The sun was setting on the second day of June, in the year 1701, when Pietro Falier, the Captain of the Police of Venice, quitted his office in the Piazzetta of St. Mark and set out, alone, for the Palace of Fr? Giovanni, the Capuchin friar, who lived over on the Island of the Guidecca. “I shall return in an hour,” he said to his subordinate as he stepped into the black gondola which every Venetian knew so well. “If any has need of me, I am at the house of Fr? Giovanni.” The subordinate saluted, and returned slowly toward the Ducal palace. He was thinking that his Captain went overmuch just then to the house of that strange friar who had come to Venice so mysteriously, and so mysteriously had won the favour of the republic. “Saint John!” he muttered to himself, “that we should dance attendance on a shaven crown,ー we, who were the masters of the city a year ago! What is the Captain thinking of? Are we all women, then, or have women plucked our brains that it should be Fr? Giovanni this and Fr? Giovanni that, and your tongue snapped off if you so much as put a question. To the devil with all friars, say I.” The good fellow stopped a moment in his walk to lay the flat of his sword across the shoulders of a mountebank, who had dared to remain seated at the door of his booth while so great a person passed. Then he returned to his office, and whispered in the ear of his colleague the assurance that the Captain was gone again to the island of the Jews, and that his business was with the friar. “And look you, Michele,” said he, “it is neither to you nor to me that he comes nowadays. Not a whisper of it, as I live, except to this friar, whom I could crush between my fingers as a glass ball out of Murano.” His colleague shook his head. “There have been many,” said he, “who have tried to crush Fr? Giovanni. They grin between the bars of dungeons, my friend,ーat least, those who have heads left to grin with. Be warned of me, and make an ally of the man who has made an ally of Venice. The Captain knows well what he is doing. If he has gone to the priest’s house now, it is that the priest may win rewards for us again, as he has won them already a hundred times.”画面が切り替わりますので、しばらくお待ち下さい。 ※ご購入は、楽天kobo商品ページからお願いします。 ※切り替わらない場合は、こちら をクリックして下さい。 ※このページからは注文できません。
