A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking

up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic,

illustrative of the command to “multiply and replenish

the earth.” The Cathedral itself had seemed very old;

but this picture was illustrating a period in history

which made the building seem young by comparison.

But I presently found an antique which was older than either

the battered Cathedral or the date assigned to the piece

of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as

the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench,

and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth.

Contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this

modest fossil, those other things were flippantly

modern–jejune–mere matters of day-before-yesterday.

The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away

under the influence of this truly venerable presence.

St. Mark’s is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer

of the profound and simply piety of the Middle Ages.

Whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple,

did it and contributed his swag to this Christian one.

So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions

procured in that peculiar way. In our day it would be

immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church,

but it was no sin in the old times. St. Mark’s was itself

the victim of a curious robbery once. The thing is set

down in the history of Venice, but it might be smuggled

into the Arabian Nights and not seem out of place

there:

Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a Candian

named Stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house

of Este, was allowed to view the riches of St. Mark’s.

His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind

an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest

discovered him and turned him out. Afterward he got

in again–by false keys, this time. He went there,

night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone,

overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil,

and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble

paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury;

this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put

it in at will. After that, for weeks, he spent all

his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it

in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure,

and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn,

with a duke’s ransom under his cloak. He did not need

to grab, haphazard, and run–there was no hurry.

He could make deliberate and well-considered selections;

he could consult his esthetic tastes. One comprehends

how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger

of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off

a unicorn’s horn–a mere curiosity–which would not pass

through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two–

a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor.

He continued to store up his treasures at home until his

occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous;

then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be;

for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly

fifty million dollars!

He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country,

and it might have been years before the plunder was missed;

but he was human–he could not enjoy his delight alone,

he must have somebody to talk about it with. So he

exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni,

then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath

away with a sight of his glittering hoard. He detected

a look in his friend’s face which excited his suspicion,

and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni

saved himself by explaining that that look was only

an expression of supreme and happy astonishment.

Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state’s

principal jewels–a huge carbuncle, which afterward

figured in the Ducal cap of state–and the pair parted.

Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal,

and handed over the carbuncle as evidence.