a dish of fritters over
a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through the press, aware
at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation,
there was no undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to horse-play,
as in such crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of facetious suavity
which seemed to include everybody in the circumference of one huge joke.
In such an air the sense of strangeness soon wore off, and Tony was
beginning to feel himself vastly at home, when a lift of the tide bore
him against a droll-looking bell-ringing fellow who carried above his
head a tall metal tree hung with sherbet-glasses.

The encounter set the glasses spinning and three or four spun off and
clattered to the stones. The sherbet-seller called on all the saints,
and Tony, clapping a lordly hand to his pocket, tossed him a ducat by
mistake for a sequin. The fellow's eyes shot out of their orbits,
and just then a personable-looking young man who had observed the
transaction stepped up to Tony and said pleasantly, in English:

"I perceive, sir, that you are not familiar with our currency."

"Does he want more?" says Tony, very lordly; whereat the other laughed
and replied: "You have given him enough to retire from his business and
open a gaming-house over the arcade."

Tony joined in the laugh, and this incident bridging the preliminaries,
the two young men were presently hobnobbing over a glass of Canary in
front of one of the coffee-houses about the square. Tony counted
himself lucky to have run across an English-speaking companion who was
good-natured enough to give him a clue to the labyrinth; and when he had
paid for the Canary (in the coin his friend selected) they set out
again to view the town. The Italian gentleman, who called himself Count
Rialto, appeared to have a very numerous acquaintance, and was able to
point out to Tony all the chief dignitaries of the state, the men of ton
and ladies of fashion, as well as a number of other characters of a kind
not openly mentioned in taking a census of Salem.

Tony, who was not averse from reading when nothing better offered,
had perused the "Merchant of Venice" and Mr. Otway's fine tragedy; but
though these pieces had given him a notion that the social usages of
Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising
appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The
gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious