I. "I have obeyed my orders and done
my duty."

The blood flushed into the old man's face and his eyes blazed through
his mask.

"You are thieves and murderers, every man of you," he cried. "What are
you doing here? You are Frenchmen. Why are you not in France? Did we
invite you to Venice? By what right are you here? Where are our
pictures? Where are the horses of St. Mark? Who are you that you should
pilfer those treasures which our fathers through so many centuries have
collected? We were a great city when France was a desert. Your drunken,
brawling, ignorant soldiers have undone the work of saints and heroes.
What have you to say to it?"

He was, indeed, a formidable old man, for his white beard bristled with
fury and he barked out the little sentences like a savage hound. For
my part I could have told him that his pictures would be safe in Paris,
that his horses were really not worth making a fuss about, and that he
could see heroes--I say nothing of saints--without going back to his
ancestors or even moving out of his chair. All this I could have pointed
out, but one might as well argue with a Mameluke about religion. I
shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.

"The prisoner has no defence," said one of my masked judges.

"Has any one any observation to make before judgment is passed?" The old
man glared round him at the others.

"There is one matter, your Excellency," said another.

"It can scarce be referred to without reopening a brother's wounds,
but I would remind you that there is a very particular reason why an
exemplary punishment should be inflicted in the case of this officer."

"I had not forgotten it," the old man answered.

"Brother, if the tribunal has injured you in one direction, it will give
you ample satisfaction in another."

The young man who had been pleading when I entered the room staggered to
his feet.

"I cannot endure it," he cried. "Your Excellency must forgive me. The
tribunal can act without me. I am ill. I am mad." He flung his hands out
with a furious gesture and rushed from the room.

"Let him go! Let him go!" said the president. "It is, indeed, more than
can be asked of flesh and blood that he should remain under this roof.
But he is a true Venetian, and when the first agony is over he will
understand that it could not be otherwise."

I had been forgotten during this episode, and though I am not a man who
is accustomed to being overlooked I should have been all the h