house of Soranzo de St. Pol, and I had the honour of being present at the
wedding--as a fiddler. I played the violin in one of the numerous bands
engaged for the balls which were given for three consecutive days in the
Soranzo Palace.

On the third day, towards the end of the dancing, an hour before
day-break, feeling tired, I left the orchestra abruptly; and as I was
going down the stairs I observed a senator, wearing his red robes, on the
point of getting into a gondola. In taking his handkerchief out of his
pocket he let a letter drop on the ground. I picked it up, and coming up
to him just as he was going down the steps I handed it to him. He
received it with many thanks, and enquired where I lived. I told him, and
he insisted upon my coming with him in the gondola saying that he would
leave me at my house. I accepted gratefully, and sat down near him. A few
minutes afterwards he asked me to rub his left arm, which, he said, was
so benumbed that he could not feel it. I rubbed it with all my strength,
but he told me in a sort of indistinct whisper that the numbness was
spreading all along the left side, and that he was dying.

I was greatly frightened; I opened the curtain, took the lantern, and
found him almost insensible, and the mouth drawn on one side. I
understood that he was seized with an apoplectic stroke, and called out
to the gondoliers to land me at once, in order to procure a surgeon to
bleed the patient.

I jumped out of the gondola, and found myself on the very spot where
three years before I had taught Razetta such a forcible lesson; I
enquired for a surgeon at the first coffee-house, and ran to the house
that was pointed out to me. I knocked as hard as I could; the door was at
last opened, and I made the surgeon follow me in his dressing-gown as far