William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

murder does not help the Countess Rostova’s case. Or is her motive more subtly political than I imagined?”
    Stephan drew in his breath to make an instant reply, then changed his mind. He laughed slightly, spearing a piece of fish and putting it into his mouth. “I was going to answer that with absolute certainty,” he replied. “Then the fact that you asked the question made me think about it. Perhaps I was mistaken. I would have denied it. She hated Gisela for entirely personal reasons and thought the Princess behaved from immediate, personal motives: pride, ambition, love of glamour, attention, luxury, status among her peers, envy, revenge for love wasted or betrayed, all the things that have nothing to do with patriotism or matters of state, simply humanity. But perhaps I was wrong. I don’t think I knew Zorah as well as I had assumed.”
    His face became very serious, his eyes steady on Monk’s. “But I would lay my life that she is no hypocrite. Whatever her cause, there is no lie in it.”
    Monk believed him. He was less sure that Zorah had not been used, but he had as yet no idea by whom. It was one of the things he might learn in Venice.
    The next day Stephan took him to explore a little of the city, drifting gently down one waterway after another until they found themselves on the Grand Canal, and Stephan pointed out the palaces one after another, telling Monk of their history and sometimes of the present occupants. He pointed to the magnificent Gothic Palazzo Cavalli.
    “Henry the Fifth of France lives there,” Stephan said with a smile.
    Monk was lost. “Henry the Fifth of France?” He thought he knew there was no king of France, never had been for well over half a century.
    “Monsieur le Comte de Chambord,” Stephan said with a laugh, leaning back on one elbow in an oddly graceful gesture of comfort. “Grandson of Charles the Tenth, and king if there were a throne in France, a fact many people here prefer to overlook. His mother, the Duchesse de Berry, married a penniless Italian nobleman and lives in good style in the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi. She bought it in 1844, practically for a song: pictures, furniture and everything. Venice used to be terribly cheap then. You know, in ’51 John Ruskin paid only twenty-six pounds a year for an apartment here on the Grand Canal, and for years before that Robert and Elizabeth Browning paid only twenty-six pounds a year for a suite at the Casa Guidi in Florence. But Mr. James, the British consul here, is paying one hundred sixty pounds a year for one floor in the Palazzo Foscolo. Everything is terribly expensive now.”
    They rocked slightly in the wake of a larger barge, and the sound of laughter drifted across the water from a closed gondola a hundred feet away.
    “The Comte de Montmoulin lives here too,” Stephan went on. “In the Palazzo Loredan, at San Vio.”
    “And what is he king of?” Monk asked, catching the flavor but far more interested in the mention of poets and critics such as Ruskin.
    “Spain,” Stephan replied. “Or so he would believe. There are all sorts of artists and poets and invalids, social and political exiles, some of marvelous color, others of utter tediousness.”
    It seemed eminently the right place for Friedrich and Gisela, and those who chose to follow them, for whatever reason.
    An hour later they sat in a small piazza eating luncheon. Passersby strolled across the square, talking idly. Monk heard the chatter of half a dozen different languages. Here and there soldiers in Austrian uniform lounged around, guns hanging, half ready if there should be any resistance or unpleasantness. It was a startling reminder that this was an occupied city. Thenative Venetians were not in control. They must obey or suffer the consequences.
    The streets and canals were quieter than he had expected. He was used to the noise and ebullience of London, the constant bustle of life. The contrast between the teeming capital of an empire, with its opulence and squalor, the bursting confidence of its trade and the tide of wealth and expansion, its poor and its oppressed in ever-growing slums, had an utterly different air from this glorious ruin sinking into a gentle despair under foreign domination. The past was all around as an aching memory filled with beauty that crumbled. Visitors like Monk and Stephan sat in the autumn sunlight on marble pavements and watched over wanderers and expatriates talking in hushed tones, while Venetians