Loredan and Mocenigo were already there, as Foscari had anticipated, eating pistachio nuts and sipping sherbet through rice straws out of tall glasses from Murano.  It was a very safe place, for Hossein’s knowledge of the Italian language was of a purely commercial character, embracing every numeral and fraction, common or uncommon, and the names of all the hundreds of foreign coins that passed current in Venice, together with half-a-dozen necessary phrases; and his invisible but occasionally audible wife understood no Italian at all.  Also, Hossein was always willing to lend any young patrician money with which to pay his losses, at the modest rate of seven ducats to be paid every week for the use of each hundred; which one of the youths, who had a turn for arithmetic, had discovered to be only about 364 per cent yearly, whereas Casadio, the Hebrew, had a method of his own by which he managed to get about 580.  It was therefore a real economy to frequent Hossein’s shop.

In spite of his pretended forgetfulness, Venier remembered every word that Beroviero had told him, and indolently as he talked, his whole nature was roused to defend Zorzi.  In his heart he despised Contarini, and hoped that his marriage might never take place, for he was sincerely sorry for Marietta; but it was Jacopo’s behaviour towards Zorzi that called forth his wrath, it was the man’s disdainful assumption that because Zorzi was not a patrician, the oath to defend every companion of the society was not binding where he was concerned; it was the insolent certainty that the others should all be glad to be rid of the poor Dalmatian, who after all had not troubled them over-much with his company.  On that very evening they were to meet at the house of the Agnus Dei, and Venier was determined to speak his mind.  When he chose to exert himself, his influence over his companions was very great, if not supreme.

He soon brought Mocenigo and Loredan to share his opinion and to promise the support of all their many relations in Zorzi’s favour, and the four began to play, for lack of anything better to do.  Before long others of the society came in, and as each arrived Venier, who only played in order not to seem as unsociable as he generally felt, set down the dice box to gain over a new ally.  An hour had passed when Contarini himself appeared, even more magnificent than usual, his beautiful waving beard most carefully trimmed and combed as if to show it to its greatest advantage against the purple silk of a surcoat cut in a new fashion and which he was wearing for the first time.  His white hands were splendid with jewelled rings, and he wore at his belt a large wallet-purse embroidered in Constantinople before the coming of the Turks and adorned with three enamelled images of saints.  Hossein himself ushered him in, as if he were the guest of honour, as the Persian merchant indeed considered him, for none of the others had ever paid him half so many seven weekly ducats for money borrowed in all their lives, as Jacopo had often paid in a single year.