"What is your name?"

"Here, in Paris, I am Pere Canet," he said. "It was the only way of
spelling my name on the register. But in Italy I am Marco Facino Cane,
Prince of Varese."

"What, are you descended from the great _condottiere_ Facino Cane,
whose lands won by the sword were taken by the Dukes of Milan?"

"_E vero_," returned he. "His son's life was not safe under the
Visconti; he fled to Venice, and his name was inscribed on the Golden
Book. And now neither Cane or Golden Book are in existence." His
gesture startled me; it told of patriotism extinguished and weariness
of life.

"But if you were once a Venetian senator, you must have been a wealthy
man. How did you lose your fortune?"

"In evil days."

He waved away the glass of wine handed to him by the flageolet, and
bowed his head. He had no heart to drink. These details were not
calculated to extinguish my curiosity.

As the three ground out the music of the square dance, I gazed at the
old Venetian noble, thinking thoughts that set a young man's mind
afire at the age of twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic; I saw her
ruin in the ruin of the face before me. I walked to and fro in that
city, so beloved of her citizens; I went from the Rialto Bridge, along