimming up the
Adriatic before a sirocco that is hot enough to cook my maccaroni, and
which sets the whole sea boiling worse than the caldrons of Scylla."

"Hist!" eagerly interrupted the gondolier, who had indulged, with
Italian humor, in the controversy for preeminence, though without any
real feeling, "here comes one who may think, else, we shall have need of
his hand to settle the dispute—Eccolo!"

The Calabrian recoiled apace, in silence, and stood regarding the
individual who had caused this hurried remark, with a gloomy but steady
air. The stranger moved slowly past. His years were under thirty, though
the calm gravity of his countenance imparted to it a character of more
mature age. The cheeks were bloodless, but they betrayed rather the
pallid hue of mental than of bodily disease. The perfect condition of
the physical man was sufficiently exhibited in the muscular fulness of a
body which, though light and active, gave every indication of strength.
His step was firm, assured, and even; his carriage erect and easy, and
his whole mien was strongly characterized by a self-possession that
could scarcely escape observation; and yet his attire was that of an
inferior class. A doublet of common velvet, a dark Montero cap, such as
was then much used in the southern countries of Europe, with other
vestments of a similar fashion, composed his dress. The face was
melancholy rather than sombre, and its perfect repose accorded well with
the striking calmness of the body. The lineaments of the former,
however, were bold and even noble, exhibiting that strong and manly
outline which is so characteristic of the finer class of the Italian
countenance. Out of this striking array of features gleamed an eye that
was full of brilliancy, meaning, and passion.

As the stranger passed, his glittering organs rolled over the persons of
the gondolier and his companion, but the look, though searching, was
entirely without interest. 'Twas the wandering but wary glance, which
men who have much reason to distrust, habitually cast on a multitude. It
turned with the same jealous keenness on the face of the next it
encountered, and by the time the steady and well balanced form was lost
in the crowd, that quick and glowing eye had gleamed, in the same rapid
and uneasy manner, on twenty others.

Neither the gondolier nor the mariner of Calabria spoke until their
riveted gaze after the retiring figure became useless. Then the former
simply ejaculated, with a strong respiration—

"Jacopo!"

His companion raised three of his fingers, with an occult meaning,
towards the palace of the doges.

"Do they let him take the air, even in San Marco?" he asked, in
unfeigned surprise.

"It is not easy, caro amico, to make water run up stream, or to stop the
downward current. It is said that most of the senators would sooner lose
their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him. Jacopo! He knows more
family secrets than the good Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor
man, is half his time in the confessional."

"Aye, they are afraid to put him in an iron jacket, lest awkward secrets
should be squeezed out."

"Corpo di Bacco! there would be little peace in Venice, if the Council
of Three should take it into their heads to loosen the tongue of yonder
man in that rude manner."

"But they say, Gino, that thy Council of Three has a fashion of feeding
the fishes of the Lagunes, which might throw the suspicion of his death
on some unhappy Ancona-man, were the body ever to come up again."

"Well, no need of bawling it aloud, as if thou wert hailing a Sicilian
through thy trumpet, though the fact should be so. To say the truth,
there are few men in business who are thought to have more custom than
he who has just gone up the piazzetta."

"Two sequins!" rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing his meaning by a
significant grimace.

"Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor
has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano
less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two
sequins, leave a man leisure to tell tales, or even to say his prayers
half the time."

"Jacopo!" ejaculated the other, with an emphasis which seemed to be a
sort of summing up of all his aversion and horror.

The gondolier shrugged his shoulders with quite as much meaning as a man
born on the shores of the Baltic could have conveyed by words; but he
too appeared to think the matter exhausted.

"Stefano Milano," he added, after a moment of pause, 'there are things
in Venice which he who would eat his maccaroni in peace, would do well
to forget. Let thy errand in port be what it may, thou art in good
season to witness the regatta which will be given by the state itself
to-morrow."

"Hast thou an oar for that race?"

"Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San Teodoro. The prize will
be a silver gondola to him who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and
then we shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic."

"Thy nobles had best woo the bride well; for there are heretics who lay
claim to her good will. I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous
fleetness, in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who seemed to have half
a mind to follow the felucca in her path towards the Lagunes."