Messer Gherardo turned his eyes towards her a few moments, anxious to profit by so lovely and edifying an example, without the least alloy of any more terrestrial feeling, and accordingly drew a little psalter from his pocket, and began, quite absorbed within himself, and shaking his head with emotion, to join in the anthem.
Morosini family
The mass being at length over, Messer Gherardo bethought himself, according to courteous custom, of making a chaste obeisance to the lady; but while he was preparing, she had already passed, and he followed, marveling within himself in what manner she would have returned his intended civility. On getting out, he instinctively took the road to pay his ten pieces to the landlord, an agent for one of the noble Morosini family, and knocking at the door, he said, “I am come here to pay money as usual, but you have never yet returned my calls to pay me anything; come and look at my shop some day;” and in this jocular strain he thrust his hand into his purse, feeling on all sides without finding a single sequin.
“Am I out of my wits?” he cried. “What is this?” and he rolled his eyes like a demoniac, as if under the operation of the bitterest torments. At length, feeling something hard sticking in a comer of his purse, and hastily seizing it, he drew forth a beautiful bracelet of fine gold with diamond clasps, amounting to the value of some two hundred ducats.
The poor tradesman was half petrified at the sight. At first he believed it to be the effect of witchcraft, then a trick; and was altogether so much at a loss, that turning briskly round, while the agent grinned in his face, he ran down the steps without saying a single word “Messer Gherardo, good Messer Gherardo,” he cried, as he held pen and paper in hand to give him a receipt, “what is the matter?”
Then looking out of the window, he beheld him running along at a furious pace, every one making way for him. The agent, shaking his head (for he now thought him a little beside himself), returned to his accounts, regretting only that he had not received the money; while Messer Gherardo, who had all his wits about him as far as his interest was concerned, hastened to the house of his friend the goldsmith, anxious to ascertain the value of the toy, in lieu of the sum he had lost.
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