the only four horses, alive or dead, in the whole
town, so it was not to be expected that the people would know any
better. They wept bitterly when they were sent away, and ten French
soldiers were found floating in the canals that night. As a punishment
for these murders a great many more of their pictures were sent away,
and the soldiers took to breaking the statues and firing their muskets
at the stained-glass windows.

This made the people furious, and there was very bad feeling in the
town. Many officers and men disappeared during that winter, and even
their bodies were never found.

For myself I had plenty to do, and I never found the time heavy on
my hands. In every country it has been my custom to try to learn the
language. For this reason I always look round for some lady who will be
kind enough to teach it to me, and then we practise it together. This
is the most interesting way of picking it up, and before I was thirty I
could speak nearly every tongue in Europe; but it must be confessed that
what you learn is not of much use for the ordinary purposes of life. My
business, for example, has usually been with soldiers and peasants, and
what advantage is it to be able to say to them that I love only them,
and that I will come back when the wars are over?

Never have I had so sweet a teacher as in Venice. Lucia was her first
name, and her second--but a gentleman forgets second names. I can say
this with all discretion, that she was of one of the senatorial families
of Venice and that her grandfather had been Doge of the town.

She was of an exquisite beauty--and when I, Etienne Gerard, use such a
word as "exquisite," my friends, it has a meaning. I have judgment, I
have memories, I have the means of comparison. Of all the women who have
loved me there are not twenty to whom I could apply such a term as that.
But I say again that Lucia was exquisite.

Of the dark type I do not recall her equal unless it were Dolores of
Toledo. There was a little brunette whom I loved at Santarem when I was
soldiering under Massena in Portugal--her name has escaped me. She was
of a perfect beauty, but she had not the figure nor the grace of Lucia.
There was Agnes also. I could not put one before the other, but I do
none an injustice when I say that Lucia was the equal of the best.

It was over this matter of pictures that I had first met her, for her
father owned a palace on the farther side of the Rialto Bridge upon the
Gran