Even the peasants in the vineyards seemed as merry and thoughtless as
the quality in their gardens. The vintage-time is the holiday of the
rural year and the day's work was interspersed with frequent intervals
of relaxation. At the villages where the burchiello touched for
refreshments, handsome young women in scarlet bodices came on board with
baskets of melons, grapes, figs and peaches; and under the trellises on
the landings, lads and girls with flowers in their hair were dancing the
monferrina to the rattle of tambourines or the chant of some wandering
ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they
could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village
diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity,
was too volatile not to be drawn into the adventure. The whole party
accordingly disembarked, and were presently giving an exhibition of
their talents to the assembled idlers, the Pantaloon, Harlequin and
Doctor enacting a comical intermezzo which Cantapresto had that morning
composed for them, while Scaramouch and Columbine joined the dancers,
and the rest of the company, seizing on a train of donkeys laden with
vegetables for the Venetian market, stripped these patient animals of
their panniers, and mounting them bareback started a Corso around the
village square amid the invectives of the drivers and the applause of
the crowd.
Day was declining when the Marquess at last succeeded in driving his
flock to their fold, and the moon sent a quiver of brightness across the
water as the burchiello touched at the landing of a villa set amid
close-massed foliage high above the river.
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