It will be necessary that we should go back in our narrative
but a single week before the occurrence of these events. Let
us penetrate the dim and lonesome abode on the confines of the
“Jewish Quarter,” but not within it, where the “Spanish Gipsy”
delivered her predictions. It is midnight, and still she sits over
her incantations. There are vessels of uncouth shape and unknown
character before her. Huge braziers lie convenient, on
one of which, amid a few coals, a feeble flame may be seen to
struggle. The atmosphere is impregnated with a strong but
not ungrateful perfume, and through its vapors objects appear
with some indistinctness. A circular plate of brass or copper —
it could not well be any more precious metal — rests beneath
the eye and finger of the woman. It is covered with strange
and mystic characters, which she seems busily to explore, as if
they had a real significance to her mind. She evidently united
the highest departments of her art with its humblest offices; and
possessed those nobler aspirations of the soul, which, during the
middle ages, elevated in considerable degree the professors of
necromancy. But our purpose is not now to determine her

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pretensions. We have but to exhibit and to ascertain a small
specimen of her skill in the vulgar business of fortune-telling —
an art which will continue to be received among men, to a
greater or less extent, so long as they shall possess a hope
which they can not gratify, and feel a superstition which they
can not explain. Our gipsy expects a visiter. She hears his
footstep. The door opens at her bidding, and a stranger makes
his appearance. He is a tall and well-made man, of stern and
gloomy countenance, which is half concealed beneath the raised
foldings of his cloak. His beard, of enormous length, is seen to
stream down upon his breast; but his cheek is youthful, and his
eye is eagerly and anxiously bright. But for a certain repelling
something in his glance, he might be considered a very
handsome man — perhaps by many persons he was thought so.
He advanced with an air of dignity and power. His deportment
and manner — and, when he spoke, his voice — all seemed to
denote a person accustomed to command. The woman did not
look up as he approached: on the contrary, she seemed more
intent than ever in the examination of the strange characters before
her. But a curious spectator might have seen that a corner
of her eye, bright with an intelligence that looked more like cunning
than wisdom, was suffered to take in all of the face and person
of the visiter that his muffling costume permitted to be seen.

“Mother,” said the stranger, “I am here.”

“You say not who you are,” answered the woman.

“Nor shall say,” was the abrupt reply of the stranger.
“That, you said, was unnecessary to your art — to the solution
of the questions that I asked you.”

“Surely,” was the answer. “My art, that promises to tell
thee of the future, would be a sorry fraud could it not declare
the present — could it not say who thou art, as well as what
thou seekest.”

“Ha! and thou knowest!” exclaimed the other, his hand
suddenly feeling within the folds of his cloak as he spoke, as if
for a weapon, while his eye glared quickly around the apartment,
as if seeking for a secret enemy.

“Nay, fear nothing,” said the woman, calmly. “I care not
to know who thou art. It is not an object of my quest, otherwise
it would not long remain a secret to me.”

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“It is well! mine is a name that must not be spoken among
the homes of Venice. It would make thee thyself to quail
couldst thou hear it spoken.”

“Perhaps! but mine is not the heart to quail at many things,
unless it be the absolute wrath of Heaven. What the violence
or the hate of man could do to this feeble frame, short of death,
it has already suffered. Thou knowest but little of human cruelty,
young man, though thy own deeds be cruel.”

“How knowest thou that my deeds are cruel?” was the
quick and passionate demand, while the form of the stranger
suddenly and threateningly advanced. The woman was unmoved.

“Saidst thou not that there was a name that might not be
spoken in the homes of Venice? Why should thy very name
make the hearts of Venice to quail unless for thy deeds of cruelty
and crime? But I see further. I see it in thine eyes that
thou art cruel. I hear it in thy voice that thou art criminal. I
know, even now, that thy soul is bent on deeds of violence and
blood; and the very quest that brings thee to me now is less
the quest of love than of that wild and selfish passion which so
frequently puts on its habit.”

“Ha! speak to me of that! This damsel, Francesca Ziani!
'Tis of her that I would have thee speak. Thou saidst that
she should be mine; yet lo! her name is written in the `Book
of Gold,' and she is allotted to this man of wealth, this Ulric
Barberigo.”

“She will never be the wife of Ulric Barberigo.”

“Thou saidst she should be mine.”

“Nay, I said not that.”

“Ha! — but thou liest!”

“No! Anger me not, young man! I am slower, much
slower to anger than thyself — slower than most of those who
still chafe within this mortal covering — yet am I mortal like
thyself, and not wholly free from such foolish passions as vex
mortality. Chafe me, and I will repulse thee with scorn. Annoy
me, and I close upon thee the book of fate, leaving thee
to the blind paths which thy passions have ever moved thee to
take.”

The stranger muttered something apologetically.

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“Make me no excuses. I only ask thee to forbear and submit.
I said not that Francesca Ziani should be thine! I said
only that I beheld her in thy arms.”

“And what more do I ask!” was the exulting speech of the
stranger, his voice rising into a sort of outburst, which fully
declared the ruffian, and the cruel passions by which he was
governed.

“If that contents thee, well!” said the woman, coldly, her
eye perusing with a seeming calmness the brazen plate upon
which the strange characters were inscribed.

“That, then, thou promisest still?” demanded the stranger.

“Thou shalt see for thyself,” was the reply. Thus speaking
the woman slowly arose and brought forth a small chafing-dish,
also of brass or copper, not much larger than a common plate.
This she placed over the brazier, the flame of which she quickened
by a few smart puffs from a little bellows which lay beside
her. As the flame kindled, and the sharp, red jets rose like
tongues on either side of the plate, she poured into it something
like a gill of a thick, tenacious liquid, that looked like, and
might have been, honey. Above this she brooded for a while
with her eyes immediately over the vessel; and the keen ear
of the stranger, quickened by excited curiosity, could detect the
muttering of her lips; though the foreign syllables which she
employed were entirely beyond his comprehension. Suddenly,
a thick vapor went up from the dish. She withdrew it from the
brazier and laid it before her on the table. A few moments
sufficed to clear the surface of the vessel, the vapor arising and
hanging languidly above her head.

“Look now for thyself and see!” was her command to the
visiter; she herself not deigning a glance upon the vessel, seeming
thus to be quite sure of what it would present, or quite indifferent
to the result. The stranger needed no second summons.
He bent instantly over the vessel, and started back with undisguised
delight.

“It is she!” he exclaimed. “She droops! whose arm is it
that supports her — upon whose breast is it that she lies — who
bears her away in triumph?”

“Is it not thyself?” asked the woman, coldly.

“By Hercules, it is! She is mine! She is in my arms!

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She is on my bosom! I have her in my galley! She speeds
with me to my home! I see it all, even as thou hast promised
me!”

“I promise thee nothing. I but show thee only what is
written.”

“And when and how shall this be effected?”

“How, I know not,” answered the woman; “this is withheld
from me. Fate shows what her work is, only as it appears when
done, but not the manner of the doing.”

“But when will this be?” was the question.

“It must be ere she marries with Ulric Barberigo, for him
she will never marry.”

“And it is appointed that he weds with her on the day of St.
Mary's Eve. That is but a week hence, and the ceremony
takes place—”

“At Olivolo.”

“Ha! at Olivolo!” and a bright gleam of intelligence passed
over the features of the stranger, from which his cloak had by
this time entirely fallen. The woman beheld the look, and a
slight smile, that seemed to denote scorn rather than any other
emotion, played for a moment over her shrivelled and sunken lips.

“Mother,” said the stranger, “must all these matters be left
to fate?”

“That is as thou wilt.”

“But the eye of a young woman may be won — her heart
may be touched — so that it shall be easy for fate to accomplish
her designs. I am young; am indifferently well-fashioned in
person, and have but little reason to be ashamed of the face
which God has given me. Beside, I have much skill in music,
and can sing to the guitar as fairly as most of the young men
of Venice. What if I were to find my way to the damsel —
what if I play and sing beneath her father's palace? I have
disguises, and am wont to practice in various garments: I can—”

The woman interrupted him.

“Thou mayst do as thou wilt. It is doubtless as indifferent
to the fates, what thou doest, as it will be to me. Thou hast
seen what I have shown — I can no more. I am not permitted
to counsel thee. I am but a voice; thou hast all that I can
give thee.”

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