difficulty; for he would
marry none who was not distinguished by beauty and gentle birth. The
dwarfish daughter of Lord Bemboro he refused on the ground that besides
being a pigmy she was hunchbacked; while another young lady, an orphan
belonging to a very good family in Hampshire, was rejected by him
because her face, like that of so many dwarfs, was wizened and
repulsive. Finally, when he was almost despairing of success, he
heard from a reliable source that Count Titimalo, a Venetian nobleman,
possessed a daughter of exquisite beauty and great accomplishments, who
was by three feet in height. Setting out at once for Venice, he went
immediately on his arrival to pay his respects to the count, whom he
found living with his wife and five children in a very mean apartment
in one of the poorer quarters of the town. Indeed, the count was so far
reduced in his circumstances that he was even then negotiating (so it
was rumoured) with a travelling company of clowns and acrobats, who had
had the misfortune to lose their performing dwarf, for the sale of his
diminutive daughter Filomena. Sir Hercules arrived in time to save her
from this untoward fate, for he was so much charmed by Filomena's grace
and beauty, that at the end of three days' courtship he made her a
formal offer of marriage, which was accepted by her no less joyfully
than by her father, who perceived in an English son-in-law a rich and
unfailing source of revenue. After an unostentatious marriage, at which
the English ambassador acted as one of the witnesses, Sir Hercules and
his bride returned by sea to England, where they settled down, as it
proved, to a life of uneventful happiness.

"Crome and its household of dwarfs delighted Filomena, who felt herself
now for the first time to be a free woman living among her equals in
a friendly world. She had many tastes in common with her husband,
especially that of music. She had a beautiful voice, of a power
surprising in one so small, and could touch A in alt without effort.
Accompanied by her husband on his fine Cremona fiddle, which he played,
as we have noted before, as one plays a bass viol, she would sing all
the liveliest and tenderest airs from the operas and cantatas of her
native country. Seated together at the harpsichord, they found that they
could with their four hands play all the music written for two hands
of ordinary size, a circumstance which gave Sir Hercules unfailing
pleasure.

"When they were n