"This noble gentleman--he has taken my place, Lorenzo! He has
borne it for me. He has suffered that I might be saved."
I could sympathise with the struggle which I could see in the
Italian's face. At last he held out his hand to me.
"Colonel Gerard," he said, "you are worthy of a great love. I
forgive you, for if you have wronged me you have made a noble
atonement. But I wonder to see you alive. I left the tribunal
before you were judged, but I understood that no mercy would be
shown to any Frenchman since the destruction of the ornaments of
Venice."
"He did not destroy them," cried Lucia. "He has helped to
preserve those in our palace."
"One of them, at any rate," said I, as I stooped and kissed her
hand.
This was the way, my friends, in which I lost my ear. Lorenzo
was found stabbed to the heart in the Piazza of St. Mark within
two days of the night of my adventure. Of the tribunal and its
ruffians, Matteo and three others were shot, the rest banished
from the town.
Lucia, my lovely Lucia, retired into a convent at Murano after
the French had left the city, and there she still may be, some
gentle lady abbess who has perhaps long forgotten the days when
our hearts throbbed together, and when the whole great world
seemed so small a thing beside the love which burned in our
veins.
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