assumed a still sourer expression. The poor woman slipped down to the boat in silence, and was helped in, trembling violently.

"I commend myself to Our Lady of Caravino, my good Pin!" she said. "What a dreadful lake!"

The boatman shook his head, smiling.

"By the way!" Pasotti exclaimed, "have you brought the sail along?"

"It is up at the house," Pin answered. "Shall I go for it? But perhaps the Signora here, might be frightened. Besides, here comes the rain!"

"Go and fetch it," said Pasotti.

The Signora, who was as deaf as a post, had not heard a word of this conversation, and, greatly amazed at seeing Pin run off, asked her husband where he was going.

"The sail!" Pasotti shouted into her face. She sat, bending forward, her mouth wide open, striving in vain, to catch, at least, the sound of his voice.

"The sail!" he repeated, still louder, his hands framing his mouth.

She began to think that she understood. Trembling with fright she drew a questioning hieroglyphic in the air with her finger. Pasotti answered by drawing an imaginary curve in the air, and blowing into it; then he silently nodded his head. His wife, convulsed with terror, started to leave the boat.

"I am going to get out!" said she in an agonised voice. "I am going to get out! I want to walk!"

Her husband seized her by the arm, and pulled her down into her seat, fixing two flaming eyes upon her.

Meanwhile the boatman had returned with the sail. The poor woman writhed and sighed; tears stood in her eyes, and she cast despairing glances at the shore, but she was silent. The mast was raised, the two lower ends of the sail were made fast, and the boat was about to put out, when a voice bellowed from the portico—

"Hallo! Hallo! The Signor Controllore!" and out popped a big, rubicund priest, with a glorious belly, a large, black straw hat, a cigar in his mouth, and an umbrella under his arm.

"Oh! Curatone!" Pasotti exclaimed. "Well done! Are you invited to the dinner also? Are you coming to Cressogno with us?"

"If you will take me," the curate of Puria answered, going down towards the boat. "Well, I never! The Signora Barborin is here also."

The expression of his big face became supremely amiable, his great voice became supremely sweet.

"She is devilish frightened, poor creature!" Pasotti grinned, while the curate was making a series of little bows, and smiling sweetly upon the lady, who was more terrified than ever at the prospect of this added weight. She began to gesticulate silently, as if the others had been more deaf than she herself. She pointed to the lake, to the sail, to the bulk of the enormous curate, raising her eyes to heaven, hiding her face in her hands, or pressing them to her heart.

"I don't weigh so very much," said the curate laughing. "Hold your tongue, will you?" he added, turning to Pin, who had murmured disrespectfully: "A good, big fish!"

"I'll tell you how we can cure her of her fright!" Pasotti exclaimed. "Pin, have you a little table, and a pack of tarocchi [B] cards?"

"I have a pack," Pin replied. "But they are rather greasy."

They had great difficulty in making Signora Barbara—generally called Barborin—understand the matter in hand. She would not understand, not even when her husband forced the pack of filthy cards into her hands.

For the present, however, playing was out of the question. The boat was being laboriously rowed forward towards the mouth of the river of San Mamette, where they would be able to hoist the sail. The surf, flung back from the shore, clashed with the in-coming waves, and the little boat was tossing about among the seething, foaming crests. The lady was weeping and Pasotti was swearing at Pin, who had not stood out into the lake far enough. At last the fat curate seized a couple of oars, and planting his big person firmly in the middle of the boat, bent to his work with such good will that a few strokes sufficed to send them forward and out of difficulty. Then the sail was hoisted, and the boat glided quietly and smoothly onward, rocking slowly and gently, while the water gurgled softly under its keel. Then the smiling priest sat down beside Signora Barborin, who had closed her eyes and was muttering. But Pasotti drummed impatiently on the table with the cards, and play they must.

Meanwhile the grey rain was creeping slowly towards them, veiling the mountains, and stifling the breva.

The lady's breath returned in proportion as the wind's breath diminished, and she played resignedly, calmly oblivious to her own gross mistakes, and her husband's consequent outbursts of rage. When the rain began to rustle on the boat's awning, on the lifeless waves, which in the now almost breathless atmosphere, were rolling in against the rocks of the Tentiòn; when the boatman, judging it best to lower the sail, took to the oars once more, then, at last, Signora Barborin breathed freely. "Pin, my good fellow!" she said tenderly, and began playing tarocchi with a zeal, an energy and an expression of beatitude, which neither mistakes nor scoldings could trouble.

Many days of breva and of rain, of sunshine and of storm have dawned and faded away over the Lake of Lugano, over the hills of Valsolda since that game of cards was played by Signora Pasotti, her husband, the retired controller of customs, and the big curate of Puria, in the boat which coasted slowly along the rocky shore between San Mamette and Cressogno in the misty rain.

The times were grey and sleepy, in keeping with the aspect of sky and lake, after the breva had subsided, the breeze which had so terrified Signora Pasotti. The great breva [C] of 1848, after bringing a few hours of sunshine, and striving awhile with the heavy clouds, had slumbered for three years, allowing one breathless, gloomy, silent day to follow another in those places where the scene of this humble tale of mine is laid.

The king and queens of tarocchi, the mondo, the matto and the bagatto, were imported personages at that time, and in those parts; minor powers tolerated benevolently by the great, silent Austrian empire; and their antagonisms, their alliances, their wars, were the only political questions which might be freely discussed. Even Pin, as he rowed, eagerly poked his hooked and inquisitive nose into Signora Barborin's cards, withdrawing it reluctantly again. Once he paused in his rowing, and let his nose hover above the cards, to see how the poor woman would extricate herself from a difficult position; what she would do with a certain card it was dangerous to play, and equally dangerous to hold. Her husband thumped impatiently on the little table, the big curate sorted his cards with a blissful smile, while she clasped hers to her bosom, now laughing, now groaning, and rolling her eyes from one to the other of her companions.

"She holds the matto," the curate whispered.

"She always goes on like that when she has the matto," said Pasotti, and called to her, thumping the table one more—

"Out with the matto!"

"I will throw him into the lake!" said she. She cast a glance towards the prow, and, as an excuse, remarked that they were nearing Cressogno, and that it was time to