e, signor, to withdraw."

"Have pity on me, my cruel enemy! What have I done to you that you
should thus leave me with death in my soul? You do not know that, for
months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow, that
I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they should
disturb your peaceful slumber. You are afraid, perhaps, to let yourself
be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who adores you. Alas!
Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she did not need many
entreaties to take pity on Romeo."

Nisida suffered a sad and thoughtful look to fall upon this handsome
young man who spoke to her in so gentle a voice, and withdrew without
further reply, that she might not humiliate his poverty.

The prince made great efforts to suppress a strong inclination towards
laughter, and, very well satisfied with this opening, turned his steps
towards the spot where he had left his servant. Trespolo, after having
emptied a bottle of lacryma with which he had provided himself for any
emergency, had looked long around him to choose a spot where the grass
was especially high and thick, and had laid himself down to a sound
sleep, murmuring as he did so, this sublime observation, "O laziness,
but for the sin of Adam you would be a virtue!"

The young girl could not close her eyes during the whole night after the
conversation that she had held with the stranger. His sudden appearance,
his strange dress and odd speech, had awakened in her an uncertain
feeling that had been lying asleep in the bottom of her heart. She
was at this time in all the vigour of her youth and of her resplendent
beauty. Nisida was not one of the weak and timid natures that are broken
by suffering or domineered over by tyranny. Far otherwise: everything
around her had contributed towards shaping for her a calm and serene
destiny; her simple, tender soul had unfolded in an atmosphere of peace
and happiness. If she had not hitherto loved, it was the fault, not of
her coldness but of the extreme timidity shown by the inhabitants of her
island. The blind depth of respect that surrounded the old fisherman had
drawn around his daughter a barrier of esteem and submission that no one
dared to cross. By means of thrift and labour Solomon had succeeded
in creating for himself a prosperity that put the poverty of the other
fishermen to the blush. No one had asked for Nisida because no one
thought he deserved her. The only admirer