“Hence, scurvy companion! I know you and your tricks too well. This is all a concerted scheme between you, a design upon my purse, an attempt to procure both money and thanks, and under the lame pretence of having saved me from an assassin. Go, fellow, go! practise these dainty devices on the Doge’s credulity if you will; but with Buonarotti you stand no chance, believe me.”
The wretched starving beggar stood like one petrified, and gazed on the taunting stranger.
“No, as I have a soul to save, signor, ’tis no lie I tell you!—’tis the plain truth; have compassion, or I die this night of hunger.”
“Begone this instant, I say, or by Heaven—”
The unfeeling man here drew out a concealed pistol, and pointed it at his preserver.
“Merciful Heaven! and is it thus that services are acknowledged in Venice?”
“The watch is at no great distance, I need only raise my voice and—”
“Hell and confusion! do you take me for a robber, then?”
“Make no noise, I tell you. Be quiet—you had better.”
“Hark you, signor. Buonarotti is your name, I think? I will write it down as belonging to the second scoundrel with whom I have met in Venice.”
He paused for a moment, then continuing in a dreadful voice, “And when,” said he, “thou, Buonarotti, shalt hereafter hear the name of _Abellino_—_tremble_!”
Abellino turned away, and left the hard-hearted Venetian.
AND now rushed the unfortunate wildly through the streets of Venice. He railed at fortune; he laughed and cursed by turns; yet sometimes he suddenly stood still, seemed as pondering on some great and wondrous enterprise, and then again rushed onwards, as if hastening to its execution.
Propped against a column of the Signoria, he counted over the whole sum of his misfortunes. His wandering eyeballs appeared to seek comfort, but they found it not.
“Fate,” he at length exclaimed in a paroxysm of despair, “Fate has condemned me to be either the wildest of adventurers, or one at the relation of whose crimes the world must shudder. To astonish is my destiny. Rosalvo can know no medium; Rosalvo can never act like common men. Is it not the hand of fate which has led me hither? Who could ever have dreamt that the son of the richest lord in Naples should have depended for a beggar’s alms on Venetian charity? I—I, who feel myself possessed of strength of body and energy of soul fit for executing the most daring deeds, behold me creeping in rags through the streets of this inhospitable city, and torturing my wits in vain to discover some means by which I may rescue life from the jaws of famine! Those men whom my munificence nourished, who at my table bathed their worthless souls in the choicest wines of Cyprus, and glutted themselves with every delicacy which the globe’s four quarters could supply, these very men now deny to my necessity even a miserable crust of mouldy bread. Oh, that is dreadful, cruel—cruel of men—cruel of Heaven!”