"And Venice too?" asked Nella, shaking her head in disapproval. "What will they say in Casa Contarini when they hear that you have actually gone out of the house to help a wounded young man in your father's glass-house?"
"If they are human, they will say that I was quite right," answered Marietta promptly. "If they are not, why should I care what they say?"
Zorzi smiled. At that moment Pasquale passed the window, and then came in by the open door, growling. His ugly face was transfigured by rage, until it had a sort of grotesque grandeur, and he clenched his fist as he began to speak.
"Animals! Beasts! Brutes! Worse than savages! He was almost incoherent.
"Well? What has happened now?" asked. Nella. "You talk like a mad dog. Remember the young lady!"
"It would make a leaden statue speak!" answered Pasquale. "The Signor Giovanni sends a boy to say that the Surgeon was not at home, because he had gone to shave the arch-priest of San Piero!"
In spite of the great pain he still suffered, Zorzi laughed, a little.
"You said that you would throw, him into the canal if he came at all," he said.
"Yes, and so I meant to do!" cried Pasquale. "But that is no reason why the inhuman monster should be shaving the arch-priest when a man might be dying for need of him! Oh, let him come here! Oh, I advise him to come! The miserable, cowardly, bloodletting, soap-sudding, shaving little beast of a barber!"
Pasquale drew a long breath after this, and unclenched his fist, but his lips still moved, as he said things to himself which would have shocked Marietta if she could have had the least idea of what they meant.