if a hot iron were set on my heart. An invisible fluid courses through
my frame and scorches my nerves, a cloud dims my sight, the air seems
to me to glow as it did at Rivalta when the sunlight came through a
red silk blind, and I, without her knowing it, could admire her lost
in dreams, with her subtle smile like that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
Well, either my Highness will end my days by a pistol-shot, or the
heir of the Cane will follow old Carmagnola's advice; we will be
sailors, pirates; and it will be amusing to see how long we can live
without being hanged."

The Prince lighted another cigar, and watched the curls of smoke as
the wind wafted them away, as though he saw in their arabesques an
echo of this last thought.

In the distance he could now perceive the mauresque pinnacles that
crowned his palazzo, and he was sadder than ever. The Duchess' gondola
had vanished in the Canareggio.

These fantastic pictures of a romantic and perilous existence, as the
outcome of his love, went out with his cigar, and his lady's gondola
no longer traced his path. Then he saw the present in its real light:
a palace without a soul, a soul that had no effect on the body, a
principality without money, an empty body and a full heart--a thousand
heartbreaking contradictions. The hapless youth mourned for Venice as
she had been,--as did Vendramini, even more bitterly, for it was a
great and common sorrow, a similar destiny, that had engendered such a
warm friendship between these two young men, the wreckage of two
illustrious families.

Emilio could not help dreaming of a time when the palazzo Memmi poured