"His name I don't know," answered the boatman; "but when I wanted to keep him out of the boat, which was too heavy laden as it was, he whispered that he was a messenger of the holy office, and told me to refuse him a passage at my peril. He brought a curse into our boat, I trow, or we should not have had such a storm; but there is no use of my sitting here and watching the water. Two horses and two men have gone down beside the boat, and no one will ever rise again till the last trumpet calls them out of the grave. I may as well go with you to the village as sit here watching the water that rolls over them all;" and getting up, he followed the rest of the party with his hands behind his back, in dull and silent grief. CHAPTER VIII. Do you know well, dear reader, any of those large villages which are scattered over what may be called the Mantuan plain? They deserve not, indeed, the name of towns, though they often approach them in size. I mean such places as San Felice, Gonzaga, Bozzolo, Sanguinetto, and others of that class, which now present a number of small scattered stone houses, with gardens generally around them, and a road running through the midst; and here and there a much larger house falling rapidly to decay, with no windows to keep out the storm or the tempest, and very often the roof completely off, while the tall square tower, which is certain to be found stuck somewhere about the building, rises one, if not two stories above the rest. The church is generally placed upon any little rising ground, sometimes at one extreme of the village, sometimes in the middle, with the priest's cottage close by; but in any of these at the present day, you might as well look for an inn as for the shop of a diamond merchant, unless you chose to call by that name the little hovel, surrounded by a garden, where, on festival days, the peasantry go to drink their glass of Rosolio and water, wine, lemonade, or, since the Austrians have bestrid the land, vermouth.