"
"Two sequins!" rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing his meaning by a
significant grimace.
"Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor
has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano
less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two
sequins, leave a man leisure to tell tales, or even to say his prayers
half the time."
"Jacopo!" ejaculated the other, with an emphasis which seemed to be a
sort of summing up of all his aversion and horror.
The gondolier shrugged his shoulders with quite as much meaning as a man
born on the shores of the Baltic could have conveyed by words; but he
too appeared to think the matter exhausted.
"Stefano Milano," he added, after a moment of pause, 'there are things
in Venice which he who would eat his maccaroni in peace, would do well
to forget. Let thy errand in port be what it may, thou art in good
season to witness the regatta which will be given by the state itself
to-morrow."
"Hast thou an oar for that race?"
"Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San Teodoro. The prize will
be a silver gondola to him who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and
then we shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic."
"Thy nobles had best woo the bride well; for there are heretics who lay
claim to her good will. I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous
fleetness, in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who seemed to have half
a mind to follow the felucca in her path towards the Lagunes.
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