vigilance was by this time a little awakened, and a
patrol of the troops was ordered to bring this singular stranger before
the sublime podesta. The crowd instantly dropped him at the sight of the
bayonets, and knowing the value of life in the most delicious climate of
the world, took to their heels. The guard took possession of their
prisoner, and were leading him rather roughly to the governor's house,
when he requested them to stop for a moment beside a convent gate, that
he might get a cup of wine. But the Dominicans would not give the
satirist of their illustrious order a cup of water.

"If you will not give me refreshment," exclaimed he, in an angry tone,
"give me wherewithal to buy it. I demand a hundred sequins."

The prior himself was at the window above his head; and the only answer
was a sneer, which was loyally echoed through every cloister.

"Let me have your bayonet for a moment," said the stranger to one of his
guard. He received it; and striking away a projecting stone in the wall,
out rushed the hundred sequins. The prior clasped his hands in agony,
that so much money should have been so near, and yet have escaped his
pious purposes, The soldiers took off their caps for the discoverer, and
bowed them still lower when he threw every sequin of it into the shakos
of those polite warriors. The officer, to whom he had given a double
share, showed his gratitude by a whisper, offering to assist his escape
for as much more. But the stranger declined the civility, and walked
boldly into the presence-chamber of the sublime podesta.

The Signer Dominico Castello-Grande Tremamondo was a little Venetian
noble, descended in a right line from Aeneas, with a palazzo on the
Canale Regio of Venice, which he let for a coffee-house; and living in
the pomp and pride of a _magnifico_ on something more than the wages of
an English groom. The intelligence of this extraordinary stranger's
discoveries had flown like a spark through a magazine, and the
_illustrissimo_ longed to be a partaker in the secret. He interrogated
the prisoner with official fierceness, but could obtain no other reply
than the general declaration, that he was a traveller come to see the
captivations of Italy. In the course of the inquiry the podesta dropped
a significant hint about money.

"As to money," was the reply, "I seldom carry any about me; it is so
likely to tempt _rascals_ to dip deeper in roguery. I have it whenever I
choose to call for it.