Max Pemberton

“ And yet I have killed many a man, Count. The quiver of flesh upon my blade has been meat and drink to me often since the day I slew Marco Foscari in my father’s garden at Belluno. But the work in the garden of swords! Ah, that was like new wine in my veins.
“I had been in the city—benedetta la mia Venezia—five years when Girolamo brought the trouble to my doors. The people had learned already to applaud me; men bent the weapons of Nicolo and cried that the devil was in the steel. But I made them as the son of Andrea taught me; and finer for play or work never came out of Damascus. ”

“ It was plain that Paolo must come no more to my house by the church of the Salute; and while I gave Orio this promise, I wept in my heart for little Christine. But oh, how cunning is woman—how quick to see and mend her misfortunes!
“‘Nicolo,’ said she to me that very night at supper, ‘dear Nicolo’—for this was her way of speaking—‘what shall I do, how shall I live without him?’
“‘Who knows,’ said I, to cheer her, ‘what time may bring? I have seen men more set than your father, and yet turned about when a month has gone like a blade in a rotten basket. ”

“ Little Christine loved to wait for me upon the riva; she had supper set in that pleasant arbour whence one may see the shores of the Lido and the purple crowns of the Eugaæean Hills. Oh, it was good to see her thus: the child become the woman, the little maid playing mother. And I have never said her nay—not even when she told me of Paolo Steno, and of the words which he spoke when the Ascension brought him to her from Torcello. ”

“ I taught Girolamo, and he came daily to my house—at first, to hold me in fence with the fine conceit that I was making him my master; after that, as presently I was to learn, for love of Christine, the daughter of my neighbour, Orio Zorzi. She had then grown quite the woman; her beauty, though she had come only to her fifteenth year, was the talk of all the painters over upon the Guidecca, And for her, Count, I would have broken my sword the sword of Andrea of Belluno, the like to which there is not in the world. ”

“ The maid must become the wife, and the wife the mother, as it is written. And if the youth be honest, of good heart and will, and the child be ready, how is the love of an old man to come between them? Not, be it understood, that any consent of mine could help her to this happiness. Her father was a hard man; Paolo was a simple fellow of the people, who had nothing but his honest labour at the making of the finer glass-ware to help him. I foresaw trouble from the beginning of it; and when I talked of the thing to Orio, his old love for me alone permitted him to hear me out. ”

“ We made haste together to bind up the wound, lest there might be life yet smouldering in the body; and telling Christine to spread cushions in the boat, we carried Paolo thither. Scarce, however, were we in the long canal, when the gondola of Manin, the painter, came sweeping up towards his home; and at the sight of us and of our burden, the three men in it, first of whom was Girolamo, cried out to us to stop, or they would run us through as we sat. ”

“ Thou wilt lose me, Nicolo; I shall die, dear cousin; I shall never touch Paolo’s lips again.’
“‘Thy father has returned, then?’ said I.
“‘He was here at sundown,’ said she, ‘and even now has gone to speak with the priests.’
“It is a bitter thing, old friend, to see a child in sorrow. It is more bitter if that child has loved you all her life with a great love. I have never known so sad a moment as that; never one in which I stood so perplexed and helpless. And there were but twenty hours before me—twenty hours in which to save little Christine for her lover ”

“ I watched him from my window. An hour ago Luigi carried me in the boat to the garden gate, and I saw him at Girolamo’s feet. He is dead. Oh, God help me, he is dead.’
“She spoke the words, and such a torrent of weeping came upon her that I troubled her with no more questioning; but carried her to my gondola, which lay still at the steps. It was then quite dark; yet I feared so much to find the story as she had told to me that I waited for no lantern, but bade my boatman make straight for the house of Manin, which lies near by the canal of the Zitelle. ”

“ Our surgeon was to come again at daybreak, and the light was scarce up when I heard his voice upon the riva. He found Paolo to be doing well, and would not have him waked from the deep sleep into which he had fallen. The wound, he said, was near to the heart, and could be healed only by sustained rest and quiet. ”

“ When the thing befell, we had worked round to that part of the garden where the body of the hag lay. Retreating before the new fury of his attack—for fury it was when he felt that I was wearing—I stepped upon the woman whom I thought to be dead, and almost losing my foothold I gave him opening. But while I waited to feel the steel at my heart, while my head swam and a prayer rose upon my lips, the seemingly dead woman of a sudden raised herself up to clutch him about the legs ”

“ What truck I had with him, that was in my own house, where he came that I might school him in the use of the rapier—a pretty toy, old comrade, which these masters of France insist shall now hang like bodkins at our girdle; but, faugh! a weapon for boys, or for the hand of women at their play. ”