"Oh, I can make friends anywhere. And this one was lots of fun. He was a priest, an _abbate_, I think he calls himself. He had read five newspapers in the _caffe_ and paid for one tiny cup of coffee. When I finished the _Debats_ I passed it to him for his sixth--and he spoke to me in French, and I wasn't going to let an Italian talk French to me without answering back, so I just sailed in and began to swap stories with him." "No doubt you gave him much valuable information." "Well, I did; I just exuded information. Why, the first thing he said, when I told him I was an American, was to wonder whether I hadn't met his brother, who was also in America--in Rio Janeiro--just as if Rio was the other side of the North River!" John Manning smiled at Larry's disgusted expression, and asked, "What has this _abbate_ to do with the fragile Venetian glass?" "Only this," answered Larry. "I told him two or three North-westers, just as well as I could in French, and then he said that marvellous things were also done here once upon a time. And he told me about the glass which broke when poison was poured into it." "It is a pleasant superstition," said John Manning. "I think Poe makes use of it, and I believe Shakespeare refers to it." "But did either Poe or Shakespeare say anything about the two goblets just alike made for the twin brothers Manin nearly four hundred years ago? Did they tell you how one glass was shivered by poison and its owner killed, and how the other brother had to flee for his life? Did they inform you that the unbroken goblet exists to this day, and is in fact now for sale by an Hebrew Jew who peddles antiquities? Did they tell you that?" "Neither Edgar Allan Poe nor William Shakespeare ever disturbs my slumbers by telling me anything of the sort," laughed Manning. "Well, my _abbate_ told me just that, and he gave me the address of the Shylock who has the surviving goblet for sale." "Suppose we go there and see it," suggested Manning, "and you can tell me the whole story of the twin brothers as we go along." "Shall we take a gondola or walk?" was Larry's interrogative acceptance of the suggestion. "It's in the Ghetto, isn't it?" "Most of the Jew curiosity dealers have left the Ghetto. Our Shylock has a palace on the Grand Canal. I guess we had better take a gondola, though it can't be far." So they sat themselves down in one of the aquatic cabs which ply the water streets of the city in the sea. The gondolier stood to his oar and put his best foot foremost, and as the boat sped forward on its way along the capital S of the Grand Canal, Larry told the tale of the twin brothers and the shattered goblet.