I could not kill her; I could not
see; and I was so poor that I could not pay another arm.
"If only I had taken counsel with my jailer, Benedetto Carpi, before I
lost him, I might have known the exact position of my cell, I might
have found my way back to the Treasury and returned to Venice when
Napoleon crushed the Republic--
"Still, blind as I am, let us go back to Venice! I shall find the door
of my prison, I shall see the gold through the prison walls, I shall
hear it where it lies under the water; for the events which brought
about the fall of Venice befell in such a way that the secret of the
hoard must have perished with Bianca's brother, Vendramin, a doge to
whom I looked to make my peace with the Ten. I sent memorials to the
First Consul; I proposed an agreement with the Emperor of Austria;
every one sent me about my business for a lunatic. Come! we will go to
Venice; let us set out as beggars, we shall come back millionaires. We
will buy back some of my estates, and you shall be my heir! You shall
be Prince of Varese!"
My head was swimming. For me his confidences reached the proportions
of tragedy; at the sight of that white head of his and beyond it the
black water in the trenches of the Bastille lying still as a canal in
Venice, I had no words to answer him. Facino Cane thought, no doubt,
that I judged him, as the rest had done, with a disdainful pity; his
gesture expressed the whole philosophy of despair.
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