only prize of any price was the captive Georgian girl who was being
brought westward to be sold, like thousands of others in those days,
with little concealment and no mystery, in one of the slave markets of
northern Italy. Aristarchi claimed her for himself, as his share of the
booty, but his men knew her value. Standing shoulder to shoulder between
him and her, they drew their knives and threatened to cut her to pieces,
if he would not promise to sell her as she was, when they should come to
land, and share the price with them. They judged that she must be worth
a thousand or fifteen hundred pieces of gold, for she was more beautiful
than any woman they had ever seen, and they had already heard her
singing most sweetly to herself, as if she were quite sure that she was
in no danger, because she knew her own value. So Aristarchi was forced
to consent, cursing them; and night and day they guarded her door
against him, till they had brought her safe to Venice, and delivered her
to the slave-dealers.

Then Aristarchi sold all that he had, except his ship, and it all
brought far too little to buy such a slave. She would have gone with
him, for she had seen that he was stronger than other men and feared
neither God nor man, but she was well guarded, and he was only allowed
to talk with her through a grated window, like those at convent gates.

She was not long in the dealers' house, for word was brought to all the
young patricians of Venice, and many of them bid against each other for
her, in the dealers' inner room, till Contarini outbid them all, saying
that he could not live without her, though the price should ruin him,
and because he had not enough gold he gave the dealers, besides money, a
marvellous sword with a jewelled hilt, which one of his forefathers had
taken at the siege of Constantinople, and which some said had belonged
to the Emperor Justinian himself, nine hundred years ago.