Rafael Sabatini - Venetian Masque—a Romance

The man looked hard at Marc-Antoine before he recognized him; then he summoned an assistant as lugubrious as himself to conduct his excellency.

Above-stairs lackeys moved silent and soft-footed as if in a house of death.

Amid the splendours of the untenanted salon Marc-Antoine waited, uneasily wondering, until, pallid, sombre, and gaunt, the Count stood before him in the candlelight.

'I am glad to see you at last delivered, Marc. It is a condition for which you are to thank the French.' In bitterness he added: 'The rulers of this Venice for which you have laboured would never have treated you as generously. They have a different way with those who serve them. Domenico has gone to reap the reward of his loyal conduct. They have taken him to Murano. He is a prisoner there in the fortress of San Michele.'

'Domenico!' Marc-Antoine was appalled. 'But why?'

'So that presently he may face a firing-party.'

'I mean on what pretext? What has he done?'

'He had the temerity to carry out the orders of the Government he served, and fired on a French warship that sought to force an entrance to the Port of Lido. The French have asked for his head in expiation, and the brave Manin is tossing it to them.'

Marc-Antoine looked into those weary, blood-injected eyes in speechless sympathy both of sorrow and of anger.

The Count invited him to sit, and, moving past him on dragging feet, flung himself, a man limp and jaded, into a chair. Marc-Antoine, disregarding the invitation, merely wheeled to face him.

'The boy's poor mother is almost out of her mind, and Isotta is not much better. I boasted that I was ready without a tremor to surrender everything to this Republic. Do not suppose that I boasted of more than the event proved me able to perform. To save Venice I would have given son and daughter, life and wealth. But this . . . This is just waste and wanton immolation that was never in my reckoning.' He sank his head to his hand with a little moan of weariness and pain, and he remained so whilst Marc-Antoine, heavy-hearted, looked on. Thus for a long moment. Then, abruptly rousing himself, he looked up again. 'Forgive me, Marc. I have no right to trouble you with all this.'

'My dear Count! Do you think I do not share your sorrow? Do you forget that I, too, loved Domenico?'

'Thank you, my friend. Now that you are delivered, tell me in what I can serve you, if it is still in my power to serve any man. Now that we have reached the end there will be nothing to keep you in Venice. In fact, it may not even be safe for you to linger.'

Mechanically Marc-Antoine answered him: 'It certainly will not if the French are coming. It will profit nobody that I end my days before a firing-party.'

'I heard this morning that there is an English squadron at Pola,' said the Count. 'Admiral Correr is at San Giorgio in Alga, and at a word from me would send you there in his fastest galley.'

'Ah!' Marc-Antoine's glance brightened with inspiration.

He stood chin in hand, for a thoughtful moment. Then at last he found himself a chair and begged the Count to tell him briefly all that had happened in these last weeks. The Count told him, but not briefly, because Marc-Antoine himself thwarted the brevity he had begged. At every stage he interrupted the Count with questions upon detail.

But at the end of a half-hour the tale was told, and Marc-Antoine stood up again now fully instructed.

'I challenge you,' the Count said, as he rose with him, 'to find me in all history a more lamentable page.' And then, anticipating the question Marc-Antoine most desired to ask, he spoke of Isotta. 'Amid this ruin I can at least thank God that my daughter is spared from marriage with a dishonoured scoundrel.'

Marc-Antoine's eyes were suddenly alight. Yet his only comment, far indeed from expressing the sudden uplift in his soul, was: 'So! You have found him out.' He did not press for details. For the moment the miraculous fact itself contented him. His voice vibrated deeply. 'Then it may yet prove that my journey to Venice has not been entirely wasted.' He swept on without giving the Count time to speak, so that his next question seemed (quite falsely) to supply the explanation. 'It may yet be that the salvation of your son shall follow. I may yet take him with me to those British ships at Pola.'

The Count stared in sudden fierceness. 'Take Domenico? Are you mad?'

'Perhaps. But have you not observed that madmen often prevail in this world?' He held out his hand in leave-taking. 'Unless I fail you, you shall have word of me very soon again.'

'Fail? But what have you in mind?'

Marc-Antoine smiled into those tired eyes. 'Suspend your despair until this time tomorrow, sir. If you have not heard from me by then, you may mourn me together with Domenico. That is all now. It is idle to talk of what may never be accomplished. I go to see what I can do.'

Abruptly he departed.

Half-an-hour later Battista, the landlord of the Swords, was gaping at the ill-kempt, unshaven figure that stood before him asking for Philibert.

'Virgin Most Holy!' ejaculated the paunchy little man. 'But it is our Englishman come back from the dead!'

'Not quite so far, Battista. Where is that rascal of mine, and where is my baggage?'

One and the other were produced. Philibert had remained in the employment of the inn. At the sight of his master he almost fell on his knees in the ardour of thanksgiving. Marc-Antoine, in haste, cut short this ecstasy. He carried off Philibert to his old rooms which were standing vacant.

At the end of an hour he came forth again metamorphosed. Shaved, and his hair carefully dressed, he had arrayed himself as nearly in the livery of Jacobinism as his wardrobe permitted: buckskins and Hessian boots, a long brown riding-coat with silver buttons, a white neckcloth very full and plain, and a conical hat on which, as if to contradict the rest, he had pinned the blue-and-yellow cockade of Venice. For weapons he put a pistol in each of the ample pockets of his full-skirted coat and tucked a cudgel under his arm.

A gondola carried him through the night, wafted by the soft balmy air of early May. By dark oily canals on which flickered reflections of illuminated windows he came to the Madonna dell' Orto, and by the narrow alley in which two months ago he had all but lost his life, to the Corte del Cavallo and the French Legation.

The door-keeper of the Della Vecchia Palace, whom Marc-Antoine's appearance startled, startled the visitor in return with the information that the Citizen Lallemant was no longer at the legation. Nor did Marc-Antoine by any means recover his calm when he heard that the Citizen Villetard was in charge. He had the feeling that in Villetard, who was the creature of Bonaparte, he would meet a sterner opposition than that which Lallemant might have offered.

Because of this when presently under the amazed glances of the chargè d'affaires and the secretary Jacob, who were at work together, he walked hat on head into the room that had been Lallemant's, his air carried all the truculence of the Jacobin in office that he could pack into it.

Villetard sprang to his feet in amazement. 'Lebel! Where the devil have you been these weeks?'

No question could have done more to restore Marc-Antoine's courage. It resolved the one doubt in his mind; assured him that the one danger he might face in coming thus into the lair of the wolf was not present.

Coldly he looked his questioner up and down as if the question were presumptuous. 'Where I was needed, of course,' he answered dryly.

'Where you were needed! Don't you think you were needed here?' He flung open a dispatch-box, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. 'Look at these letters from the Directory for you, all awaiting your attention. Lallemant told me you had not been seen since the day I left for Klagenfurt. He began to fear that you had been murdered.' He dropped the sheaf ill-humouredly on the table within Marc-Antoine's reach. 'Will you explain yourself?'

Marc-Antoine was languidly turning over the letters. There were five, all sealed, and all addressed to the Citizen-Representative Camille Lebel. His eyebrows went high above the cold light eyes that fixed Villetard.

'Explain myself? To whom are you speaking, Villetard?'

'And—sacred name of a name!—what are you doing with that cockade in your hat?'

'If in the discharge of my functions I find it necessary to display the Venetian colours—just as I choose to call myself Mr. Melville—what affair may that be of yours? Do you know that I find you presumptuous?'

'You give yourself airs, I think.'

'And this being chargè d'affaires here seems to have gone to your head. I asked you just now to whom you suppose that you are speaking. I shall be glad of an answer.'

'A thousand devils! I know to whom I am speaking.'

'I am glad to hear it. I was wondering if I should have to show you my papers, so as to remind you that in Venice I am the plenipotentiary of the Directory of the French Republic.'

Browbeaten, the browbeater changed his tone. He took refuge in remonstrance. 'Name of a name, Lebel, what necessity is there for this?'

'That is what I have been wondering: why it should be necessary for me to remind you that I am here not to take orders, but to give them.'

'To give them?'

'At need. And that is why I have come tonight.' He looked round for a chair, drew one up to the table, sat down and crossed his legs.