The oars fell into the water; Don Camillo was repelled by a violent
shove backwards into the hall, the gondoliers stepped lightly into
their places, and the gondola swept away from the steps, beyond the
power of him they left to follow.
"Gino!--miscreant!--what means this treachery?"
The moving of the parting gondola was accompanied by no other sound than
the usual washing of the water. In speechless agony Don Camillo saw the
boat glide, swifter and swifter at each stroke of the oars, along the
canal, and then whirling round the angle of a palace, disappear.
Venice admitted not of pursuit like another city; for there was no
passage along the canal taken by the gondola, but by water. Several of
the boats used by the family, lay within the piles on the great canal,
at the principal entrance, and Don Camillo was about to rush into one,
and to seize its oars with his own hands, when the usual sounds
announced the approach of a gondola from the direction of the bridge
that had so long served as a place of concealment to his own domestic.
It soon issued from the obscurity cast by the shadows of the houses, and
proved to be a large gondola pulled, like the one which had just
disappeared, by six masked gondoliers. The resemblance between the
equipments of the two was so exact, that at first not only the wondering
Camillo, but all the others present, fancied the latter, by some
extraordinary speed, had already made the tour of the adjoining palaces,
and was once more approaching the private entrance of that of Donna
Violetta.
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