"If any has
need of me, I am at the house of Fra Giovanni."
The subordinate saluted, and returned slowly toward the ducal palace.
He was thinking that his Captain went over-much just then to the house
of that strange friar who had come to Venice so mysteriously, and so
mysteriously had won the favor of the republic.
"Saint John!" he muttered to himself, "that we should dance attendance
on a shaven crown--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 Fra Giovanni this and Fra
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 Fra
Giovanni. They grin between the bars of dungeons, my friend--at least,
those who have heads left to grin with.
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