However, amid all those superb objects, the shape and uses of which were quite unfamiliar to me, my mind was still beset by doubt. Was I not mistaken? Was it really the harp that I was looking at? I determined to make sure of it; I entered the cabinet and placed an awkward, trembling hand on the strings. O rapture! they answered to my touch. Impelled by indescribable excitement, I made all those resonant voices speak, at random and in a sort of frenzy, and I do not believe that the most skilful and most skilfully led orchestra has ever, since that day, afforded me so much pleasure as the horrible confusion of sounds with which I filled Signora Aldini's apartment. But my joy was not of long duration. A servant who was at work in the adjoining rooms ran to investigate the noise, and was so enraged to find that a little clodhopper in rags had stolen in that way and was abandoning himself to the love of art with such shocking disregard of the proprieties, that he set about expelling me by beating me out with his broom. I did not care to be dismissed in that way, and prudently retired to the balcony, intending to go away as I had come. But before I could climb over the balustrade, the servant pounced upon me, and I found myself confronted by the alternative of being beaten or turning a ridiculous somersault. I adopted a violent course, namely, to avoid the blow by stooping quickly, grasping my adversary by the legs, and thus throwing him forward with his breast against the balcony rail. Then to lift him up and throw him into the canal was the affair of a moment. That is the game that the children practise on one another at Chioggia. But I had no time to reflect that the balcony was twenty feet above the water, and that the poor devil of a footman might not know how to swim. Luckily for him and for me he came to the surface at once and clung to the boats at the _traghetto_. I was horribly frightened when I tossed him over; but, as soon as I saw that he was safe, I began to think about making my escape; for he was roaring with rage and would surely set all the pack of servants in the Aldini Palace upon me. I passed through the first door I saw, and, hurrying through the corridors, was about to go downstairs, when I heard indistinct voices apparently coming toward me. I ran upstairs again in hot haste, and took refuge under the eaves, where I hid in a garret among old worm-eaten pictures and discarded furniture.