and done my duty."

The blood flushed into the old man's face and his eyes blazed
through his mask.

"You are thieves and murderers, every man of you," he cried.
"What are you doing here? You are Frenchmen.

Why are you not in France? Did we invite you to Venice? By what
right are you here? Where are our pictures? Where are the
horses of St. Mark? Who are you that you should pilfer those
treasures which our fathers through so many centuries have
collected? We were a great city when France was a desert. Your
drunken, brawling, ignorant soldiers have undone the work of
saints and heroes. What have you to say to it?"

He was, indeed, a formidable old man, for his white beard
bristled with fury and he barked out the little sentences like a
savage hound. For my part I could have told him that his
pictures would be safe in Paris, that his horses were really not
worth making a fuss about, and that he could see heroes--I say
nothing of saints--without going back to his ancestors or even
moving out of his chair. All this I could have pointed out, but
one might as well argue with a Mameluke about religion. I
shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.

"The prisoner has no defence," said one of my masked judges.

"Has any one any observation to make before judgment is passed?"
The old man glared round him at the others.