"Come, strike up, Daddy Canard!" added the flageolet, and the three began to play. But while they executed the four figures of a square dance, the Venetian was scenting my thoughts; he guessed the great interest I felt in him. The dreary, dispirited look died out of his face, some mysterious hope brightened his features and slid like a blue flame over his wrinkles. He smiled and wiped his brow, that fearless, terrible brow of his, and at length grew gay like a man mounted on his hobby. "How old are you?" I asked. "Eighty-two." "How long have you been blind?" "For very nearly fifty years," he said, and there was that in his tone which told me that his regret was for something more than his lost sight, for great power of which he had been robbed. "Then why do they call you 'the Doge'?" I asked. "Oh, it is a joke. I am a Venetian noble, and I might have been a doge like any one else." "What is your name?" "Here, in Paris, I am Pere Canet," he said. "It was the only way of spelling my name on the register. But in Italy I am Marco Facino Cane, Prince of Varese." "What, are you descended from the great _condottiere_ Facino Cane, whose lands won by the sword were taken by the Dukes of Milan?" "_E vero_," returned he. "His son's life was not safe under the Visconti; he fled to Venice, and his name was inscribed on the Golden Book. And now neither Cane or Golden Book are in existence." His gesture startled me; it told of patriotism extinguished and weariness of life. "But if you were once a Venetian senator, you must have been a wealthy man. How did you lose your fortune?" "In evil days." He waved away the glass of wine handed to him by the flageolet, and bowed his head. He had no heart to drink. These details were not calculated to extinguish my curiosity.