My errand now is in behalf of the living." The sympathy of the senator was suddenly checked, and he already listened with a doubting and suspicious air.
"Thy errand ?" he simply repeated.
"Is to beg your interest, Signore, to obtain the release of my grandson from the galleys.

They have seized the lad in his fourteenth year, and condemned him to the wars with the Infidels, without thought of his tender years, without thought of evil example, without thought of my age and loneliness, and without justice; for his father died in the last battle given to the Turk." As he ceased, the fisherman riveted his look on the marble countenance of his auditor, wistfully endeavoring to trace the effect of his words.
But all there was cold, unanswering, and void of human sympathy.

The soulless, practised, and specious reasoning of the state, had long since deadened all feeling in the senator on any subject that touched an interest so vital as the maritime power of the Republic.

He saw the hazard of innovation in the slightest approach to interests so delicate, and his mind was drilled by policy into an apathy that no charity could disturb, when there was question of the right of St.Mark to the services of his people.
"I would thou hadst come to beg masses, or gold, or aught but this, Antonio!" he answered, after a moment of delay.

"Thou hast had the company of the boy, if I remember, from his birth, already." "Signore, I have had that satisfaction, for he was an orphan born; and I would wish to have it until the child is fit to go into the world armed with an honesty and faith that shall keep him from harm.