appearance. He bowed very courteously to Emilio, which seemed so
natural that no one noticed it, and Emilio bowed gravely in return.
Cataneo looked round to see if there was anybody he knew, recognized
Vendramin and greeted him, bowed to his banker, a rich patrician, and
finally to the man who happened to be speaking,--a celebrated musical
fanatic, a friend of the Comtesse Albrizzi. Like some others who
frequented Florian's, his mode of life was absolutely unknown, so
carefully did he conceal it. Nothing was known about him but what he
chose to tell.

This was Capraja, the nobleman whom the Duchess had mentioned to the
French doctor. This Venetian was one of a class of dreamers whose
powerful minds divine everything. He was an eccentric theorist, and
cared no more for celebrity than for a broken pipe.

His life was in accordance with his ideas. Capraja made his appearance
at about ten every morning under the _Procuratie_, without anyone
knowing whence he came. He lounged about Venice, smoking cigars. He
regularly went to the Fenice, sitting in the pit-stalls, and between
the acts went round to Florian's, where he took three or four cups of
coffee a day; and he ended the evening at the cafe, never leaving it
till about two in the morning. Twelve hundred francs a year paid all
his expenses; he ate but one meal a day at an eating-house in the
Merceria, where the cook had his dinner ready for him at a fixed hour,
on a little table at the back of the shop; the pastry-cook's daughter
herself prepared his stuffed oysters, provided him with cigars, and
took care of his money. By his advice, this girl, though she was very
handsome, would never countenance a lover, lived very steadily, and
still wore the old Venetian costume. This purely-bred Venetian girl
was twelve years old when Capraja first took an interest in her, and