Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/153

142

a distant apartment of the villa a youth lay sleeping, his richly-tinted face with the black curls falling back from the bold brow, like one of the beautiful boys who loved, and laughed, and danced, and sung in one long carnival, from sunset to sunrise, in the glad Venice of Goldoni. He slept soundly, as only youth sleeps, dressed in a Capriote fishing suit; and on his chest, as the striped shirt fell back from it, there were the scars of deep wounds just healed—no more—over the strong fearless beatings of his young heart. A little distance from him sat his father, an old man, with the grand head of a noble of Tintoretto's or Bassano's canvas—the head of the great mediæval signori who filled the porphyry palaces, and swept through the Piazzo San Marco, in the red gold of glowing summer evenings, when the year of revel was held in Venice for the Foscaria's accession, and the City of the Waters was in her