terrace or balcony of their home.

As the boat now touched the bank, Madame de Montaigne accosted the
musicians, thanked them with a sweet and unaffected earnestness for the
compliment so delicately offered, and invited them ashore. The
Milanese, who were six in number, accepted the invitation, and moored
their boat to the jutting shore. It was then that Monsieur de Montaigne
pointed out to the notice of his wife a boat, that had lingered under
the shadow of a bank, tenanted by a young man, who had seemed to listen
with rapt attention to the music, and who had once joined in the chorus
(as it was twice repeated), with a voice so exquisitely attuned, and so
rich in its deep power, that it had awakened the admiration even of the
serenaders themselves.

"Does not that gentleman belong to your party?" De Montaigne asked of
the Milanese.

"No, Signor, we know him not," was the answer; "his boat came unawares
upon us as we were singing."

While this question and answer were going on, the young man had quitted
his station, and his oars cut the glassy surface of the lake, just
before the place where De Montaigne stood. With the courtesy of his
country, the Frenchman lifted his hat; and, by his gesture, arrested the
eye and oar of the solitary rower. "Will you honour us," he said, "by
joining our little party?"

"It is a pleasure I covet too much to refuse," replied the boatman, with
a slight foreign accent, and in another moment he was on shore. He was
one of remarkable appearance. His long hair floated with a careless