asion, he followed.

"I wonder, Signor Jacopo, that a man of your sagacity has not remembered
that a packet to be delivered to himself should bear his own name."

The Bravo took the paper, and held the superscription again to the
light.

"That is not so. Though unlearned, necessity has taught me to know when
I am meant."

"Diamine! That is just my own case, Signore. Were the letter for me,
now the old should not know its young quicker than I would come at the
truth."

"Then thou canst not read?"

"I never pretended to the art. The little said was merely about writing.
Learning, as you well understand, Master Jacopo, is divided into
reading, writing, and figures; and a man may well understand one,
without knowing a word of the others. It is not absolutely necessary to
be a bishop to have a shaved head, or a Jew to wear a beard."

"Thou would'st have done better to have said this at once; go, I will
think of the matter."

Gino gladly turned away, but he had not left the other many paces before
he saw a female form gliding behind the pedestal of one of the granite
columns. Moving swiftly in a direction to uncover this seeming spy, he
saw at once that Annina had been a witness of his interview with the
Bravo.

CHAPTER IV.

"'T will make me think
The world is full of rubs, and that my fortune
Runs 'gainst the bias."
RICHARD THE SECOND.

Though Venice at that hour was so gay in her squares, the rest of the
town was silent as the grave. A city in which the hoof of horse or the
rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of
its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training
of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay.
There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful
blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their
display--nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from
the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared
to imbibe the character of their sombre city.

Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the
previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco. The
moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls,
here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a
quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its
light in a