All this time, a fat red face, belonging to a corpulent body, has been watching the depressed lover from the right wing.  As Alberto utters the last sad ejaculation, a thick hand attached to a short arm raises a kerchief to a pair of small eyes in this fat red face, and wipes them.  Then the stout gentleman reflects a moment, nods his head approvingly, draws forth a wallet, opens it slowly, takes out some paper that rustles like bank notes, produces a memorandum book, writes a few lines on one of the leaves hastily with a pencil, tears out the leaf, encloses the leaf and the bank notes in an envelope, emerges with his entire figure into the full light of the stage, walks stealthily toward Alberto with a pair of creaking shoes that would have waked the soundest sleeper, places the note on the table by his side, raises his hands to heaven, murmuring, “God bless the boy!” and retires in the same feline but tumultuous manner.

This mysterious visitor was Bignolio (Matthew Maltboy), a rich money lender, uncle of Alberto, and commonly reported to be the “tightest old skinflint in Venice.”

After a pause, scarcely long enough to allow his uncle’s heavy footsteps to die away in the distance, Alberto came out of his revery.  His first act was to look at the ceiling, then at the floor, then all about him—­everywhere but at the note on the table.  At last, when nothing else remained to be scrutinized, his eyes naturally fell upon this valuable communication.

“What is this?” he asked.  Then he answered his own question by opening the letter, and reading it, as follows: 

     Venice, Oct. 16,——.

     Dear Nephew: 

I have watched you, and know all.  You are indeed the son of your father, and, I am proud to add, the nephew of your uncle.  Enclosed are sixty thousand florins.  Go to Jinkerini Bros., on the Rialto, and buy up judgments that they hold against Rodicaso for three times that amount, and offset them against old Corpetto’s debts.  Rodicaso conceals his property so well, that none has ever been found to satisfy these judgments.  Drive a sharp bargain, and show yourself a chip of the old block.  Keep the balance for your wedding gift.

     Farewell—­till we meet again.

     Bignolio.

“Dear, dear uncle!” exclaimed Alberto, carefully buttoning up his pocket over the funds, and kissing the letter in transports of joy.  “And only yesterday he would not lend me a scudi to get my dinner.  Generous man! how have I wronged him!  Now, Fate, I will floor thee and Rodicaso together.”

[Exit Alberto, rapidly, by shortest land route to the Rialto.]

Overtop’s acting, throughout this difficult scene, was of a superior order.  Nothing could be more natural, for instance, than the buttoning up of his pocket over his uncle’s gift.  But neither that, nor the other strong point, where he exulted in the finest tragedy tones over the anticipated downfall of Fate and Rodicaso, produced the slightest sensation among his hearers.  Matthew Maltboy paid the penalty of his intimate relations with Overtop, by an equal unpopularity.  His fine rendition of the character of Bignolio might as well have been played to a select company of gravestones.