th it in my hand to the Palace. When I got
there with it, old Falieri was just coming down. He flashed out at me
with 'What is this old hag doing here?' I made a curtsey deep, deep
down to the ground as well as I could, and said I had a medicine which
would cure the beautiful Dogaressa very speedily. When the old fellow
heard that, he gazed steadfastly at me with most terrible eyes, and
stroked his grey beard smooth. Then he seized me by the shoulders, and
dragged me up to her chamber in such a way that I nearly fell down all
my length on the floor of it. Ah, Tonino! there lay the pretty young
creature stretched on her couch, pale as a corpse, sighing and groaning
with pain, and gently complaining, "Ah! I am certain I am poisoned
through and through!" But I set to work in a moment and took off the
stupid doctor's useless plaster. Oh, heaven! the beautiful delicate
hand! swollen, red as blood! Well, well! my ointment cooled it--eased
the pain. 'That is very comforting!' the little dove whispered. 'A
thousand _zecchini_ are yours if you save the Dogaressa,' old Falieri
cried, as he left the room. When I had been sitting there for three
hours, with the little hand in mine, stroking and nursing it, the
little soul awoke from a slumber into which she had fallen, and felt no
further pain. When I had put on a fresh bandage, she looked at me with
eyes sparkling with gladness. Then I said:

"'"Ah, gracious Lady Dogaressa! you once saved a boy's life, when you
killed a serpent which was going to strike him while he was sleeping."

"'"Tonino! you should have seen how her pale cheeks glowed red, as if a
beam of the evening sun had shone in upon them--how her eyes flashed
with sparkling fire."

"'"'Ah! yes! old woman,' she cried. 'I was only a child, at my father's
place in the country. Ah! he was a dear, beautiful boy! Oh, how I think
of him still! It seems to me as if nothing happy had ever come into my
lot since that day.'

"'"Then I spoke of you; told her that you were in Venice that your
heart is still full of all the love and blissfulness of that moment,
and that you risked your life on Giovedi Grasso merely to look into the
eyes of your guardian angel, and put the flowers into her hand."

"'"'Tonino! Tonino!' she cried, enthusiastically; 'I knew it! I knew
it! I felt it! When he pressed his lips on my hand, when he called me
by my name--I did not know what it was that pierced my heart so
strangely. Perhaps it was happine