your happiness."

Nisida embraced her father effusively, and was beside herself with joy
all day, waiting impatiently for the evening in order to give the young
man such splendid news. Eligi Brancaleone was but moderately flattered,
as you will easily believe, by the fisherman's magnanimous intentions
towards him; but like the finished seducer that he was, he appeared
enchanted at them. Recollecting his character as a fantastical student
and an out-at-elbows poet, he fell upon his knees and shouted a
thanksgiving to the planet Venus; then, addressing the young girl, he
added, in a calmer voice, that he was going to write immediately to his
own father, who in a week's time would come to make his formal proposal;
until then, he begged, as a favour, that he might not present himself to
Solomon nor to any person at all in the island, and assigned as a pretext
a certain degree of shame which he felt on account of his old clothes,
assuring his beloved that his father would bring him a complete outfit
for the wedding-day.

While the ill-starred girl was thus walking in terrifying security at the
edge of the precipice, Trespolo, following his master's wishes, had
established himself in the island as a pilgrim from Jerusalem. Playing
his part and sprinkling his conversation with biblical phrases, which
came to him readily, in his character of ex-sacristan, he distributed
abundance of charms, wood of the true Cross and milk of the Blessed
Virgin, and all those other inexhaustible treasures on which the eager
devotion of worthy people daily feeds. His relics were the more
evidently authentic in that he did not sell any of them, and, bearing his
poverty in a holy manner, thanked the faithful and declined their alms.
Only, out of regard for the established virtue of Solomon, he had
consented to break bread with the fisherman, and went to take meals with