"_Signora mia_," I said in an undertone to her mother, as I drew the child's curtains, "you have done well not to splash ink on your azure crest. Here is a little patrician who would never have forgiven you." "And my heart," she replied sadly, "is pierced, not with a pin, but with a thousand swords." When I was in the street, I stopped to look at the corner of the palace which stood out in the moonlight from the eaves to the depths of the Grand Canal. A boat passed, and, causing a ripple in the water, cut and scattered the reflection of that pure line. It seemed to me that I had just had a beautiful dream and had awakened in darkness. I began to run at full speed, never looking behind, and did not stop until I reached the Paglia bridge, where the boats for Chioggia await passengers, while the boatmen, wrapped in their capes in winter and summer alike, lie sound asleep on the parapet, and even across the steps, under the feet of passers-by. I asked if anyone of my fellow-townsmen would take me to my father's house. "Is it you, _kinsman_?" they cried in surprise. That word _kinsman_, which the Venetians ironically bestow on the Chioggians, and which the latter have had the good-sense to accept,[4] was so sweet to my ear that I embraced the first man who called me by it. They promised to start in an hour, and asked me several questions, but did not listen to my answers. The Chioggian hardly knows the use of a bed; but he sleeps while walking, talking, even rowing. They suggested my taking a nap on the common bed, that is to say on the flagstones of the quay. I lay on the ground, with my head on one of those worthy fellows, while another used me as a pillow, and so on. I slept as in the happiest days of my childhood, and I dreamed that my poor mother--who had been dead a year--appeared in the doorway of our cottage and congratulated me on my return. I was awakened by the repeated shouts of _Chiosa_! _Chiosa_![5] with which our boatmen wake the echoes of the ducal palace and the prisons, to attract passengers. It seemed to me a cry of triumph, like the _Italia_! _Italia_! of the Trojans in the _Æneid_. I jumped aboard a boat with a light heart, and, thinking of the night Bianca must have passed, reproached myself a little for sleeping soundly. But I was reconciled to myself by the thought that I had not poisoned her future peace of mind.