He would have rejoiced to have been as light of
heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the
gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours,
before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious
of your duties, in which he had been an actor.
CHAPTER XXIX.
"Art thou not guilty! No, indeed, I am not."
ROGERS.
The following morning brought the funeral of Antonio. The agents of the
police took the precaution to circulate in the city, that the Senate
permitted this honor to the memory of the old fisherman, on account of
his success in the regatta, and as some atonement for his unmerited and
mysterious death. All the men of the Lagunes were assembled in the
square at the appointed hour, in decent guise, flattered with the notice
that their craft received, and more than half disposed to forget their
former anger in the present favor. Thus easy is it for those who are
elevated above their fellow-creatures by the accident of birth, or by
the opinions of a factitious social organization, to repair the wrongs
they do in deeds, by small concessions of their conventional
superiority.
Masses were still chanted for the soul of old Antonio before the altar
of St. Mark. Foremost among the priests was the good Carmelite, who had
scarce known hunger or fatigue, in his pious desire to do the offices of
the church in behalf of one whose fate he might be said to have
witnessed.
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