into the Serpentine, he was compelled to return
to the Continent. He subsequently joined the
army, and has now, I believe, the honour of
marching at the head of the Hundred and First
Regiment of the Line.

I knew this present poodle to be an animal,
a brute beast, soulless and futureless; at least,
my miserable human conceit taught me thus
to regard him. He had no reason, of course,
only instinct. He could know no pleasures
beyond the gratification of his sensual appetites.
And yet, all brute as he was, he did not look
like a poodle that would over-eat himself. He
was, patently, a total abstainer from
intoxicating liquors. He was a brute, but he didn't
bark at passing strangers; and from the little I
saw of him on dry land, he was not prone to
association with low dogs. It was very strange,
and very irreverent, and a vagabond kind of
thought altogether, but the more I considered
him, the more I grew to deem that, to be
complete, he ought to have a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles across his nose, a neatly puckered
frill with a diamond brooch in his bosom, a
snuff-box, or a golden-headed cane in one paw,
and a sprinkling of hair-powder on his pate. Thus
accoutred he would have been, to me, the image
of a grave, wise, cultivated physician of the old
school—no solemn humbug, no voluble quack,
but a sapient, polished medico. The allusion
was enhanced by the fact of there being at the
corner of the canal, where I took oars, a cool
and shady chemist's shop; and I fancied that
he had been writing prescriptions in the
Pharmacy, and had now come out for a mouthful of
the sea breeze, or to see a patient at the
Giudecca. He was not, however, attached to
the compounder of drugs. He was the friend
and Mentor of the boatman I had just engaged.
He, the boat, and the boatman, belonged to each
other, and made up one harmonious whole. As
I have noted, he appeared, as a matter of
courtesy, to ask my permission to be of the
party for a stroll on the Canalazzo; and, that
being granted, he tripped blithely over the
bulwarks from the marble landing-stairs to the
carpeted keelson, and was of us directly.

"Alci, qui?" said the boatman.

Observe, that to the "qui" I have appended
a note of interrogation. The inflection of the
boatman's tone justifies me in the act. It was
not a brutal command—a savage "come here!"
It was a kindly query as to where he intended
to sit. "Qui" meant the afterpart, behind my
cabin. The poodle did not shake his head.
Instinct did not go so far as that; but his tail
deflected in the wag negative. He elected to
sit at the prow, and at that carved and fiddle-
headed promontory he took his station
immediately over against the bench where I was
reclining. The boatman called him "Alci,"
whence I conjectured that the poodle's name
was Alcibiades.

The water-side, in England, is associated with
noise, scurrility, and extortion. The waterman
you have hired makes up his mind to cheat you.
The Tom Tugs who have failed in securing you,
curse their colleague and his fare as the wherry
pushes off. You depart from a shore of mud,
ordure, broken bottles, and fragments of pottery.
Abroad, even, I have found the canotiers at
Asnières a ruffianly crew, and the red-shirted
and bearded Charons who ferry you over the
Neva little better than savages. Here we went
off in cheerful tranquillity. In a place where
everybody must take a boat, competition is
robbed of its feverish fierceness. If it be
Giacomo's turn this time, it will be Paolo's
within five or ten minutes. Extortion does not
obtain to any great extent. You cannot be ten
minutes in the city, without somebody telling
you that the water-fare for the first hour (single-
oared) is a franc, and for every succeeding hour
half that sum, and that for five francs you
may have a boat and boatman for the entire
day. As for the extra gratuity, the
"buonamano," a couple of soldi will suffice, and a
hundred soldi go to a florin. The only little
"pull" possessed by the boatman lies in the
franc in these latitudes being an imaginary coin,
and in the quarter florin, which he tells you is
worth only half a franc, representing about a
third more. Altogether, the financial state of
things is curious. You see in actual circulation
nothing but Austrian florins, zwanzigers,
kreuzers, and soldi; but the accounts are all
kept in francs and centimes—the Italian lire
and centesimi. In adopting this mode of
reckoning, perhaps, the people cherish a mournful
chimera that they have still some kind
of union with the beloved and distant land—
the land beyond the lagunes and the
Quadrilateral—the land where human speech and
action are free—the land where Victor
Emmanuel, the fighting king who tells no lies,
reigns by the grace of God and the national
will, over twenty-two millions of Italians who
can call their souls their own.

Back, then, I stretched myself upon the
cushions in full enjoyment of the long-desired
at last-attained haven; and the poodle sat
outside the door, calmly contemplating me, his wise
head a little on one side. No Mordecai in the
gate he, full of minatory remonstrance; the
rather, a cheerful harbinger, a pleasant cicerone,
an obliging gentleman-usher, murmuring,
"Welcome to the wonderful city that is moored on
the bosom of the salt, salt sea." "Poodle,"
I said, "you and the boatman shall be my
guides to-day, and I will have no other. Into
the hands of the abhorred valet de place I know
that sooner or later I must fall. He has been
looming in handbooks and continental
Bradshaws these ten days past. I was threatened
with him at the railway station, just as I stepped
into the omnibus. The omnibus is a boat—a
shabby Bucentaur. He flitted through the
vestibule of the Hotel Victoria, and the waiter
had all but consigned me to his custody, when I
declared that, for one day at least, I would go
out alone. I see him smirking at me now, from
every pair of water-stairs: rings in his ears, a
pink umbrella under his arm, expectant. His
little brown brats at home may have but a