In the evening the merchant returned from his stores, which were situated down by the port. Soon after he came in he sent for Gervaise. “There is a question I had intended to ask you last night,” he said, “but it escaped me. More than two months since there sailed from this port and others many vessels--not the ships of the State, but corsairs. In all, more than twenty ships started, with the intention of making a great raid upon the coast of Italy. No word has since been received of them, and their friends here are becoming very uneasy, the more so as we hear that neither at Tunis nor Algiers has any news been received. Have you heard at Rhodes of a Moorish fleet having been ravaging the coast of Italy?”