The countenance of the senator lowered. He cast a sharp glance at his foster-brother, and ere he answered he closed the door which communicated with the outer chamber.
"Thy words forebode disaffection, as of wont. Thou art accustomed to comment on measures and interests that are beyond thy limited reason, and thou knowest that thy opinions have already drawn displeasure on thee. The ignorant and the low are, to the state, as children, whose duty it is to obey, and not to cavil. Thy errand?"
"I am not the man you think me, Signore. I am used to poverty and want, and little satisfies my wishes. The senate is my master, and as such I honor it; but a fisherman hath his feelings as well as the Doge!"
"Again! These feelings of thine, Antonio, are most exacting. Thou namest them on all occasions, as if they were the engrossing concerns of life."
"Signore, are they not to me? Though I think mostly of my own concerns, still I can have a thought for the distress of those I honor. When the beautiful and youthful lady, your eccellenza's daughter, was called away to the company of the saints, I felt the blow as if it had been the death of my own child; and it has pleased God, as you very well know, Signore, not to leave me unacquainted with the anguish of such a loss."
"Thou art a good fellow, Antonio," returned the senator, covertly removing the moisture from his eyes; "an honest and a proud man, for thy condition!"
"She from whom we both drew our first nourishment, Signore, often told me, that next to my own kin, it was my duty to love the noble race she had helped to support. I make no merit of natural feeling, which is a gift from Heaven, and the greater is the reason that the state should not deal lightly with such affections."
"Once more the state! Name thy errand."
"Your eccellenza knows the history of my humble life. I need not tell you, Signore, of the sons which God, by the intercession of the Virgin and blessed St. Anthony, was pleased to bestow on me, or of the manner in which he hath seen proper to take them one by one away."
"Thou hast known sorrow, poor Antonio; I well remember thou hast suffered, too."