one."

It seemed as if he wanted to reply, but uttered nothing more than a short laugh, which the landlady interpreted as an affirmation. At this moment, Marietta entered again, carrying a pitcher of water and a fumigating pan, on which pungently smelling herbs were smoldering and blowing their fumes into her face, so that, as she coughed, cursed, and rubbed her eyes, she made the cutest gestures. With small steps, she carried the fumigant closely by all four walls, which were covered by a huge number of flies and gnats.

"Get yourself away from there, you scoundrels," she said, "you bloodsuckers, worse than lawyers and doctors! Would you also like to eat figs before bedtime and enjoy a sip of Cypriot wine? You might as well laugh if you did and afterwards show your gratitude by stinging this gentleman all over his face, when he's asleep, you sneaky murderers! Just wait, I'll feed you with something which shall put you to sleep without supper."

"Do you always have to babble on, you godless creature?" said the mother, who was following every movement of her darling with overjoyed looks. "Don't you know that an empty barrel makes the loudest sound, and that she who talks much, says little?" - "Mother," the girl said laughingly, "I have to sing a lullaby for the gnats, and look how it works! Here, they are already dropping off the wall. Good night, you loafers, you worst of all company, not paying any rent and yet peeking into all pots. I'll take care of you tomorrow again, if you didn't get enough today."

She once again swung the almost burnt out herbs over her head as if she was casting a spell and poured the ashes into the canal; then, she made a quick bow towards the stranger and rushed out of the room as swiftly as the wind.

"Isn't she a witch, an ugly, naughty creature?" said Signora Giovanna, while getting up and starting to leave as well. "And yet, every female monkey likes her little monkey. And besides, however little and useless she may be, to the same extent she's also eager to help out, and it has also been said about her:

  "Before the mother bends her back,
  The herb is plucked, in the girl's sack.

"If I hadn't the child, Signore Andrea! But you want to sleep, and I'm still standing here, chatting away like a soup, cooking noisily over a hot fire. Sleep well, and welcome to Venice!"

Unemotionally, he returned her greeting and did not seem to notice that she was obviously still expecting him to make a kind remark about her daughter. When he was finally alone, he continued sitting at the table for some time, and his face grew more and more gloomy and pain-stricken. The light burnt on a long wick, those flies which had managed to evade Marietta's witchcraft, besieged the overripe figs in black clusters; outside, in the blind alley, the bats were flying against the window and collided with the bars - the lonely stranger seemed to be dead to everything around him, and only his eyes were alive.

Only after the clock in the tower of a nearby church had struck eleven, he rose mechanically and looked around. The pungent fumes of the fumigating herbs moved along the ceiling of his low chamber in gray strands and the smoke from the candle joined the cloud above. Andrea opened the window going out to the canal, to cleanse the air. In doing so, he saw a light on the other side, coming from a window, which was only half covered by a white curtain, and through the gap, he could clearly observe a girl, sitting at a table with a bowl and hastily devouring the remains of a large pie, putting the pieces into her mouth with her fingers, and drinking once and again from a small crystal bottle. Her face had a frivolous, but not enticing expression, being no longer in her earliest youth. Her negligent clothing and partially undone hair had something calculating and intentional about it, which was nevertheless not an unpleasant sight. She must have noticed already a while ago that the room on the other side had got a new inhabitant; but though she now saw him at the window, she calmly continued her feast, and only when she drank, she first swung the little bottle in front of herself, as if she was greeting someone who would drink with her. When she was finished, she put the empty bowl aside, pushed the table with the lamp on it against the wall, so that all of the light now fell on a wide mirror in the back of the room, and began to try on one costume after another from a colourful pile of clothes for a masquerade, which lay on an armchair, standing in front of the mirror, so that the stranger, to whom she had turned her back, had to see her reflection just the more clearly. She seemed to like herself rather much, wearing those disguises. At least, she most approvingly nodded to her reflection, smiling at herself, showing her brightly gleaming teeth and lips, frowning to act out a tragic or longing expression of her face, and secretly looking sideways towards her observer during all of this, also keeping an eye on him in the mirror. When the dark figure remained motionless and kept her waiting for the desired signs of applause, she became irritated and prepared her main assault. She tied a large, red turban around her temples, from which, attached to a shiny brooch, a heron's feather stuck out. The red colour actually complemented her yellow taint very well, and she gave herself a deep bow of appreciation. But when, even now, everything continued to remain quiet on the other side, she could not keep her patience any longer, and hastily, still wearing the turban on her head, she stepped to the window, pushing the curtain all the way back.

"Good day, Monsů," she said politely. "You're my neighbour now, as I can see. I only hope that you don't play the flute like your predecessor, who kept me awake half of the night."

"Beautiful neighbour," said the stranger, "I won't bother you with any kind of music. I'm an ill man, who also prefers not to be disturbed in his sleep."

"So!" - the girl replied in a stretched out tone of voice.
"You're ill? But are you at least rich?"

"No! Why do you ask?"

"Because it's so terrible to be ill and poor at the same time.
Who are you, anyway?"

"Andrea Delfin is my name. I used to be a clerk at the court in
Brescia and am looking for a quiet job with a notary, here."

This answer seemed to completely disappoint all of her hopes for the new acquaintance. Lost in thought, she played with a golden necklace, she wore around her neck.

"And who are you, beautiful neighbour?" asked Andrea in a tender tone, which completely contradicted the motionless expression of his face. "To have your charming sight so close to me, will comfort me in my sufferings."

She apparently felt satisfied, since he now turned to that tone which she had a right to expect.

"To you," she said, "I'm Princess Smeraldina, who is granting you the permission to long for her favour from afar. Whenever you'll see me putting on this turban, this shall be a sign for you that I'm inclined to chat with you. For I'm more bored than I could bear, considering my youth and my charms. You must know," she continued, suddenly dropping out of character, "that my mistress, the countess, won't permit me at all to have even the slightest love affair, though she herself changes her lovers more frequently than her shirts. She says that she had always thrown her confidante and chamber-maid out of her services as soon as she would have attempted to serve two masters, her and the little winged god. I now have to suffer under her prejudice, and if I wouldn't find some other satisfaction here, and if there wasn't, from time to time, a kind stranger living over there in your room, who'd fall just a little