"You're mistaken, Samuele," Andrea answered quickly and looked into his face, as if he could not care less. "It is rather that I'm grateful to you for helping me to overcome my indolence. If it wasn't for you, I would hardly be here. Let's go upstairs, to call on this important gentleman, who would hardly have received us while he was still alive. A stately domicile, which he has to exchange for so very narrow quarters in such an untimely fashion! I pity him indeed, though I've never laid eyes on him." Walking side by side among the large crowd, they ascended the staircase, shrouded in black, and looking down from its top, there was the coat of arms of the house of Venier, dressed in crape, commanding the crowd to silence in the absence of a porter. Inside, in the largest hall, the catafalque had been set up under a canopy, tall cypress-trees touched the ceiling high above, candles on silver candelabra flickered as the air blew from the water across the open balcony through the hall, and four servants of the house of Venier, dressed in black velvet, with crapes wrapped around their shiny halberds, were standing on guard like statues at the four corners of the catafalque. The corpse had been covered with a velvet blanket; the silver fringes touched the floor. The first thing the people saw of the dead man as they entered the hall was his sharp profile with an angry and sad expression, his closed eye turned towards the canopy. Andrea recognised these features. In that night in Leonora's room, he had firmly committed them to memory. But no twitch of his mouth nor of his eyes, which were keenly fixed on the dead man, revealed that the avenger was facing his victim. -