But matters did not turn out as he expected.  When the force came down the footway from the dilution of San Piero, Giovanni was still talking to his wife about household economies and censuring what he called the reckless extravagance of his father’s housekeeping.  As he talked, he heard the even tread of a number of marching men.  He sprang to his feet and went to the window, for he guessed who was coming, though he could not imagine why the Governor had not waited till the next day, as had been agreed.  He could not know that on leaving him Jacopo Contarini had seen his father and had told him of Zorzi’s misdeeds; and that the Governor had supped with old Contarini, who was an uncompromising champion of the law, besides being one of the Ten and therefore the Governor’s superior in office; and that Contarini had advised that Zorzi should be taken on that same night, as he might be warned of his danger and find means to escape.  Moreover, Contarini offered a trusty and swift oarsman to take the order to Murano, and the Governor wrote it on the supper table, between two draughts of Greek wine, which he drank from a goblet made by Angelo Beroviero himself in the days when he still worked at the art.

In half an hour the warrant was in the hands of the officer, who immediately called out half-a-dozen of his men and marched them down to the glass-house.

Giovanni saw them stop and knock at the door, and he heard Pasquale’s gruff inquiry.

“In the Governor’s name, open at once!” said the officer.

“Any one can say that,” answered the porter.  “In the devil’s name go home and go to bed!  Is this carnival time, to go masquerading by the light of the moon and waking up honest people?”

“Silence!” roared the lieutenant.  “Open the door, or it will be the worse for you.”

“It will be the worse for you, if the Signor Giovanni hears this disturbance,” answered Pasquale, who could see Giovanni at the window opposite in the moonlight.  “Either get orders from him, or go home and leave me in holy peace, you band of braying jackasses, you mob of blobber-lipped Barbary apes, you pack of doltish, droiling, doddered joltheads!  Be off!”

This eloquence, combined with Pasquale’s assured manner, caused the lieutenant to hesitate before breaking down the door, an operation for which he had not been prepared, and for which he had brought no engines of battery.

“Can you get in?” he inquired of his men, without deigning to answer the porter’s invectives.  “If not, let one of you go for a sledge hammer.  Try it with the butts of your halberds against the lock, one, two, three and all at once.”

“Oh, break down the door!” cried Pasquale derisively.  “It is of oak and iron, and it cost good money, and you shall pay for it, you lubberly ours.”

But the men pounded away with a good will.

“Open the door!” cried Giovanni from the opposite window, at the top of his lungs.