INTRODUCTION:

"PIETRO GIUSTINIANI, merchant, of Venice." This was the signature
affixed to his receipt by the little antiquary in the city of St. Mark,
from whom I purchased a few stitched sheets of manuscript. What a name
and title!

As I remarked on the splendor of his ancestry he slapped his pocket, and
exclaimed, half in pride and half in lamentation:

"Yes, they had plenty of money; but what has become of it?"

"And have you no record of their deeds?" I asked the little man, who
himself wore a moustache with stiff military points to it.

"Their deeds!" he echoed scornfully. "I wish they had been less zealous
in their pursuit of fame and had managed their money matters better!--
Poor child!"

And he pointed to little Marietta who was playing among the old books,
and with whom I had already struck up a friendship. She this day
displayed some strange appendage in the lobes of her ears, which on
closer examination I found to be a twist of thread.

The child's pretty dark head was lying confidentially against my arm and
as, with my fingers, I felt this singular ornament, I heard, from behind
the little desk at the end of the counter, her mother's shrill voice in
complaining accents: "Aye, Sir, it is a shame in a family which has given
three saints to the Church--Saint Nicholas, Saint Anna, and Saint