Cecco took his boat and made his way through the small canals down to Riva degli Schiavoni. There was a wide view from there; he looked towards Lido and the sea. Yes, it was a hard wind, but not a storm by any means; there were hardly any waves. And his sons had perished in weather like this! It was inconceivable.
He fastened his boat, and went across the Piazetta and the Market Place into San Marco. There were many people in the church, and they were all kneeling and praying in great fear; for it is much more terrible for the Venetians, you know, than any other people when there is a disaster at sea. They do not get their living from vineyards or fields, but they are all, everyone of them, dependent on the sea. Whenever the sea rose against any one of them they were all afraid, and hurried to San Marco to pray to him for protection.
As soon as Cecco entered the cathedral he stopped. He thought of how he had brought his little sons there, and taught them to pray to San Marco. 'It is he who carries us over the sea, who opens the gates of Byzance for us and gives us the supremacy over the islands of the East,' he said to them. Out of gratitude for all this the Venetians had built San Marco the most beautiful temple in the world, and no vessel ever returned from a foreign port without bringing a gift for San Marco.
Then they had admired the red marble walls of the cathedral and the golden mosaic ceiling. It was as if no misfortune could befall a city that had such a sanctuary for her patron Saint.
Cecco quickly knelt down and began to pray, the one Paternoster after the other. It came back, he felt. He would send it away by prayers. He would not believe anything bad about San Marco.
But it had been no storm at all. And so much was certain, that even if the Saint had not sent the storm, he had, in any case, not done anything to help Cecco's sons, but had allowed them to perish as if by accident. When this thought came upon him he began to pray; but the thought would not leave him.
And to think that San Marco had a treasury in this cathedral full of all the glories of fairyland! To think that he had himself prayed to him all his life, and had never rowed past the Piazetta without going into the cathedral to invoke him!
Surely it was not by a mere accident that his sons had to-day perished on the sea! Oh, it was miserable for the Venetians to have no one better to depend upon! Just fancy a Saint who revenged himself upon two children—a patron Saint who could not protect against a gust of wind!
He stood up, and he shrugged his shoulders, and disparagingly waved his hand when he looked towards the tomb of the Saint in the chancel.