Yet while I prayed, I kept my eyes well open and saw the whole band pass the church, except one man who entered, and I strained my sight so that I seemed to see behind as well as in front, and then it was I longed for my poignard, for I should not have heeded being in a church.’  But the constable, it soon appeared, was not looking for Bibboni.  So he gathered up his courage, and ran for the Church of San Spirito, where the Padre Andrea Volterrano was preaching to a great congregation.  He hoped to go in by one door and out by the other, but the crowd prevented him, and he had to turn back and face the sbirri.  One of them followed him, having probably caught sight of the blood upon his hose.  Then Bibboni resolved to have done with the fellow, and rushed at him, and flung him down with his head upon the pavement, and ran like mad and came at last, all out of breath, to San Marco.  It seems clear that before Bibboni separated from Bebo they had crossed the water, for the Sestiere di San Polo is separated from the Sestiere di San Marco by the Grand Canal.  And this they must have done at the traghetto di San Spirito.  Neither the church nor the traghetto are now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure.[14] Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte della Paglia, where tourists are now wont to stand and contemplate the Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs.  First, he sought the house of a woman of the town who was his friend; then changed purpose, and rowed to the palace of the Count Salici da Collalto.  ’He was a great friend and intimate of ours, because Bebo and I had done him many and great services in times passed.  There I knocked; and Bebo opened the door, and when he saw me dabbled with blood, he marvelled that I had not come to grief and fallen into the hands of justice, and, indeed, had feared as much because I had remained so long away.’  It appears, therefore, that the Palazzo Collalto was their rendezvous.  ’The Count was from home; but being known to all his people, I played the master and went into the kitchen to the fire, and with soap and water turned my hose, which had been white, to a grey colour.’  This is a very delicate way of saying that he washed out the blood of Alessandro and Lorenzo!

Soon after the Count returned, and ‘lavished caresses’ upon Bebo and his precious comrade.  They did not tell him what they had achieved that morning, but put him off with a story of having settled a sbirro in a quarrel about a girl.  Then the Count invited them to dinner; and being himself bound to entertain the first physician of Venice, requested them to take it in an upper chamber.  He and his secretary served them with their own hands at table.  When the physician arrived, the Count went downstairs; and at this moment a messenger came from Lorenzo’s mother, begging the doctor to go at once to San Polo, for that her son had been murdered and Soderini wounded to the death.  It was now no longer possible to conceal their doings from the Count, who told them to pluck up courage and abide in patience.  He had himself to dine and take his siesta, and then to attend a meeting of the Council.