lurks about the street, accessible to my slightest boating impulse. He
salutes my going out and coming in with grave reverence, and I think he
has no work to do but that which G.'s wise compassion has given him from
me. Suddenly, like the Gobbo, the Veccio also disappears, and I hear
vaguely--for in Venice you never know any thing with precision--that he
has found a regular employment in Padua, and again that he is dead. While
he lasts, G. has a pleasant, even a sportive manner with this poor old
man, calculated to cheer his declining years; but, as I say, cases of
insolent and aggressive misery fail to touch her. The kind of wretchedness
that comes breathing woe and _sciampagnin_ [Footnote: Little
champagne,--the name which the Venetian populace gave to a fierce and
deadly kind of brandy drunk during the scarcity of wine. After the
introduction of coal-oil this liquor came to be jocosely known as
_petrolio_.] under our window, and there spends a leisure hour in the
rehearsal of distress, establishes no claim either upon her pity or her
weakness. She is deaf to the voice of that sorrow, and the monotonous
whine of that dolor cannot move her to the purchase of a guilty
tranquillity. I imagine, however, that she is afraid to deny charity to
the fat Capuchin friar in spectacles and bare feet, who comes twice a
month to levy contributions of bread and fuel for his convent, for we hear
her declare from the window that the master is not at home, whenever the
good brother rings; and at last, as this excuse gives out, she ceases to
respond to his ring at all.

Sometimes, during the summer weather, comes down our street a certain
tremulous old troubadour with an aged cithern, on which he strums feebly
with bones which remain to him from former fingers, and in a thin
quivering voice pipes worn-out ditties of youth and love. Sadder music I
have never heard, but though it has at times drawn from me the sigh of
sensibility without referring sympathy to my pocket, I always hear the