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

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

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

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

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

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