Signor Fabio," she said to him, "I am aware of your misfortunes;
they are the talk of all the town. Hear me; I am not rich, but I have
some jewels at the bottom of a little coffer. An you will accept them of
a poor girl that would serve you, I shall know God and the Virgin love
me."

And it was a true word, that in the prime of her youth and fine flower
of her beauty, the fair Zanetta was poor. Fabio answered her:

"Kind Zanetta, there is more nobility in the hovel where you dwell than
in all the Palaces of Venice."

For three days longer Fabio visited the banks and fondacos without
discovering any one willing to lend him money. Everywhere he received an
unfavourable answer, and listened to speeches that always came to this:

"You did very wrong to sell your plate to pay your debts. Money is lent
to a man in debt, but not to one without furniture and plate."

The fifth day he made his way, in despair, as far as the Corte delle
Galli, which men also call the Ghetto, and which is the quarter the Jews
inhabit.

"Who knows," he kept saying to himself, "if I may not get from one of
the Circumcised what the Christians have denied me?"

He proceeded therefore between the Calle San Geremia and the Calle San
Girolamo along a narrow evil-smelling canal, the entrance of which was
barred with chains every night, by order of the Senate. While hesitating
to know which Usurer he should first apply to, he remembered to have
heard speak of an Israelite named Eliezer, son of Eliezer Maimonides,
who was said to be exceedingly rich and of a wondrous subtle spirit.
Accordingly, inquiring out the house of the Jew Eliezer, he stopped his
gondola before the door. Above the entrance was seen a representation of
the seven-branched candlestick, which the Jew had had carved as a sign
of hope, in expectation of the promised days when the Temple should rise
again from its ashes.

The Merchant now entered a hall lighted by a copper lamp with twelve
wicks that were burning smokily. Eliezer the Jew was there, seated
before his scales. The windows of the house were walled up, because he
was an Unbeliever.

Fabio Mutinelli approached and thus accosted him:

"Eliezer, over and over again have I called you dog and renegade
heathen. There have been times, when I was younger and in the flush of
early manhood, I have cast stones and mud at folks going along the Canal
who wore the round patch of yellow sewn on their shoulder, so that I
may likely