comes here from Trieste. As for the rest, I am to send her to him, as I
said."

"You are deceived," I say solemnly to the Mouse's wife. "I am not a rich
man. I lent your husband five francs because he had nothing. I am sorry
but I cannot spare twenty florins to send you to Ferrara. If _one_
will help you?"

"Thanks the same," said the young woman, who was well dressed enough; and
blessed me, and gathered up her child, and went her way.

But her blessing did not lighten my heart, depressed and troubled by so
strange an end to my little scheme of a beneficent loan. After all,
perhaps the Mouse may have been as keenly disappointed as myself. With the
ineradicable idea of the Italians, that persons who speak English are
wealthy by nature, and _tutti originali_, it was not such an absurd
conception of the case to suppose that if I had lent him five francs once,
I should like to do it continually. Perhaps he may yet pay back the loan
with usury. But I doubt it. In the mean time, I am far from blaming the
Mouse. I merely feel that there is a misunderstanding, which I can pardon
if he can.



CHAPTER XI.

CHURCHES AND PICTURES.


One day in the gallery of the Venetian Academy a family party of the