d no room on board for so much as a
hungry flea.

Odo, who had accompanied Cantapresto to the water-side, was listening to
these assurances and to the soprano's vain invectives, when a
well-dressed young man stepped up to the group. This gentleman, whose
accent and dress showed him to be a Frenchman of quality, told Odo that
he was come from Vicenza, whither he had gone to engage a company of
actors for his friend the Procuratore Bra, who was entertaining a
distinguished company at his villa on the Brenta; that he was now
returning with his players, and that he would be glad to convey Odo so
far on his road to Venice. His friend's seat, he added, was near Oriago,
but a few miles above Fusina, where a public conveyance might always be
found; so that Odo would doubtless be able to proceed the same night to
Venice.

This civil offer Odo at once accepted, and the Frenchman thereupon
suggested that, as the party was to set out the next day at sunrise, the
two should sup together and pass the intervening hours in such
diversions as the city offered. They returned to the inn, where the
actors were also lodged, and Odo's host having ordered a handsome
supper, proposed, with his guest's permission, to invite the leading
members of the company to partake of it. He departed on this errand; and
great was Odo's wonder, when the door reopened, to discover, among the
party it admitted, his old acquaintance of Vercelli, the Count of
Castelrovinato. The latter, whose dress and person had been refurbished,
and who now wore an air of rakish prosperity, greeted him with evident
pleasure, and, while their entertainer was engaged in seating the ladies
of the company, gave him a brief account of the situation.

The young French gentleman (whom he named as the Marquis de
Coeur-Volant) had come to Italy some months previously on the grand
tour, and having fallen a victim to the charms of Venice, had declared
that, instead of continuing on his travels, he meant to complete his
education in that famous school of pleasure. Being master of his own
fortune, he had hired a palace on the Grand Canal, had dispatched his
governor (a simple archaeologist) on a mission of exploration to Sicily
and Greece, and had devoted himself to an assiduous study of Venetian
manners. Among those contributing to his instruction was Mirandolina of
Chioggia, who had just completed a successful engagement at the theatre
of San Moise in Venice. Wishing to detain her in