Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

much more terrible for the Venetians, you know, than any other people when there is a disaster at sea. They do not get their living from vineyards or fields, but they are all, everyone of them, dependent on the sea. Whenever the sea rose against any one of them they were all afraid, and hurried to San Marco to pray to him for protection.

As soon as Cecco entered the cathedral he stopped. He thought of how he had brought his little sons there, and taught them to pray to San Marco. “It is he who carries us over the sea, who opens the gates of Byzance for us and gives us the supremacy over the islands of the East,” he said to them. Out of gratitude for all this the Venetians had built San Marco the most beautiful temple in the world, and no vessel ever returned from a foreign port without bringing a gift for San Marco.

Then they had admired the red marble walls of the cathedral and the golden mosaic ceiling. It was as if no misfortune could befall a city that had such a sanctuary for her patron Saint.

Cecco quickly knelt down and began to pray, the one Paternoster after the other. It came back, he felt. He would send it away by prayers. He would not believe anything bad about San Marco.

But it had been no storm at all. And so much was certain, that even if the Saint had not sent the storm, he had, in any case, not done anything to help Cecco’s sons, but had allowed them to perish as if by accident. When this thought came upon him he began to pray; but the thought would not leave him.

And to think that San Marco had a treasury in this cathedral full of all the glories of fairyland! To think that he had himself prayed to him all his life, and had never rowed past the Piazetta without going into the cathedral to invoke him!

Surely it was not by a mere accident that his sons had today perished on the sea! Oh, it was miserable for the Venetians to have no one better to depend upon! Just fancy a Saint who revenged himself upon two children⁠—a patron Saint who could not protect against a gust of wind!

He stood up, and he shrugged his shoulders, and disparagingly waved his hand when he looked towards the tomb of the Saint in the chancel.

A verger was going about with a large chased silver-gilt dish, collecting gifts for San Marco. He went from the one person to the other, and also came to Cecco.

Cecco drew back as if it were the Evil One himself who handed him the plate. Did San Marco ask for gifts from him? Did he think he deserved gifts from him?

All at once he seized the large golden zecchine he had in his belt, and flung it into the plate with such violence that the ring of it could be heard all over the church. It disturbed those who were praying, and made them turn round. And all who saw Cecco’s face were terrified; he looked as if he were possessed of evil spirits.

Cecco immediately left the church, and at first felt it as a great relief that he had been revenged upon the Saint. He had treated him as one treats a usurer who demands more than he is entitled to. “Take this too,” one says, and throws his last gold piece in the fellow’s face so that the blood runs down over his eyes. But the usurer does not strike again⁠—simply stoops and picks up the zecchine. So, too, had San Marco done. He had accepted Cecco’s zecchine, having first robbed him of his sons. Cecco had made him accept a gift which had been tendered with such bitter hatred. Would an honourable man have put up with such treatment? But San Marco was a coward⁠—both cowardly and revengeful. But he was not likely to revenge himself upon Cecco. He was, no doubt, pleased and thankful he had got the zecchine. He simply accepted it and pretended that it had been given as piously as could be.

When Cecco stood at the entrance, two vergers quickly passed him.

“It rises⁠—it rises terribly!” the one said.

“What rises?” asked Cecco.

“The water in the crypt. It has risen a foot in the last two or three minutes.”

When Cecco went down the steps, he saw a small pool of water on the Market Place close to the bottom step. It was seawater, which had splashed up from the Piazetta. He was surprised that the sea had risen so high, and he hurried down to the Riva, where his boat lay. Everything was as he had left it, only the water had risen considerably. It came rolling in broad waves through the five sea-gates; but the wind was not very strong. At the Riva there were already pools of seawater, and the canals rose so that the doors in the houses facing the water had to be closed. The sky was all gray like the sea.

It never struck Cecco that it might grow into a serious storm. He would not believe any such thing. San Marco had allowed his sons to perish without cause. He felt sure this was no real storm. He would just like to see if it would be a storm, and he sat down beside his boat and waited.

Then suddenly rifts appeared in the dull-gray clouds which covered the sky. The clouds were torn asunder and flung aside, and large storm-clouds came rushing, black like warships, and from them scourging rain and hail fell upon the city. And something like quite a new sea came surging in from Lido. Ah, signor! they were not the swan-necked waves you have seen out there, the waves that bend their transparent necks and hasten towards the shore, and which, when they are pitilessly repulsed, float away again with their