10.–Six gondolas in procession; tritons spouting.

11.–Mutilated.

12.–Three figures holding out bags.

Such were the automata and the bas-reliefs in the backgrounds of the twelve hours.

As to the scenes they represented, St. Hilary had made a rough guess at most of them. Four or five of the scenes he thought he had identified unmistakably. All twelve of them were scenes out of Venetian history. When I urged him for the results he had gained so far, he declared at first that they were too meager to be suggestive. But I was not to be balked.

“I have been running your errands for a week, 163St. Hilary,” I reminded him. “I have been your obedient messenger–an intelligent messenger, if you will–and I have left you to do the piecing together of the different parts of the puzzle. Now I want to know what you have accomplished.”

163

“There is very little to tell,” he said sulkily. “Scene one represents St. Mark and his lion, the tutelary saint of Venice. As to the second scene, the story is in every guide-book. The artist Gentile Bellini visited the Sultan of Turkey, and painted for him a picture of the daughter of Herodias bringing in the head of St. John the Baptist on a charger. The Sultan objected that the neck was not rightly drawn–that when a man was beheaded, no neck appeared at all, in fact. The artist disputed the point. To prove himself in the right, the Sultan struck off a slave’s head.”

“And the third hour–the ten disks arranged in a row?”

“The Council of Ten, I suppose.”

“Well, well, the fourth, St. Hilary?” I cried sharply.

“Perhaps you know its significance. I don’t. The camel doesn’t figure in Venetian history, so far as I know. It is true, Marco Polo traveled to the Great Khan of Cathay. The scene might 164have been a chapter out of his life. But after wading through his travels I have failed to find it.”

164

“And the next, I suppose, is too badly mutilated to be identified?”

“Absolutely,” he grumbled.

“And the background of the sixth hour?” I asked, studying the photograph through a powerful magnifying-glass. “Have you been able to 

 Prev. P 88/162 next