"Arriving in Brescia, I could pass for my servant without any problems, since he had left the town when he was still a boy and no longer had any relatives there. For five years, I lived like a criminal who would shun the light of day and avoided the company of other men. My spirit had been clouded by a feeling of powerlessness, as if that blow which had struck me down had shattered whatever organ had been in charge of my willpower.
"That it had not been destroyed, but only paralysed, I felt when the news of you speaking out against the tribunal arrived. With a feverish excitement, which rejuvenated me and let me become aware of the energy of my living soul again, I followed the reports from Venice. When I heard about the failure of your high-minded venture, I fell back into the old, mind-numbing depression for just a short moment. In the next moment, something like a fire-storm penetrated all of my senses. My decision had been made, to carry out the work, which you had been unable to perform by the open means of justice and the law, by means of violence and a horrifying kind of self-defence, with the arm of the invisible judge and avenger for the salvation my precious native country.
"Since then, I have incessantly examined this decision and found that my intentions could not be condemned. I am solemnly aware of the fact that it is not hatred against those persons, not revenge for the pain I have suffered, not even the just sorrow for the woe which has come over my loved ones, which arms my hand against the tyrants. What moves me to take on the task of saving an entire enslaved people and to execute the sentence by myself, which in other times the collective will of a free nation used to pronounce over unjust rulers, who are out of the reach of the arm of a judge, - this is neither selfishness nor the vain lust for fame; it is merely a debt I owe for having spent my youth in idleness, and which your look, when we were in Morosini Palace, admonished my to pay.
"May God, whom I beseech to protect my cause, mercifully grant me, as the only replacement for all He has taken from me, that in a liberated Venice I shall once more be able to shake your hand. You will not reject my blood-stained hand, which will thereafter rest in no friend's hand any more; for he who has performed an executioner's duties has been consecrated to a lonely life and has to shun the sight of his fellow men. But if I should perish by my deeds, he whose respect I care for the most will know that the younger generation is also not entirely without men who know how to die for Venice.
"This letter will be delivered to you by a reliable man, who has exchanged the garments of a secretary of the inquisition for a monk's cowl, to atone by means of fasting and prayer for the sins of the republic, for which his pen had to serve. Burn this page. Farewell! Candiano."
After the banished man had finished reading the letter, he sat there for about one hour, regarding the fateful pages in deep grief. Then, he held them over the flame, scattered the ashes into the fireplace, and restlessly paced up and down the room until the early morning, while the unfortunate man, whose confession he had read, had long since fallen asleep like someone whose cause is just and who has heaven on his side. - -
The next day, the late arrival of the street della Cortesia, left the house early. Marietta's happy singing outside in the corridor might have let him sleep a while longer, but her mother's loud scolding, rebuking her for making a racket which could raise a dead man and would end up driving all guests out of the house, encouraged him fully. He tarried at the stairs, where his landlady was already sitting at her usual post, just long enough to inquire where a few notaries and advocates would live, whose names a friend had written down for him in Brescia. Once he had got this information, neither the widow's affectionate worries concerning his health, nor the red bow Marietta had put into her hair, could move him to stay any longer, and though the good woman at other times used to do her best to avoid any social contact of the lodgers with her daughter, it now gave her an almost dreadful feeling that the stranger was so persistently overlooking the dear creature, the apple of her eye. To her, his gray hair was only an insufficient explanation of this strange blindness. He had to have a secret sorrow or feel thus ill that the sight of freshly blossoming life would hurt him. Nevertheless, he walked firmly and swiftly, and his chest was broad and strong, so that the illness, he had talked about, had to reside deeply within his body. The colour of his face also gave no rise to suspicion. Striding through the streets of Venice, he attracted pleased looks from many a woman's eyes, and Marietta also, watching him as he left from one of the upper windows, was not without any feelings for him.
But he tended to his business in a self-absorbed manner, and though he had at length asked Signoria Giovanna for directions and was finally comforted by her, concerning his ignorance of the city, with the saying "Asking will get a person all the way to Rome", he nevertheless now seemed to be able to find his way through the network of alleys and canals without any help at all. He spent several hours visiting advocates, but with them his recommendation by a colleague from Brescia carried little weight, and he seemed to strike them as suspicious on account of his modest appearance. For there was actually a certain pride in the wrinkles of his forehead, telling anyone of the keener observers that he, under other circumstances, would have regarded the work he sought to be beneath his dignity. Finally, he reached a notary who lived in a side-alley of the Merceria and seemed to engage in all kinds of shifty business on the side. Here, he found a place as a clerk at a very modest salary, just on a trial basis, and the hasty manner in which he accepted gave the man the suspicion that he was facing an impoverished nobile, many of which would be willing to do any kind of work, without haggling over the price, just to be able to make a living.
But Andrea was evidently very content with the result of his efforts and entered, since it was already noon, the next inn, where he saw people from the lower classes sitting at long tables without linen, who were spicing up their very simple meals with a glass of turbid wine. He took his seat in a corner near the door and ate the slightly rancid fish without any complaint, while, on the other hand, he left the wine untouched after having taken a sip. He was already about to ask for the bill, when he found himself being politely addressed by his neighbour. The man, whom he had overlooked entirely until now, had already been sitting there for a long time with his half bottle of wine, eating nothing, only taking a sip once in a while, making a sightly wry face every time; but while he gave the impression of being so tired that his eyes had to be half closed, his keen looks wandered all across the large, gloomy room and stuck with particular interest to our Brescian, who, on his part, had noticed nothing remarkable about his observer. He was a man in his thirties with blond, curly hair, whose Jewish descent was not instantly recognisable since he wore black Venetian garments. In his ears, he wore heavy, golden rings, on his shoes, buckles with large topazes, while his collar was wrinkled and unclean, and his coat of fine wool had not been brushed for weeks.
"The gentleman doesn't like the wine," he said in a low voice, dexterously leaning over towards Andrea. "The gentleman seems to have wandered in here only by mistake, where they aren't accustomed to waiting on guests of a better class."