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Updated: June 24, 2025
Two big men in rusty black and long boots had entered the room, and were advancing. They were broad-shouldered men, of a determined bearing, with sinister faces, and both wore swords and kept their slouch hats on their heads. Stradella was unarmed, and could only stand before Ortensia, awaiting their onset, for he had not a doubt but that they were Bravi sent by Pignaver to murder him.
'Before we left Venice the town was ringing with your exploit, as it has echoed with your praises these three months past. My friend Count Gambardella and I are amongst your most ardent admirers, Signor Maestro, and I may say in confidence that we have a private grudge against the Senator Pignaver. You may imagine our delight on hearing that you had carried off his niece!
These, in few words, are the facts which had preceded her visit to Stradella's lodging, and which resulted in the maddening disappointment and humiliation she felt when she turned her steps homewards. At the same hour no one at the Palazzo Pignaver had yet noticed the absence of Ortensia and Pina.
Pignaver was not a particularly truthful person himself, but he exacted strict truthfulness from others, which is good business if it is bad morality; and Ortensia had been brought up rigidly in the practice of veracity as a prime virtue. She had not hitherto been tempted to tell fibs, indeed; but she had always looked upon doing so as a great sin, which, if committed, would require penance.
Moreover, as to getting in by the window, a man would first have to get access to the walled garden below, which Pignaver regarded as another impossibility, for the wall was high, he himself kept the key of the postern that opened on the canal, and the gardener entered through the house.
At the mere thought she often turned very pale and bent nearly double, as if she felt bodily pain. For of all things, she feared that most. Sooner than suffer it again she would betray Ortensia into Alberto Altieri's hands, as she had almost forced her into Stradella's arms in order to be revenged on Pignaver himself. 'I have been thinking, she said after a long pause.
With many patronising smiles on the Senator's part, and many flattering expressions of admiration and respectful salutations from Stradella, the two parted and Pignaver took himself off, leaving his niece to take her first lesson under the guardianship of the nurse, who moved her chair so that she could watch the pair while she was busy with her lace.
They have earned the reputation of being conscientious in carrying out their engagements, and intrepid in danger. Pignaver had listened attentively, and at once asked for the names and the address of the Bravi.
For the Venetian maxim was that women and girls were safe in public or under lock and key, but that there was no salvation for them between those two extremes. But, in the eyes of Pignaver, a musician was not a man, any more than a servant or a gondolier could be.
Only their rapiers were unchanged, the same serviceable, business-like weapons that Pignaver had seen before. The three men knelt side by side, putting on an air of devotion; and no one else was very near them. 'Tantum ergo ... began the choir, somewhere out of sight. 'I presume you mean business, my lord, said Gambardella so that the Senator could just hear him.
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