His colleague shook his head.

“There have been many,” said he, “who have tried to crush Fra Giovanni.  They grin between the bars of dungeons, my friend—­at least, those who have heads left to grin with.  Be warned of me, and make an ally of the man who has made an ally of Venice.  The Captain knows well what he is doing.  If he has gone to the priest’s house now, it is that the priest may win rewards for us again, as he has won them already a hundred times.

He spoke earnestly, though, in truth, his guess was not a good one.  The Captain of the Police had not gone to the Island of the Guidecca to ask a service of the friar; he had gone, as he thought, to save the friar’s life.  At the moment when his subordinates were wagging their heads together, he himself stood in the priest’s house, before the very table at which Fra Giovanni sat busy with his papers and his books.

“I implore you to listen to me, Prince!” he had just exclaimed very earnestly, as he repeated the news for the second time, and stood clamorous for the answer to his question.

The friar, who was dressed in the simple habit of the Capuchins, and who wore his cowl over his head so that only his shining black eyes could be seen, put down his pen when he heard himself addressed as “Prince.”

“Captain,” he said sharply, “who is this person you come here to warn?  You speak of him as ‘Prince.’  It is some other, then, and not myself?”

The Captain bit his lip.  He was one of the four in Venice who knew something of Fra Giovanni’s past.

“Your Excellency’s pardon,” he exclaimed very humbly; “were we not alone, you would find me more discreet.  I know well that the Prince of Iseo is dead—­in Venice at least.  But to Fra Giovanni, his near kinsman, I say beware, for there are those here who have sworn he shall not live to say Mass again.”

For an instant a strange light came into the priest’s eyes.  But he gave no other sign either of surprise or of alarm.

“They have sworn it—­you know their names, Captain?”

“The police do not concern themselves with names, Excellency.”

“Which means that you do not know their names, Captain?”

Pietro Falier sighed.  This friar never failed to humble him, he thought.  If it were not for the honors which the monk had obtained for the police since he began his work in Venice, the Captain said that he would not lift a hand to save him from the meanest bravo in Italy.

“You do not know their names, Captain—­confess, confess,” continued the priest, raising his hand in a bantering gesture; “you come to me with some gossip of the bed-chamber, your ears have been open in the market-place, and this tittle-tattle is your purchase—­confess, confess.”

The Captain flushed as he would have done before no other in all Venice.

“I do not know their names, Excellency,” he stammered; “it is gossip from the bravo’s kitchen.  They say that you are to die before Mass to-morrow.  I implore you not to leave this house to-night.  We shall know how to do the rest if you will but remain indoors.”