The Bravo of Venice: A Romance

IT was evening. Multitudes of light clouds, partially illumined by the moonbeams, overspread the horizon, and through them floated the full moon in tranquil majesty, while her s...

AND now rushed the unfortunate wildly through the streets of Venice. He railed at fortune; he laughed and cursed by turns; yet sometimes he suddenly stood still, seemed as ponde...

SCARCELY were the bravoes seated, when Cinthia (for that was the young woman’s name) was again summoned to the door; and the company was now increased by two new-comers, who exa...

ABELLINO, this Italian Hercules, all terrible as he appeared to be, was not long a member of this society before his companions felt towards him sentiments of the most unbounded...

ABELLINO had already passed six weeks in Venice, and yet, either from want of opportunity, or of inclination, he had suffered his daggers to remain idle in their sheaths. This p...

“Nay, to say truth, ’tis but a woman; but one must not give too difficult a task to a young beginner. I will myself accompany you, and see how you conduct yourself in the first...

IT was not without good reason that Abellino took his departure in such haste. He had quitted the spot but a few minutes, when a large party accidentally strolled that way, and...

“CONFUSION!” exclaimed Parozzi, a Venetian nobleman of the first rank, as he paced his chamber with a disordered air on the morning after Matteo’s murder; “now all curses light...

SCARCELY had Abellino achieved the bloody deed which employed every tongue in Venice, when he changed his dress and whole appearance with so much expedition and success as to pr...

IN solitude and anxiety, with barred windows and bolted doors, did the banditti pass the day immediately succeeding Matteo’s murder; every murmur in the street appeared to them...

TWO evenings had elapsed since the Doge’s entertainment. On the second, Parozzi sat in his own apartment, with Memmo and Falieri. Dimly burnt the lights; lowering and tempestuou...

SINCE Rosabella’s birthday, no woman in Venice who had the slightest pretensions to beauty, or the most remote expectations of making conquests, had any subject of conversation...

I INFORMED my readers, in the beginning of the last chapter, that Flodoardo was become melancholy, and that Rosabella was indisposed, but I did not tell them what had occasioned...

SCARCELY had she reached her chamber ere Rosabella repented her having acted so courageously. It was cruel in her, she thought, to have given him so harsh an answer. She recolle...

IT must be superfluous to inform my readers that all Venice became furious at this new insolence. Within the memory of man had no one ever treated with such derision the celebra...

ROSABELLA, the idol of all Venice, lay on the bed of sickness; a sorrow, whose cause was carefully concealed from every one, undermined her health, and destroyed the bloom of he...

AND now who was so blessed as the fortunate Flodoardo? The victory was his own, he had heard the wished-for sentence pronounced by the lips of Rosabella. He raised her from the...

“VICTORY!” shouted Parozzi, as he rushed into the Cardinal Gonzaga’s chamber, where the chief conspirators were all assembled; “our work goes on bravely. Flodoardo returned this...

THE next morning everything in Venice seemed as tranquil as if nothing more than ordinary was on the point of taking place; and yet, since her first foundation, never had a more...

THE Doge became uneasy. The senator Vitalba began to tremble for his thousand sequins, and the conspirators could not restrain their spiteful laughter, when Contarino gravely de...

INSTANTLY a loud cry of terror resounded through the apartment. Rosabella sank fainting at the bravo’s feet; the conspirators were almost suffocated with rage, terror, and aston...

AND now it would not be at all amiss to make Count Rosalvo sit down quietly between the good old Doge and his lovely niece; and then cause him to relate the motive of Monaldesch...