“The Senate, boy?”

“Is the same:  soulless, selfish, and pretending!” answered Jacopo sternly; then turning away his face, in bitterness of heart, though without permitting the words to be audible, he cursed them.

“The noble Signori were deceived in believing me concerned in the attempt to rob their revenues,” returned the patient old man; “one day they will see and acknowledge their error.”

Jacopo made no answer, for unlettered as he was, and curtailed of that knowledge which should be, and is bestowed on all by every paternal government, the natural strength of his mind had enabled him to understand that a system, which on its face professed to be founded on the superior acquirements of a privileged few, would be the least likely to admit the fallacy of its theories, by confessing it could err.

“Thou dost the nobles injustice, son; they are illustrious patricians, and have no motive in oppressing one like me.”

“None, father, but the necessity of maintaining the severity of the laws, which make them senators and you a prisoner.”

“Nay, boy, I have known worthy gentlemen of the Senate!  There was the late Signor Tiepolo, who did me much favor in my youth.  But for this false accusation, I might now have been one of the most thriving of my craft in Venice.”

“Father, we will pray for the soul of the Tiepolo.”

“Is the senator dead?”

“So says a gorgeous tomb in the church of the Redentore.”

“We must all die at last,” whispered the old man, crossing himself.  “Doge as well as patrician—­patrician as well as gondolier,—­Jaco—­”

“Father!” exclaimed the Bravo, so suddenly as to interrupt the coming word; then kneeling by the pallet of the prisoner, he whispered in his ear, “thou forgettest there is reason why thou should’st not call me by that name.  I have told thee often if thus called my visits must stop.”

The prisoner looked bewildered, for the failing of nature rendered that obscure which was once so evident to his mind.  After gazing long at his son, his eye wandered between him and the wall, and he smiled childishly.

“Wilt thou look, good boy, if the spider is come back?”

Jacopo groaned, but he rose to comply.

“I do not see it, father; the season is not yet warm.”

“Not warm! my veins feel heated to bursting.  Thou forgettest this is the attic, and that these are the leads, and then the sun—­oh! the sun!  The illustrious senators do not bethink them of the pain of passing the bleak winter below the canals, and the burning summers beneath hot metal.”

“They think of nothing but their power,” murmured Jacopo—­“that which is wrongfully obtained, must be maintained by merciless injustice—­but why should we speak of this, father; hast thou all thy body needs?”

“Air—­son, air!—­give me of that air, which God has made for the meanest living thing.”