Lorenzo. He knew me perfectly, and I knew him as
well. I bowed; he looked me in the face, lifted his hat with gravity,
and passed onwards, saying: "Addio Michele!" The continual persistence
of this error almost brought me to imagine that I was Michele. If
Michele had earned the ill-will of brutal and revengeful enemies, this
mistaken identity would certainly have been for me no laughing matter.

One very hot evening, when the splendour of the moon was turning night
into day, I went abroad to take the air, and was conversing with the
patrician Francesco Gritti on the piazza of San Marco. I heard a voice
behind me saying: "What are you doing here at this hour? Why don't you
go to bed and sleep, you ass?" These words were accompanied with two
smart raps upon my back. I turned to resent the affront, and found
myself facing the patrician Cavaliere Andrea Gradenigo, who gazed
fixedly at me, and then exclaimed: "Pray pardon me! I could have sworn
that you were Daniele Zanchi." Some explanations and excuses followed
regarding the cuffs and the title of ass, which I had got through being
taken for a Daniele. The cavaliere, it seems, was familiar enough with
this fellow to call him ass and give him a couple of thwacks in sign of
amicable pleasantry.

Not less whimsical was the following incident of the same description. I
happened to be talking one very fine day with my friend Carlo Andrich on
the Piazza di San Marco, when I observed a Greek, with mustachios, long
coat, and red cap, who had with him a boy dressed in the same costume.
When he saw me, the Greek ran up to us, exhibiting ecstatic signs of
joy. After embracing and kissing me with rapture, he turned to the boy
and said: "Come, lad, and kiss the hand here of your uncle Costantino."
The boy seized and kissed my hand. Carlo Andrich stared at me; I stared
at Carlo Andrich: we were like a pair of images. At length I asked the
Greek for whom he took me. "What a joke!" said he; "aren't you my dear
friend Costantino Zucala?" Andrich held his sides to save himself from
bursting, and it took me seven minutes to persuade the Greek that I was
not Signor Constantino Zucala. On making inquiries with people who knew
Signor Zucala, I was assured that this worthy merchant was a short fat
man, without one grain of resemblance to myself.

I shall probably have wearied out my readers by relating the hundredth
part of such occurrences. I will now glance at the hundredth part of the
contr