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After we all went back to the tarven and I had laid down a spell and rested, I went out with Arvilly and Tommy for a little walk, Miss Meechim, and Dorothy, and Robert Strong havin' gone over to Maceo, the old Portuguese town on the mainland. They wanted to see the place where Camoens wrote his great poem, "The Lusiad," and where he writ them heart-breakin' poems to Catarina.
We present to you, if so it shall please your grace, our future queen, this fair young maid, Catarina, the daughter of the noble Marco Cornaro, merchant and senator of the Republic." What the seventy-one disappointed young ladies thought of the King's choice, or what they said about it when they were safely at home once more, history does not record.
The service closed, and in the great Cornaro tomb in the family chapel, at last was laid to rest the body of one who had enjoyed much but suffered more the sorrowful Queen of Cyprus, the once bright and beautiful Daughter of the Republic. Venice to-day is mouldy and wasting. The palace in which Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop.
I provided a stock of groceries for two months' consumption; and, after the usual amount of unnecessary fuss and delay on the part of the owner, we started on the 19th of November. Penna took his family with him this comprised a smart, lively mameluco woman, named Catarina, whom we called Senora Katita, and two children.
I reached home, the dear old number twenty-seven in Santa Catarina dei Funari, by half-past seven, or even earlier; and I was glad when I rang the bell on the landing, and called through the keyhole in my impatience. "Mariuccia, Mariuccia, come quickly! It is I!" I cried. "O Madonna mia! I heard her exclaim, and there was a tremendous clatter, as she dropped the coffee-pot.
As to these few letters bound by themselves, give them just as they are to Monna Catarina di Giovanni, and let her distribute them.
Donizetti's last opera, "Catarina Comaro" the sixty-third one represented, was brought out at Naples in the year 1844 without adding aught to his reputation.
To be "the most picturesque figure in the history of Holland," as she has been called, is distinction indeed; but higher still must surely be that gentleness of character and nobility of soul that, in these days of ours, may be acquired by every girl and boy who reads this romantic story of the Countess Jacqueline, the fair young Lady of Holland. "Who is he? Why do you not know, Catarina mia?
"But then," he declared, "Venice hath many fair daughters, sire, whom the king's choice would honor, and Catarina is but a young maid yet. Would it not be wiser, when you choose a queen, to select some older donzella for your bride? Though it will, I can aver, be hard to choose fairer."
I do not know if the story is true, but this is the story, Signori, and there is the train for Napoli. Ah, grazie! Signori, grazie tanto! A rivederci! Signori, a rivederci!" Sister Maddelena. Across the valley of the Oreto from Monreale, on the slopes of the mountains just above the little village of Parco, lies the old convent of Sta. Catarina.
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