elves.

The ball opened, and now we were much besought by the ladies. I had to
deny myself with a whole series of comical excuses. Eustace performed
his duty after a stiff English fashion--once with his pretty partner
of the _pranzo_, and once again with a fat gondolier. The band
played waltzes and polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs--the Marcia
Reale, Garibaldi's Hymn, &c. Men danced with men, women with women,
little boys and girls together. The gallery whirled with a laughing
crowd. There was plenty of excitement and enjoyment--not an unseemly
or extravagant word or gesture. My _comare_ careered about with a
light maenadic impetuosity, which made me regret my inability to accept
her pressing invitations. She pursued me into every corner of the
room, but when at last I dropped excuses and told her that my real
reason for not dancing was that it would hurt my health, she waived
her claims at once with an _Ah, poverino!_

Some time after midnight we felt that we had had enough of
_divertimento_. Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. With
many silent good wishes we left the innocent playful people who had
been so kind to us. The stars were shining from a watery sky as we
passed into the piazza beneath the Campanile and the pinnacles of
S. Mark. The Riva was almost empty, and the little waves fretted the
boats moored to the piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering
by. We smoked a last cigar, crossed our _traghetto_, and were
soon sound asleep at the end of a long pleasant day. The ball, we
heard next morning, finished about four.

Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for seeing my
friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment.
Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried fish
and amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always cooked with
scrupulous cleanliness, and served upon a table covered with coarse
linen. The polenta is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with
a string called _lassa_. You take a large slice of it on the
palm of the left hand, and break it with the fingers of the right.
Wholesome red wine of the Paduan district and good white bread were
never wanting. The rooms in which we met to eat looked out on narrow
lanes or over pergolas of yellowing vines. Their whitewashed walls
were hung with photographs of friends and foreigners, many of them
souvenirs from English or American employers. The men, in broad
black hats and lilac s