It was on my lips to tell him that he was a liar, but there is a time to argue and a time to be silent.
“I am an honourable soldier,” said I. “I have obeyed my orders and done my duty.”
The blood flushed into the old man's face and his eyes blazed through his mask.
“You are thieves and murderers, every man of you,” he cried. “What are you doing here? You are Frenchmen. Why are you not in France? Did we invite you to Venice? By what right are you here? Where are our pictures? Where are the horses of St. Mark? Who are you that you should pilfer those treasures which our fathers through so many centuries have collected? We were a great city when France was a desert. Your drunken, brawling, ignorant soldiers have undone the work of saints and heroes. What have you to say to it?”
He was, indeed, a formidable old man, for his white beard bristled with fury and he barked out the little sentences like a savage hound. For my part I could have told him that his pictures would be safe in Paris, that his horses were really not worth making a fuss about, and that he could see heroes—I say nothing of saints—without going back to his ancestors or even moving out of his chair. All this I could have pointed out, but one might as well argue with a Mameluke about religion. I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.
“The prisoner has no defence,” said one of my masked judges.
“Has any one any observation to make before judgment is passed?” The old man glared round him at the others.
“There is one matter, your Excellency,” said another.
“It can scarce be referred to without reopening a brother's wounds, but I would remind you that there is a very particular reason why an exemplary punishment should be inflicted in the case of this officer.”
“I had not forgotten it,” the old man answered.