said:

"'"Oh, my liege! would you so far honour me as to raise me to your side
on this throne? I will revere you from the depths of my soul, and be
your true maid and servant till my life's end."

"'Old Falieri was beside himself with rapture. When she took his hand
he felt all his members thrill; and then he began so to shake and
tremble with his head, and all his body, that he had to seat himself in
his great chair as quickly as ever he could. It seemed as though
Bodoeri's views concerning the greenness of the Doge's age were about
to be controverted. And he could not repress a strange smile which
twitched about his lips. The innocent Annunziata remarked nothing, and
there was no one present besides. It may have been that old Falieri
felt the undesirability of posing before the populace as the bridegroom
of a girl of nineteen; that a sense arose within him that there was a
certain risk in furnishing the Venetians--fond of fun and jesting--with
a subject such as this for their sallies; and that it was best to keep
the critical point of the date of his marriage in the shade. At all
events, it was determined, with Bodoeri's consent, that the wedding
should be celebrated in the profoundest secrecy, and that the Dogaressa
should, some days afterwards, be presented to the Signoria and populace
as having been long since married to Falieri, and recently come from
Treviso, where she had been waiting whilst he was absent on his mission
to the Papal Court.

"'Let us turn our glance to this well-dressed young gentleman,
classically handsome, who is walking up and down the Rialto, with a
purse of _zecchini_ in his hand, talking with Jews, Turks, Greeks, and
Armenians; who turns aside his gloomy brow, stops, and at last steps
into a gondola and bids the gondoliers take him to the Palazzo di San
Marco. Arrived there, he strolls up and down, with folded arms, and
devious, uncertain step, with eyes fixed on the ground, unobservant,
not dreaming that many a whisper, many a clearing of the throat, from
many a window, and many a richly-draped balcony, are love-signals
directed to his address. It is not so very easy to recognize in this
youth the Antonio who, a few days ago, was lying in rags, poor and
miserable, on the marble pavement of the Dogana.

"'"Little son!--my golden little son Antonio!--good-day! good-day!" the
old beggar-woman called out to him from the steps of St. Mark's, where
she was sitting, as he was pacing past her