He even carried off
a unicorn's horn - a mere curiosity - which would not pass
through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two
- a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor.
He continued to store up his treasures at home until his
occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous;
then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be;
for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly
fifty million dollars!
He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country,
and it might have been years before the plunder was missed;
but he was human - he could not enjoy his delight alone,
he must have somebody to talk about it with. So he
exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni,
then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath
away with a sight of his glittering hoard. He detected
a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion,
and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni
saved himself by explaining that that look was only
an expression of supreme and happy astonishment.
Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state's
principal jewels - a huge carbuncle, which afterward
figured in the Ducal cap of state - and the pair parted.
Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal,
and handed over the carbuncle as evidence.
Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the
old-time Venetian promptness. He was hanged between
the two great columns in the Piazza - with a gilded rope,
out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps. He got
no good of his booty at all - it was ALL recovered.
In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot
on the continent - a home dinner with a private family.
If one could always stop with private families,
when traveling, Europe would have a charm which it
now lacks. As it is, one must live in the hotels,
of course, and that is a sorrowful business.
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic
cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe;
but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.
He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal.
That is too formidable a change altogether; he would
necessarily suffer from it. He could get the shadow,
the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would
do him no good, and money could not buy the reality.
To particularize: the average American's simplest and
commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak;
well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can
get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it
resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness.
It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff,
and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an
American hotel.
