messer grande and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I could do it because I have influence and influence has long arms and moves in mysterious ways. Do you remember that morning some sixteen months ago when Venetian agents forced their way into your room and you railed at them, spitting with indignation, demanding that you be informed of your crimes? You will certainly recall the next sixteen months, buried away, sprawling on a rotten straw bed, still wondering what it was you were accused of. Do you think it might have been a word in the right ear, a little flexing of muscles that landed you there? It might easily have been my doing. Not that I am saying it was, I only mention it because I think you should consider it as a possibility among others, something you should give some thought to once this night is through. Because, although I am not a writer and am not preparing to embark on any kind of career, and though I am losing my hair and suffer shooting pains in my arms, and though time is certainly not on my side, I am nevertheless possessed of effective means. And, if I wanted to, I could still stretch out my arm and touch a life that considers itself secure in Venice, under the protection of Papa Bragadin. How pale you look! You have taken a step back. Are you looking for your dagger? Is it revenge you want?… Control yourself, my boy. I have come unarmed, as you see, and there is nothing to stop you running me through in an act of revenge and then taking to your heels to escape the police of half the world, until you are caught and find yourself on the scaffold. But how pointless that would be! You would lose everything and even your revenge would be tinged with doubt about my part in your imprisonment. Calm down. I haven’t said I was responsible for that. I have merely thrown a little light on the faint possibility that I might have been. I have fought too many battles and have lived too full a life to feel any compassion for you. My compassion is not easily earned. Only weak and frightened people shed crocodile tears and hug their enemies to their bosoms with false enthusiasm. I will not take you to my bosom, Giacomo. I will neither kill you nor exile you before your time is due. What course, if any, is there left to me, then?… Well, I believe I have found the only acceptable solution. I will strike a bargain with you. I realize that in proposing this bargain, which will be not a whit more crooked or honest than such bargains usually are, I am addressing both your feelings and your intelligence. So let me put it plainly: I want to buy you, my boy. You can name your price, and in case false modesty, false ambition, or any other false feeling prevent you, I will tell you the price, the price I am willing to pay to prevent the reality from becoming a ghostly rival, to ensure that you finally vanish from my life, having completed your business and played your part by allowing the duchess to see you, as she must, as she wishes…. I am buying you: these are ugly words, not the words an author or a duchess are likely to use, but they are my words, and they, too, are precise. I have weighed them and chosen them carefully. I know your services will not be cheap, but I am rich and powerful and I shall pay you in gold and clemency, in advice and connections, in documents and cash. Whatever it costs it will be a bargain. Please don’t protest. I shall buy you as people buy a donkey for carrying water on the market in Toulon, as they buy a slave on the market at Smyrna: I shall buy you as if I were buying a curio from one of the silversmiths on the Ponte Vecchio. Are you still protesting? Are you staring at the floor and biting your lips?… Are you planning some terrible act of revenge, a revenge that might at once wipe out this insult as well as the disgrace of your imprisonment in Venice?… Please control yourself. Naturally, I must pay you for those injuries, too, and will offer you the full pleasures of the world, for one has to buy the whole man, with the full complement of his moods and passions, or the bargain is meaningless. I am buying you because you are a mere mortal. Think it over carefully: it is almost a compliment. I used the word ‘almost’ at the beginning of our conversation and I repeat it now because words bind and their binding power extends to both the past and the future. It is almost a compliment, believe me, for what is man in the daily traffic of the world?… A chance combination of character and fate, no more. I know your character and have researched your history, so I know, with absolute certainty, that however pale you grow, however you gasp and stare, you will kill neither me nor yourself. Not because you are a coward! — not at all! — but because it is simply not in your character to do so, because, in your heart of hearts, you are already calculating how much you dare demand of me, because the bargain fundamentally appeals to you, and because there are certain things that you can do nothing about for, after all, how could you?… It’s how you are. The fact that you are not averse to a bargain might be the one and only fully human feature of your character. Don’t worry about how much you can demand of me, Giacomo: I will give you what you ask for. And more on top of that! I may be acting against my business principles in telling you this, but let that be, for I confess that whatever figure you dream up is of no interest to me. Let me offer you a thousand ducats in gold this very evening. Is that too little? Fine. Let us say two thousand, in cash, to see you through Munich and Paris. Not enough? That’s all right, my boy, carry on by all means, I understand. Let us therefore say ten thousand ducats, together with a letter of credit for use in Paris. Still not enough?… I understand, I really do understand, my boy. Let me throw in a letter of safe passage for use on the road, so you may travel like the prince de Condé, and, in addition, a personal introduction to the elector, who will be happy to hear the story of your escape from your own lips. Is that still not enough?… Well, why not? I’m not a petty man. All right, I will trump it all with a letter of introduction to my cousin, Louis himself.”