It was shortly after this affair that the direction of Zeno’s life was settled for ever; jealous of his success and his growing fame, a Greek knight, in a moment of spleen, accused him, after all he had done, of treachery!
There is a touch of to-day about the form which Sir Simon’s venom took that brings that distant past very close to us. “Tradito!” “Nous sommes trahis!” These are still the first cries to be heard when the gold of the spendthrift years has run out and the horrible creditors crowd into a nation’s House.
One would hardly have thought that a reasoning man in Zeno’s position would have worried his head with such foolishness. The insult might well have been the occasion of a righteous wrath and contempt, but that is all. Carlo, however, did not see it in that light, and, despite the protests of his more sensible friends and the pleadings of his Bishop, he challenged his traducer, and, by so doing, threw up his ecclesiastical ambitions and took the sword in perpetuity.
Free now, and without friends, he lost no time in marrying a rich and noble lady who had fallen in love with him, at Chiavenna; her he left, after a short honeymoon, in order to meet Sir Simon, according to arrangement, at Naples.
That kingdom being in its usual condition, it was no easy task to penetrate to its Capital or arrive there, even by sea, in anything like safety. But Carlo was not a person lightly to be deterred when the prospect of a fight was in question, and in due time he arrived in the presence of Queen Joanna, who had been selected as an umpire.
But she, in the meanwhile, had come to the decision that it was a case for damages rather than for a duel, and, a court having sat upon it, the Greek was ordered to refund Carlo for his expenses. There being nothing else to keep him, he returned to his wife in Greece, where he was soon made governor of a province. Soon after his wife died, and he, being unable to retain her dowry, reëmbarked for Venice, where he struck out anew as a bachelor.
It was not long, though, before he married again, and his second wife, the daughter of the Admiral, Marco Giustiniani, had a sufficiently large fortune to permit of his establishing himself as a merchant in the East.