ell'--in Venice 'they do let Heaven see
those tricks they dare not show,' &c. &c.; so, for all response, I
said that neither of the three places suited me; but that I would
either be at home at ten at night alone, or be at the ridotto at
midnight, where the writer might meet me masked. At ten o'clock I
was at home and alone (Marianna was gone with her husband to a
conversazione), when the door of my apartment opened, and in
walked a well-looking and (for an Italian) _bionda_ girl of about
nineteen, who informed me that she was married to the brother of my
_amorosa_, and wished to have some conversation with me. I made a
decent reply, and we had some talk in Italian and Romaic (her
mother being a Greek of Corfu), when lo! in a very few minutes in
marches, to my very great astonishment, Marianna S * *, _in propria
persona_, and after making a most polite courtesy to her
sister-in-law and to me, without a single word seizes her said
sister-in-law by the hair, and bestows upon her some sixteen slaps,
which would have made your ear ache only to hear their echo. I need
not describe the screaming which ensued. The luckless visiter took
flight. I seized Marianna, who, after several vain efforts to get
away in pursuit of the enemy, fairly went into fits in my arms;
and, in spite of reasoning, eau de Cologne, vinegar, half a pint of
water, and God knows what other waters beside, continued so till
past midnight.

"After damning my servants for letting people in without apprizing
me, I found that Marianna in the morning had seen her
sister-in-law's gondolier on the stairs, and, suspecting that his
apparition boded her no good, had either returned of her own
accord, or been followed by her maids or some other spy of her
people to the conversazione, from whence she returned to perpetrate
this piece of pugilism. I had seen fits before, and also some small
scenery of the same genus in and out of our island: but this was
not all. After about an hour, in comes--who? why, Signor S * *, her
lord and husband, and finds me with his wife fainting upon a sofa,
and all the apparatus of confusion, dishevelled hair, hats,
handkerchiefs, salts, smelling bottles--and the lady as pale as
ashes, without sense or motion. His first question was, 'What is
all this?' The lady c