III
THE JEW IN THE VIA DELLA GATTA
If there is not much to be said for the Via della Gatta in these days, there was even less when Ippolita was the reigning toast. It was cloistered (as now), it was cobbled, shabby-white, secret, blind; it echoed silence, was a place for slippering crones, for furtive cats, and the smell of garlic and charcoal fires. Of nights, by the same token, it was not the place to choose for an after-supper walk. The watch used to go through it with swords before and daggers behind. Lanterns were little use save to reveal the cut-throat blackness all about.
Now, on the very night when Matteo was fuddled, Ippolita in tears, Alessandro in a fever, and the more reputable Padovani turning down their beds, the watch came rattling at the Sub-Prefect's door to report a dead Jew in the Via della Gatta. Of all nights in the year, this, the eve of the Glorious Ippolita's home-bringing, to be vexed by a dead Jew! Messer Alessandro was exceedingly annoyed.
"Take your accursèd Jew," he said to the lieutenant, "and stuff him underground. I am busy, I am absorbed in work. When I have leisure I will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought me nothing of the sort, and to-night, for example, you plump a Jew on my doorstep. Bury your beastly Jew and leave me in peace."
"But, Excellency," stammered the Lieutenant, "your Excellency will see that I have no control over the assassins of Padua. This Jew has not died happily. There is a great hole under his ribs. He is scarcely cold yet."
"That is soon remedied," said Alessandro; "put him in the ground."
"But, Excellency, a murdered Jew, a Jew in holes—"