Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/157

 MARCO POLO 93 tainment was served in great splendor with gold and silver dishes, and the three travellers, when they sat down, were dressed in robes of the richest crimson satin flowing down to the ground. After some of the courses had been eaten, they re- tired to their chamber and came forth again dressed in other robes of crimson silk damask, very rich, and the satin garments were cut up and divided among the servants. Again, later on in the repast, they retired, and when they came again to the table they wore other robes, of the richest crimson velvet, and the second gar- ments were cut up and divided as the others had been. When the dinner was over they took off the velvet robes, and these were disposed of in like manner. " These proceedings," says the honest Ramusio, " caused much wonder and amazement among the guests," which we can well imagine. Next, dismissing all the servants, the younger one of the three, Marco Polo, went to an inner chamber and brought forth to the table the coarse and shabby dresses in which the three had arrived in Venice. Then, taking sharp knives, the travellers ripped open the seams and welts of the garments, and shook from them a vast profusion of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, emeralds, and other precious stones. The guests were dumfounded and amazed. " And now," says Ramusio, " they recognized that in spite of all former doubts, these were in truth those honored and worthy gentlemen of the Casa Polo that they claimed to be ; and so all paid them the greatest honor and reverence." Fur- thermore, we are told that when the story got wind in Venice, straightway the whole city, gentle and simple, flocke.d to the house to embrace the three travel- lers, and to make much of them with every conceivable demonstration of affec- tion and respect. This was the wonderful home-coming of the three Polos, who for twenty-four years had been wandering in the East, and who, when they set out on their homeward journey, a journey beset with untold difficulties and dangers, took the precaution to conceal in their garments, as above told, the wealth which they had accumulated while they were at the court of the Great Khan of Tartary. It reads like a romance, a story out of " The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." But it is all true, and the archives of Venice corroborate pretty nearly all the de- tails herein set forth. Indeed, as a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own kindred, it must be said that the later generation of Venetians found less difficulty in believing the tales of the three travellers than did those who first heard them. In telling these tales, they had frequent occasion to use the word " millions," a word not then common among the Venetians, as to say that the Great Khan had revenues amounting to ten or fifteen millions of gold, and so on. And the people gave Marco, who seems to have been the story-teller of the party, the nickname of Messer Marco Millioni. Curiously enough, this name appears in the public records of old Venice. Of the final exit of the elders of the Polo family, Nicolo and Maffeo, we have no trustworthy account. As they were well stricken in years when they returned from their long sojourn in Cathay, we may suppose that they did not