"A gondolier is a man, and though they had the feelings of human nature on being beaten, they had also the feelings of human nature when they heard that a father was robbed of his son--Signore," continued Antonio, with great earnestness and a singular simplicity, "there will be great discontent on the ca.n.a.ls, if the galleys sail with the boy aboard them!"

"Such is thy opinion; were the gondoliers on the Lido numerous?"

"When the sports ended, eccellenza, they came over by hundreds, and I will do the generous fellows the justice to say, that they had forgotten their want of luck in the love of justice. Diamine! these gondoliers are not so bad a cla.s.s as some pretend, but they are men like ourselves, and can feel for a Christian as well as another."

The secretary paused, for his task was done; and a deep silence pervaded the gloomy apartment. After a short pause one of the three resumed--

"Antonio Vecchio," he said, "thou hast served thyself in these said galleys, to which thou now seemest so averse--and served bravely, as I learn?"

"Signore, I have done my duty by St. Mark. I played my part against the infidel, but it was after my beard was grown, and at an age when I had learnt to know good from evil. There is no duty more cheerfully performed by us all, than to defend the islands and the Lagunes against the enemy."

"And all the Republic's dominions.--Thou canst make no distinctions between any of the rights of the state."

"There is wisdom granted to the great, which G.o.d has denied the poor and the weak, Signore. To me it does not seem clear that Venice, a city built on a few islands, hath any more right to carry her rule into Crete or Candia, than the Turk hath to come here."

"How! Dost thou dare on the Lido to question the claim of the Republic to her conquests? or do the irreverent fishermen dare thus to speak lightly of her glory?"

"Eccellenza, I know little of rights that come by violence. G.o.d hath given us the Lagunes, but I know not that he has given us more. This glory of which you speak may sit lightly on the shoulder of a senator, but it weighs heavily on a fisherman's heart."

"Thou speakest, bold man, of that which thou dost not comprehend."

"It is unfortunate, Signore, that the power to understand hath not been given to those who have so much power to suffer."

An anxious pause succeeded this reply.

"Thou mayest withdraw, Antonio," said he, who apparently presided in the dread councils of the Three. "Thou wilt not speak of what has happened, and thou wilt await the inevitable justice of St. Mark in full confidence of its execution."

"Thanks, ill.u.s.trious senator; I will obey your excellency; but my heart is full, and I would fain say a few words concerning the child, before I quit this n.o.ble company."

"Thou mayest speak--and here thou mayest give free vent to all thy wishes, or to all thy griefs, if any thou hast. St. Mark has no greater pleasure than to listen to the wishes of his children."

"I believe they have reviled the Republic in calling its chiefs heartless, and sold to ambition!" said the old man, with generous warmth, disregarding the stern rebuke which gleamed in the eye of Jacopo. "A senator is but a man, and there are fathers and children among them, as among us of the Lagunes."

"Speak, but refrain from seditious or discreditable discourse," uttered a secretary, in a half-whisper. "Proceed."

"I have little now to offer, Signori; I am not used to boast of my services to the state, excellent gentlemen, but there is a time when human modesty must give way to human nature. These scars were got in one of the proudest days of St. Mark, and in the foremost of all the galleys that fought among the Greek Islands. The father of my boy wept over me then, as I have since wept over his own son--yes--I might be ashamed to own it among men, but if the truth must be spoken, the loss of the boy has drawn bitter tears from me in the darkness of night, and in the solitude of the Lagunes. I lay many weeks, Signori, less a man than a corpse, and when I got back again to my nets and my toil, I did not withhold my son from the call of the Republic. He went in my place to meet the infidel--a service from which he never came back. This was the duty of men who had grown in experience, and who were not to be deluded into wickedness by the evil company of the galleys. But this calling of children into the snares of the devil grieves a father, and--I will own the weakness, if such it be--I am not of a courage and pride to send forth my own flesh and blood into the danger and corruption of war and evil society, as in days when the stoutness of the heart was like the stoutness of the limbs. Give me back, then, my boy, till he has seen my old head laid beneath the sands, and until, by the aid of blessed St.

Anthony, and such counsels as a poor man can offer, I may give him more steadiness in his love of the right, and until I may have so shaped his life, that he will not be driven about by every pleasant or treacherous wind that may happen to blow upon his bark. Signori, you are rich, and powerful, and honored, and though you may be placed in the way of temptations to do wrongs that are suited to your high names and ill.u.s.trious fortunes, ye know little of the trials of the poor. What are the temptations of the blessed St. Anthony himself, to those of the evil company of the galleys! And now, Signori, though you may be angry to hear it, I will say, that when an aged man has no other kin on earth, or none so near as to feel the glow of the thin blood of the poor, than one poor boy, St. Mark would do well to remember that even a fisherman of the Lagunes can feel as well as the Doge on his throne. This much I say, ill.u.s.trious senators, in sorrow, and not in anger; for I would get back the child, and die in peace with my superiors, as with my equals."

"Thou mayest depart," said one of the Three.

"Not yet, Signore, I have still more to say of the men of the Lagunes, who speak with loud voices concerning this dragging of boys into the service of the galleys."

"We will hear their opinions."

"n.o.ble gentlemen, if I were to utter all they have said, word for word, I might do some disfavor to your ears! Man is man, though the Virgin and the saints listen to his aves and prayers from beneath a jacket of serge and a fisherman's cap. But I know too well my duty to the senate to speak so plainly. But, Signori, they say, saving the bluntness of their language, that St. Mark should have ears for the meanest of his people as well as for the richest n.o.ble; and that not a hair should fall from the head of a fisherman, without its being counted as if it were a lock from beneath the horned bonnet; and that where G.o.d hath not made marks of his displeasure, man should not."

"Do they dare to reason thus?"

"I know not if it be reason, ill.u.s.trious Signore, but it is what they say, and, eccellenza, it is holy truth. We are poor workmen of the Lagunes, who rise with the day to cast our nets, and return at night to hard beds and harder fare; but with this we might be content, did the senate count us as Christians and men. That G.o.d hath not given to all the same chances in life, I well know, for it often happens that I draw an empty net, when my comrades are groaning with the weight of their draughts; but this is done to punish my sins, or to humble my heart, whereas it exceeds the power of man to look into the secrets of the soul, or to foretell the evil of the still innocent child. Blessed St.

Anthony knows how many years of suffering this visit to the galleys may cause to the child in the end. Think of these things, I pray you, Signori, and send men of tried principles to the wars."

"Thou mayest retire," rejoined the judge.

"I should be sorry that any who cometh of my blood," continued the inattentive Antonio, "should be the cause of ill-will between them that rule and them that are born to obey. But nature is stronger even than the law, and I should discredit her feelings were I to go without speaking as becomes a father. Ye have taken my child and sent him to serve the state at the hazard of body and soul, without giving opportunity for a parting kiss, or a parting blessing--ye have used my flesh and blood as ye would use the wood of the a.r.s.enal, and sent it forth upon the sea as if it were the insensible metal of the b.a.l.l.s ye throw against the infidel. Ye have shut your ears to my prayers, as if they were words uttered by the wicked, and when I have exhorted you on my knees, wearied my stiffened limbs to do ye pleasure, rendered ye the jewel which St. Anthony gave to my net, that it might soften your hearts, and reasoned with you calmly on the nature of your acts, you turn from me coldly, as if I were unfit to stand forth in defence of the offspring that G.o.d hath left my age! This is not the boasted justice of St. Mark, Venetian senators, but hardness of heart and a wasting of the means of the poor, that would ill become the most grasping Hebrew of the Rialto!"

"Hast thou aught more to urge, Antonio?" asked the judge, with the wily design of unmasking the fisherman's entire soul.

"Is it not enough, Signore, that I urge my years, my poverty, my scars, and my love for the boy? I know ye not, but though ye are hid behind the folds of your robes and masks, still must ye be men. There may be among ye a father, or perhaps some one who hath a still more sacred charge, the child of a dead son. To him I speak. In vain ye talk of justice when the weight of your power falls on them least able to bear it; and though ye may delude yourselves, the meanest gondolier of the ca.n.a.l knows--"

He was stopped from uttering more by his companion, who rudely placed a hand on his mouth.

"Why hast thou presumed to stop the complaints of Antonio?" sternly demanded the judge.

"It was not decent, ill.u.s.trious senators, to listen to such disrespect in so n.o.ble a presence," Jacopo answered, bending reverently as he spoke. "This old fisherman, dread Signori, is warmed by love for his offspring, and he will utter that which, in his cooler moments, he will repent."

"St. Mark fears not the truth! If he has more to say, let him declare it."

But the excited Antonio began to reflect. The flush which had ascended to his weather-beaten cheek disappeared, and his naked breast ceased to heave. He stood like one rebuked, more by his discretion than his conscience, with a calmer eye, and a face that exhibited the composure of his years, and the respect of his condition.

"If I have offended, great patricians," he said, more mildly, "I pray you to forget the zeal of an ignorant old man, whose feelings are master of his breeding, and who knows less how to render the truth agreeable to n.o.ble ears, than to utter it."

"Thou mayest depart."

The armed attendants advanced, and obedient to a sign from the secretary, they led Antonio and his companion through the door by which they had entered. The other officials of the place followed, and the secret judges were left by themselves in the chamber of doom.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Oh! the days that we have seen."

SHELTON.

A pause like that which accompanies self-contemplation, and perhaps conscious distrust of purpose, succeeded. Then the Three arose together, and began to lay aside the instruments of their disguise. When the masks were removed, they exposed the grave visages of men in the decline of life, athwart which worldly cares and worldly pa.s.sions had drawn those deep lines, which no subsequent ease or resignation can erase. During the process of unrobing neither spoke, for the affair on which they had just been employed, caused novel and disagreeable sensations to them all. When they were delivered from their superfluous garments and their masks, however, they drew near the table, and each sought that relief for his limbs and person which was natural to the long restraint he had undergone.

"There are letters from the French king intercepted," said one, after time had permitted them to rally their thoughts;--"it would appear they treat of the new intentions of the emperor."

"Have they been restored to the amba.s.sador? or are the originals to go before the senate?" demanded another.

"On that we must take counsel at our leisure. I have naught else to communicate, except that the order given to intercept the messenger of the Holy See hath failed of its object."

"Of this the secretaries advertised me. We must look into the negligence of the agents, for there is good reason to believe much useful knowledge would have come from that seizure."

"As the attempt is already known and much spoken of, care must be had to issue orders for the arrest of the robbers, else may the Republic fall into disrepute with its friends. There are names on our list which might be readily marked for punishment, for that quarter of our patrimony is never in want of proscribed to conceal an accident of this nature."

"Good heed will be had to this, since, as you say, the affair is weighty. The government or the individual that is negligent of reputation, cannot expect long to retain the respect of its equals."