“How do you do, my dear.” He gave me a friendly smile. He was an older man with a pale moustache and jowls that gave him a rather hangdog look. “So nice to see a fellow English person. Most of them have fled for home, fearing the worst, I’m afraid.”

“Do you think there will be a worst?”

“I’m rather afraid that I do,” he said. “I’m waiting to see if and when I may be recalled. It all depends on Mussolini and if he decides to follow along with his idol Adolf. I don’t think he has anything like the resources to start a proper war yet, but it would be bad if he invited the Germans to use Venice as a base and thus got us drawn in against our will.”

“Oh gosh,” I said. “I suppose Venice would make a good naval base.”

“The Nazis would like to use Trieste, which used to be the big Austrian naval base before the Great War,” he said. “But Venice is a safer harbour, and easier to hide ships amongst all the little islands.” He shook his head. “But let us not dwell on what might be. Let us make the most of this perfect Venetian night and good company, what?”

I nodded. He picked up a glass of Prosecco and handed it to me. “So you’re visiting here?”

“I’m here for a year, studying at the accademia,” I said. “I got a bursary to take leave from my teaching job.”

“Jolly nice. I’d make the most of it, if I were you. Venice is still one of the few civilized cities in the world. The racial laws created last year by Il Duce were supposed to exclude Jews from education and teaching and then to strip them of property. None of that has happened here. The Venetians still live quite happily and do business in the ghetto and turn a blind eye to those of Jewish origin, like our dear contessa here.”

I looked at him with surprise and then turned my gaze to Contessa Fiorito. I remembered now that she had mentioned her parents were Jewish é migré s. “But her husband was an Italian count,” I said.

“Indeed he was, but that has nothing to do with her racial origin. Born of a poor Jewish family in Paris, so I understand. Of course she is well respected here and does a lot in the way of philanthropy for the city. Most people don’t even know her heritage.” He drew closer to me. “I have advised her to have an escape plan ready, just in case.”