“_Ciò!_” said Shylock, smiling graciously at his futile attempts to open communication with the enemy. Then he called Jessica from the deep window where she had been at work on the quaint old account-books of the shop, as great curiosities as anything in it, since they were kept in Venetian, but by means of the Hebrew alphabet. She spoke Italian, and to her the young men made known their wants. She said a few words to her father, and he brought forth the goblet.
It was a marvellous specimen of the most exquisite Venetian workmanship. A pair of green serpents, with eyes that glowed like fire, writhed around the golden stem of a blood-red bowl, and as the white light of the cloudless sky fell on it from the broad window, it burned in the glory of the sunshine and seemed to fill itself full of some mysterious and royal wine. Shylock revolved it slowly in his hand to show the strange waviness of its texture, and as it turned, the serpents clung more closely to the stem and arched their heads and shot a glance of hate at the strangers who came to gaze on them with curious fascination.
John Manning looked at the goblet long and eagerly. “How did it come into your possession?” he asked.
And Jessica translated Shylock’s declaration that the goblet had been at Murano for hundreds of years; it was _anticho_--_antichissimo_, as the signor could see for himself. It was of the best period of the art. That Shylock would guarantee. How came it into his possession? By the greatest good fortune. It was taken from Murano during the troubles after the fall of the Republic in the time of Napoleon. It had gone finally into the hands of a certain count, who, very luckily, was poor. _Conte che non conta, non conta niente._ So Shylock had been enabled to buy it. It had been the desire of his heart for years to own so fine an object.
“How much do you want for it?” asked John Manning.
Shylock scented from afar the battle of bargaining, dear in Italy to both buyer and seller. He gave a keen look at both the _Inglesi_, and took up the glass affectionately, as though he could not bear to part with it. Jessica interpreted. Shylock had intended that goblet for his own private collection, but the frank and generous manner of their excellencies had overcome him, and he would let them have it for five hundred florins.