“The next day, of course, the Signora forgave him. There was nothing else to be done, for, as she said to me afterwards, ‘What? Venice without Giovanni! Mon Dieu!’”
The Professor throws away the end of his last cigarette and begins gathering up his hat and the one unmated, lonely glove. No living soul ever yet saw him put this on. Sometimes he thrusts in his two fingers, as if fully intending to bury his entire hand, and then you see an expression of doubt and hesitancy cross his face, denoting a change of mind, as he crumples it carelessly, or pushes it into his coat-tail pocket to keep company with its fictitious mate.
At this moment Espero raises his head out of his gondola immediately beneath us. Everything is ready, he says: the sketch trap, extra canvas, fresh siphon of seltzer, ice, fiasco of Chianti, Gorgonzola, all but the rolls, which he will get at the baker’s on our way over to the Giudecca, where I am to work on the sketch begun yesterday.
“Ah, that horrid old German woman from Prague!” sighs the Professor. “If I could only go with you!”
OPEN-AIR MARKETS
SOMETIMES, in early autumn, on the lagoon behind the Redentore, you may overtake a curious craft, half barge, half gondola, rowed by a stooping figure in cowl and frock.
Against the glow of the fading twilight this quaint figure, standing in the stern of his flower-laden boat, swaying to the rhythm of his oar, will recall so vividly the time when that other
“Dumb old servitor ... went upward with the flood,”
that you cannot help straining your eyes in a vain search for the fair face of the lily maid of Astolat hidden among the blossoms. Upon looking closer you discover that it is only the gardener of the convent grounds, on his way to the market above the Rialto.