You must see him now as he was seventeen years after he had come to China, and fourteen years after his wife, little Golden Bells, had died, a lean figure of a man, with his hair streaked with gray, a lean, hard face on him and savage eyes, and all the body of him steel and whale-bone from riding on the great Khan's business, and riding fast and furious, so that he might sleep and forget; but forgetting never came to him. . .You might think he was a harsh man from his face and eyes, but he was the straight man in administering justice, and he had the soft heart for the poor -- the heart of Golden Bells.
He was easily moved to anger, but the fine Chinese people never minded him, knowing he was a suffering man. Though never a word of Golden Bells came from his mouth, barring maybe that line of Dante's, the saddest line in the world, and that he used to repeat to himself and no one there:
. . ."'la bella persona Che mi fu tolta. . .che mi fu tolta'; who was taken from me; Taken! Taken from me!"
And oftentimes a look would come over his face as if he were listening for a voice to speak -- listening, listening, and then a wee harsh laugh would come from him, very heartbreaking to hear, and whatever was in his hand, papers or a riding-whip, he would pitch down and walk away. . .
He had just come in from the borders of the Arctic lands, from giving the khan's orders to the squat, hairy tribes who live by the icy shores, and had come to the garden by the Lake of Cranes, the garden where the Golden Bells of singing and laughter were dumb this armful of years, and he was alone, and the listening look was on his face, when there came Kubla and Li Po and the old magician. . .
Now Kubla was very old, so old he could hardly walk, and very frail, and Li Po was very old, too, and gray in the face, and sadder in the eyes than ever, and the magician's white beard had grown to his knees, but there was no more humor in his eyes. . .And Marco Polo helped the old khan to sit down.
"Oh, sir, why did you come to me? Sure I was going to you the moment I had changed my riding-clothes. . .Sir, you should have stayed in your bed. . ."
"There was something on my mind, Marco, and the old do be thinking long to get things off their mind."
"What can I do sir?"
"Marco, my child, you mustn't take what I say amiss. But I want you to be going back, to be going back to Venice."
"Sir, what have I done to dissatisfy you? In all my embassies have I been weak to the strong or bullying toward the weak? Does an oppressed man complain of injustice, does a merchant complain of being cheated, or a woman say she was wronged?"
"Now, Marco of my heart, didn't I say not to be taking it amiss?
Is there any one closer to me nor you, or is it likely I'd be listening to stories brought against you? It's just this. I'm an old and tired man, Marco Beag, and in a week or a moon at most I'm due to die, so the Sanang tells me. Don't be sorry, son. Be glad for me. Life has been a wee bit too long.
"And now, son dear, I want to tell you. You've been closer to me than my own sons, and you've been the dear lad. And there's not one man in all China can say you did a harsh or an unjust thing;
but, my dear son, 'tis just the way of people; there's a power of hard feeling against you in this land, you being a stranger and having stood so high.
