Now they all began to talk to him and comfort him. It was his grief which made him lose his senses. This was not like San Marco. He would not revenge himself upon two children. Was it not natural that when a boat was caught in a storm this would happen on the open sea and not in the harbour?
Surely his sons had not lived in enmity with San Marco. They had heard them shout, 'Eviva San Marco!' as eagerly as all the others, and had he not protected them to this very day. He had never, during the years that had passed, shown any sign of being angry with them.
'But, Cecco,' they said, 'you will bring misfortune upon us with your talk about San Marco. You, who are an old man and a wise man, should know better than to raise his anger against the Venetians. What are we without him?'
Cecco sat and looked at them bewildered.
'Then you don't believe it?'
'No one in his senses would believe such a thing.'
It looked as if they had succeeded in quieting him.
'I will also try not to believe it,' he said. He rose and walked towards the door. 'It would be too cruel, would it not?' he said. 'They were too handsome and too brave for anyone to hate them; I will not believe it.'
He went home, and in the narrow street outside his door he met an old woman, one of his neighbours.
'They are reading a Mass in the cathedral for the souls of the dead,' she said to Cecco, and hurried away. She was afraid of him; he looked so strange.