the soft liquid sound of the preceding vowel.  One franc!  It is wonderful how the thing, worthless as it is, can be made even by the most starving fingers for such a price.  Yet after dangling his toy for a minute, and gazing, oh, so wistfully! the while out of his big haggard eyes, he says, “Seventy-five centimes! half a franc!” and still lingers ere he turns away with a sigh, a weary movement of his emaciated figure and a longing look on his poor hollow face that make one feel that the drama we are witnessing is not all comedy.  But it is all supremely interesting to our neighbor, Si’or Pantaleone.  He has been keenly watching the attempted deal, and no doubt wished that his countryman might succeed.  But there was no element of tragedy in the matter for him, a condition of semi-starvation is too much an ordinary, every-day and normal spectacle.  He looked on more as a retired merchant might look on at the progress of a bargain for the delivery of a shipload of grain.  Presently, a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffe.  The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in her hand.  The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly dressed and as shining as oil can make it.  She has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-colored shawl in good condition.  Whatever might be beneath and below this is in dark shadow—­“et sic melius situm.”  She is not starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm.  The young girl has one of those pale, delicate, oval faces so common in Venice:  she also has a good shawl—­an amber-colored one—­which so sets off the olive-colored complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture.  This couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing ad misericordiam.  They pose themselves en artistes.  The girl sets about arranging her music in a business-like way, and then they play the well-known air of “La Stella Confidente,” the little violinist really playing remarkably well.  Then the elder woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions.  No slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give nothing.  The saucer is presented to each in turn.  I supposed that the application to Si’or Pantaleone was an empty form.  But no.  That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime—­the fifth part of a cent—­into the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden Fleece.  Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines curiously and cheapens.  Then a body of men singing part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighboring