thick, curly beard
(I see him before me at this moment)--looked kindly at me, kissed me,
and took out a _zecchino_ or two, which he put into my hand, and which
I quickly pocketed. We took a gondola to go over to San Marco. As we
were crossing, the old man asked me to give him the money, and I don't
know why it was that I came to maintain that I ought to keep it myself,
because the Armenian had wished me to do so. The old man was angry;
but, as he was arguing with me, I noticed that his face took on a
horrible, earthy-yellow colour, and that he mixed up all sorts of wild
incoherent things in what he was saying. When we landed at the Piazza
he staggered about like a drunken man, till, just in front of the Ducal
Palazzo, he fell down dead. I threw myself on his body with loud
outcries of grief. The people came running up; but the terrible cry
'The plague! the plague!' broke out, and they all went scattering away
in every direction. At the same instant I was seized by a dull
stupefaction, and my senses left me. When I awoke from this condition I
found myself in a spacious chamber, on a little mattress, covered with
a woollen rug. Around me some twenty or thirty pale forms were lying,
on similar mattresses. Afterwards I learned that some compassionate
monks, who happened to be passing at the time of my seizure, finding
some traces of life in me, had taken me to a gondola and over to the
Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, where the Benedictines had
established an hospital. But how can I ever describe to you, old woman,
that moment when I came back to consciousness? The fury of the disease
had completely taken away from me all memory of the past. As if life
had suddenly come to some statue, I possessed only the consciousness of
the present moment, knitted on to nothing besides. You may fancy what
disconsolateness this condition--only to be called a consciousness
floating in vacant space, with nothing to hold on to--brought to me.
The monks could only tell me that I had been found beside Father
Bluenose, whose son I was supposed to be. My thoughts collected
themselves by slow degrees, so that I remembered something of my former
life. But what I have told you is all I know of it; nothing but one or
two detached pictures, without connection or coherency. Alas! this
disconsolate sense of being alone in the world keeps me from all
happiness, well as things are going with me now."

"'"Tonino, my dear! content yourself with what the