more
speak a kind word to each other, and this meeting in truth pleased me
ill. Howbeit, his next letter gave us better cheer. He had then seen
Kunz, meeting him right joyfully, and was lodged in the Fondaco, the
German Merchants' Hall, where likewise Kunz had his own chamber.

Herdegen's next letter from Venice brought us the ill tidings that the
plague had broken out, and that he could find no fellowship to travel
with him, by reason that, so long as the sickness raged in Venice,
her vessels would not be suffered to cast anchor in any seaport of the
Levant. And a great fear came over me, for our dear father had fallen a
prey to that evil.

In his third or fourth letter our pilgrim told us, with somewhat of
scorn, that the Marchesa Zorzi, who had in fact removed thither from
Padua, and had made friends with Ursula in the house of Filippo Polani,
had bidden him to wait on her, by one of her pages; yet might he
be proud--he said--of the high-handed and steadfast refusal he had
returned, once for all. In truth I was moved to deeper fears by what
both my brothers wrote of the black barges, loaded to the gunwale with
naked corpses, which stole along the canals in the silent night, to cast
forth their dreadful freight in the grave yards on the shore, or into
the open sea. The plague was raging nigh to the Fondaco, and my two
brothers were living in the midst of the dead; nay, and Ann knew that
Ursula would not depart from her lover, although the Palazzo Polani,
where she had found lodging, lay hard by the Fondaco.

Yet, hard as as it is to conceive of it, never had the music sounded
with noisier delights in the dancing-halls of Venice, nor had the money
been more lightly tossed from hand-to-hand over the gaming-tables, nor,
at any time, had there been hotter love-making. It must be that each one
was minded to enjoy, in the short space of life that might yet be his,
all the delights of long years.--And foremost of these was the Marchesa
Bianca Zorzi.

As for Herdegen, not long did he brook the narrow chambers of the
Fondaco-house; driven forth by impatience and heart-sickness, from
morning till night he was in his boat, or on the grand Piazza, or on the
watery highways; and inasmuch as he ever fluttered to where ladies of
rank and beauty were to be found, as a moth flies to the light, that
evil woman was ever in his path, day after day, and whensoever her hosts
would suffer it, Ursula would be with her. Nay, and the Germ