shepherdesses with
fair characters whom he had been able to engage amounted only to
twenty-three.

"Nonsense!" cried the marquis, irritably, as soon as the steward had
made his confession. "I told you to get thirty girls, and thirty I mean
to have. What's the use of shaking your head when all their dresses are
ordered? Thirty tunics, thirty wreaths, thirty pairs of sandals and silk
stockings, thirty crooks, you scoundrel--and you have the impudence to
offer me only twenty-three hands to hold them. Not a word! I won't hear
a word! Get me my thirty girls, or lose your place." The marquis roared
out this last terrible sentence at the top of his voice, and pointed
peremptorily to the door.

The steward knew his master too well to remonstrate. He took his hat and
cane, and went out. It was useless to look through the ranks of rejected
volunteers again; there was not the slightest hope in that quarter.
The only chance left was to call on all his friends in Pisa who had
daughters out at service, and to try what he could accomplish, by
bribery and persuasion, that way.

After a whole day occupied in solicitations, promises, and patient
smoothing down of innumerable difficulties, the result of his efforts
in the new direction was an accession of six more shepherdesses. This
brought him on bravely from twenty-three to twenty-nine, and left him,
at last, with only one anxiety--where was he now to find shepherdess
number thirty?

He mentally asked himself that important question, as he entered a shady
by-street in the neighborhood of the Campo Santo, on his way back to the
Melani Palace. Sauntering slowly along in the middle of the road, and
fanning himself with his handkerchief after the oppressive exertions of
the day, he passed a young girl who was standing at the street door of
one of the houses, apparently waiting for somebody to join her before
she entered the building.

"Body of Bacchus!" exclaimed the steward (using one of those old Pagan
ejaculations which survive in Italy even to the present day), "there
stands the prettiest girl I have seen yet. If she would only be
shepherdess number thirty, I should go home to supper with my mind at
ease. I'll ask her, at any rate. Nothing can be lost by asking, and
everything may be gained. Stop, my dear," he continued, seeing the girl
turn to go into the house as he approached her. "Don't be afraid of
me. I am steward to the Marquis Melani, and well known in Pisa as an
eminent