“Well, whatever it is,” replied Mrs. Vervain,
“it 's too vexatious. Of course, going to new places,
that way, as we 're always doing, and only going 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 as any. It really is too trying.
Now, when I was talking with that nice monk
of yours at the convent, there, I could n't help
thinking how perfectly delightful it would be if
Florida could have him for a teacher. Why could n't
she? He told me that he would come to take breakfast
or lunch with us, but not dinner, for he always
had to be at the convent before nightfall. Well,
he might come to give the lessons sometime in the
middle of the day.”

“You could n't manage it, Mrs. Vervain, I know
you could n't,” answered Ferris earnestly. “I 'm
sure the Armenians never do anything of the kind.
They 're all very busy men, engaged in ecclesiastical
or literary work, and they could n't give the
time.”

`Why not? There was Byron.”

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

“Well,” said Mrs. Vervain; “I 'm exceedingly
sorry. I had quite set my heart on it. I never

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

took such a fancy to any one in such a short time
before.”

“It seemed to be a case of love at first sight on
both sides,” said Ferris. “Padre Girolamo does n't
shower those syruped rose-leaves indiscriminately
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, it does n't
serve the present purpose. What teachers do you
know of?”

She had been by marriage so long in the service
of the United States that she still regarded its
agents as part of her own domestic economy. Consuls
she everywhere employed as functionaries specially
appointed to look after the interests of American
ladies traveling without protection. 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 or sympathy or advice. She took
amiable possession of him at once, and she had established
an amusing sort of intimacy with him, to
which the haughty trepidations of her daughter set
certain bounds, but in which the demand that he
should find her a suitable Italian teacher seemed
trivially matter of course.

“Yes, I know several teachers,” he said, after
thinking awhile; “but they 're all open to the objection
of being human; and besides, they all do
things in a set kind of way, and I 'm afraid they

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

would n't enter into the spirit of any scheme of
instruction that departed very widely from Ollendorff.”
He paused, and Mrs. Vervain gave a
sketch of the different professional masters whom
she had employed in the various countries of her
sojourn, and a disquisition upon their several lives
and characters, fortifying her statements by reference
of doubtful points to her daughter. This occupied
some time, and Ferris listened to it all with
an abstracted air. At last he said, with a smile,
“There was an Italian priest came to see me this
morning, who astonished me by knowing English—
with a brogue that he 'd learned from an English
priest straight from Dublin; perhaps he might
do, Mrs. Vervain? He 's professionally pledged,
you know, not to give the kind of annoyance
you 've suffered from in teachers. He would do as
well as Padre Girolamo, I suppose.”

“Do you really? Are you in earnest?”

“Well, no, I believe I 'm not. I have n't the
least idea he would do. He belongs to the church
militant. He came to me with the model of a
breech-loading cannon he 's invented, and he wanted
a passport to go to America, so that he might
offer his cannon to our government.”

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

“You overpraise me, Mrs. Vervain. If I could
make such jokes as that priest was, I should set

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

up for a humorist at once. He had the touch of
pathos that they say all true pieces of humor ought
to have,” he went on instinctively addressing himself
to Miss Vervain, who did not repulse him.
“He made me melancholy; and his face haunts
me. I should like to paint him. Priests are generally
such a snuffy, common lot. And I dare
say,” he concluded, “he 's sufficiently commonplace,
too, though he did n't look it. Spare your romance,
Miss Vervain.”

The young lady blushed resentfully. “I see as
little romance as joke in it,” 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 for the
Southerners — if they had it. Poor fellow! I suppose
he came with high hopes of me, and expected
me to receive his invention with eloquent praises.
I 've no doubt he figured himself furnished not only
with a passport, but with a letter from me to President
Lincoln, and foresaw his own triumphal entry
into Washington, and his honorable interviews with
the admiring generals of the Union forces, to whom
he should display his wonderful cannon. Too bad;
is n't it?”

“And why did n'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?”

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

“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 is n't time.”

The gondola had already entered the canal, and
was swiftly approaching the 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 privateer on the canal of the
Brenta.”

“Really?” Mrs. Vervain leaned towards Ferris
for sharper scrutiny of his face. Her glasses
sprang from her nose, and precipitated themselves
into his bosom.

“Allow me,” he said, with burlesque politeness,
withdrawing them from the recesses of his waistcoat
and gravely presenting them. Miss Vervain
burst into a helpless laugh; then she turned toward
her mother with a kind of indignant tenderness,
and gently arranged her shawl so that it should not
drop off when she rose to leave the gondola. She
did not look 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 a vase of divers-colored hyacinths,
and stepping out upon the balcony flung the

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

flowers into the canal. As she put down the empty
vase, the lingering 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 of
hyacinths when they 're a little old is dreadful.
But I can't imagine a gentleman'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,” and seating herself beside
the young girl on the sofa, she fondly took down
her hands. “Do tell me what it was. Was it
about your teachers falling in 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 it over with a stranger?”
asked Florida, still angrily.

“That 's true, my dear,” said Mrs. Vervain, penitently.
“But if it worried you, why did n't you
do something to stop me? Give me a hint, or just
a little knock, somewhere?”

“No, mother; I 'd rather not. Then you 'd
have come out with the whole thing, to prove that
you were right. It 's better to let it go,” said
Florida with a fierce laugh, half sob. “But it 's

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

strange that you can't remember how such things
torment me.”

“I suppose it 's my weak health, dear,” answered
the mother. “I did n't use to be so. But now I
don't really seem to have the strength to be sensible.
I know it 's silly as well as you. The talk
just seems to keep going on of itself, — slipping out,
slipping out. But you need n't mind. Mr. Ferris
won't think you could ever have done anything out
of the way. I 'm sure you don't act with him as
if you 'd ever encouraged anybody. I think you 're
too haughty with him, Florida. And now, his
flowers.”

“He 's detestable. He 's conceited and presuming
beyond all endurance. I don't care what he
thinks of me. But it 's his manner towards you
that I can't tolerate.”

“I suppose it 's rather free,” said Mrs. Vervain.
“But then you know, my dear, I shall be soon getting
to be an old lady; and besides, I always feel as
if consuls were a kind of one of the family. He 's
been very obliging since we came; I don't know
what we should have done without him. And I
don't object to a little ease of manner in the gentlemen;
I never did.”

“He makes fun of you,” cried Florida: “and
there at the convent,” she said, bursting into angry
tears, “he kept exchanging glances with that monk,
as if he..... He 's insulting, and I hate
him!”

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

“Do you mean that he thought your mother
ridiculous, Florida?” asked Mrs. Vervain gravely.
“You must have misunderstood his looks; indeed
you must. I can't imagine why he should. I remember
that I talked particularly well during our
whole visit; my mind was active, for I felt unusually
strong, and I was interested in everything.
It 's nothing but a fancy of yours; or your prejudice,
Florida. But it 's odd, now I 've sat down
for a moment, how worn out I feel. And thirsty.”

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

“It is n'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 before dinner will do me good.
I don't see why I 'm so drowsy of late. I suppose
it 's getting into the sea air here at Venice; though
it 's mountain air that makes you drowsy. But
you 're quite mistaken about Mr. Ferris. He is n't
capable of anything really rude. Besides, there
would n't have been any sense in it.”

The young girl brought the water and then knelt
beside the sofa, on which she arranged the pillows
under her mother, and covered her with soft wraps.
She laid her cheek against the thinner face.
“Don't mind anything I 've said, mother; let 's
talk of something else.”

The mother drew some loose threads of the

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

daughter's hair through her slender fingers, but said
little more, and presently fell into a deep slumber.
Florida gently lifted her head away, and remained
kneeling before the sofa, looking into the sleeping
face with an expression of strenuous, compassionate
devotion, mixed with a vague alarm and self-pity,
and a certain wondering anxiety.

III.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

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

His heart was in these inventions of his, which
had as yet so grudgingly repaid his affection. For
their sake he had stinted himself of many needful
things. The meagre stipend which he received
from the patrimony of his church, eked out with
the money paid him for baptisms, funerals, and
marriages, and for masses by people who had friends
to be prayed out of purgatory, would at best have
barely sufficed to support him; but he denied himself
everything save the necessary decorums of dress
and lodging; he fasted like a saint, and slept hard
as a hermit, that he might spend upon these ungrateful
creatures of his brain. They were the

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

work of his own hands, and so he saved the expense
of their construction; but there were many
little outlays for materials and for tools, which he
could not avoid, and with him a little was all.
They not only famished him; they isolated him.
His superiors in the church, and his brother priests,
looked with doubt or ridicule upon the labors for
which he shunned their company, while he gave up
the other social joys, few and small, which a priest
might know in the Venice of that day, when all
generous spirits regarded him with suspicion for
his cloth's sake, and church and state were alert
to detect disaffection or indifference in him. But
bearing these things willingly, and living as frugally
as he might, he had still not enough, and he
had been fain to assume the instruction of a young
girl of old and noble family in certain branches of
polite learning which a young lady of that sort
might 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 the slender
salary was a help; these patricians were very
good to him; many a time he dined with them,
and so spared the cost of his own pottage at home;
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 a word, his
condition was not privation. He did his duty as a
teacher faithfully, and the only trouble with it was
that the young girl was growing into a young

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

woman, and that he could not go on teaching her
forever. In an evil hour, as it seemed to Don
Ippolito, that made the years she had been his
pupil shrivel to a mere pinch of time, there came
from a young count of the Friuli, visiting Venice,
an offer of marriage; and Don Ippolito lost his
place. It was hard, but he bade himself have patience;
and he composed an ode for the nuptials of
his late pupil, which, together with a brief sketch
of her ancestral history, he had elegantly printed,
according to the Italian usage, and distributed
among the family friends; he also made a sonnet
to the bridegroom, and these literary tributes were
handsomely acknowledged.

He managed a whole year upon the proceeds,
and kept a cheerful spirit till the last soldo was
spent, inventing one thing after another, and giving
much time and money to a new principle of steam
propulsion, which, as applied without steam to a
small boat on the canal before his door, failed to
work, though it had no logical excuse for its delinquency.
He tried to get other pupils, but he got
none, and he began to dream of going to America.
He pinned his faith in all sorts of magnificent possibilities
to the names of Franklin, Fulton, and
Morse; he was so ignorant of our politics and geography
as to suppose us at war with the South American
Spaniards, but he knew that English was the
language of the North, and he applied himself to
the study of it. Heaven only knows what kind of

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

inventor's Utopia, our poor, patent-ridden country
appeared to him in these dreams of his, and I can
but dimly figure it to myself. But he might very
naturally desire to come to a land where the spirit
of invention is recognized and fostered, and where
he could hope to find that comfort of incentive and
companionship which our artists find in Italy.

The idea of the breech-loading cannon had occurred
to him suddenly one day, in one of his New-World-ward
reveries, and he had made haste to
realize it, carefully studying the form and general
effect of the Austrian cannon under the gallery of
the Ducal Palace, to the high embarrassment of the
Croat sentry who paced up and down there, and
who did not feel free to order off a priest as he
would a civilian. Don Ippolito's model was of
admirable finish; he even painted the carriage yellow
and black, because that of the original was so,
and colored the piece 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 chiefly from his kindly manner, but
they had died away before nightfall, and this morning
he could not rekindle them.

He had had his coffee served to him on the
bench, as his frequent custom was, but it stood untasted
in the little copper pot beside the dismounted
cannon, though it was now ten o'clock, and it was
full time he had breakfasted, for he had risen early

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

to perform the matin service for three peasant
women, two beggars, a cat, and a paralytic nobleman,
in the ancient and beautiful church to which he
was attached. He had tried to go about his wonted
occupations, but he was still sitting idle before his
bench, while his servant gossiped from her balcony
to the mistress of the next house, across a calle so
deep and narrow that it opened like a mountain
chasm beneath them. “It were well if the master
read his breviary a little more, instead of always
maddening himself with those blessed inventions,
that eat more soldi than a Christian, and never
come to anything. There he sits before his table,
as if he were nailed to his chair, and lets his coffee
cool — and God knows I was ready to drink it
warm two hours ago — and never looks at me if I
open the 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 this
house, 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, and she went to announce
him to her master by the title he had given, while
he 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 which he heard the
voice of the priest begging him to remain at his

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

convenience 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 entry in
which he stood, when he felt a cold hand laid on
his, and passively yielded himself to its guidance.
He tried to excuse himself for intruding upon Don
Ippolito so soon, but the priest in far suppler Italian
overwhelmed him with lamentations that he should
be so unworthy the honor done him, and ushered his
guest into his apartment. He plainly took it for
granted that Ferris had come to see his inventions,
in compliance with the invitation he had given him
the day before, and he made no affectation of delay,
though after the excitement of the greetings was
past, it was with a quiet dejection that he rose and
offered to lead his visitor to his laboratory.

The whole place was an outgrowth of himself;
it was his history as well as his character. It recorded
his quaint and childish tastes, his restless
endeavors, his partial and halting successes. The
ante-room in which he had paused with Ferris was
painted to look like a grape-arbor, where the vines
sprang from the floor, and flourishing up the trellised
walls, with many a wanton tendril and flaunting
leaf, displayed their lavish clusters of white and
purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when
Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had
been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to
find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had
seen in remote corners of Venice before the doors

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

of degenerate palaces, or forming the entrances of
open-air restaurants, and did not seem at all to have
been studied from grape-arbors in the country.
He perceived the archaic striving for exact truth,
and he successfully praised the mechanical skill and
love of reality with which it was done; but he was
silenced by a collection of paintings in Don Ippolito's
parlor, where he had been made to sit down a
moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression,
and opaque in color, these copies of famous
masterpieces, — saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions,
martyrdoms, and what not, — and they
were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained
that he had made them from such prints
of the subjects as he could get, and had colored
them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose
art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a
thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically
pathetic than the frescoed grape-arbor; he stared
about him for some sort of escape from the pictures,
and his eye fell upon a piano 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 air with a hand upon each instrument.

Ferris smiled. “Don Ippolito, you are another
Da Vinci, a universal genius.”

“Bagatelles, bagatelles,” said the priest pensively;
but he rose with greater spirit than he had
yet shown, and preceded the consul into the little
room that served him for a smithy. It seemed

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

from some peculiarities of shape to have once been
an oratory, but it was now begrimed with smoke and
dust from the forge which Don Ippolito had set up
in it; the embers of a recent fire, the bellows, the
pincers, the hammers, and the other implements of
the trade, gave it a sinister effect, as if the place of
prayer had been invaded by mocking imps, or as if
some hapless mortal in contract with the evil powers
were here searching, by the help of the adversary,
for the forbidden secrets of the metals and of fire.
In those days, Ferris was an uncompromising enemy
of the theatricalization of Italy, or indeed of anything;
but the fancy of the black-robed young
priest at work in this place appealed to him all the
more potently because of the sort of tragic innocence
which seemed to characterize Don Ippolito's
expression. He longed intensely to sketch the
picture then and there, but he had strength to rebuke
the fancy as something that could not make
itself intelligible without the help of such accessories
as he despised, and he victoriously followed the
priest into his larger workshop, where his inventions,
complete and incomplete, were stored, and
where he had been seated when his visitor arrived.
The high windows and the frescoed ceiling were
festooned with dusty cobwebs; litter of shavings
and whittlings strewed the floor; mechanical implements
and contrivances were everywhere, and
Don Ippolito's listlessness seemed to return upon
him again at the sight of the familiar disorder.

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

Conspicuous among other objects lay the illogically
unsuccessful model of the new principle of
steam propulsion, untouched since the day when he
had lifted it out of the canal and carried it indoors
through the ranks of grinning spectators. From a
shelf above it he took down models of a flyingmachine
and a perpetual motion. “Fantastic
researches in the impossible. I never expected
results from these experiments, with which I
nevertheless once pleased myself,” he said, and
turned impatiently to various pieces of portable
furniture, chairs, tables, bedsteads, which by folding
up their legs and tops condensed themselves
into flat boxes, developing handles at the side for
convenience in carrying. They were painted and
varnished, and were in all respects complete; they
had indeed won favorable mention at an exposition
of the Provincial Society of Arts and Industries,
and Ferris could applaud their ingenuity sincerely,
though he had his tacit doubts of their usefulness.
He fell silent again when Don Ippolito called his
notice to a photographic camera, so contrived with
straps and springs that you could snatch by its help
whatever joy there might be in taking your own
photograph; and he did not know what to say of a
submarine boat, a four-wheeled water-velocipede, a
movable bridge, or the very many other principles
and ideas to which Don Ippolito's cunning hand
had given shape, more or less imperfect. It seemed
to him that they all, however perfect or imperfect,

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

had some fatal defect: they were aspirations toward
the impossible, or realizations of the trivial
and superfluous. Yet, for all this, they strongly
appealed to the painter as the stunted fruit of a
talent denied opportunity, instruction, and sympathy.
As he looked from them at last to the
questioning face of the priest, and considered out of
what disheartened and solitary patience they must
have come in this city, — dead hundreds of years to
all such endeavor, — he could not utter some glib
phrases of compliment that he had on his tongue.
If Don Ippolito had been taken young, he might
perhaps have amounted to something, though this
was questionable; but at thirty — as he looked now,—
with his undisciplined purposes, and his head full
of vagaries of which these things were the tangible
witness..... Ferris let his eyes drop again. They
fell upon the ruin of the breech-loading cannon, and
he said, “Don Ippolito, it 's very good of you to
take the trouble of showing me these matters, and I
hope you 'll pardon the ungrateful return, if I cannot
offer any definite opinion of them now. They
are rather out of my way, I confess. I wish with
all my heart I could order an experimental, life-size
copy of your breech-loading cannon here, for trial
by my government, but I can't; and to tell you the
truth, it was not altogether the wish to see these inventions
of yours that brought me here to-day.”

“Oh,” said Don Ippolito, with a mortified air,
“I am afraid that I have wearied the Signor Console.”

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

“Not at all, not at all,” Ferris made haste to
answer, with a frown at his own awkwardness.
“But your speaking English yesterday;.... perhaps
what I was thinking of is quite foreign to
your tastes and possibilities.”.... He hesitated
with a look of perplexity, while Don Ippolito stood
before him in an attitude of expectation, pressing
the points of his fingers together, and looking curiously
into his face. “The case is this,” resumed
Ferris desperately. “There are two American
ladies, friends of mine, sojourning in Venice, who
expect to be here till midsummer. They are
mother and daughter, and the young lady wants
to read and speak Italian with somebody a few
hours each day. The question is whether it is
quite out of your way or not to give her lessons of
this kind. I ask it quite at a venture. I suppose
no harm is done, at any rate,” and he looked at
Don Ippolito with apologetic perturbation.

“No,” said the priest, “there is no harm. On
the contrary, I am at this moment in a position to
consider it a great favor that you do me in offering
me this employment. I accept it with the greatest
pleasure. Oh!” he cried, breaking by a sudden
impulse from the composure with which he had
begun to speak, “you don't know what you do for
me; you lift me out of despair. Before you came,
I had reached one of those passes that seem the last
bound of endeavor. But you give me new life.
Now I can go on with my experiment. I can

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

attest my gratitude by possessing your native country
of the weapon I had designed for it — I am sure of
the principle: some slight improvement, perhaps
the use of some different explosive, would get over
that difficulty you suggested,” he said eagerly.
“Yes, something can be done. God bless you, my
dear little son — I mean — perdoni! — my dear
sir.”....

“Wait — not so fast,” said Ferris with a laugh,
yet a little annoyed that a question so purely tentative
as his should have met at once such a definite
response. “Are you quite sure you can do what
they want?” He unfolded to him, as fully as he
understood it, Mrs. Vervain's scheme.

Don Ippolito entered into it with perfect intelligence.
He said that he had already had charge of
the education of a young girl of noble family, and
he could therefore the more confidently hope to be
useful to this American lady. A light of joyful
hope shone in his dreamy eyes, the whole man
changed, he assumed the hospitable and caressing
host. He conducted Ferris back to his parlor, and
making him sit upon the hard sofa that was his
hard bed by night, he summoned his servant, and
bade her serve them coffee. She closed her lips
firmly, and waved her finger before her face, to
signify that there was no more coffee. Then he
bade her fetch it from the caffè; and he listened
with a sort of rapt inattention while Ferris again
returned to the subject and explained that he had

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

approached him without first informing the ladies,
and that he must regard nothing as final. It was
at this point that Don Ippolito, who had understood
so clearly what Mrs. Vervain wanted, appeared
a little slow to understand; and Ferris had
a doubt whether it was from subtlety or from simplicity
that the priest seemed not to comprehend
the impulse on which he had acted. He finished
his coffee in this perplexity, and when he rose to go,
Don Ippolito followed him down to the street-door,
and preserved him from a second encounter with
the cistern-top.

“But, Don Ippolito — remember! I make no
engagement for the ladies, whom you must see before
anything is settled,” said Ferris.

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

“Could he really have been so stupid because
his mind was on his ridiculous cannon?” wondered
Ferris as he sauntered frowning away; and he
tried to prepare his own mind for his meeting with
the Vervains, to whom he must now go at once.
He felt abused and victimized. Yet it was an
amusing experience, and he found himself able to
interest both of the ladies in it. The younger had

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

received him as coldly as the forms of greeting
would allow; but as he talked she drew nearer him
with a reluctant haughtiness which he noted. He
turned the more conspicuously towards Mrs. Vervain.
“Well, to make a long story short,” he
said, “I could n't discourage Don Ippolito. He refused
to be dismayed — as I should have been at
the notion of teaching Miss Vervain. I did n't arrange
with him not to fall in love with her as his
secular predecessors have done — it seemed superfluous.
But you can mention it to him if you like.
In fact,” said Ferris, suddenly addressing the
daughter, “you might make the stipulation yourself,
Miss Vervain.”

She looked at him a moment with a sort of defenseless
pain that made him ashamed; and then
walked away from him towards the window, with
a frank resentment that made him smile, as he continued,
“But I suppose you would like to have
some explanation of my motive in precipitating
Don Ippolito upon you in this way, when I told
you only yesterday that he would n't do at all; in
fact I think myself that I 've behaved rather ficklemindedly—
for a representative of the country.
But I 'll tell you; and you won't be surprised to
learn that I acted from mixed motives. I 'm not
at all sure that he 'll do; I 've had awful misgivings
about it since I left him, and I 'm glad of the
chance to make a clean breast of it. When I came
to think the matter over last night, the fact that he

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

had taught himself English — with the help of an
Irishman for the pronunciation — seemed to promise
that he 'd have the right sort of sympathy with
your scheme, and it showed that he must have
something practical about him, too. And here 's
where the selfish admixture comes in. I did n't
have your interests solely in mind when I went to
see Don Ippolito. I had n'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
a notion to ask him to let me paint him. It was
an even chance whether I should try to secure him
for Miss Vervain, or for Art — as they call it.
Miss Vervain won because she could pay him, and
I did n't see how Art could. I can bring him round
any time; and that 's the whole inconsequent business.
My consolation is that I 've left you perfectly
free. There 's nothing decided.”

“Thanks,” said Mrs. Vervain; “then it 's all
settled. You can bring him as soon as you like, to
our new place. We 've taken that apartment we
looked at the other day, and we 're going into it
this afternoon. Here 's the 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 did n't want to trouble you before.”

“You 're a woman of business, Mrs. Vervain,”
said Ferris. “The man 's a perfect Jew — or a
perfect Christian, one ought to say in Venice; we
true believers do gouge so much more infamously

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

here — and you let him get 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 half too 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 to be done about it?”

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

“A bargain? Oh nonsense, now, Mr. Ferris.
This is merely a note of mutual understanding.”

“Yes, that 's one way of looking at it. The
Civil Tribunal would call it a binding agreement
of the closest tenure, — if you want to go to law
about it.”

“I will go to law about it.”

“Oh no, you won't — unless you mean to spend
your remaining days and all your substance in Venice.
Come, you have n't done so badly, Mrs. Vervain.
I don't call four rooms, completely furnished
for housekeeping, with that lovely garden, at all
dear at eleven francs a day. Besides, the landlord
is a man of excellent feeling, sympathetic and
obliging, and a perfect gentleman, though he is
such an outrageous scoundrel. He 'll cheat you, of
course, in whatever he can; you must look out for
that; but he 'll do you any sort of little neighborly
kindness. Good-by,” said Ferris, getting to the
door before Mrs. Vervain could intercept him.
“I 'll come to your new place this evening to see
how you are pleased.”

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

“Florida,” said Mrs. Vervain, “this is outrageous.”

“I would n'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 said yesterday, I don't
think Mr. Ferris's manners are quite respectful to
me.”

“He only told you the truth; I think he advised
you for the best. The matter could n'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,” said Florida. “Perhaps not in our
priest, either,” she added.

“Yes, that was kind of Mr. Ferris,” said Mrs.
Vervain. “It was thoroughly thoughtful and considerate—
what I call an instance of true delicacy.
I 'm really quite curious to see him. Don Ippolito!
How very odd to call a priest Don! I should have
said Padre. Don always makes you think of a
Spanish cavalier. Don Rodrigo: something like
that.”

They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito,
and what he might be like. In speaking of
him the day before, Ferris had hinted at some mysterious
sadness in him; and to hint of sadness in a
man always interests women in him, whether they
are old or young: the old have suffered, the young

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

forebode suffering. Their interest in Don Ippolito
had not been diminished by what Ferris had told
them of his visit to the priest's house and of the
things he had seen there; for there had always
been the same strain of pity in his laughing account,
and he had imparted none of his doubts to
them. They did not talk as if it were strange that
Ferris should do to-day what he had yesterday said
he would not do; perhaps as women they could not
find such a thing strange; but it vexed him more
and more as he went about all afternoon thinking
of his inconsistency, and wondering whether he had
not acted rashly.

IV.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

The palace in which Mrs. Vervain had taken an
apartment fronted on a broad campo, and hung its
empty marble balconies from gothic windows above
a silence scarcely to be matched elsewhere in Venice.
The local pharmacy, the caffè, the grocery,
the fruiterer's, the other shops with which every
Venetian campo is furnished, had each a certain
life about it, but it was a silent life, and at midday
a frowsy-headed woman clacking across the flags in
her wooden-heeled shoes made echoes whose garrulity
was interrupted by no other sound. In the
early morning, when the 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 the housewives of the neighborhood and the local
force of strong-backed Friulan water-girls drew
their day's supply of water; and on that sort of
special parochial holiday, called a sagra, the campo
hummed and clattered and shrieked with a multitude
celebrating the day around the stands where
pumpkin seeds and roast pumpkin and anisettewater
were sold, and before the movable kitchen
where cakes were fried in caldrons of oil, and uproariously
offered to the crowd by the cook, who
did not suffer himself to be embarrassed by the

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

rival drama of adjoining puppet-shows, but continued
to bellow forth his bargains all day long and
far into the night, when the flames under his kettles
painted his visage a fine crimson. The sagra
once over, however, the campo relapsed into its
habitual silence, and no one looking at the front of
the palace would have thought of it as a place for
distraction-seeking foreign sojourners. But it was
not on this side that the landlord tempted his
tenants; his principal notice of lodgings to let was
affixed to the water-gate of the palace, which opened
on a smaller channel so near the Grand Canal
that no wandering eye could fail to see it. The
portal was a tall arch of Venetian gothic tipped
with a carven flame; steps of white Istrian stone
descended to the level of the lowest ebb, irregularly
embossed with barnacles, and dabbling long fringes
of soft green sea-mosses in the rising and falling
tide. Swarms of water-bugs and beetles played
over the edges of the steps, and crabs scuttled sidewise
into deeper water at the approach of a gondola.
A length of stone-capped brick wall, to
which patches of stucco still clung, stretched from
the gate on either hand under cover of an ivy that
flung its mesh of shining green from within, where
there lurked a lovely garden, stately, spacious for
Venice, and full of a delicious, half-sad surprise for
wh so opened upon it. In the midst it had a
broken fountain, with a marble naiad standing on
a shell, and looking saucier than the sculptor

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

meant, from having lost the point of her nose;
nymphs and fauns, and shepherds and shepherdesses,
her kinsfolk, coquetted in and out among the greenery
in flirtation not to be embarrassed by the fracture
of an arm, or the casting of a leg or so; one
lady had no head, but she was the boldest of all.
In this garden there were some mulberry and pomegranate
trees, several of which hung about the
fountain with seats in their shade, and for the rest
there seemed to be mostly roses and oleanders, with
other shrubs of a kind that made the greatest show
of blossom and cost the least for tendance. A wide
terrace stretched across the rear of the palace, dropping
to the garden path by a flight of balustraded
steps, and upon this terrace opened the long windows
of Mrs. Vervain's parlor and dining-room.
Her landlord owned only the first story and the
basement of the palace, in some corner of which he
cowered with his servants, his taste for pictures and
bric-à-brac, and his little branch of inquiry into
Venetian history, whatever it was, ready to let
himself or anything he had for hire at a moment's
notice, but very pleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive;
a cheat and a liar, but of a kind heart
and sympathetic manners. Under his protection
Mrs. Vervain set up her impermanent household
gods. The apartment was taken only from week
to week, and as she freely explained to the padrone
hovering about with offers of service, she
knew herself too well ever to unpack anything that

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

would not spoil by remaining packed. She made
her trunks yield all the appliances necessary for
an invalid's comfort, and then left them in a
state to be strapped and transported to the station
within half a day after the desire of change or the
exigencies of her feeble health caused her going.
Everything for housekeeping was furnished 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 her
arrival, with the charge to find a maid for herself
and daughter. As if she had been waiting at the
next door this maid appeared promptly, and being
Venetian, and in domestic service, her name
was of course Nina. Mrs. Vervain now said to
Florida that everything was perfect, and contentedly
began her life in Venice by telling Mr. Ferris,
when he came in the evening, that he could bring
Don Ippolito the day after the morrow, if he liked.

She and Florida sat on the terrace waiting for
them on the morning named, when Ferris, with the
priest in his clerical best, came up the garden path
in the sunny light. Don Ippolito's best was a little
poverty-stricken; he had faltered a while, before
leaving home, over the sad choice between a shabby
cylinder hat of obsolete fashion and his well-worn
three-cornered priestly beaver, and had at last put
on the latter with a sigh. He had made his servant
polish the buckles of his shoes, and instead of

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

a band of linen round his throat, he wore a strip of
cloth covered with small white beads, edged above
and below with a single row of pale blue ones.

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

“My daughter,” said Mrs. Vervain, and Don
Ippolito made another low bow, and then looked at
the girl with a sort of frank and melancholy wonder,
as she turned and exchanged a few words with
Ferris, who was assailing her seriousness and hauteur
with unabashed levity of compliment. 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 as she bent them upon him a
moment before she broke abruptly, not coquettishly,
away from him, and moved towards her mother,
while Ferris walked off to the other end of the terrace,
with a laugh. Mrs. Vervain and the priest

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

were trying each other in French, and not making
great advance; he explained to Florida in Italian,
and she answered him hesitatingly; 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.” The deprecating
wave of the hand with which Don Ippolito
appealed to her from herself, seemed arrested midway
by his perception of some novel quality in her.
He said gravely that he should try to be of use, and
then the two stood silent.

“Come, Mr. Ferris,” called out Mrs. Vervain,
“breakfast is ready, and I want you to take me
in.”

“Too much honor,” said the painter, coming forward
and offering his arm, and Mrs. Vervain led
the way indoors.

“I suppose I ought to have taken Don Ippolito's
arm,” she confided in under-tone, “but the fact is,
our French is so unlike that we don't understand
each other very well.”

“Oh,” returned Ferris, “I 've known Italians and
Americans whom Frenchmen themselves could n't
understand.”

“You see it 's an American breakfast,” said Mrs.
Vervain with a critical glance at the table before
she sat down. “All but hot bread; that you can't
have,” and Don Ippolito was for the first time in
his life confronted by a breakfast of hot beef-steak,

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

eggs and toast, fried potatoes, and coffee with milk,
with a choice of tea. He subdued all signs of the
wonder he must have felt, and beyond cutting his
meat into little bits before eating it, did nothing to
betray his strangeness 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. “It
is 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 aside to Don Ippolito, who
smiled, but shrank from contributing to the new
tongue.

“Very well, then,” said the painter. “I shall
stick to my native Bergamask for the future; and
Don Ippolito may translate for the foreign ladies.”

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

“I 'm so pleased!” said Mrs. Vervain, rising
when Ferris said that he must go, and Florida
shook hands with both guests.

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

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

“Oh nonsense, now,” returned the lady. “You
know what I mean. I 'm perfectly delighted with
him,” she continued, getting Ferris to one side,
“and I know he must have a good accent. So very
kind of you. Will you arrange with him about the
pay? — such a shame! Thanks. Then I need n't
say anything to him about that. I 'm so glad I had
him to breakfast the first day; though Florida
thought not. Of course, one need n't keep it
up. But seriously, it is n't an ordinary case, you
know.”

Ferris laughed at her with a sort of affectionate
disrespect, and said good-by. Don Ippolito lingered
for a while to talk over the proposed lessons,
and then went, after more elaborate adieux. Mrs.
Vervain remained 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. But perhaps it 's the Venetian custom.
At any rate, my dear, he 's a gentleman in
virtue of his profession, and I could n't do less than
ask him to breakfast. He has beautiful manners;
and if he must take snuff, I suppose it 's neater to
carry two handkerchiefs, though it does look odd.
I wish he would n't take snuff.”

“I don't see why we need care, mother. At any
rate, we cannot help it.”

“That 's true, my dear. And his nails. Now,

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

when they 're spread out on a book, you know, to
keep it open, won't it be unpleasant?”

“They seem to have just such fingernails all over
Europe — except in England.”

“Oh, yes; I know it. I dare say we should n't
care for it in him, if he did n't seem so very nice
otherwise. How handsome he is!”

V.

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

It was understood that Don Ippolito should come
every morning at ten o'clock, and read and talk
with Miss Vervain for an hour or two; but Mrs.
Vervain's hospitality was too aggressive for the letter
of the agreement. She oftener had him to
breakfast at nine, for, as she explained to Ferris,
she could not endure to have him feel that it was
a mere mercenary transaction, and there was no
limit fixed for the lessons on these days. When
she could, she had Ferris come, too, and she 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 of me. You are so apt to
be heavy if you 're not made light of occasionally.
I certainly should n't want a son to be so respectful
and obedient as you are, my dear.”

The painter honestly returned her fondness, and
with not much greater reason. He saw that she
took pleasure in his talk, and enjoyed it even when
she did not understand it; and this is a kind of
flattery not easy to resist. Besides, there was very
little ladies' society in Venice in those times, and
Ferris, after trying the little he could get at, had
gladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted
with the young men he met at the caffès, or in the

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

Piazza. But when the Vervains came, they recalled
to him the younger days in which he had delighted
in the companionship of women. After so
long disuse, it was charming to be with a beautiful
girl who neither regarded him with distrust nor expected
him to ask her in marriage because he sat
alone with her, rode out with her in a gondola,
walked with her, read with her. All young men
like a house in which no ado is made about their
coming and going, and Mrs. Vervain perfectly understood
the art of letting him make himself 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 blameless of the tribe, but still lawless, —
whether from her campaigning married life, or the
rovings of her widowhood, or by natural disposition;
and that Miss Vervain was inclined to be
conventionally strict, but with her irregular training
was at a loss for rules by which to check her mother's
little way wardnesses. Her anxious perplexity,
at times, together with her heroic obedience and
unswerving loyalty to her mother had something
pathetic as well as amusing in it. He saw her tried
almost to tears by her mother's helpless frankness,—
for Mrs. Vervain was apparently one of those
ladies whom the intolerable surprise of having anything
come into their heads causes instantly to say
or do it, — and he observed that she never tried to

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

pass off her endurance with any feminine arts; but
seemed to defy him to think what he would of it.
Perhaps she was not able to do otherwise: he
thought of her at times as a person wholly abandoned
to the truth. Her pride was on the alert
against him; she may have imagined that he was
covertly smiling at her, and she no doubt tasted the
ironical flavor of much of his talk and behavior,
for in those days he liked to qualify his devotion
to the Vervains with a certain nonchalant slight,
which, while the mother openly enjoyed it, filled
the daughter with anger and apprehension. Quite
at random, she visited points of his informal manner
with unmeasured reprisal; others, for which he
might have blamed himself, she passed over with
strange caprice. Sometimes this attitude of hers
provoked him, and sometimes it disarmed him; but
whether they were at feud, or keeping an armed
truce, or, as now and then happened, were in an
entente cordiale which he found very charming, the
thing that he always contrived to treat with silent
respect and forbearance in Miss Vervain was that
sort of aggressive tenderness with which she hastened
to shield the foibles of her mother. That
was something very good in her pride, he finally decided.
At the same time, he did not pretend to
understand the curious filial self-sacrifice which it
involved.

Another thing in her that puzzled him was her
devoutness. Mrs. Vervain could with difficulty be

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

got to church, but her daughter missed no service
of the English ritual in the old palace where the
British and American tourists assembled once a
week with their guide-books in one pocket and their
prayer-books in the other, and burried the tomahawk
under the altar. Mr. Ferris was often sent with
her; and then his thoughts, which were a young
man's, wandered from the service to the beautiful
girl at his side, — the golden head that punctiliously
bowed itself at the proper places in the liturgy:
the full lips that murmured the responses; the
silken lashes that swept her pale cheeks as she perused
the morning lesson. He knew that the Vervains
were not Episcopalians when at home, for
Mrs. Vervain had told him so, and that Florida
went to the English service because there was no
other. He conjectured that perhaps her touch of
ritualism came from mere love of any form she
could make sure of.

The servants in Mrs. Vervain's lightly ordered
household, with the sympathetic quickness of the
Italians, learned to use him as the next friend of
the family, and though they may have had their
decorous surprise at his untrammeled footing, they
probably excused the whole relation as a phase of
that foreign eccentricity to which their nation is so
amiable. If they were not able to cast the same
mantle of charity over Don Ippolito's allegiance,—
and doubtless they had their reserves concerning
such frankly familiar treatment of so dubious a

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

character as priest, — still as a priest they stood
somewhat in awe of him; they had the spontaneous
loyalty of their race to the people they served,
and they never intimated by a look that they found
it strange when Don Ippolito freely came and went.
Mrs. Vervain had quite adopted him into her family:
while her daughter seemed more at ease with
him than with Ferris, and treated him with a grave
politeness which had something also of compassion
and of child-like reverence in it. Ferris observed
that she was always particularly careful of his supposable
sensibilities as a Roman Catholic, and that
the priest was oddly indifferent to this deference, as
if it would have mattered very little to him whether
his church was spared or not. He had a way of
lightly avoiding, Ferris fancied, not only religious
points on which they could disagree, but all phases
of religion as matters of indifference. At such
times Miss Vervain relaxed her reverential attitude,
and used him with something like rebuke, as if it
did not please her to have the representative of even
an alien religion slight his office; as if her respect
were for his priesthood and her compassion for him
personally. That was rather hard for Don Ippolito,
Ferris thought, and waited to see him snubbed outright
some day, when he should behave without sufficient
gravity.

The blossoms came and went upon the pomegranate
and almond trees in the garden, and some
of the earliest roses were in their prime;

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

everywhere was so full leaf that the wantonest of the
strutting nymphs was forced into a sort of decent
seclusion, but the careless naiad of the fountain
burnt in sunlight that subtly increased its fervors
day by day, and it was no longer beginning to be
warm, it was warm, when one morning Ferris and
Miss Vervain sat on the steps of the terrace, waiting
for Don Ippolito to join them at breakfast.

By this time the painter was well on with the
picture of Don Ippolito which 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 should think you would want to
make him the centre of some famous or romantic
scene,” she added, gravely looking into his eyes as
he sat with his head thrown back against the balustrade.

“No, I doubt if you think,” answered Ferris,
“or you 'd see that a Venetian priest does n't need
any tawdry accessories. What do you want?
Somebody administering the extreme unction to a
victim of the Council of Ten? A priest stepping
into a confessional at the Frari — tomb of Canova
in the distance, perspective of one of the naves, and
so forth — with his eye on a pretty devotee coming
up to unburden her conscience? I 've no patience
with the follies people think and say about Venice!”

Florida started in haughty question at the painter.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

“You 're no worse than the rest,” he continued
with indifference to her anger at his bluntness.
“You all think that there can be no picture of Venice
without a gondola or a Bridge of Sighs in it.
Have you ever read the merchant of Venice, or
Othello? There is n't a boat nor a bridge nor a
canal mentioned in either of them; and yet they
breathe and pulsate with the very life of Venice.
I 'm going to try to paint a Venetian priest so that
you 'll know him without a bit of conventional Venice
near him.”

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

“I don't say I shall succeed,” Ferris answered.
“In fact I 've made one failure already, and I 'm
pretty well on with a second; but the principle
is right, all the same. I don't expect everybody to
see the difference between Don Ippolito and Father
O'Brien. At any rate, what I 'm going to paint at
is the lingering pagan in the man, the renunciation
first of the inherited nature, and then of a personality
that would have enjoyed the world. I want
to show that baffled aspiration, apathetic despair,
and rebellious longing which you catch in his face
when he 's off his guard, and that suppressed look
which is the characteristic expression of all Austrian

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

Venice. Then,” said Ferris laughing, “I must
work in that small suspicion of Jesuit which there
is in every priest. But it 's quite possible I may
make a Father O'Brien of him.”

“You won't make a Don Ippolito of him,” said
Florida, after serious consideration of his face to see
whether he was quite in earnest, “if you put all
that into him. He has the simplest and openest
look in the world,” she added warmly, “and there 's
neither pagan, nor martyr, nor rebel in it.”

Ferris laughed again. “Excuse me; I don't
think you know. I can convince you.”....

Florida rose, and looking down the garden path
said, “He 's coming;” and as Don Ippolito drew
near, his face lighting up with a joyous and innocent
smile, she continued absently, “he 's got on
new stockings, and a 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, curling brim. Don Ippolito's
coat, also, was of a more mundane cut than the
talare; he wore a waistcoat and small-clothes, meeting
the stockings at the knee with a sprightly
buckle. His person showed no traces of the snuff
with which it used to be so plentifully dusted; in
fact, he no longer took snuff in the presence of the
ladies. The first week he had noted an inexplicable
uneasiness in them when he drew forth that
blue cotton handkerchief after the solace of a pinch;
shortly afterwards, being alone with Florida, he

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

saw her give a nervous start at its appearance.
He blushed violently, and put it back into the
pocket from which he had half drawn it, and whence
it never emerged again in her presence. The contessina
his former pupil had not shown any aversion
to Don Ippolito's snuff or his blue handkerchief;
but then the contessina had never rebuked his finger-nails
by the tints of rose and ivory with which
Miss Vervain's hands bewildered him. It was a
little droll how anxiously he studied the ways of
these Americans, and conformed to them as far as
he knew. His English grew rapidly in their society,
and it happened sometimes that the only Italian
in the day's lesson was what he read with Florida,
for she always yielded to her mother's wish to
talk, and Mrs. Vervain preferred the ease of her
native tongue. He was Americanizing in that good
lady's hands as fast as she could transform him, and
he listened to her with trustful reverence, as to a
woman of striking though eccentric mind. Yet he
seemed finally to refer every point to Florida, as if
with an intuition of steadier and stronger character
in her; and now, as he ascended the terrace steps
in his modified costume, he looked intently at her.
She swept him from head to foot with a glance, and
then gravely welcomed him with unchanged countenance.

At the same moment Mrs. Vervain came out
through one of the long windows, and adjusting
her glasses, said with a start, “Why, my dear Don
Ippolito, I should n't have known you!”

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

“Indeed, madama?” asked the priest with a
painful smile. “Is it so great a change? We can
wear this dress as well as the other, if we please.”

“Why, of course it 's very becoming and all that;
but it does look so out 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 used to be
glad to get out of his.”

“Perfectly wild,” assented Mrs. Vervain. “But
he never seemed the same person. Soldiers and —
clergymen — are so much more stylish in their own
dress — not stylish, exactly, but taking; don't you
know?”

“There, Don Ippolito,” interposed Ferris, “you
had better put on your talare and your nicchio
again. Your abbate's dress is n't acceptable, you
see.”

The painter spoke in Italian, but Don Ippolito
answered — with certain blunders which it would
be tedious to reproduce — in his patient, conscientious
English, half sadly, half playfully, and glancing
at Florida, before he turned to Mrs. Vervain,
“You are as rigid as the rest of the world, madama.
I thought you would like this dress, but it seems
that you think it a masquerade. As madamigella
says, it is a relief to lay aside the uniform, now and
then, for us who fight the spiritual enemies as well

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

as for the other soldiers. There was one time,
when I was younger and in the subdiaconate orders,
that I put off the priest's dress altogether, and wore
citizen's clothes, not an abbate'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 the streets in that dress, meeting the
students, as they strolled singing through the moonlight;
we went to the theatre and to the caffè, — we
smoked cigars, all the time laughing and trembling
to think of the tonsure under our hats. But in the
morning we had to put on the stockings and the
talare and the nicchio again.”

Don Ippolito gave a melancholy laugh. He had
thrust the corner of his napkin into his collar; seeing
that Ferris had not his so, he twitched it 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; Florida looked with grave
rebuke at Don Ippolito, whose story affected Ferris
like that of some girl's adventure in men's
clothes. He was in terror lest Mrs. Vervain should
be going to say it was like that; she was going to
say something; he made haste to forestall her, and
turn the talk on other things.

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

VI.

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

One afternoon, as Don Ippolito was posing to
Ferris for his picture of A Venetian Priest, the
painter asked, to make talk, “Have you hit upon
that 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 since that day you saw it at my
house; and as for other things, I have not been able
to put my mind to them. I have made a few trifles,
which I have ventured to offer the ladies.”

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

An odd look, which the painter caught at and
missed, came into the priest's face, as he resumed:
“I suppose it is the distraction of my new occupation,
and of the new acquaintances — so very
strange to me in every way — that I have made in
your amiable country-women, which hinders me
from going about anything in earnest, now that
their munificence has enabled me to pursue my aims

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

with greater advantages than ever before. But
this idle mood will pass, and in the mean time I am
very happy. They are real angels, and madama is
a true original.”

“Mrs. Vervain is rather peculiar,” said the
painter, retiring a few paces from his picture, and
quizzing it through his half-closed eyes. “She is a
woman who has had affliction enough to turn a
stronger head than hers could ever have been,” he
added kindly. “But she has the best heart in the
world. In fact,” he burst forth, “she is the most
extraordinary 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 could n't explain to
you,” answered Ferris.

There was a silence for a time, broken at last by
Don Ippolito, who asked, “Why do you not marry
madamigella?”

He seemed not to feel that there was anything
out of the way in the question, and Ferris was too
well used to the childlike directness of the 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 not of the type of
priests whom the American knew from the prejudice
and distrust of the Italians; he was alienated
from his clerical fellows by all the objects of his
life, and by a reciprocal dislike. About other priests

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

there were various scandals; but Don Ippolito was
like that pretty 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 is
mad!” He was of a purity so blameless that he
was reputed crack-brained by the caffè-gossip that
in Venice turns its searching light upon whomever
you mention; and from his own association with
the man Ferris perceived in him an apparent singleheartedness
such as no man can have but the rarest
of Italians. He was the albino of his species; a
gray crow, a white fly; he was really this, or he
knew how to seem it with an art far beyond any
common deceit. It was the half expectation of coming
sometime upon the lurking duplicity in Don
Ippolito, that continually enfeebled the painter in
his attempts to portray his Venetian priest, and
that gave its undecided, unsatisfactory character to
the picture before him — its weak hardness, its provoking
superficiality. He expressed the traits of
melancholy and loss that he imagined in him, yet
he always was tempted to leave the picture with a
touch of something sinister in it, some airy and subtle
shadow of selfish 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't want
to marry anybody. Besides,” he added, relaxing
into a smile of helpless amusement, “it 's possible
that Miss Vervain might not want to marry
me.”

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

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

“You 're a poet, Don Ippolito,” laughed the
painter. “What property of the 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 some stormy
romance; and yet how simply patient and good
she is!”

“Yes,” said Ferris, who often responded in English
to the priest's Italian; 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 she has a bad temper. At any rate, I always
expect to see smoke somewhere when I look at
those eyes of hers. She has wonderful self-control,
however; and I don't exactly understand why.
Perhaps people of strong impulses have strong
wills to overrule them; it seems no more than
fair.”

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

“Is it the custom,” asked Don Ippolito, after a
moment, “for the American young ladies always
to address their mammas as mother?”

“No; that seems to be a peculiarity of Miss
Vervain's. It 's a little formality 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 certain air of regretting to have gone
so far in comment on the Vervains. He added
recklessly, “Don't you see that Mrs. Vervain sometimes
does and says things that embarrass her
daughter, and that Miss Vervain seems to try to
restrain her?”

“I thought,” returned Don Ippolito meditatively,
“that the signorina was always very tenderly submissive
to her mother.”

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

After a minute Don Ippolito said, “They must
be very rich to live as they do.”

“I don't know about that,” replied Ferris.
“Americans spend and save in ways different from
the Italians. I dare say the Vervains find Venice
very cheap after London and Paris and Berlin.”

“Perhaps,” said Don Ippolito, “if they were
rich you would be in a position to marry her.”

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

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

“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 the matter.
Why do you do so?”

“I? Why? I could not but imagine that you
must love her. Is there anything wrong in speaking
of such things? Is it contrary to the American
custom? I ask pardon from my heart if I have
done anything amiss.”

“There is no offense,” said the painter, with a
laugh, “and I don't wonder 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 marry
because women were beautiful and good, there is n't
one of us could live single a day. Besides, I 'm the
victim of another passion, — I 'm laboring under 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 triumphant buoyancy of step.
A subtle content diffused itself over his face, and
a joyful light burnt in his deep eyes. He sat down
before the piano and organ as he had arranged
them, and began to strike their keys in unison; this

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

seemed to him for the first time childish. Then he
played some lively bars on the piano alone; they
sounded too light and trivial, and he turned to the
other instrument. As the plaint of the reeds arose,
it filled his sense like a solemn organ-music, and
transfigured the place; the notes swelled to the
ample vault of a church, and at the high altar he
was celebrating the mass in his sacerdotal robes.
He suddenly caught his fingers away from the keys;
his breast heaved, he hid his face in his hands.

VII.

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

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

He put on his hat and coat and strolled vaguely
forth, and in an hour or two came by a roundabout
course to the gondola station nearest his own house.
There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation
of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring
for his custom, he stepped into one and ordered
the man to row him to a gate on a small canal
opposite. The gate opened, at his ringing, into
the garden of the Vervains.

Florida was sitting alone on a bench near the
fountain. It was no longer a ruined fountain; the
broken-nosed naiad held a pipe above her head,
and from this rose a willowy spray high enough to
catch some colors of the sunset then striking into
the garden, and fell again in a mist around her,
making her almost modest.

“What does this mean?” asked Ferris,

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

carelessly taking the young girl's hand. “I thought
this lady's occupation was gone.”

“Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the landlord,
and he agreed to pay for filling the tank that
feeds it,” said Florida. “He seems to think it a
hard bargain, for he only lets it play about half an
hour a day. But he says it 's very ingeniously
mended. He did n't believe it could be done. It
is pretty.

“It is, indeed,” said the painter, with a singular
desire, going through 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 little about inventions. Do
you think there are many practical ideas amongst
his things? I hope there are — he seemed so proud
and pleased to show them. Should n'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, pulled the
bark off in silence. Then, “Miss Vervain,” he
said, knitting his brows, as he always did when he
had something on his conscience and meant to ease
it at any cost, “I 'm the dog that fetches a bone
and carries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over with
you, the other day, and now I 've been talking you
over with him. But I 've the grace to say that I 'm
ashamed of myself.”

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

“Why need you be ashamed?” asked Florida.
“You said no harm of him. Did you of us?”

“Not exactly; but I don't think it was quite my
business to discuss you at all. I think you can't
let people alone too much. For my part, if I try to
characterize my friends, I fail to do them perfect
justice, of course; and yet the imperfect result remains
representative of them in my mind; it limits
them and fixes them; and I can't get them back
again into the undefined and the ideal where they
really belong. One ought never to speak of the
faults of one's friends: it mutilates them; they can
never be the same afterwards.”

“So you have been talking of my faults,” said
Florida, breathing quickly. “Perhaps you could
tell me of them to my face.”

“I should have to say that unfairness was one of
them. But that is common to the whole sex. I
never said I was talking of your faults. I declared
against doing so, and you immediately infer that
my motive is remorse. I don't know that you have
any faults. They may be virtues in disguise.
There is a charm even in unfairness. Well, I did
say that I thought 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, unaffected by her hauteur.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

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

“I wanted to clear my conscience, I suppose,
and sin again. I wanted to talk with you about
Don Ippolito.”

Florida looked with perplexity at Ferris's face,
while her own slowly cooled 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. You know I feel somewhat responsible
for him.”

“Yes.”

“Of course, I never should have thought of him,
if it had n't been for your 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 for the man himself, as the desire
to serve your mother, that prompted me to
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 Italian ideas,
or old liberals — hate and despise the priests.
They believe that priests are full of guile and deceit,
that they are spies for the Austrians, and altogether
evil.”

“Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

secret thoughts to the police,” said Florida, whose
look of rising alarm relaxed into a smile.

“Oh,” cried the painter, “how you leap to conclusions!
I never intimated that Don Ippolito was
a spy. On the contrary, it was his difference 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. And yet he is a priest,
with a priest's education. What if I should have
been altogether mistaken? He is either one of the
openest souls in the world, 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't believe 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 to
put into words an undefined uneasiness of mine, a
quite formless desire to 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 did n't speak to her.
I don't misunderstand you, I think; I expressed
myself badly,” she added with an anxious face. “I
thank you very much. What do you want me to
do?”

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

By Ferris's impulse they both began to move
down the garden path toward the water-gate. The
sunset had faded out of the fountain, but it still lit
the whole heaven, in whose vast blue depths hung
light whiffs of pinkish cloud, as ethereal as the draperies
that floated after Miss Vervain as she walked
with a splendid grace beside him, no awkwardness,
now, or self-constraint in her. As she turned to
Ferris, and asked in her 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 bidden by 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
caught his breath before he answered. Her gauzes
blew about his feet in the light breeze that lifted
the foliage; she was a little near-sighted, and in
her eagerness she drew closer to him, fixing her
eyes full upon his with a bold innocence. “Good
heavens! Miss Vervain,” he cried, with a sudden
blush, “it is n't a serious matter. I 'm a fool to
have spoken to you. Don't do anything. Let
things go on as before. It is n't for me to instruct
you.”

“I should have been very glad of your advice,”
she said with a disappointed, almost wounded manner,
keeping her eyes upon him. “It seems 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

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

dismay. This apparent readiness of Miss Vervain's
to be taken command of, daunted him, on second
thoughts. “I wish you 'd dismiss all my stupid
talk from your mind,” he said. “I feel as if I 'd
been guiltily trying to set you against a man whom
I like very much and have no reason not to trust,
and who thinks me so much his friend that he
could n't dream of my making any sort of trouble
for him. It would break his heart, I 'm afraid, if
you treated him in a different way from that in
which you 've treated him till now. It 's really
touching to listen to his gratitude to you and your
mother. It 's only conceivable on the ground that
he has never had friends before in the world. He
seems like another man, or the same man come to
life. And it is n't his fault that he 's a priest. I
suppose,” he added, with a sort of final throe,
“that a Venetian family would n't use him with
the frank hospitality you 've shown, not because
they distrusted him at all, perhaps, but because
they would be afraid of other Venetian tongues.”

This ultimate drop of venom, helplessly distilled,
did not seem to rankle in Miss Vervain's mind.
She walked now with her face turned from his, and
she answered coldly, “We shall not be troubled.
We don't care for 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 awkward self-constraint again
upon her.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

“No, thanks,” said Ferris, gloomily. “I have n't
time. I just dropped in for a moment, to blast an
innocent man's reputation, and destroy a young
lady's peace of mind.”

“Then you need n't go, yet,” answered Florida,
coldly, “for you have n't succeeded.”

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

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

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

VIII.

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

It was late before Ferris forgot his chagrin in
sleep, and when he woke the next morning, the sun
was making the solid green blinds at his window
odorous of their native pine woods with its heat,
and thrusting a golden spear at the heart of Don
Ippolito's effigy where he had left it 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 join them on
an excursion, of which they had all often talked, up
the Canal of the Brenta. “Don Ippolito has got
his permission — think of his not being able to go
to the mainland without the Patriarch's leave! and
can go 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 where he had himself parted with
her the evening before; and he observed with a
guilty relief that Don Ippolito was talking to her
in the happy unconsciousness habitual with him.

Florida cast at the painter a swift glance of latent
appeal and intelligence, which he refused, and in

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

the same instant she met him with another look, as
if she now saw him for the first time, and gave him
her hand in greeting. It was a beautiful hand;
he could not help worshipping its lovely forms, and
the lily whiteness and softness of the back, the rose
of the palm and finger-tips.

She idly resumed the great Venetian fan which
hung from her waist by a chain. “Don Ippolito
has been talking about the villeggiatura on the
Brenta in the old days,” she explained.

“Oh, yes,” said the painter, “they used to have
merry times in the villas then, and it was worth
while being a priest, or at least an abbate di casa.
I should think you would sigh for a return of those
good old days, Don Ippolito. Just imagine, if you
were abbate di casa with some patrician family
about the close of the last century, you might be the
instructor, companion, and spiritual adviser of Illustrissima
at the theatres, card-parties, and masquerades,
all winter; and at this season, instead of going
up the Brenta for a day's pleasure with us
barbarous Yankees, you might be setting out with
Illustrissima 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,
and you would stay a month, walking, going to
parties and caffès, drinking chocolate and lemonade,
gaming, sonneteering, and butterflying about generally.”

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