He
chose the latter, as the least likely to interfere with his own plans.
"Who art thou?" demanded one, who had assumed the character of a leader.
"If men of the Lagunes and Christians, join your friends, and away with
us to St. Mark for justice!"
"What means this tumult?" asked Don Camillo, whose dress effectually
concealed his rank, a disguise that he completed by adopting the
Venetian dialect. "Why are you here in these numbers, friends?"
"Behold!"
Don Camillo turned, and he beheld the withered features and glaring eyes
of old Antonio, fixed in death. The explanation was made by a hundred
voices, accompanied by oaths so bitter, and denunciations so deep, that
had not Don Camillo been prepared by the tale of Jacopo, he would have
found great difficulty in understanding what he heard.
In dragging the Lagunes for fish, the body of Antonio had been found,
and the result was, first, a consultation on the probable means of his
death, and then a collection of the men of his calling, and finally the
scene described.
"Giustizia!" exclaimed fifty excited voices, as the grim visage of the
fisherman was held towards the light of the moon; "Giustizia in Palazzo
e paue in Piazza!"
"Ask it of the Senate!" returned Jacopo, not attempting to conceal the
derision of his tones.
"Thinkest thou our fellow has suffered for his boldness yesterday?"
"Stranger things have happened in Venice!"
"They forbid us to cast our nets in the Canale Orfano, lest the secrets
of justice should be known, and yet they have grown bold enough to drown
one of our own people in the midst of our gondolas!"
"Justice, justice!" shouted numberless hoarse throats.
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