a benefactress.

Presently he rose and went to walk with her in the garden, and sitting
down to rest in a thicket of myrtles, he drew the young widow on his
knee and manifested his gratitude by a thousand caresses.

He found her not insensible to his efforts and spent some hours by her
side drowned in amorous delight. But soon he grew pensive, and suddenly
asked his hostess what month they were in, and what day of the month
precisely it then was.

And when she told him, he fell to groaning and lamenting sore, finding
it lacked but twenty-four short hours of a full year since he had
received the five hundred ducats of Eliezer the Jew. The thought of
breaking his promise and exposing his pledge to the reproaches of the
Circumcised was intolerable to him. Signora Loreta inquiring the reason
of his despair, he told her the whole story; and being a very pious
woman and an ardent votress of the Holy Mother of God, she shared his
chagrin to the full. The difficulty was not to procure the five hundred
ducats; a Banker in a neighbouring town had had such a sum in his hands
for the last six months at Fabio's disposition. But to travel from the
coast of Dalmatia to Venice in four-and-twenty hours, with a broken sea
and contrary winds, was a thing beyond all hope.

"Let us have the money ready to begin with," said Fabio.

And when one of his hostess's serving-men had brought the sum, the noble
Merchant ordered a vessel to be brought close in to the shore. In her
he laid the bags containing the ducats, then went to the Signora
Loreta's Oratory in search of an image of the Virgin with the Infant
Jesus--an image of cedar-wood and greatly revered. This he set in the
little bark, near the rudder, and addressed in these words:

"Madonna, you are my pledge. Now the Jew Eliezer must needs be paid
to-morrow; 'tis a question of mine honour and of yours, Madonna, and of
your Son's good name. What a mortal sinner, such as I, cannot do, you
will assuredly accomplish, unsullied Star of the Sea, you whose bosom
suckled Him who walked upon the waters. Bear this silver to Eliezer the
Jew, in the Ghetto at Venice, to the end the Circumcised may never say
you are a bad surety."

And pushing the bark afloat, he doffed his hat and cried softly:

"Farewell, Madonna! farewell!"

The vessel sailed out to sea, and long the merchant and the widow
followed it with their eyes. When night began to close in, a furrow of
light was seen marking her wak