Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/98

86 will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought me nothing of the sort, and to-night, for example, you plump a Jew on my doorstep. Bury your beastly Jew and leave me in peace."

"But, Excellency," stammered the Lieutenant, "your Excellency will see that I have no control over the assassins of Padua. This Jew has not died happily. There is a great hole under his ribs. He is scarcely cold yet."

"That is soon remedied," said Alessandro; "put him in the ground."

"But, Excellency, a murdered Jew, a Jew in holes—"

"The Jews have been damned from the beginning of our dispensation," cried the Sub-Prefect in a rage. "Well, I add my malediction. I say, Damn your Jew!" And he shut the door in the face of the watch.

The Lieutenant was hungry. If his chief could damn the Jews, so could he.

"Corporal," says he, "I am going to supper. Do what you like with the Jew, so long as you put him decently away when you have finished. Good night."

The Corporal conferred with his men. Here was the Jew—what should they do with him? One of the archers suggested a source of profit. He might be shown in the wine-shops at a quattrino a head. Agreed. Off they set.

They showed him at the Codalunga—there were some low-browed hovels there, as was usual