1828.] A Night at Covigliajo. 461 



demeanour of their* companion : and, to a general request that he would 

 communicate the cause of these reflections, the poor fellow answered by 

 the following narrative : 



" I was but just turned of twelve years, gentlemen, when some Levan- 

 tine sailors of a brig lying in the bay seduced me from my mother's side, 

 and my beloved Catarrho. Like other boys, I was fond of the sea ; and 

 when these men, in their handsome Eastern dresses, talked of distant 

 places, and their free mode of life, I was easily persuaded to be their 

 companion. But I exchanged a happy home for a course of miserable 

 wandering. We sailed immediately afterwards; and nothing have I 

 seen of the blue Adriatic to this blessed hour the good saints know 

 whether I am yet to behold it. I found myself on board a merchant 

 vessel, trading to Smyrna and the Islands, and spent two years in this 

 way, with little more variety than occurs in the life of every seafaring 

 man. But why detail these distant occurrences ? It is enough to say, 

 that, from this vessel, I was transferred to another and so on ; some- 

 times for the better, and sometimes for the worse ; till at last, by the 

 intervention of the Virgin, I got promoted to the rank of master ; and 

 having, in that capacity, scraped together a little capital, I became a 

 part-owner of a stout felucca, trading from Constantinople to Odessa and 

 Alexandria. By diligence and happy speculations, I amassed sufficient 

 property to be considered a man well to do in the world ; and, in the 

 leisure intervals between my voyages, or when the command was 

 entrusted to any of my partners, I found in Constantinople a welcome in 

 very good society. I was cordially received by many Christian families, 

 between whom, in a heretic country, the bond of union is naturally very 



strong. Among these was a matron, with one daughter. Blessed 



Jesus ! what a wretch am I ! Teresa ! if you can now feel as you were 

 wont in those happy days, pity me, and take from my heart the load of 

 consciousness that I was the cause of all your woe ! Could I but know 

 that you pardon the deed, my own sorrows would not now be remem- 

 bered!" 



QHe paused for a short time, and then, in a calmer strain, thus pro- 

 ceeded : ] 



" Signors, you have before you a man both guilty and most unhappy. 

 Let your sympathy for his sorrow overcome your abhorrence of his errors. 

 I have never yet recounted those past events; and now, while for the 

 first time I collect them together in my recollection, the display of so 

 many sad mischances is almost too much 'for me. I hope for your 

 indulgence. 



" When I first knew Teresa, she was a fresh creature, grown up into 

 womanly beauty, by the side of a fond mother, and cautiously kept from 

 the gaze of men, who had not sufficient claim for her kindness. She was 

 the most innocent and simple-hearted girl that ever mixed the purity of 

 heaven with the infirmities of a human nature. Her birth-place was 

 somewhere amid the Euganean hills, not far from Padua ; and as we used 

 to talk of a common country, in a common language, it seemed to us 

 that we were cousins, or ought to be so considered ; for the world with- 

 out was strange, and, as she had been told, heartless, as well as strange. 

 It needed little to advance myself in her favour. I scarcely knew what 

 I was doing when I talked so warmly, and listened so earnestly to her 



