Young Zuan nodded.
"It is all over Venice," he said. "That Angevin devil Lewis is coming westward again, and, to begin with, has set his friend the ban on Zara and Spalato. He chose his time well, God knows!" He paused a moment as if in expectation of comment, but old Giovanni's face was a death-mask, immobile, and he went on: "As Il Lupo, the German captain, said to me a quarter of an hour ago, 'Venice is a very sick man—poison within, wounds without.' We shall lose Dalmatia."
Old Giovanni nodded once or twice, and for a moment he closed his pale eyes, sitting quite motionless in his great chair. It was as if he ceased even to breathe. Then, quite suddenly, the eyes snapped open and a swift flame of rage seemed to leap up in the old man, amazing in its unexpectedness. A momentary patch of crimson glowed upon each of the gray cheeks.
"That dog may have Dalmatia," he cried, "but, by God and by my ring of office! I'm damned if he shall have Arbe! I won't give up Arbe! I want to die there!"
Now Arbe needs a very brief word of comment. It was, and is, one of the northern Dalmatian islands—a tiny island, claw-fashioned, ten miles long, perhaps, not more than a mile wide at its thickest. It is hemmed about by greater isles—Veglia to the north, Cherso and Lussin Grande to the west, Pago to the south. Eastward the high, bare, rocky rampart of the Croatian hills rises sheer from the sea, almost throwing its shadow over the island that nestles under it. The northern expanse of Arbe is wooded, but at the extremity of one south-stretching claw sits a city in miniature.
It was at this time, and had been for more than a century, a summer resort for several of the great Venetian families, who had built there villas and campanili and churches as beautiful as anything beside the Grand Canal, though no more beautiful than those of the true, native, Arbesan families, such as the De Dominis and Nemira and Zudeneghi. As a witness that I do not lie, you may see the ruins of them even now—magnificent ruins, dwelt in by a horde of fishermen. And among these great families, by far the foremost had been the Gradenigo. There were three Gradenigo villas, cloistered and courtyarded, which were magnificent enough to be called palaces; a Gradenigo had, early in the thirteenth century, built the highest and finest of the four campanili—it still stands; a Gradenigo had been several times count of the island. Hence, as you see, Arbe was peculiarly a Gradenigo pride. It was the apple of their eye. Hence also you will comprehend old Giovanni's sudden flare of rage. His withered heart was wrung with fear. He saw, I have no doubt, hideous visions of the ban's barbarians slaying, looting, wielding torch and hammer in his fairy-land.
Young Zuan looked up with new concern.
"A-ah!" he said, half under his breath. "Arbe!—I had not thought of Arbe." His tone took on a shade of doubt.