ly packed
in the dried seaweed of the lagoons. Gold would follow gold, and his
wealth would increase, till it became greater than that of any patrician
in Venice. Who could tell but that, in time, the great exception might
be made for him, and he might be admitted to sit in the Grand Council,
he and his heirs for ever, just as if he had been born a real patrician
and not merely a member of the half-noble caste of glass-blowers? Such
things were surely possible.

In the cooler hours of the afternoon he got into his father's gondola,
for he was far too economical to keep one of his own, and he had himself
rowed to the house of the Governor, on the Grand Canal of Murano. But at
the door he was told that the official was in Venice and would not
return till the following day. The liveried porter was not sure where he
might be found, but he often went to the palace of the Contarini, who
were his near relations. The Signor Giovanni, to whom the porter was
monstrously civil, might give himself the fatigue of being taken there
in his gondola. In any case it would be easy to find the Governor. He
would perhaps be on the Grand Canal in Venice at the hour when all the
patricians were taking the air. It was very probable indeed.

The porter bowed low as the gondola pushed off, and Giovanni leaned back
in the comfortable seat, to repeat again and again in his mind what he
meant to say if he succeeded in speaking with the Governor. He had his
letter of complaint safe in his wallet, and he could remember every word
he had written. In order to go to Venice, the nearest way was to return
from the Grand Canal of Murano by the canal of San Piero, and to pass
the glass-house. The door was shut as usual, and Giovanni smiled as he
thought of how the city archers would go in, perhaps that very night,
to take Zorzi away. He would not be with them, but when they were gone,
he would go and find the book under one of the stones. When he had got
it, his father might come home, for all Giovanni cared.

Before long the gondola was winding its way through the narrow canals,
now shooting swiftly along a short straight stretch, between a monastery
and a palace, now brought to by a turn of the hand at a corner, as the
man at the oar shouted out a direction meant for whoever might be
coming, by the right or left, as one should say "starboard helm" or
"port helm," and both doing the same, two vessels pass clear of one
another; and to this day the gondoli