“Oh! my necklace!” cried a fair woman as she leaned over the side of
her gondola.
A string of opals, linked and set in gold, had been loosened from
her throat, and had slid down into the water of the lagoon, midway
between the Lido and the city of Venice. But the gondola was moving
swiftly under the impulsion of a rower fore and aft, and, though they
stopped a few moments after at her cry, the spot where it had fallen
was already passed and left behind. She was vexed and provoked. She
had many jewels, but the opal necklace was an heirloom, and of fine
and curious workmanship. The gondoliers did their best to find it,
but in vain. They were in the deeper water of the sailing roads,
which were marked out by the lines of poles, and the necklace, a
slight thing, had been borne away by the current setting in from the
open sea.
It was a pale afternoon in late summer; the heat was still great; the
skies and the waters were of the same soft, dreamy, silvery hue, and
the same transparency and ethereality were on the distant horizons
of the hills, west and east. The only colour there was came from
the ruddy painted sails of some fruit-laden market boats which were
passing to leeward.
[Illustration: “Oh! my necklace!” cried a fair woman, as she leaned
over the side of the gondola.]
Neither of the men could swim; many Venetians cannot; but they got
over the side, and waded up to their waists in the water, and with
their oars struck and sounded the sandy bottom, whilst she encouraged
them with praise and extravagant promise of reward. Their efforts
were of no avail. The lagoon, which has been the grave of so many,
kept the drowned opals.
“We will go back and send divers,” she said to her men who, wet to
their waists, were well content to turn the head of the gondola back
to the city.
They wore white clothes with red sashes and red ribbons round their
straw hats; they were in her private service; they steered quickly
home again over the calm water-way, and in and out the crowded craft
by the Schiavone past the Customs House, and S. Giorgio, and the
Salvatore, until they reached a palace on the Grand Canal, which
was their mistress’s residence, with poles painted red and white,
with coronets on their tops, marking the landing stairs in the old
Venetian fashion.
“I have lost my opals in the water!” she cried to a friend who was on
one of the balconies of the first floor.
“I am glad you have lost them,” replied her friend. “They are stones
of misfortune.”
“Nonsense! They were beautiful, and they were Ninetta Zaranegra’s,
poor Carlo’s great-great-grandmother; they were one of her nuptial
presents a hundred and twenty years ago. I must have the men dive and
dredge till they are found. The water is so shallow. I cannot think
how the collar can have vanished so completely in such a moment of
time.”
She ascended her palace steps, and dismissed her gondoliers with a
gesture, as she paused in the entrance-hall to tell her major-domo
of her loss, and consult him as to the best means to recover the
necklace. The hall was painted in fresco, with beautiful Moorish
windows, and a groined and gilded ceiling, and a wide staircase of
white marble, uncarpeted. Opposite the entrance was a latticed door
through which was seen the bright green of acacias, cratægus, and
laurel growing in a garden.
On the morrow, when it was known through Venice that the rich and
generous Countess Zaranegra had lost her jewels, all the best
divers hurried to the place where the opals had dropped, and worked
sedulously from daybreak to find it, sailors and fishermen and
boatmen all joining in the search, in hope to merit the reward she
promised. But no one of them succeeded. Their efforts were useless.
The tenacious water would not yield up its prey. The opals were gone,
like spindrift.
[Illustration: Chapter end woodcut]
[Illustration: The winter came and went, wrapping Venice in its
mists.]
[Illustration: Chapter head woodcut]