and
Giovanni turned it in the lock. They would have taken him to the small
inner room, to lay him on his pallet bed, but he would not go.

"The bench," he managed to say, indicating it with a nod of his head.

There was an old leathern pillow in the big chair. The foreman took it
and placed it under Zorzi's head.

"We must get a surgeon to dress his wound," said the foreman.

"I will send for one," answered Giovanni. "Is there anything you want
now?" he asked, with an attempt to speak kindly to the valuable piece of
property that lay helpless before him.

"Water," said Zorzi very faintly. "And feed the fire--it must be time."

The foreman dipped a cupful of water from an earthen jar, held up his
head and helped him to drink. Giovanni pushed some wood into the
furnace.

"I will send for a surgeon," he repeated, and went out.

Zorzi closed his eyes, and the foreman stood looking at him.

"Do not stay here," Zorzi said. "You can do nothing for me, and the
surgeon will come presently."

Then the foreman also left him, and he was alone. It was not in his
nature to give way to bodily pain, but he was glad the men were gone,
for he could not have borne much more in silence. He turned his head to
the wall and bit the edge of the leathern cushion. Now and then his
whole body shook convulsively.

He did not hear the door open again, for the torturing pain that shot
through him dulled all his other senses. He wished that he might faint
away, even for a moment, but his nerves were too sound for that. He was
recalled to outer things by feeling a hand laid gently on his leg, and
immediately afterwards he heard a man's voice, in a quietly gruff tone
that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most
appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips. For an instant, in
his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of
Satan himself.

He turned his head on the cushion and saw the ugly face of the old
porter, who was bending down and examining the wounded foot while he
steadily cursed everything in heaven and earth, with an earnestness that
would have been grotesque had his language been less frightful. For a
few moments Zorzi almost forgot that he was hurt, as he listened. Not a
saint in the calendar seemed likely to escape the porter's fury, and he
even went to the length of cursing the relatives, male and female, of
half-legendary martyrs and other good persons about whose families