nine o'clock
The unwonted freedom exhilarated her ; there was intoxication in the encounter of faces on the promenade , in the dazzle and glimmer of the lights , and even in the music of the Austrian band playing in the Piazza , as it came purified to her patriotic ear by the distance . There were none but Italians upon the Molo , and one might walk there without so much as touching an officer with the hem of one 's garment ; and , a little later , when the band ceased playing , she should go with the other Italians and possess the Piazza for one blessed hour . In the mean time , the Paronsina had a sharp little tongue ; and , after she had flattered the landscape , and had , from her true heart , once for all , saluted the promenaders as brothers and sisters in Italy , she did not mind making fun of their peculiarities of dress and person . She was signally sarcastic upon such ladies as Tonelli chanced to admire , and often so stung him with her jests that he was glad when Pennellini appeared , as he always did exactly at nine o'clock , and joined the ladies in their promenade , asking and answering all those questions of ceremony which form Venetian greeting . He was a youth of the most methodical exactness in his whole life , and could no more have arrived on the Molo a moment before or after nine than the bronze giants on the clock-tower could have hastened or lingered in striking the hour . Nature , which had made him thus punctual and precise , gave him also good looks , and a most amiable kindness of heart . The Paronsina cared nothing at all for him in his quality of handsome young fellow ; but she prized him as an acquaintance whom she might salute , and be saluted by , in a city where her grandfather 's isolation kept her strange to nearly all the faces she saw .