of Messer Maffio and his father Messer Nicolo. They had decided,
whilst still on their travels, that Marco should marry as soon as
they should get to Venice; but now they found themselves in this
unlucky pass, with so much wealth and nobody to inherit it. Fearing
that Marco’s imprisonment might endure for many years, or, worse
still, that he might not live to quit it (for many assured them
that numbers of Venetian prisoners had been kept in Genoa a score
of years before obtaining liberty); seeing too no prospect of being
able to ransom him,—a thing which they had attempted often and
by various channels,—they took counsel together, and came to the
conclusion that Messer Nicolo, who, old as he was, was still hale
and vigorous, should take to himself a new wife. This he did; and
at the end of four years he found himself the father of three sons,
Stefano, Maffio, and Giovanni. Not many years after, Messer Marco
aforesaid, through the great favour that he had acquired in the
eyes of the first gentlemen of Genoa, and indeed of the whole city,
was discharged from prison and set free. Returning home he found
that his father had in the meantime had those three other sons.
Instead of taking this amiss, wise and discreet man that he was,
he agreed also to take a wife of his own. He did so accordingly,
but he never had any son, only two girls, one called Moreta and the
other Fantina.
“When at a later date his father died, like a good and dutiful son
he caused to be erected for him a tomb of very honourable kind for
those days, being a great sarcophagus cut from the solid stone,
which to this day may be seen under the portico before the Church
of S. Lorenzo in this city, on the right hand as you enter, with
an inscription denoting it to be the tomb of Messer Nicolo Polo of
the contrada of S. Gio. Chrisostomo. The arms of his family consist
of a _Bend_ with three birds on it, and the colours, according to
certain books of old histories in which you see all the coats of
the gentlemen of this city emblazoned, are the field _azure_, the
bend _argent_, and the three birds _sable_. These last are birds of
that kind vulgarly termed _Pole_,[8] or, as the Latins call them,
_Gracculi_.
[Sidenote: Ramusio’s account of the Family Polo and its
termination.]