“Why, my friend? Because it so happens that I hold a little note that is signed jointly in the writing of the noble youths. Now if I were to postpone the necessity of their paying those notes for a month or two, or if I removed the necessity of payment altogether, would they not be duly grateful?”
As I have said, St. Hilary’s methods were always so beautifully direct and unscrupulous.
CHAPTER XXIV
St. Hilary and I were smiling at ourselves before the pier-glass in my bedroom. It seemed to me quite impossible that we could be recognized.
As a captain of the Inquisitorial Guard St. Hilary was inimitable. His black eyes, as bright and piercing as any swashbuckler’s, glowed through the velvet mask with a ferocity that was startling. His leanness and agility, the stiff carriage of his compact and sinewy little body, the gray goatee and mustachios, all distinctive of St. Hilary, were quite as distinctive of the part he had taken. Nothing could be more thoroughly foreign, more Italian.
He was pleased to approve of me. A magnificent robe of old Genoese velvet, bordered with ermine, the Doge’s cap, with one great stone glowing in the front, made of me a most imposing personage. The velvet mask completed my disguise. We might or might not be mistaken for the two gallant young noblemen whose costumes St. Hilary had “squeezed” from them, but at least we were not ourselves.
And so, seated stiffly upright, not to crush our gorgeous costumes, we started late in the evening for the ball at the Cæsarini Palace.
Propelled with vigorous strokes, we swept down the Grand Canal. It was impossible not to enter into the adventure with spirit and abandon. Our going to the ball was audacious enough. But the ball itself was a mere bagatelle to us. We were about to loot a palace. It is not every day that one has such big game to key one’s nerves to fighting pitch.
We glided silently and swiftly down the broad stream. Glimmering lanterns of other gondolas danced about us. Every moment we overtook and were passed by guests. Every Rio poured forth its tribute, a doge, a monk, a queen, a knight. As we neared the palace the gondolas almost touched, so dense was the throng. A compact mass, we drifted toward the blaze of light pouring from the open hall of the Cæsarini Palace.
Slowly, one by one, the gondolas were deftly guided to the marble steps. St. Hilary grasped my arm. He whispered his last instructions. I was not an adept at this sort of thing.