"To-day, as yesterday, and to-morrow will be as to-day I row the gondola from the Rialto to the Giudecca; from San Giorgio to San Marco; from San Marco to the Lido, and from the Lido home. There are no Tunis-men by the way, to chill the heart or warm the feet."
"Enough of friendship. And is there nothing stirring in the republic?—no young noble drowned, nor any Jew hanged?"
"Nothing of that much interest—except the calamity which befell Pietro. Thou rememberest Pietrello? he who crossed into Dalmatia with thee once, as a supernumerary, the time he was suspected of having aided the young Frenchman in running away with a senator's daughter?"
"Do I remember the last famine? The rogue did nothing but eat maccaroni, and swallow the lachryma christi, which the Dalmatian count had on freight."
"Poverino! His gondola has been run down by an Ancona-man, who passed over the boat as if it were a senator stepping on a fly."
"So much for little fish coming into deep water."
"The honest fellow was crossing the Giudecca, with a stranger, who had occasion to say his prayers at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in the canopy, and broke up the gondola, as if it had been a bubble left by the Bucentaur."
"The padrone should have been too generous to complain of Pietro's clumsiness, since it met with its own punishment."
"Madre di Dio! He went to sea that hour, or he might be feeding the fishes of the Lagunes! There is not a gondolier in Venice who did not feel the wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain justice for an insult, as well as our masters."
"Well, a gondola is mortal, as well as a felucca, and both have their time; better die by the prow of a brig than fall into the gripe of a Turk. How is thy young master, Gino; and is he likely to obtain his claims of the senate?"