Then the former simply ejaculated, with a strong respiration-- "Jacopo!" His companion raised three of his fingers, with an occult meaning, towards the palace of the doges.
"Do they let him take the air, even in San Marco ?" he asked, in unfeigned surprise.
"It is not easy, caro amico, to make water run up stream, or to stop the downward current.

It is said that most of the senators would sooner lose their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him.

Jacopo! He knows more family secrets than the good Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor man, is half his time in the confessional." "Aye, they are afraid to put him in an iron jacket, lest awkward secrets should be squeezed out." "Corpo di Bacco! there would be little peace in Venice, if the Council of Three should take it into their heads to loosen the tongue of yonder man in that rude manner." "But they say, Gino, that thy Council of Three has a fashion of feeding the fishes of the Lagunes, which might throw the suspicion of his death on some unhappy Ancona-man, were the body ever to come up again." "Well, no need of bawling it aloud, as if thou wert hailing a Sicilian through thy trumpet, though the fact should be so.

To say the truth, there are few men in business who are thought to have more custom than he who has just gone up the piazzetta." "Two sequins!" rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing his meaning by a significant grimace.
"Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed.

Not a caratano less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art.