These pious men, however, while they had been willing enough to risk themselves in an ordinary venture, shrank—and quite reasonably—from the prospect which the brothers unfolded to them on the way; it must be confessed that the chances they were asked to take were rather appalling, and, at the last point from which they could return safely, they left the brothers and made back whence they had come.

So the three (for Marco’s son accompanied them) struck out into the hinterland alone, and for three long years they journeyed on ceaselessly, now in peace, now fighting, now fed, now half starved, until at last they came to the rising ground, from whose sandy height they had looked their last on the city of Kublai Khan eight years before.

With the descent of the farther slope, they vanished from the world, as completely as though they had been swallowed up in a “dust-devil,” and a quarter of a century passed before they reappeared, by which time every memory of them had grown dim in Venice.

It was, as I have said, only after twenty-five years that they managed to make their way across Asia, slowly and, it must be supposed, anxiously, for they carried with them a burden of wealth, the like of which had never before been heard of in prosaic Europe. As they had vanished in the twilight, so they returned in the dusk, three figures, crouching in the long boat, looking about them at the dim bulk of house, church, and palace with eager eyes, and whispering to each other, as old, long-forgotten landmarks rose up from the water to greet them. They must have chuckled to themselves, too, at the thought of the amazement of their relations at the joke which they were going to play upon them presently. For a sorry appearance they must have presented, yet beneath the rough Tartar clothing was hidden that which would have bought a street of those shadowy buildings that loomed up on either side of them.

The Casa Polo happened that night to be full of their relations, brought together for a “festa” of some sort, and when they arrived in the courtyard the sounds and the lights must have warmed the travellers’ hearts. Nothing could have been more to their taste, or at least to that of Marco, who was decidedly fond of the “lime-light,” than the prospect of being thus precipitated into a crowd of strange relations. That the present owners might not be enthusiastic about giving up the “Casa” to its rightful owners does not seem to have occurred to them, for they advanced boldly and knocked, announcing themselves loudly when the windows filled with heads, and the gate—which may be seen to this day in the Corte della Sabbinera—with bodies, and the air with voices, demanding to know who these evil-looking strangers were and by what right they came thundering at the doors of a noble House.

A difficult business it proved for the three to so much as make themselves understood, for their Venetian was rusty and their faces were those of absolute strangers. They were dirty and brown and altogether foreign, but they seem to have made some impression, for they were allowed to make a serious attempt at establishing their identity, by asking every one present to a great banquet on the following day—when, as the story goes, they astonished the company vastly by changing their dress no less than three times during the meal, each time for a more gorgeous one, until the climax came upon young Marco’s leaving the table and bringing into the room the three coarse Tartar coats in which they had returned, and ripping them open, when such a rain of jewels fell upon the table that the company sprang to its feet with cries, for nothing like it had been heard of in the memory of man. At the sight of such prodigious wealth, it seems the relations recognised them instantly, as is the habit of relations to this day, and fell upon their necks, and all the young plants of grace came to the house from all over the town and also fell upon their necks and made much of them, and the night must have slid into the day in a blaze of glory and wine.

So the adventurers came home again, and for years afterwards Marco continued to relate the amazing tales of their adventures, not ceasing even when he was in prison in Genoa, after the battle of Cuozla.

I must, with permission, take this opportunity of warning all and sundry against a too serious consideration of the late Mr. Ruskin in any other capacity than as a student of the beautiful. In that he is alone. As a philosopher—or as a theologian—he is also alone, and I would very strongly recommend my readers to leave him in his loneliness. I would not take the space to notice the calumnies on the Church and her history with which his immortal work is interlarded, save that she and her teachings are, as far as can be judged from contemporary writings, utterly unknown to any one outside of her own Communion. Again and again I have picked up articles, written by men of known learning, professors, clergymen, men of letters, whose names are almost household words, that set forth, with all complacency and assurance—not as statements about which there might be some reasonable doubt, but as facts, so well known as to admit of no further question—such appalling lies—there is no other word for it—that one is driven, at times, to the point of wondering if it is an epidemic from which they are suffering—a disease which they have caught unconsciously and in spite of themselves. On most other subjects they are sane—on other questions which they undertake to discuss they are informed—they must be, or else how could they have arrived at their present eminence? Yet, for the discussion of this, admittedly the most intricate of studies and one for the understanding of which a lifetime of labour is hardly sufficient, they never appear to feel the need of any sort of serious preparation. In the same way, while they will vigorously adhere to facts, elsewhere, refraining manfully from entangling comment, here they seem to lose all sense of moral obligations in the direction of effectual research, and, naturally kindly, as many of them are, they become simply venomous. Naturally accurate and conscientious, they develop a spirit of vicious speculation, which amounts to a possession.

I will not enlarge upon this topic, nor would I have embarked upon it at all were it not that the spirit of Ruskin—narrow, self-centred, self-contented, utterly uninformed, making a religion of ill-will, and ill-will into a religion—has as much sway in our day as it had in his, and its expression in his works is the reflection of the real feelings of many, many people to-day. Let none doubt that; and the fact that the calumniators are, some of them, men of blameless private life, or of unquestionable mental integrity in their own work, makes them all the more difficult to reach, for the pride which those private virtues engender is a horribly thick armour to penetrate.