It was affluence, it was luxury, but it was slavery and he knew it, and accepted the fact at first with much philosophy. Surely, he said to himself, a good cook and a good cellar, with a fine house at San Cassian, and a virtuous, if elderly, wife ought to satisfy any man of forty. The rest was but vanity. Could anything be more absurd, at his age, than to go on for ever playing the butterfly—such an elderly butterfly!—from one pair of bright eyes to another?
But he had counted without the fact that the butterfly is the final development of its genus and cannot turn into anything else. It must be a butterfly to the end. Poor Marco soon found that his heart was as susceptible as ever, and could beat like a boy's on very slight provocation, but that unfortunately it was never his rich wife who provoked it to such unseemly and lively action. Yet her facial angle inspired him with a terror even greater than the attraction of a pretty face and a well-turned figure. She had a way of setting her thin lips over her prominent teeth which at the same time stretched the skin upon the bridge of her hooked nose while she looked at him from under her half-closed lids, that made his blood run cold, robbed the richest sauce of its delicious flavour, and turned the wine of Samos to vinegar in his glass. Daily, she grew older, sharper, more irritable; and daily, too, the heart of Marco Pesaro seemed to grow younger and the more to crave the companionship of a mate much younger still, or at least the near presence of those outward, visible, and tangible gifts of the gods, such as a deep warm eye, and a soft white hand, with which man has always associated the heart of woman.
Zeno guessed all this and the rest too; the letter he had received needed no further explanation, and for old acquaintance's sake he had no objection to executing the commission Marco had thrust upon him.
And now, all you who stop and gather round the story-teller in this world's great bazaar, to listen, if his tale please you, and to find fault with him if it does not, you cry out that if Carlo Zeno was really the hero history describes him to have been, he would have been very, very grieved at being asked to do anything so inhuman as to buy a pretty slave abroad to be sent home to a friend, even though the latter protested that the girl was to be trained as a companion for his wife. He would have been grieved and angry, he would have torn the letter to shreds, and would either not have answered it at all, or would have written to tell Pesaro that he was a brute, that men and women are all free and equal, and that to buy and sell them is high treason against the majesty of the rights of men.
But to those protests and outcries the story-teller has many answers ready. In the first place, no one had even dreamt of the rights of men in 1376; and secondly, the trade in white slaves was almost as profitable to Venice then as it is in 1906 to certain great states the story-teller could name, with the advantage that there was no hypocritical secret about it, and that it was provided for in international treaties, in spite of the Pope, who said it was wrong; and thirdly, heroes are heroes for ever in respect of their heroic deeds, but in their daily lives they are very much like the other men of their class and time, as you will soon learn if you read the life of Bayard, 'without fear or reproach,' written by his Faithful Servitor; for the faithful one set down some doings of the virtuous knight which a modern biographer would have altogether left out, but which were no more a 'reproach' to a man in the year 1500, than getting drunk was a 'reproach' in 1700, or than stealing anything over a million is a 'reproach' to-day; fourthly and lastly, if Zeno had virtuously refused to buy a slave for Marco Pesaro, there would have been no story to tell, and this seems an excellent argument to the story-teller himself.
Zeno's thoughts soon wandered from Pesaro and the letter, and followed the old thread of life in Venice, till it led his soul through the labyrinth of daily existence far out into the dreamland beyond; and the place of his dreams was a calm and resplendent water, where stately palaces rose through vapours of purple and gold against an evening sky. Over the lagoon came music of old chimes from San Giorgio, and the deeper bells of Venice answered back again; at the instant the sunset breeze floated off the land and breathed into the dyed sails of the Istrians without a sound, so that the boats began to move by magic, gliding out one by one with a soft, low rush, heard only for a moment, as of a woman's hand drawn across silk.
The mere thought of Venice called up the vision of her before the inward eye of his heart; for he loved his native city better than he had ever loved any woman yet, and much better than his own life. When he could think of Venice, until the broad expanse of the lagoon seemed to spread itself over the deeper and darker waters of the Golden Horn, and when he could fancy himself at home, he was supremely and calmly happy, and would not have changed his dream for any reality except its own.
CHAPTER II
Omobono had drawn on a pair of well-greased raw-hide boots that came half-way up his thin legs, and had wrapped himself in his big brown cloak before going out. On his smooth grey head he wore a soft felt hat, the brim turned up round the crown at the back but pulled out to a long point in front, and he carried a tough cornel stick in his right hand. He had been careful to leave in the strong box the purse that contained money belonging to his employer, and had but a few small coins of his own in his wallet to pay a ferryman if he should need one, or to give to a hungry beggar. Like most men who have failed to make money Omobono was very sorry for poor people, and did not believe that all beggars could be rich if they would work. But he was poor himself, and his charity was of the humble kind.
There was a fairly broad street behind Carlo Zeno's house, and here the early spring sun had dried the mud to something like a solid surface; but Omobono followed this thoroughfare only for a little distance, and then turned into a narrow and filthy lane that led to other lanes, and to others still beyond, all crowded with humanity, all dark and muddy, all foul with garbage, all reeking with the overpowering smell of Eastern cooking made up of garlic, frying onions, sour cream, oil of sesame, and roasting mutton where there were Jews or Mohammedans, or fried fish where Christians lived, since it was Friday.