There enters now another and much more important
character,--one infinitely more interesting to
my beautiful Lady of the Shipyards than any grandfather
gondolier or staid old painter who ever lived.
This young gentleman is twenty-one; has a head like
the Hermes, a body like the fauns, and winsome, languishing
eyes with a light in their depths which have
set the heart of every girl along his native Giudecca
pitapatting morning, noon, and night. He enjoys
the distinguished name of Vittorio Borodini, and is
the descendant of a family of gondoliers--of the guild
of the Castellani--who can trace their ancestral calling
back some two hundred years (so can Luigi; but
then Luigi never speaks of it, and the Borodinis
always do). Being aristocrats, the Zanalettos and
Borodinis naturally fraternize, and as they live in
the same quarter--away up on the Giudecca--two
miles from my canal--the fathers of Vittorio and
Luigi have become intimate friends. Anything,
therefore, touching the welfare of any one of the
descendants of so honorable a guild is more or less
vital to the members of both families.

At the moment something HAD touched a Borodino
--and in the most vital of spots. This was nothing
less than the heart of young Vittorio, the pride
and hope of his father. He had seen the "Rose of
the Shipyards," as she was now called, pass the traghetto
of the Molo, off which lay his gondola awaiting
custom,--it was on one of the days when the