ring
ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they
could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village
diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity,
was too volatile not to be drawn into the adventure. The whole party
accordingly disembarked, and were presently giving an exhibition of
their talents to the assembled idlers, the Pantaloon, Harlequin and
Doctor enacting a comical intermezzo which Cantapresto had that morning
composed for them, while Scaramouch and Columbine joined the dancers,
and the rest of the company, seizing on a train of donkeys laden with
vegetables for the Venetian market, stripped these patient animals of
their panniers, and mounting them bareback started a Corso around the
village square amid the invectives of the drivers and the applause of
the crowd.

Day was declining when the Marquess at last succeeded in driving his
flock to their fold, and the moon sent a quiver of brightness across the
water as the burchiello touched at the landing of a villa set amid
close-massed foliage high above the river. Gardens peopled with statues
descended from the portico of the villa to the marble platform on the
water's edge, where a throng of boatmen in the Procuratore's livery
hurried forward to receive the Marquess and his companions. The
comedians, sobered by the magnificence of their surroundings, followed
their leader like awe-struck children. Light and music streamed from the
long facade overhead, but the lower gardens lay hushed and dark, the air
fragrant with unseen flowers, the late moon just burnishing the edges of
the laurel-thickets from which, now and again, a nightingale's song
gushed in a fountain of sound. Odo, spellbound, followed the others
without a thought of his own share in the adventure. Never before had
beauty so ministered to every sense. He felt himself lost in his
surroundings, absorbed in the scent and murmur of the night.

3.3.

On the upper terrace a dozen lacqueys with wax lights hastened out to
receive the travellers. A laughing group followed, headed by a tall
vivacious woman covered with jewels, whom Odo guessed to be the
Procuratessa Bra. The Marquess, hastening forward, kissed the lady's
hand, and turned to summon the actors, who hung back at the farther end
of the terrace. The light from the windows and from the lacquey's tapers
fell full on the motley band, and Odo, roused to the singularity of his