Thus Also Those Three Gentlemen Who
Had Been So Many Years Absent From Their Native City Were Recognized By
None Of Their Kinsfolk, Who Were Under The Firm Belief That They Had All
Been Dead For Many A Year Past, As Indeed Had Been Reported.
Through the
long duration and the hardships of their journeys, and through the many
worries and anxieties that they had undergone, they were quite changed
in aspect, and had got a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both
in air and accent, having indeed all but forgotten their Venetian
tongue.
Their clothes too were coarse and shabby, and of a Tartar cut.
They proceeded on their arrival to their house in this city in the
confine of St. John Chrysostom, where you may see it to this day. The
house, which was in those days a very lofty and handsome palazzo, is now
known by the name of the Corte del Millioni for a reason that I will
tell you presently. Going thither they found it occupied by some of
their relatives, and they had the greatest difficulty in making the
latter understand who they should be. For these good people, seeing them
to be in countenance so unlike what they used to be, and in dress so
shabby, flatly refused to believe that they were those very gentlemen of
the Ca' Polo whom they had been looking upon for ever so many years as
among the dead.[4] So these three gentlemen, - this is a story I have
often heard when I was a youngster from the illustrious Messer GASPARO
MALPIERO, a gentleman of very great age, and a Senator of eminent virtue
and integrity, whose house was on the Canal of Santa Marina, exactly at
the corner over the mouth of the Rio di S. Giovanni Chrisostomo, and
just midway among the buildings of the aforesaid Corte del Millioni, and
he said he had heard the story from his own father and grandfather, and
from other old men among the neighbours, - the three gentlemen, I say,
devised a scheme by which they should at once bring about their
recognition by their relatives, and secure the honourable notice of the
whole city; and this was it:
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