“Perhaps you know its significance. I don’t. The camel doesn’t figure in Venetian history, so far as I know. It is true, Marco Polo traveled to the Great Khan of Cathay. The scene might have been a chapter out of his life. But after wading through his travels I have failed to find it.”
“And the next, I suppose, is too badly mutilated to be identified?”
“Absolutely,” he grumbled.
“And the background of the sixth hour?” I asked, studying the photograph through a powerful magnifying-glass. “Have you been able to identify either of the two figures seated on the balcony?”
“Both,” he replied with more animation. “The figure with the Doge’s cap is Dandolo. The figure crowned with a wreath of laurel by his side represents the poet Petrarch, who was his guest. The automatic figure that dances the ten steps forward and backward symbolizes a festival held on the Piazza after Venice had subdued her enemy Crete.”
“The seventh hour represents,” I ventured, “the legend of the Doge receiving news of victory by a carrier-pigeon. Every child who feeds the creatures on the Piazza knows that story. The tower must be the Campanile.”
“Quite right. The scene of the eighth hour,” continued St. Hilary, “you discovered for yourself in the Academy this morning. The room of the palace in the background is an exact reproduction of the palace seen in the painting of Carpaccio.”
“And the ninth?” I demanded, feeling that our information was meager indeed.
“Here, again, we can only guess. The broken figure may be Carmagnola, the soldier of fortune. The thirteen figures kneeling in the background no doubt typify his conquered enemies. The procession of the gondolas and the spouting tritons in the tenth probably represent the going of the Doge in his bucentaur to wed the Adriatic.”
“And the eleventh hour must be quite hopeless. The automaton is missing and the plate at the back is battered beyond all recognition,” I said moodily.