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The day was drawing near when Marcantonio Giustiniani, the only son of Giustinian Giustiniani, a noble of the Senate and of the Council of the Ten, should present himself before the Avvocato del Comun to claim admission to the Great Council as a noble, born in lawful wedlock, of noble parents, inscribed in the Golden Book.

To the young fellow himself this twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth, when, by Venetian law, the ceremony must take place, approached with needlessly rapid footsteps; he was not yet ready for the duties it would bring, so much more did he incline to that measure of boyish freedom which had thus far been his, so unwilling was he to renounce his longing for some form of art life—the impulse to which fretted him almost unbearably, in view of the political career which opened mercilessly before him, threatening every dearer project.

Not that he felt himself born to be an artist—Paolo Cagliari laughed at his studies while he encouraged his coming to the studio, telling him that for one who had not chosen Art for his mistress the drawings were "well enough"; and from the Veronese the words were consoling. His mother had been afraid of this taste for art, which, for a short time, had exercised such sway over his fancy, stimulated by his culte for the beautiful, that he had plead with her to win his father's consent for an art life. Yet he had himself acquiesced in her quiet but inflexible showing of the futility of attempting such an overturning of Giustiniani traditions, though he still went with dangerous frequency to the studio of the Veronese, to which she had procured him entrance upon his promise that he would not seriously consider that impossible possibility at which he had hinted. There had been mention of Pordenone and of Aretino, with a certain cool scorn that was worse than censure, and as convincing, there was the Titian, than whom, in art and sumptuousness, one could not be greater; but, even for him, Cavaliere of France, there was no place in the Consiglio!

Not that Marcantonio would voluntarily have relinquished his hereditary place in the state, his possible part in its glory—the dream which came to all young noblemen of the portrait in that splendid Sala di Consiglio of his own face grown venerable, wearing the ermine and the ducal coronet, in token of that supremacy so dear to each Venetian heart, but jealously held by every noble of the Republic within confines which lessened with each succession, until the crown was assumed in trembling and ignominious restriction—if with external pomp and honor that might befit a king.

But he wanted time; he wanted liberty to choose his own life or enjoy his restlessness, and he realized the more keenly, from the sense of power that was so chafed in the curbing, that he was too young to be forced into such ruthless service; and he could not but acquiesce the less fervently because it was not open to him to give himself, since the claim of Venice was absolute and resistance was a crime.

But with quite other sentiments the preparations for the fete were progressing in that ancient family of Giustiniani, where the day was awaited with an impatience which increased the fervor and the pomp of preparation, but was not otherwise manifested in any sign of undignified eagerness. No house in Venice had held this right for more generations; no house was princelier in its bearing, nor more superbly republican! No member of that Supreme Council was more esteemed than the stern Giustinian, who had been again and again elected to the most important missions of the state; no donna nobile of all the Venetians was prouder, more highly born, more beautiful, nor more coldly gracious than the mother of Marcantonio.

In such an environment there was but one career possible for the only son of the house, who had been carefully trained, according to the traditions that made culture for the young Venetian of those days; he had even attended courses of those philosophical conferences which had become the fashion since the sittings of the famous Council of Trent, and which had been conducted in various convents by distinguished professors from Padua and Bologna, and even by some of the learned men of Rome; it was a species of amusement creditable for a young nobleman—it would quicken the reasoning powers and give more subtlety in debate, when government problems should later absorb his gifts.

But if, like other golden youth of his time, he was like a Greek in possession of their liquid tongue and in a mastery of oratory that filled the soul of Giustinian Giustiniani with satisfaction, the young patrician himself had acquired this learning, less with a thought of one day shining in the Senate than because it pleased him as a touch of finish. He was, in some sort, a reaction from the proud and typical Venetian so ably represented by the elder Giustinian, who claimed unchallenged descent from the Emperor Justinian, upheld by the traditions of that long line of ancestry and by the memory of many honorable offices most honorably discharged by numerous members of his house. Marcantonio, on the contrary, was handsome, winning, pleasure-loving—after an innocent fashion, which brought some sneers from his compeers, the gay "company of the hose;" but he thought life not made for pain, nor ugliness, nor hardness of any sort; he was bred to luxury, yet his intellectual inheritance made learning easy for him; he was many sided and vacillating, an exquisite in taste and the science of trifles. His affectionate nature, repressed and chilled, refused absolute subjection to that purpose which the elder Giustinian held relentlessly before him; he wished to live for himself a little, and not wholly for Venice. He was an embodiment of that late time of Venetian culture when its magnificence, its artistic and intellectual development had touched their height, and the hint of decadence shadowed its splendor with a pathos unguessed except by the thoughtful few.

He had dabbled a little in costly manuscripts—a taste for an exquisite in those days, when Venice was the envy of the world for the marvels of her press; and already he possessed a volume or two, for his cabinet, from the atelier of Aldus Manutius—that famous edition of Aristotle, the first ever printed in Greek, with the Aldine mark of anchor and dolphin on the title-page. But a volume more precious still, with its dainty finish and piquant history, conferred distinction, it was said, among the literati, upon its youthful owner; this was no less a treasure than that first copy of "Le Cose Volgare di Messer Francesco Petrarca," most exquisitely printed in type modeled after the poet's own elegant handwriting, and the volume had been superintended by many learned heads,—awaited with impatience, as a triumph for its makers,—and thought a thing rare enough to be offered, like a jewel, to the learned and illustrious lady, Isabella of Mantua. Marcantonio was no pedant, but these treasures simply had their place in the richly painted cabinet, beside many other bits of exquisite workmanship, because rare things in every art were beautiful to our dilettante, and possessions of all kinds came to him easily.

There lay the golden necklace presented by Henry III. of France to a Giustinian who had been one of the young nobles set apart for the household of the king, when on his visit to Venice; and beside it a curious volume of songs, all in honor of France and of the king, entitled "Il Magno Enrico III., difensore di Santa Chiesa, di Francia e di Polonia Re christianissimo." Here was also preserved that still more curious allegorical drama which had been given at the grand fete at the Ducal Palace in honor of this over-adulated monarch. It was natural that some of these literary curiosities, of which the visit of Henry III. had been prolific, should have remained in possession of the masters of the palace which had been tendered for his residence. The volume, bound in azure velvet, embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis and seeded with pearls, lay open at the page "Chapter in which the Most Holy Catholic Religion is introduced conversing with the most Christian, most powerful and most holy Henry III., the most glorious King of France and Poland."

The noble lady Laura Giustiniani, who looked with pride upon these costly trifles of the cabinet of Marcantonio, was a Venetian in every throb of her patrician veins—first a patriot and then a mother—she earnestly coveted for her son that he should render vast services to the state, receive in his early years the Patriarch's blessing upon his alliance with some ancient Venetian house, and close his noble career with the Doge's coronet. She admitted reluctantly to herself, although she would never have confessed it openly, that in these latter days of the Republic the ermine was not likely to be offered to one so stern and masterful as her husband; while she also knew, and the knowledge held its compensation, that Giustinian Giustiniani could not be spared from the Councils of his government. She knew her history well, and she realized that the days of the Michieli and Orseoli were over, and that the supreme honor was no longer for the strong but for the pliant; this had made her the more willing that her son should partake of the facile and gracious mood of this time of Renaissance, and had led her to shape his education more in consonance with his natural tastes than with her own views of fitness for a Venetian noble. She knew that this was weakness for a Giustinian; but it was hard to see the noble line pass down through the centuries without that coveted sign of honor—the minikin Lion of San Marco, the mighty symbol—carved upon their palaces.

Meanwhile, for a suitable alliance there were already schemes on foot, and mothers of noble young Venetian ladies paid frequent court to the stately Lady Laura in her palace on the Canal Grande; and fathers, in the Senate, in moments of unbending, discussed the probability of the immediate rise of the young Giustinian upon his admission to the Consiglio—he was competent and not positive, gracious and no fool, he could be made to see the wisdom of other people's opinions, which, with the elder Giustinian, was unheard of!

Among the maidens who should grace the banquet to be given on Marcantonio's birthnight, more than one had sat for hours in some high balcony of her palace, preparing for Venetian belle-ship with a patience worthy of a better cause—her long locks, mysteriously treated, streaming over the broad brim of the great, crownless hat which protected her fair face, while the sun bestowed its last touch of beauty in bleaching the dark tresses to that rich, red, burnished gold which the Venetians prized.

The young patrician was already esteemed a connoisseur in the most exquisite industries of Venice, and the Lady Laura had confided to her son the ordering of a set of goblets of girasole for the banquet—a new opalescent glass, with iridescent borderings, such as had never yet been seen at any Venetian fete.

Thus the gondola of the Giustiniani floated for long hours before the famous establishment of Girolamo Magagnati, so delicate and intricate was the work that had been ordered from him; and the gondoliers, meanwhile, in their splendid liveries, held converse with other gondoliers in lazily drifting barks, with hatchments of other noble houses embroidered on their sleeves; and their tones were strident and quarrelsome, or self-complacent and patronizing, as the quality of the silken sashes which displayed the color of their house was heavier or poorer than their own.

One boasts of the lantern, all of brass, "Wrought by Messer Alessandro Leopardi—'come no c'e altro!'—there is no other like it—which he, the favored gondolier, has been burnishing for the banquet of the Dandolo, to which he shall that night convey the noble lady of the Giustiniani!"

"It is less beautiful," retorts a gondolier of the house of Mocenigo, the fringes of his sash of rose sweeping the bridge of his gondola as it moves forward, slightly tilting on its side, with a quick, disdainful motion called forth by proper Mocenigo pride—so pliant are these barks of Venice to the moods of the gondolier. "It is less beautiful—by the Holy Madonna of San Castello!—than the lantern of wrought iron with the jewels of rubino that Messer Girolamo Magagnati makes this day, by order of the Eccellentissimo Andrea Mocenigo, with the jewels of the fine glass of Murano that shall be like roses flashing in the night!"

And he has sworn so great an oath, by that most ancient Madonna of Castello, and so well has he vindicated the honor and splendor of his house in thus early appropriating this recent glory of Venetian workmanship in its own family emblem, that there is no present need of distance between him and his rival, and resting upon his oar, as he stands with a proud and graceful bearing of victory, he allows the gondola to glide back into position with the lapping of the water.

For the gondoliers of the house of Giustiniani are unfolding, with quick, ringing, jubilant voices, vast confidential tales of the fetes that are in preparation for the marriage of the young noble of the Council, their master, of which this banquet is only the precursor. "For of course there will be a sposalizia! Santa Maria! there is no room on the Canal Grande for the gondolas that come to the palazzo—from every casa in the 'Libro d'Oro'—to win the favor of the donna nobile of the Giustiniani, for some bella donzella who shall be chosen for their young master—who is like a prince, and will end one day in being Doge! Santa Maria di Castello, he does not wait that day to scatter his golden coins!"

If that question of "sposalizia" is not imminent there is truth enough for any Venetian conscience in the story of the ranks of princely gondolas at the bend of the Canal Grande, on the days when the donna nobile of the Giustiniani gives welcome to her guests—princely gondolas they are, with felzes of brocaded and embroidered stuffs, the framework inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, with metal fittings curiously wrought, and all that bravery of pomp so dear to the Venetian heart, which calls forth surly decrees from those stern Signori of the Council—the much unloved "Provveditori alle Pompe," the sumptuary officers of this superb Republic.

Meanwhile, in this narrow water-street, sunk a few feet below the paved foot path that stretches to the doors of the dwellings, there are sudden grumbling movements among the retainers of the patrician families, as they steer their gorgeous gondolas from side to side, to avoid humiliating contact with that slow procession of barges bringing produce from the island gardens of Mazzorbo, there are other barges laden with great, white wooden tubs of water from Fusina, fresh and very needful to these cities of the sea, and the dark hulks of barks curiously entangled with nets and masts and unwieldy tackle of sailor and fisher, show flashes of brilliant color as the water plays through the netted baskets swinging low against their sides, while the sunlight glances back from the gold and silver glory of the scales of living fish, crowded and palpitating within their meshes.

The fisherfolk who guide these barks are gray and gnomelike in their coloring, tanned by sky and sea and ceaseless atmospheres of fish, into a neutral tint,—less vivid in hues of skin and hair, with eyes less brilliant, with less vivacity and charm of bearing than the gay Venetians,—but they are the descendants of those island tribes from which the commerce and greatness of Venice issued; there is almost a show of stateliness in the aggravating slowness with which their heavily freighted barks proceed, serenely occupying the best of the narrow waterway. They are not envious of the hangers-on of those palaces of the nobles, these free fisherfolk of the islands; they have only haughty stares for the servile set of gondoliers in lacings of gold and scarlet—who are not nobles nor fishers, nor people of the soil—and they pass them silently, with much ostentation of taking all the gondoliers of Murano into the friendliness of their jests and curses, as the barges touch and clash with some swiftly gliding gondolier of their own rank, who wears no bravery or armorial bearings.

Their homes—long, low, white-washed cottages—spread along the main channel and reach in lessening, dotted lines far off into the sea, where other islands lie in friendly nearness; but the Bridge, with the Lions of St. Mark on archivolt and parapet—the invariable official signet of Venetian dominion—stretches between that simpler quarter and this, which holds the great houses of Murano, whose masters, a sort of petite noblesse, have made their names illustrious by marvelous inventions in that exquisite industry in which Venice has no rival.



VI

The "Madonna del Sorriso" now lacked only the finishing touches upon the exquisite central figure, which reached more nearly to the spiritual ideal than anything that had ever come from the brush of the Veronese, and already the Servite friars, in their long black robes and white cowls, had visited the studio with suggestions many and fruitless, serving only to arouse the artist's indignant protest and increase his determination to image more perfectly the poetic vision that had been vouchsafed to him.

"It hath not the beauty of the 'Venezia' in the palazzo," said one.

"And the church is dark," said another, "and the people like the red and blue of the colors of the true Madonna."

"And a frate, of the Servi—since it hath been painted for the convent—here—kneeling," suggested another, more timidly; for it was known that the Veronese was not always docile in these days, since he had become great.

"Nay, leave me," said the Veronese fiercely; "for this one thing I know, and this will I paint, for the good of my soul, as mine art shall prompt me and not otherwise. And if it please not him—Fra Paolo, who hath given the order—I will bestow it elsewhere."

Then a friar habited like the others, who had stood apart and had not spoken, came and threw back his cowl, dismissing the group with a gesture. The features thus disclosed were unimportant, apart from the domelike forehead, which might well belong to the most learned man of his learned age; but Fra Paolo's face owed its distinction to the rare impression it gave the beholder of invincible calm and self-mastery, with a certain mysterious hint of power and a promise of unswervingness. His gaze held no suggestion of concealment; yet for the deeper thoughts that move the spirit of man, to those who knew him well his mild blue eyes remained inscrutable, while his courtesy to all made one forget that his words were few, and that of himself he had revealed nothing.

"It is well," he said, "to know that we know. Serve faithfully the God who gave the gift and take no counsel from men who know not."

Then he stood silent for a while before the picture, as if he would learn its meaning, the artist watching anxiously, not guessing his thought.

"The pious wish hath made the offering noble," he said at length, in quiet, measured tones. "And for the face, it is holy—of the beauty that God permits—yet I pretend no criticism, since Art is not of mine understanding. I will not take the honor of the gift away from the giver, though I had meant it otherwise."

After Fra Paolo had left the studio the Veronese was still studying his picture, pleased and serious, feeling that this man, who was not an artist, had comprehended the deepest mood in which he had ever approached his art, when Marina entered.

"Fra Paolo hath found our offering worthy," he said very gravely; and suddenly remembering that Marina had come for the last time, "Benedetto hath need of me in the outer studio for some measurements," he said to Marcantonio, "but I shall soon return. Do thou, meanwhile, show the damigella thy sketch."

She turned inquiringly toward Marcantonio, who placed it silently before her. When he gathered courage to look at her she stood flushed and trembling with clasped hands.

"Marina!" he cried.

She moved suddenly away from him, drawing herself up to her full height, one hand slightly extended, as if to keep him from coming nearer; but her face, as she turned it frankly to his, was lighted with a smile the Veronese would never copy, and her eyes shone through her tears.

"Is it true, Marina?" he questioned radiantly, as he tried to seize her hand.

But she still moved backward—not as if she were afraid, but as though she would help him by a motion to understand.

"You have confessed me unawares," she said, "and shown me mine own secret, which I knew not. It is not to confess nor deny."

"Yet you move away, Marina, as if you would not have it so."

"Because only the renunciation of it is for us," she answered firmly. "For I am of the people, and you—of the Giustiniani!"

"As you shall also be!" he affirmed, undaunted.

"Marco, at Venice this is not easy!" The tone was a caress which she made no effort to withhold, yet he dared not try again to touch her hand; he already felt her strength.

"None the less, because it is not easy it shall be done. Reach me your hand, Marina, to prove that you trust my vow."

He was not wont to crave favor so humbly, but a new reverence had entered into his soul.

She hesitated for a moment, then her words came brokenly, yet with dignity.

"Marco mio, not yet. Because I am of the people, and because the others—your father and mother, who are of the nobles, and my father, who is of the people—may not consent, we will make no vows until this difficulty is conquered."

"They shall not keep us from it."

She shook her head sadly, but came no nearer. "Will Giustinian Giustiniani ask a daughter of the people? But Girolamo Magagnati is not less proud."

"I will return now with thee to Murano. Perhaps thy father will befriend us."

"No, no; without their consent it would be useless. I think I shall not tell him—it would be only a grief."

"Because it meaneth much to thee?" Marco questioned, luminous and ungenerous.

She did not answer.

"Thou dost verily make too much of the nobles and the people, Marina; we are all Venetians."

"Venice is of the sea and of the land—not like other cities; and the Venetian people is not one, but twain; my father hath often said it. Some other day, perhaps—I do not know—if it is needful for the picture, I may come again. Will you tell the maestro? I think he is our friend, and he will understand."

He would have followed her, but she waved him back.

The day had a melancholy cast in the narrow waterways of Murano, where clouds of smoke, dense and constant, rose from hundreds of glass-workers' chimneys, dimming the reflections in the lagoon and obscuring that wonderful coloring of sky which is nowhere so radiant as at Venice.

Beyond the bridge, which the ubiquitous Lion guards with menacing, uplifted paw, beyond the Piazzetta of San Pietro where the acacia trees are growing, down by the main canal, where the breath comes freer—for it is broader than the one where the gondolas from the great houses of Venice gather and float lazily; past the line of low, whitewashed cottages bordering the narrow foot-path on either side, over the little wooden bridge that spans the lagoon, fifty feet across from bank to bank with its ugly traghetto at the farther end, a figure was often seen wending, with a child held in tender mother fashion, to the campo of the "Matrice," the mother church of San Donate.

To-day when Marina had returned from Venice she had caught the little Zuane to her breast with such a passion of tenderness that he looked up into her face with startled eyes; hers were brimming with smiles and tears, and with that wise child-knowledge, which is not granted to earth's learned ones, he put up his tiny hand with a wan smile and stroked her cheek.

"We will go to San Donato, Zuanino mio," she said caressingly, as he nestled closer, "and I have thee, my bimbo!"

She put the little one gently down as they entered the triangular field where the grass grew green and long—whiteness of sand gleaming in irregular patches between the clumps of coarse blades; but to her this poor turf was something precious associated with that island sanctuary, restful and strange, and she drew a long breath with a sense of suppressed pleasure; for sometimes the water, with its shimmering, uncertain surfaces, wearied her, and unconsciously she craved something more positive.

The child, with uncertain steps, tottered toward the standard of San Marco, which floated proudly from the staff that rose from the rude stone pillar in the center of the campo, where other little ones were playing; in the corner by the well groups of women, from the cottages that bounded the campo on one side, were waiting to draw water for the evening meal, putting down their jugs and going first into the Duomo to say an ave, that the good Madonna might bless the cup.

A few feet only from the Duomo the campanile drew her vision skyward; the film of smoke was lighter here, and the sky seemed nearer—bluer. She turned to her little charge with a beaming face—her moods were so easily wrought upon by phases of nature, but slowly moved by personal influences. "See'st thou, bimbo, how it is beautiful here by the Duomo?"

But the little fellow, in one of his sudden spasms of pain, was striking the air impotently with small, clenched fists, frightening the children who were gathering around him, joining in his cries.

Her caress and passionate forgiveness were always ready for the paroxysm in which she was violently pushed away and combated with struggling feet and hands, before came the period of exhaustion in which he nestled close, panting from weakness. Then she carried him into the church, where, kneeling before the Mother of Sorrows, whose outstretched hands seemed to touch her own in responsive sympathy and gift of calm, she prayed and wept.

"O Holy Mater Dolorosa! Why need the children suffer?—they are so tender and so dear!"

She knelt with loving, protecting arms folded close about the little form now breathing softly and at rest, while an agony of questioning filled her prayer to that beseeching Mater Dolorosa, who, wrapped in the clinging folds of her long blue robe, still leaned forward from the marble background of the apse, compassionate for the suffering ones of earth, with imploring hands and ceaseless dropping tears, symbol of love abounding—a symbol, too, of the dignity of those who suffer and are pure in heart.

This sanctuary was almost a home to the maiden, who came hither to praise or question, for life was full of enigmas. Here, too, where she came from duty and deep devotion, with an intricate sensitiveness of conscience which often rendered her unintelligible to her confessor, she lingered for delight. For the tracery on the arches—the color, the wonderful delicacy of the sculpture—were of that time when art was suggestive and faint, in tint and meaning, like a dream, and its message was always spiritual.

"It is not Thou, O Christ," she said, "who willest pain; but thy children, who are not always loving!"

For in her reverie she was comforted by that vision of a legendary time when the Holy Mother had stood, beautiful, compassionate, and commanding, in this field of flaming scarlet lilies; when a great emperor had obeyed her bidding, and San Donato, the Duomo of Murano, had arisen as a refuge for the sorrowing.

In tender language of the people it was the mother church—"Matrice."

She made a cushion of her cloak and laid the little one upon it, for he still slept and she would not waken him; and then, though the quaint, inlaid pavement was cold and bare, she knelt again, her rosary dropping from her hands as she shyly whispered the burden of her strange new confession to this ever-waiting, tender Mother—her confession more full of pain than joy, yet already dear, and a thing not to be surrendered, though it should bring her only pain.

But there was no other friend to whom she told it.

Soon, alas! the days grew over-full of pain, and Marina came more often to the Mater Dolorosa, for the little Zuane had not grown stronger with the coming of the spring; sleep came to him more easily, but it did not bring refreshment, and the roses on his cheeks were only signs of failing bloom. Passionately Marina's loving prayers were breathed before the shrine of the Madonna San Donato, but the little one grew weaker every day, till, after a long night of watching, a sweet-voiced nun stood with Marina beside the cradle.

"The burden of the baby's suffering life is changed to blessing," she said. "Earth held no joy for him; God hath been merciful beyond thy prayer, my daughter."



VII

Fra Paolo Sarpi—this friar so grave and great and unemotional—had been since he had entered the convent in his precocious boyhood the central figure, fascinating the interest of his community by the marvel of his progress, so that those who had been his teachers stood reverently aside, before he had attained to manhood, recognizing gifts beyond their leading which had already won homage from the savants of Europe and crowned the order of the Servi with unexampled honors. The element of the unusual in the young Paolo's endowments had transformed this Benjamin of the convent into a hero, and surrounded the calm flow of his studious life with a halo of romance for these Servite friars; yet the good Fra Giulio in those early days, having little learning wherewith to estimate his progress and watching over him like a father, had been grieved at his strange placidity. "He sorely needeth some touch of emotion," he said yearningly; "methinks I love the lad as if he were mine own son, and I feel something lacking in his life."

"Fret not the lad needlessly with those fanciful notions of thine," Fra Gianmaria had retorted with much asperity. "It is the most marvelous piece of mental mechanism that I have ever dreamed. Already he hath attained to larger knowledge than thou, with thy gray hairs, canst comprehend."

Fra Giulio had crossed himself devoutly, as if confessing to some earthliness. "I measure not my simple mind with that of a genius, my brother; for so God hath endowed our lad. Yet it may be that He meaneth man to garner other blessings besides knowledge. We received him as a child into our fold, and we are responsible for his development. But his condition is not normal."

"Genius is abnormal," Fra Gianmaria had responded shortly.

"He hath no wish but for this ceaseless mental labor; all natural youthful fancies, all joy in the things of beauty—for these he careth naught."

The elder friar's troubled utterance had stirred no tremor in his companion's stern reply. "Thou and I, my brother, have attained by penances and years of abnegation to that mood which hath been granted the boy as a gift to fit him for the cloister life. It were small kindness to implant a struggle of which he knows not the beginnings."

And now, after all these years, through which the good Fra Giulio had watched this son of his affections, whom he loved with a love "passing the loves of earth" he pathetically told himself,—"as if God thus made up to him for all the loves he had resigned,"—now that the name of Fra Paolo was uttered with reverence while his own was unknown, he still expressed his heart in many tender cares, providing the new cassock before the scholar had noticed that the one he wore was seamed and frayed, with such other gentle ministries as the convent rule permitted toward one who never gave a worldly thought to the morrow.

And still, after all these years, the fatherly friar often fondly recurred to a time when he had first seemed to catch some dim, shadowed glimpse of that inner self which Fra Paolo so rarely expressed. He had been endeavoring to rouse the lad to enthusiasm. "Never have I known one show so little pleasure in nature," he had said. They were standing on the terrace of a convent among the hills beyond the plains of Venetia, and the view was beautiful and new for the youth.

"What is nature?" the lad had responded quietly.

"Nature?" Fra Giulio echoed, startled at the question. "Why, nature is God's creation. Dost thou not find this bit of nature beautiful?"

"It is pleasant," the young friar had assented, without enthusiasm. "But hath God created anything nobler than the mind and soul of man? The earth is but for his habitation."

"Nay," the old man had replied, in a tone of disappointment, "it is more for me—much more for those whom we call poets."

"Poets are dreamers," the lad had said, turning to his old friend with a smile which seemed affectionate, yet was baffling, and went not deep enough for love. "I would not dream; I must know."

"A little dreaming would not hurt thee, my Paolo; for sometimes it seemeth to those who care for thee that thou needest rest."

"Rest is satisfaction," the lad answered quickly. "If there be a problem to be solved, I would rather think than dream. I would rather come in contact with the nobler activities—the mental and spiritual forces—through the minds and works of men. I would find such attrition more helpful than this phase of creation which thou callest 'nature,' whose unfolding is more passive, depending on its inherent law."

"This also is of God's gift, Paolo mio," Fra Giulio had said yearningly. "Sometimes thou seemest to find too little beauty in thy life, and when I brought thee hither I hoped it might move thy soul."

"What can be more beautiful," the young philosopher had questioned earnestly, "than the fitting of all to each, the search for hidden keys, the linking of problems that seemed apart? These are the things that move me. I must walk soberly, Fra Giulio, lest I miss some revelation, so sacred and so mysterious is knowledge! And the love of it leaves me no room for questions of outside beauty—this ordered beauty of hidden law is so wonderful!"

For one moment, as Fra Giulio had looked at him, he fancied that he had seen deeper into his eyes than ever before; then the veil had seemed to rise up from the boy's heart and close over its depths. If it had been a moment of self-revelation the young friar was again protected by that baffling calm as he glanced about him, turning affectionately to his old friend. "It pleaseth me that thou art pleased," he said.

Fra Giulio had answered with a sigh. It was hard for one who loved so truly to get so near, yet be no nearer. "I could wish that thou also shouldst take pleasure in this beauty, my Paolo, for thou art missing a joy that God permits."

Then the youthful scholar had turned his eyes upon him silently; and it had seemed to the old man, in his great love, that a sudden glory had transfigured the grave young face like a consecration. He still remembered the tones of that clear voice saying serenely: "My Father, when God speaketh a message in our souls, the peace and beauty which come to us as we follow its call, are in the measure which He hath decreed for us."

Now that the convent rang with his triumphs, and Fra Paolo was often absent from his cell on missions of honor, the old friar sometimes wondered how many of those philosophic and scientific truths which had made him famous as an original thinker had come to the lad in glimmerings on that first night among the hills, when, turning to his old friend and stretching out his hands with a solemn, imploring motion which seemed to confess a desperate need of isolation, he had said only, "Let me think!"

Had his seeming nearness to the stars in the convent loggia brought him a premonition of the later message which had made him the "friend and master" of Galileo?

Did he develop his "Laws of Sound" in that voiceful silence; or was it in that solitude he had first watched the gentle ebb and flow of his own life-current and learned the secret which Harvey, later, uttered to the world?

Or had he been wholly absorbed in those philosophical questions which he so brilliantly disputed at the learned Court of Mantua?

But to be near him was only to wonder more at the mystery which enveloped him; and Fra Giulio, now that the lad had reached his prime, often went reverently back to that night under the stars, when the gifted youth had first stood, distanced as it were from men, remote from human habitations and alone with the One whom only he acknowledged as Master—then, perhaps, he had first been conscious of his latent power; surely then the manifold message of his life must have whispered within him many premonitions!

The time was long past when a question could arise as to the right of the Augustinians to rich possessions in church and convent; and the priceless treasures of art, flung sometimes in atonement upon their quiet walls by a world-worn artist, or sent in propitiation for some unconfessed sin by a prince of Church or State, were found side by side with the gifts and legacies of the faithful, which, in sincere devotion, they often impoverished their families to bestow.

But none of these things had charms for Fra Paolo. Not even the beauty of the cloisters, where the low, gray arches rested on slender shafts of marble, wrought and twisted into as many devices, drew his thoughts from the ceaseless contemplation of his problems; not even the petted rose-tree, lovingly trained by the gentle Fra Francesco and lifting its pink glory to the crest of the colonnade, won his eyes to wander from the absorbing treasures of the great library where he passed his days. Here many a brother had taught himself patience over the fine, endless text of an ancient gospel, or wrought into the exquisite illumination of some missal which stood to him in the place of his daily living those yearning, torturing, hungering affections which had so enriched a gentle home—as a brother, less disciplined, had carved his unruly tempers into the grotesque figures of the reading desks. But for Fra Paolo the great library of the convent held no unsatisfied yearnings—only an infinite content and power to achieve.

From the days when those curious in philosophical research had flocked from the neighboring universities to see this professor of theology who could not be conquered in argument, and had been confronted by a smooth-faced lad of twenty, until now, he was still the glory of the Servi; and well might the friars watch in triumph, as one by one he gathered laurels for their order. A little human flush of triumph or of self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question, convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion of the convent. If he seemed to have missed a real childhood,—its follies, its innocent pleasures, its winsome affections,—so later, the temptations that would naturally beset a career so extraordinary fell harmlessly away from him, for a passion for knowledge burned within him, consuming all ignoble motives and keeping this young scholar, in friar's robes, in marvelous singleness of heart, in the midst of a flattering and luxurious court.

Always he had been a law to himself, both morally and intellectually; never before did it seem that genius had been cast in a mold so orderly and calm. In that state of intense concentration which was his habitual mood, he accomplished without apparent effort the things for which others paid by a life-time of struggle; and morally he had no visible combats, not seeming to be even reached by the things which tempted other men. His wants were fewer than the simplest rule of his convent allowed, and it seemed less that he had triumphed over the usual earthly temptations than that he had been created abnormally free from them that his whole strength might spend itself in the solving of problems. In a certain sense he stood mysteriously alone, though his friends were many and devoted and among the wise and venerated of the earth; but there was always a door closed to them beyond the affection which he returned them. "Always," he said once, "we veil our faces": yet none doubted his sincerity.

From time to time, as the years sped, some echo of the jealousy which his phenomenal success and the boldness of his bearing naturally evoked, penetrated to the cloisters of the Servi; and more than once there had been a denunciation to the Inquisition to discuss; some one in authority had found fault with his theological opinions and denounced him for his reading of a passage in Genesis, upon which he based his argument—the affair was grave indeed.

"Ah, the pity of it—the pity of it!" Fra Giulio had exclaimed. "They should show mercy—he is still so young a man!"

"Ay, young enough to need much discipline," bravely muttered a friar who dared to disbelieve in their prodigy.

"Silence!" commanded Father Gianmaria, who was now the Superior, in a stentorian tone; for within these walls there was no appeal from his judgment or his temper. "The man who speaks only what he knows is old in wisdom;" and turning he addressed the company in great dignity: "It doth appear that Rome approveth Fra Paolo's rendering and hath gravely censured the Inquisitor who hath cited him, commanding him to meddle only with that of which he hath some understanding."

"There are then tale-bearers whose jealousy would ruin our Paolo!" Fra Giulio had exclaimed in anxiety.

"It was none other than Fra Paolo himself who carried the tale," the Superior retorted in scorn of the old man's weak affection. "Fra Paolo refused to appear before the Inquisitor who had cited him, who, he alleged, knew not Hebrew nor Greek, and had therefore no knowledge upon which to base his judgment; and on this ground Fra Paolo appealed to Rome."

"It were a pity," said a gentle-faced young friar, who had been listening silently, but with an expression of deep and affectionate interest, "that one of so rare learning should remain long in a position of danger to orthodoxy. Already the Court of Mantua hath been censured by the Holy Father for heretical opinions."

"Nay; but for harboring heretics, hunted and driven," Fra Giulio corrected warmly. "There be deeds of mercy that will be forgiven us."

A look of perplexity crossed the candid, boyish face of Fra Francesco.

"But the law of obedience is more simple," he said timidly; "and our Holy Father—"

"Thou, not yet out of thy novitiate, doest well, verily, to prate of obedience and doctrines," interrupted Father Gianmaria, less severely than he was wont to treat such breaches of etiquette; for Fra Francesco had deep, spiritual, loving eyes, in which an unuttered wonder sometimes seemed to chide, for all his gentleness; and his ways were winsome.

So, through the years, whether he were present or absent, the life of the convent had centered about Fra Paolo, who now, after many missions of importance, had once more returned to his old cell in the Servi, with another added for his books and labors, since often it suited him to be alone. The breath of jealousy still clouded the serenity of his sky, and he was not without some unfulfilled longings; but no scandal had ever touched him. He was great enough now to be smitten through his friends, and the good Fra Giulio had been the victim taken in his stead; upon Fra Paolo's last homecoming to the convent the loving, fatherly greeting had failed him.

"Ask the nuns, to whom he is father confessor; they will have no other, and refuse admittance to one of our order who hath been sent to take this duty upon him. And our good Fra Giulio hath been removed in humiliation, and languisheth in Bologna, by order of the Patriarch who hath been won by the tale of one who loveth thee not."

"There is no more to it than that?" Fra Paolo questioned.

"Nay, no more, my brother," Fra Francesco answered with conviction.

"The name then?" said Fra Paolo; and when it had been told him he recognized the man as one in whom trust was misplaced, and one who intrigued for power.

"The charge?" he asked again. And when he had patiently learned the details of which Fra Giulio's long and faithful service gave little hint, he gathered evidence wherewith to refute them, and journeyed swiftly back to Rome, returning, triumphant, to reinstate the good old friar with honor in the home and offices he loved—the manner of his return making amends to Fra Giulio for the pain he had suffered, so sweet it seemed to him to owe to this son of his affections all the gladness of his later days.



VIII

While the little Zuane was failing, Marcantonio, seeing Marina but seldom, solaced himself in preparing a royal gift to offer to his mother on the occasion of his own birthday fete. The idea had come to him that night after the Veronese had touched his own faulty sketch into such rounded life; besides, he had thought but one beautiful thought since he had, as it were, been unconsciously brought to confession by that scene in the studio. And Paolo Cagliari had been most kind in accepting his commission with an enthusiasm which promised wonderful results. Great as was his fame in those days,—and the Veronese never lived beyond his fame,—still, as in his earlier years, he was eager for any new method of proving the genius in which his own faith was as unbounded as his capacity to achieve was vigorous and tireless. And the young noble's unique fancy for a superb goblet of crystal da Beroviero, with a miniature of Marina of Murano enlaced in exquisite gold borders and set round with costly pearls—a trifle fit to offer to a princess—not only pleased the artist's well-known taste for luxury, but seemed to him an object worthy of his skill. In the kindness of his heart he would make the lovely face so winning that the great lady should yield to the prayer that had prompted the gift.

Among all the elaborate gift-pieces that had come from the workshops of Murano, but one had as yet approached this, and it had been sent with the homage of the Senate, by a retiring ambassador of "His Most Christian Majesty," to the Queen of France, and it bore, from Titian's hand, the portrait of her royal husband. This goblet, then, must surpass that one in magnificence, for it was the Veronese's opportunity; and in his soul, genial as it was, some sense of rivalry, born of Titian's assumption of the highest place in Venetian art, would last forever, in spite of the great master's manifest affection. The suggestion of the pearls—an added touch—was indeed due to Paolo Cagliari's over-weening sumptuousness, and the eager young lover was scarcely more anxious for the completion of this gem, upon which his hope depended, than was the great artist who already had all Venice at his feet.

"I shall need no sitting," the Veronese had said, when they were planning for the work. "My picture is nearly completed, and it will suffice. Nay, ask her not, my Marco; she is a devote—she will not understand."

Marcantonio flushed like a boy. He knew it would be difficult to obtain her consent, and for that very reason he must win it, for he was a true knight.

"How shall I win my lady's favor," he cried hotly, "if I peril it by lack of chivalry! There is no prouder maiden among the donne nobile on the Canal Grande."

"Altro! Altro!" said the master quietly. "She also shall look down from the balconies in the palazzo Giustiniani."

But when the young patrician told her glowingly of his wish to give his mother, on his great day, the most beautiful gift in all the world, it was hard to make her yield.

"It is not fitting," she answered quite simply.

"Yes, yes, Marina—since I love thee!"

"Ah, no; it is only sad." Her eyes filled with tears and she moved away, so that he could not touch her hand.

"Trust me, Marina! The Veronese knows the world, and he says it is well. It is this that shall win the consent of my mother, and she will conquer my father. And in the Gran' Consiglio——"

He turned his eyes suddenly away from Marina lest she should trace the faintest flicker of a doubt within them, as the vision rose before him of that imperious body, so relentless in its decrees, so tenacious in its traditions, so positive in its autocracy; but the threatened invincibility of this force only nerved him to a resistance as invincible, and he turned back to her with a flashing face, almost before she had noticed the interruption.

"There also—in the Consiglio—it shall be arranged, and all will be well."

And where two were ready for the end that should be gained the pleading was not over-long, though the thought was very strange for this simple maiden of Murano; so the precious painting was finished and in the hands of the decorators. And meanwhile, during those days when Marina had been watching the flickering of the little Zuane's pale flame of life and there had been no spare moments for Marcantonio, he had tried to absorb himself, as far as possible, in the preparation of this gift—since she would not let him go to her—and he had come to regard it as the symbol of success; for failure was never for an instant contemplated in his vision of the future. There were pearls to be selected, one by one, in visits innumerable to the Fondaco dei Turchi, where the finest of such treasures were not secured at a first asking, and in these his mother was a connoisseur; but there were many more anxious visits to Murano, to be assured that no step in the fashioning of his gift was endangering its perfection.

But even for the most impatient, time may not tarry indefinitely, and the lagging moments had at last brought round that festa of San Marco which meant so much for Venice, with its splendid pageants for the Church, its festivities for the people, its fluttering of doves in the Piazza, and of timid, eager maiden hearts, waiting in a sort of shy assurance for that earliest Venetian love-token, the boccolo—the rosebud which breathed the secret of many a young Venetian lover to his inamorata under those April skies, on the festa of this patron saint of Venice.

And the next morning the stately lady of the Giustiniani stood quite alone on the balcony of the great palace at the bend of the Canal Grande, leaning upon her gold-embroidered cushions to watch the gondola that was just landing at the step of the Piazzetta; the restless movements of her tapering jeweled fingers were the only sign of an emotion she rarely betrayed, though doubtless, under the faultless dignity of her bearing, there were often currents of feeling and thwartings hard to be endured.

She was thinking of her boy with a great and sudden tenderness, now that the moment had come in which she would be less to him and the world of men must be more, as from the distance she saw the gondola touch the landing and watched him until he passed out of sight, after pausing with his father for a moment before the great columns of San Marco and San Teodoro, looking up perhaps with a keener sense of the dread scenes they had witnessed than had ever before possessed him, though the sunshine streamed brilliantly over the water and life seemed full of promise for this only son of the Ca' Giustiniani, on his way to take the oath of "Silence and Allegiance to the Republic," as a "Nobile di Gran' Consiglio."

Marcantonio had entered the gondola gaily, with a full, pleasurable sense of the beauty of life, and well content with that portion which had fallen to his lot; for he was easily affected, and the air of the palace was full of the excitement of his fete. The only forebodings that shadowed his sunshine were connected with Marina and the gift which he should offer to his mother upon his return from the Ducal Palace. But the day was one to banish every hint of failure, making him more conscious of his power than he had ever been before, and he felt himself floating toward attainment—whatever the difficulties might be. But with his first step upon the Piazzetta he forgot the glory of the sunshine flashing over the blue waters, and a sudden sense of fate possessed him, as his father made an almost imperceptible pause in his grave progress toward the Ducal Palace, and with the slightest possible movement of his hand seemed to direct his son's attention to the great granite columns which bore the emblems of the patron saints of Venice.

A hundred times, in crossing the Piazzetta, Marcantonio had been vaguely aware of them as appropriate emblems of barbaric force and splendor and allegoric Christian allegiance; but suddenly they stood to him for historic records—the echoes of dread deeds avenged there rolled forth from the space between the columns, and the jeweled eyes of the terrible winged Lion flashed defiance upon any who questioned, in the remotest way, the will or the act of the Republic. He glanced toward the elder man, some deprecatory comment rising to his lips as he strove to dissipate the symbolic mood which was surely possessing him, for he felt himself uncomfortably conscious of the meaning wrought into the very stones about him, and to-day this over-mastering assertion of Venice—always Venice dominant—was oppressive.

But his father, apparently unaware of Marcantonio's turbulent sensations, wore his usual reserved and dignified mien; even the motion he had seemed to make before the columns in the Piazzetta was probably only due to Marcantonio's imagination, and the young fellow's light rejoinder passed unuttered, intensifying his discomfort. He realized that he was not searching for this symbolism with a poet's appreciation, nor as an archaeologist delighting in curios, but as a son of the Republic—to gather her history and her purpose, to make himself one with her, to put himself under her yoke—and in his heart he rebelled.

Yet it was he, this time, who paused, undeniably, before the great window on the Piazzetta. The sun streamed in broad flashes of light over the soft rose-tinted walls of the palazzo and over the splendid balcony from which the Doge was wont to view the processions and fetes of the Republic; the richly sculptured decorations detached themselves at once in allegory, the figures all leading up to Venice enthroned, holding out to the world her proud motto, "Fortis, justa, trono furias, mare sub pede pono." (Strong, just, I put the furies beneath my throne and the sea beneath my foot.) He walked on under a spell, feeling that the coils were tightening around him; he was a noble, but not free; yet he would not have surrendered his opportunities for the freer life of the people who had no part in the Consiglio.

He quickened his pace that the moment of irresolution might be the sooner over.

"Wait!" his father commanded, as Marcantonio would have entered the palace gate; "haste ill befits thy grave and dignified purpose. Before thou enterest the Consiglio I would have thee reverently mark how, at the palace gate, Justice sits enthroned on high, between the Lions of St. Mark, while Courage, Prudence, Hope, and Charity wait upon her."

"And below," answered Marcantonio, because he could think of nothing else to say, and because he knew every angle and carving of the palace from the aesthetic point of view better than his father did; "below is the Doge Foscari, kneeling very reverently to our noble Lion."

His father slowly scanned him with his inscrutable gaze, but answered nothing, and they passed under the magnificent Porta della Carta quite silently. Under the deep shadow of the gateway the business of the Ducal Palace was already progressing. Secretaries at their desks were preparing papers for discussion, while their assistants came and went with messages from the various departments of the great body of workers within the palace; they were too absorbed to look up as this Chief of the Ten passed them, so oblivious were they of anything but their duty that the stir about them left them serene and undisturbed, not even penetrating the realm of their consciousness.

"There is no more learned nor devoted body of scribes in the world," said Giustinian, with pride; "they have not a thought beyond their papers, and most wonderfully do they sift and prepare them for the Council, working often far into the night."

"It is machinery, not life!" Marcantonio exclaimed, hastening beyond the portal.

The great courtyard, under the wonderful blue of the sky, was aglow with color; the palace facades, broken into irregular carvings, seemed to hold the sunshine in their creamy surfaces; the superb wells of green bronze, magnificently wrought and dimmed as yet by little weather-staining, offered a treasury of luminous points. Here, in the early morning, the women of the neighborhood gathered with their water-jars, but now the court was filled with those who had business in the Ducal Palace—red-robed senators and members of the Consiglio talking in knots; a councillor in his violet gown, a group of merchant-princes in black robes, enriched with costly furs and relieved by massive gold chains, absorbed in discussion of some practical details for the better ordering of the Fondachi, those storehouses and marts for foreign trade peculiar to Venice; some grave attorney, more soberly arrayed, making haste toward the gloom of the secretary's corner; a sprinkling of friars on ecclesiastical business, of gondoliers in the varied liveries of the senators waiting their masters' call; here and there a figure less in keeping with the magnificence around him, too full of his trouble to be abashed, going to ask for justice at the Doge's feet—the heart of Venice was pulsing in the court, and under the arches came the gleam and shimmer of the sea. Up and down the splendid stairway that opened immediately from the Porta della Carta the Venetians came and went—nobles old and young; the people, bringing wrongs to be adjusted, or favors to be granted, or some secret message for the terrible Bocca di Leone; the people, rich and poor, in continuous tread upon this Giant Stairway, guarded by the gods of war and of the sea; the winged Lion enthroned above, just over the landing where the elected noble dons the rank of Serenissimo—this kaleidoscopic epitome of the life of the Republic was bewildering.

"How was it possible that all these people could take part in it without emotion?" the young patrician asked himself, forgetting that in this familiar scene the emotion only was new for him.

At the head of the landing on the Giant Stairway the Senator arrested his son with a gesture of command. "Welcome," he said, "to the Consiglio, Marcantonio Giustiniani. Thou wilt not forget that thou comest of a house which has held honors in Church and State. May this day be memorable for Venice and for thee!"

The influences of their surroundings were strong upon them both; but the young fellow, in his bounding life, craved something more than this formal induction into the official life of his sumptuous state—he longed to feel the human throb beneath it, that the sense of its weight might be lifted; but he could not find his voice until they had passed through the loggia and reached the chambers of the Avvogadori, where sat the keepers of the Golden Book.

He stretched out his hand wistfully and touched the elder man.

"Father!" he cried, in a voice not well controlled. And again, more steadily, though no answer came, "Father, I will not forget!"

The finding of his name among the birth records of the nobles of Venice, the registration witnessed by the three solemn Avvogadori,—those officers of the law whose rulings in their department were inexorable,—the act of confirmation before the Imperial Senate, whither, in grave procession, they immediately fared, preceded by the sacred "Libro d'Oro," upon which the oath of allegiance was sworn with bended knee—the ceremony was soon over, and Marcantonio stood enrolled among the ruling body of the great Republic.

As they returned through the splendid halls of the palace, Giustinian paused frequently to exchange a greeting with some old senator who came forward to welcome the young noble to the grave circle of rulers, and they were followed with glances of interest as they passed through the Piazza. For it was whispered in the Broglio that there were reasons—valid and patriotic, as were all the arguments of Venice—for the fact that no member of that ancient and loyal house had worn the highest honor of the state. "The Ca' Giustiniani was too old, too wealthy, too influential—too much a part of Venice itself."

"Like the Orseoli!" said Morosini Morosini, who was a friend of the Giustiniani, and who, like many another strong-brained Venetian, knew the taste of unsatisfied longings, yet kept a brave heart for the records of the Republic. And as he spoke there came to some of them who knew their annals well a stinging memory of the tale—which was no legend—of that pathetic group in their island sanctuary—the brothers who were left, after the death of Otto, the exiled Doge, and of Orso, the noble bishop-prince, all of the house of Orseoli, who, with their abbess-sister Felicia, were wounded to the heart because for the crime of too great love and service the jealous and unrequiting Senate had banished them forever from the Venice so loyally served—had decreed the extinction of a family to whom, as Doge and Patriarch, the Republic owed the wisest and most self-sacrificing of her rulers!

"Nay," said another speaker quickly, a friend to Morosini the historian—for the Broglio had been known to have a voice as well as ears, and the subject was a dangerous one, not honorable to Venice—"Nay, there are no Orseoli. But it is for honor to the Giustiniani that none hath been chosen for the Serenissimo. He is strong, grave, and very silent; but most wise in council, most prudent in resource. He is needed among the Savii."

"And the coronation oath hath grown over straight since the days of the Michieli," responded Morosini. "The Giustinian is not a man for our promissione which, verily, fitteth ill with the dignity of our Prince—a man of spirit may well find it hard to assume the beretta under such restrictions!"



IX

With the nonchalance that concealed a skill all Venetian the gondoliers of the Giustiniani guided them gracefully through the floating craft moored to the stakes which rose in sheafs before their palace, announcing the colors of their noble house. Barges bearing flowers and decorations for the fete, fruits and game, were unloading on the broad marble steps, and through the wrought open-work of the splendid gates a scene of activity was disclosed in the nearer court which served as an office for the various departments of the household; while the house-master had come down the steps from his cozy lodge beside the entrance, and stood dispensing orders to a group of eager domestics.

In the deep shadow of the entrance-court the open one, through which the light streamed radiantly, seemed far distant, and when the great bell sent clanging echoes from court to court, gondoliers in undress liveries, who were lazily lounging and chatting, sprang to a show of activity over all those finishing touches of polish and nicety which had been achieved long before; and the lithe figures coming and going, throwing themselves into graceful attitudes over their semblance of labor, exchanging joyous sallies in anticipation of the evening's revelry, awoke a contagious merriment. Marcantonio rallied from the heaviness of the morning and felt young again, as he yielded to their influence and wandered among them, tossing compliments and repartees with Venetian freedom.

In the midst of this harmless trifling the voice of Giustinian Giustiniani sounded sternly.

"Marcantonio, these ancient arms have been burnished in honor of this day; I have a moment to remind thee of their history—if thou hast forgotten."

He was calling from across the open court, where the sunshine seemed suddenly less, and Marcantonio hastened to respond.

The seneschal called for lights, for the workmanship of these heirlooms was too fine to be appreciated in the gloom which pervaded the far inner court; two or three iron lanterns were brought and hung up, and link-boys flashed flaring torches upon the pieces on the wall near which their master stood.

"Surely thou dost recall this breastplate of the General Taddeo Giustiniani, who forced the Austrians to surrender Trieste, when Venice laid siege to the city in 1369? It was wrought in the East, no doubt, and the inlaying is of gold and precious; but not for this do we keep it chained. It is a priceless jewel in the history of our house, for Trieste meant much for Venice."

He raised the heavy chain that fastened it, and the links fell, clanging, against the stones of the wall; for this hall, which served as an armory, was like a prison in its construction,—as strong and as forbidding,—and here, among the ancestral relics, were kept the arms which every nobleman, by Venetian law, was required to hold in readiness to equip his household against uprisings of the populace, who were, by this same law, debarred these means of self-defense.

At a sign from the Senator a young squire came forward, proudly bearing a sword with a jeweled hilt, in an intricately wrought scabbard. Giustinian drew it from its sheath, displaying a blade exquisitely damascened with acanthus foliage, as he turned to his son.

"This is especially thine own," he said, "in honor of this day—thy maiden sword. So far as the handiwork of Cellini may make it worthy of a son of our house, it hath been worthily chosen for thee. Yet, unless thou leavest it to those who come after thee, enriched by the name of a Giustinian who hath wrought of his best for Venice, it will be all unworthy of a place among these trophies."

The torch-bearers flashed their lights over it, and the squires of the household pressed forward to admire it, but Giustinian cut short the enthusiastic chorus of the young men-at-arms and Marcantonio's eager words of appreciation, crossing the sombre hall with stately steps; for to his mind this important day held many ceremonies yet unfulfilled, and the pomp with which he chose to surround them was not a circumstance to be dilated on.

"This," he said, as he touched a quaint dagger, "belonged to thine ancestor, Marco Giustiniani, Ambassador to the Scaglieri; there were other envoys of our name in other Italian provinces, in England and the Papal Court, for we have been great in statescraft as well as in war. But I wrong thee in seeming to think thou knowest not the history of thine house. Perhaps, in these latter days, a man may best distinguish himself in statesmanship, for the mind is a weapon not to be slighted—when it is builded with strength, sharpened with careful use, and so wielded"—his gaze fell full upon Marcantonio for a weighty moment—"so wielded that it hath no pliancy save at the will of its owner. For sometimes it chanceth"—again he paused for a moment—"that a mind hath more masters than one, and Venice brooks no rival."

His father had been pointing out one heirloom after another while he spoke, and the pauses which Marcantonio found irritating, because they seemed to indicate hidden meanings to be unraveled, might proceed only from his effort to carry several trains of thought at once; but it was a habit of the elder Giustinian which held not a less share in the education of his son because it was distasteful to him.

To-day the young patrician almost resented this persistent marshaling of the shades of his ancestors, though at heart he was proud of them, and the prestige and luxury of his surroundings suited him well; but he chafed under his father's scrutiny, which, it seemed to him, unveiled the differences of their temperaments to an almost indecorous degree. The thought of Marina was tingling in his pulses, but he would not yield it up until the propitious moment came; and the strong consciousness of this sweet new queenship made the constant assertion of the sovereignty of Venice not easy to endure. But the remembrance of his vow of allegiance, just rendered before the Senate, returned to him rather as the public investiture of his rights as a man than as a claim of self-surrender; and he vowed to himself to use that right, in all possible conflict between himself and the Republic, in questions personal and dear; for the pleasant freedom of his life thus far had left him less in awe of the senatorial majesty than Giustinian Giustiniani would have deemed possible. But how could he hope to win his father's consent to any unpatrician alliance!

He passed the elder Giustinian hastily and paused beyond the next group of armor—battered breastplates, casques, and shields of the twelfth century—but his thoughts were elsewhere.

"These," said the Senator, inexorably recalling him, "were of the famous siege of Lepanto, where, but for the favor of the Holy Father, our house had been extinct."

The young fellow's soul stirred within him, for he knew the story well. How was it possible for a Giustinian to pause before this great stand of antique trophies of prowess and not call to mind visions of heroism and suffering in which the Giustiniani of those days—every one who belonged to Venice—had yielded up his life in this great struggle with the Turks!

Yes, every one who belonged to Venice. For the young Nicolo, the last survivor of their ancient name, was already set apart from the world by his priestly vows, amid the quiet groves of the island of San Nicolo. It was a pretty romance—all those noble councillors, trembling from fear of the extinction of this most ancient and princely house, framing humble petitions to the Holy Father; the youthful monk, leaving the tranquil solitude of his island sanctuary, unfrocked with honor by a Pope's decree, to don the crimson robe of senator and wed the daughter of the Doge! And later, when sons and daughters many had risen up to call them blessed, the old haunting charm of the convent reasserting itself, the return of the Giustinian—this solitary link between the long lines of his noble house, before and after—to his lonely cell on San Nicolo; the retirement of the Lady Anna from the sweet motherhood of her home to reign as Lady Abbess in the convent of Sant' Elena; the nimbus of sainthood for the pair when their quiet days were closed—it was a pretty story, leading easily to thoughts of Marina.

"To-morrow," said Giustinian Giustiniani, as if in answer to his thoughts, "at dawn of day, there will be Mass in the capello Giustiniani on Sant' Elena; and later we must visit the shrines of San Nicolo and San Lorenzo. For in the Church also we have had our part. A Giustinian was first Patriarch of Venice; a saint was father to our else broken line—we have had our share in Church and State, and it behooves a member of the Consiglio to remember the honors of his house."

He stood for a moment looking up at the shield on which were blazoned the arms of the Giustiniani, as if he missed something that should have been there; then, slowly turning back to the central court, now flooded with sunshine, he began the ascent of the grand stairway which led to the banqueting hall. The gleaming marble panels bore a fretwork of sculptured foliage with symbols entwined—the mitre, the cross, the sword—in richest Renaissance; but in all the decorations of this lordly palace, of the most ancient of the Venetians, not once did the mighty Lion of St. Mark appear.

When they had reached the landing opening into the banquet hall the Senator, turning in the direction of his own apartments, released his son with a motion of his hand toward the great, splendid chamber from which issued ripples of girlish laughter; and Marcantonio stood for a few moments under the arches which opened into it, looking on unobserved, for here it seemed that the fete was already reigning.

The noble maidens who attended the Lady Laura, fresh and charming, were knotting loops of ribbon in pendant garlands or grouping flowers in great vases between the columns which crossed the chamber from end to end—darting up the stairway to the gallery to alter a festoon in garland or brocade. Sallies of laughter, snatches of song, and pelting of flowers, like a May-day frolic, made the work long in the doing, but full of grace; and now and again, as if any purpose were wearying for such light-hearted maidens, they dropped their garlands and glided over the polished floor, twining and untwining their arms—a reflex in active life, and not less radiant, of the nymphs of Bassano on the painted ceiling, between those wonderful, gilded arabesques of Sansovino.

There was a little shriek of discomfiture as they suddenly perceived the young lord of the day, but the Contessa Beata Tagliapietra came saucily toward him as he was escaping.

"The Lady Laura hath charged me to ask the Signor Marcantonio whether the garlands be disposed according to his liking."

She swept him a mocking reverence, so full of grace and coquetry that the maidens all flocked back from their hiding-places to see how the young signor would receive it.

"I know not which pleaseth me best," he answered lightly; "the grace of the garlands, or the grace of the dance, or the grace of the damigelle who have so wrought for the beauty of this fete. Nay, I may not enter, for the Lady Laura will await my coming."

"Is this day then so full of gravity that one may not steal a moment to dance at one's own fete, Signer Consigliere?" she retorted, mockingly.

But the Lady Laura herself was coming toward them, with slow, stately steps, hiding her impatience—for the morning had seemed long.

At sight of her Marcantonio bent his knee with the knightly homage still in vogue, and gave his hand to conduct her to her boudoir.

"Signer Consigliere,"—she began, with a stately congratulation, when they were quite alone in her own boudoir; she had been planning, during the long morning, a speech that should be of a dignity to suit so great an occasion, but the words died away upon her lips; for once she forgot Venice and the Ca' Giustiniani, and the mother was uppermost. She folded her arms about him closely, and rested her head upon his shoulder in delicious abandon.

"Marco, my boy!" she murmured.

His heart overflowed to her in unaccustomed endearments, so rarely did she express any emotion, and to-day the rebound from the morning's repression filled him with hope and gladness. All fear of winning her aid was lifted. "Madre mia!" he cried, his face radiant with happiness.

"This day is not as other days," she said, half in apology for her weakness, as she recovered herself.

"I have a gift for thee, madre mia; let me bring it."

"I need no gift, Marco; for now hast thou everything before thee—every honor that Venice may offer to a Venetian of the Venetians! Forget it not, my Marco."

But he had already flown from her, with impatient, lover's footsteps. Now that the moment had come he could not wait.

"Mother!" he cried, with shining eyes, as he placed the costly case upon a table and drew her gently toward it.

She stood in mute astonishment before the faultless gift, this perfect bit of Beroviero crystal,—opalesque and lucent, reflecting hidden rainbow tints, enhanced by the golden traceries delicate and artistic—the beautiful young face framed in those sea-gems dear to the Venetian heart, each pearl a study of changing light.

"There is none like it in Venice!" she exclaimed; "nor hath there ever been. Thou hast treated me like a queen, my Marco!"

"I wished it so," he answered impatiently, for he could not wait. "And the face——"

"Never hath there been a more exquisite! It is the Titian's work?"

"Nay, of the Veronese; for the goblet is of mine own designing. And the master, for my sake, hath spent himself upon the face."

"He will be here to-night, and we will thank him," she answered graciously. "And for thee—thou hast excelled thyself."

But Marcantonio answered nothing to her praise; his eyes were fixed upon the miniature of the Veronese.

"If Paolo Cagliari findeth none so beautiful among the noble damigelle who will grace thy fete to-night as this face which he hath painted, we will forgive him," she said playfully. "But thee, Marco, we will not forgive. The time hath come when thou shouldst choose; thy father and I have spoken of this."

She came close to him and folded his hand caressingly. "The Contessa Beata Tagliapietra hath a wonderful charm; and there is the Lady Agnesina Contarini—a face for a Titian!"

"Mother! I pray thee——" Marcantonio interrupted.

"Nay, Marco—to-day it is fitting; for thy wedding should follow soon upon this fete. Thou art no longer a boy, and Venice looks to us to help thee choose a fitting bride; for there is none other of this generation of thy name, and thou,—I will not hide it from thee since thou needest heartening,—thou wilt be a fortunate wooer with these maidens, or—or elsewhere. But my little Beata is charming——-"

"Mother," said Marcantonio, flushing like a boy, yet drawing himself up proudly, "I have already crowned her who shall be my bride with pearls; and for her face—thou hast named it exquisite." Then, unbending, he threw his arms around her and kissed her on the forehead.

The Lady Laura stood as if petrified.

"I know her not," she said, when she could speak. "Name her to me." Her voice was hard and strained.

"Do not speak so, madre mia! Love her—she is so charming! And she will not come to me unless thou love her too."

"How, then—if she is thy bride?" The words seemed to choke her.

"Nay, but my chosen bride—holding my vows with my heart; yet, unless thou plead with me for my happiness she will not wed me—she is so proud."

"Name her," the Lady Laura repeated, unbending slightly.

"Marina Magagnati."

She stood listening, as if more were to follow, then she shook her head. "I know not the name, unless—but it is not possible! She is not of Venice, then?"

"A Venetian of the Venetians, my mother, with the love of Venice in her soul—but not——"

"Marcantonio, explain thine enigma! How should there be a name of all our nobles unknown to me?"

"There are nobles of the 'Libro d'Oro,' my mother, and—nobles of the people, and she is of these."

"How canst thou name a mesalliance to me—Marcantonio Giustiniani, Nobile di Consiglio—on this day, when thou hast given thy vows to Venice! Thou dost forget the traditions of thine house."

"Nay, mother; Venice and the Ca' Giustiniani I am not likely to forget," he answered, with sudden bitterness. "One thing—quite other—am I much more likely to forget; but for this have I sworn, that which my heart teaches me for noble will I do, and she whom I love will I wed—or none other."

"Marco!" the word seemed a desperate appeal.

"That do I swear upon this sword which my father hath given me to prove my knighthood—'to enrich,' he hath said, 'the records of our house.' And thou wilt help me, my mother, for I love thee!" His voice had grown tender and pleading again.

"I also love thee, Marco," she answered more gently, for none could resist his voice when this mood was upon him; "but I may not help thee to undo thyself and forget the honor of thine house."

"Mother," said Marcantonio, sternly, "charge me with no unknightly deed! To love Marina is to love a woman nobler than any of thy maidens; thou knowest her not. I would bring her to thee to win thee, but she will not come. It is thou, she saith, who must send her sign of favor."

"I fear me it must be long in going, my Marco; yet I love thee well. How should I send my favor to a daughter of the people!"

"Those are the words of Marina Magagnati."

"She is wise then; she will help thee to forget."

"The vow of a Giustinian is never broken; that hast thou taught me, my mother, from the legends of our house. This sword, upon which I have sworn it, I lay at thy feet. Bid me raise it in token of thy favor and of thine aid in this one thing which I ask of thee."

They stood looking into each other's faces, her pride melting under the glow of the beautiful new strength in the face of the son whom she had thought so yielding; yet it was she who had striven to teach him knightliness.

She hesitated,—"If I cannot aid thee, what wilt thou do?"

"I must wait and suffer," he said; "for Marina will not yield."

"It is new for a maiden of the people to know such pride," she answered, scornfully.

"It is because none are like her, and her soul is beautiful as her face! My mother, there are none prouder in all this palace; the little Contessa Beata is a contadina beside her! Yet, it is not pride, I think, but love and care for my happiness," he added, grown suddenly bold. "She will not come to bring me sorrow; and she hath said that my duty being to Venice, she can wed me only with the consent of our house. And Messer Magagnati——"

"There is a father, then, who would treat with thee?"

"Mother—use not that tone; thou dost not understand! Ask the Veronese. Messer Magagnati knows not of this; for so tenderly doth his daughter care for him that, to save him pain of knowing that she suffers for lack of thy welcome, she hath not told him. Shall the Veronese plead with thee better than thine own son? For he knoweth the maiden well; and the father, who is most honorably reported in Venice for the wonder of his discoveries in his industry of glass. He is of the people—of the 'original citizens'—for of the days before the serrata[1] hath his family records; but he might well be of the Signoria, so grave he is and full of dignity. And his name is old—Mother!"

[1] An important constitutional act, limiting the aristocracy to those families who had at that period, sat in the Council; always referred to as an era in Venetian history.

"Nay, Marco, lift thy sword; how should it lie there for lack of thy mother's favor? I will not have thee suffer, if I can give thee aid. But one may suffer in other ways—quite other—which thou hast no knowledge of, for to thee there seemeth to be, in all the world, nothing worthy but this wish of thine! But it is no promise; one must ponder in so great a matter, my boy!"

They broke down in each other's arms, clasping the sword between them.

The Senator's firm step resounded on the marble floor; they had scant time to recover themselves; but his eyes fell at once upon the magnificent goblet, and there was pleasure in his stern face.

"This, then, is of thy designing, Marcantonio," he exclaimed, as he stooped to examine it in its case of satin and velvet. "A veritable gift-piece! And already thou hast won the favor of the Senate, since it hath been reported to them by our Chief of the Ten, who hath the industries of Murano in charge, that at the exhibit given yestere'en a goblet more sumptuous than that prepared for his Majesty of France was of thy designing. The Secretary will bring thee this night a summons from the Ten to appear before them on the morrow to receive their congratulations, because of the inspiration thou hast given to our most valued industry.

"It is a rare mark of favor that it hath been confided to me," Giustinian continued, still examining the goblet with pride, "since custom doth require that one should withdraw from the sitting of the Council when any matter touching his house is treated. But Morosini, by grace of the Signoria, hath been with me for a moment, that there may be no misgivings of fear upon this fete-day of our house. And to-night this summons to favor shall be presented, to honor the youngest member of the Consiglio. Marcantonio, I am proud of thee; the Ten will be here—every one! And verily the goblet is beautiful. It shall be well displayed in the great banquet hall."

"Here, in my boudoir, where my boy hath placed it," said the mother quickly, as the Senator would have lifted it, "since it is my gift. And, Marco"—She turned to him a face softened and beautified by the struggle, which had been very great, and her eyes were deep with a light which bound him to her forever.

"Marco mio, it shall be well displayed. For I will bid my maidens circle this table whereon it rests with a wreath of roses—white and very beautiful—in token of thy mother's favor."



X

Marina, under the yellow glare of the lamp in the dark oak cabinet, worked fitfully, with broken, lifeless strokes, at the designs before her; while her father, feigning absorption in some new drawings which lay spread out within touch of his strong-veined hands, watched her furtively from the other side of the table.

"Thou art restless," he said, suddenly and sternly; "what aileth thee?"

Her lip quivered, but she did not look up, while with an effort she steadied the movement of her hand and continued her work. "My hand hath no cunning to-night, and it vexeth me, my father."

"It is poor work when the heart is lacking," he answered, in a tone charged with irritation. "I also have seen a thing which hath taken my heart from me."

The color deepened in her cheeks and the pencil strokes came more falteringly, but she answered nothing.

"Nay, then!" he exclaimed, more brusquely than his wont, as he stretched out his hand and arrested her movement. "What I have to say to thee importeth much."

She flushed and paled with the struggle of the moment, then a beautiful calm came over her face; she laid down her pencil and, quietly dropping her hands in her lap, she turned to him with a smile that might have disarmed an angrier man—it was full of tenderness, though it was shadowed by pain.

It relaxed his sternness, and, after a moment's hesitation, he came around the table and sat down beside her.

"To-night is the fete at Ca' Giustiniani, for the young noble of their house."

He waited for her to speak, but she did not tremble now, though he was searching her face.

"Yes, father, I know."

"And, Marina—I do not understand—and it is a grief to me——"

She nestled to him closely and tried to slip one of her slender hands between his, which were tightly strained together in a knotted clasp, as if he would make them the outlet for some unbearable emotion.

The previous evening was the first they had not passed together since the death of Zuanino; her father had sent her word that he had matter which would occupy him alone, and all day Marina had been heavy-hearted, going at matins and at vespers quite alone to the Madonna at the Duomo, that she might take comfort and counsel.

Girolamo did not respond to her caress, though his tone softened a little as he proceeded with his tale and her arm stole round him.

"Yesterday, at the stabilimento Beroviero, we were summoned by a call of our Capo of the Ten to witness the approval that should be passed on the exhibit of that stabilimento; we all, of the Guild of Murano, were there as always. And foremost among the productions, most marvelous for beauty, was a fabric of their lucent crystal—thou knowest it, Marina? My child—how came thy face there? Thy face, Marina—set round with lustrous pearls!"

He folded her to his breast with sudden passion, and stooped his head to her shoulder for an instant, lifting it quickly that she might not feel the sobbing of his breath which, even more than his broken words, betrayed his anguish.

"Dearest father, it was because I loved thee so much that I would not have thee suffer from my pain, that I told thee not. Never again will I hold aught from thee."

"Thy pain, Marina? and thy face—and for the young noble, Giustiniani? I do not understand."

"Father, because I could grant him nothing and he would give me everything, and because—because God sent the love and the Madonna hath made me feel that it would be sweet, I granted him only this—my portrait—because he pleaded so one could not resist; and because he said it would win the consent of all to see that he treated me like a queen!"