t too tall; and straight
as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her
forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling
below and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes,
that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half dozen. Saucy
red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.

The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in
ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and
one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and
hailed her of origin divine. But his chere amie pulling his hair for
it--and the goddess giving him a little kick--cotemporaneously, he lay
supine; and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning
him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort
of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying
cod-fish.

The drover spoke to the buffaloes, the ropes tightened, and they moved
up stream.

"What think ye of this new beef, mesdames?"

"We ne'er saw monsters so viley ill-favoured; with their nasty horns
that make one afeard, and, their foul nostrils cast up into the air.
Holes be they; not nostrils."

"Signorina, the beeves are a present from Florence the beautiful Would
ye look a gift beef i' the nose?"

"They are so dull," objected a lively lady. "I went up Tiber twice as
fast last time with but five mules and an ass."

"Nay, that is soon mended," cried a gallant, and jumping ashore he drew
his sword, and despite the remonstrances of the drivers, went down the
dozen buffaloes goading them.

They snorted and whisked their tails, and went no faster, at which the
boat-load laughed loud and long: finally he goaded a patriarch bull,
who turned instantly on the sword, sent his long horns clean through the
spark, and with a furious jerk of his prodigious neck sent him flying
over his head into the air. He described a bold parabola and fell
sitting, and unconsciously waving his glittering blade, into the yellow
Tiber. The laughing ladies screamed and wrung their hands, all but
Gerard's fair. She uttered something very like an oath, and seizing the
helm steered the boat out, and the gallant came up sputtering, griped
the gunwale, and was drawn in dripping.

He glared round him confusedly. "I understand not that," said he, a
little peevishly; puzzled, and therefore, it would seem, discontented.
At which, fin