May God and St. Mark grant that no tempter ever
offer me the sight of Venice again at the price of my soul's
salvation! I shall never, never see Venice more!"
"You must be a Venetian, father, surely, to love it so well?" said
Paolina, after a minute or two of silence.
"A Venetian I am--or was, daughter; as I well knew you were when you
first spoke. Might I ask your name?"
"Paolina Foscarelli, father. I am an orphan," said she, softly.
"No!" said the monk, shaking his head, with a deep sigh, and looking
earnestly into the girl's face, but without any appearance of
surprise,--"No; you are not Paolina Foscarelli."
"Indeed, father, that is my name," said Paolina, again recurring to
her doubt whether the monk was altogether of sound mind, and
speaking very quietly and gently; "my father's name was Foscarelli,
and the baptismal name of my mother was the same as mine--Paolina."
"Jacopo and Paolina Foscarelli, who lived in the little house at the
corner of the Campo di San Pietro and Paolo," rejoined the monk,
speaking in a dreamy far-away kind of manner.
"I have truly heard that they lived there," said she; "but I was
only four years old when they died, one very soon after the other,
and since that I have lived with a friend of my mother's, Signora
Steno."
"The child of Jacopo and Paolina Foscarelli," said the monk, in the
same dreamy tone, and pressing his thin emaciated hands before his
eyes as he spoke; "and you have come here to find me?"
"Nay, father, not to find you.
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