A Golden Book of Venice Part 15

The shout of the Giustiniani was echoed from gondola to gondola of the waiting throng, from the gondoliers of all the n.o.bles who followed in their wake, from the housetops, the balconies, the fondamenta, mingled with the words of the favorite folk-song:

"Belo ze el mare, e bela la marina!"[6]

[6] Beautiful is the sea, and beautiful the marsh.

It was like a fairy dream as the bridal procession came floating toward San Marco, in the brilliant golden sunshine, between the blue of the cloudless sky and the blue of the mirroring sea, each gondola garlanded with roses, its silver dolphins flashing in the light, and in the midst of them the bark that bore the bride. The stately pall of snowy damask, fringed with silver, swept almost to the water's breast, behind the felze of azure velvet, where, beside her father, sat the bride, in robe of brocaded silver shimmering like the sea--a subtle perfume of orange blossoms heralding her advance.

Once more the shout went up--the quaint love-song of the people--

"Belo ze el mare, e bela la marina!"

and then a breathless silence fell, for the bark of the ministering priest of San Donato had taken the lead, the white-robed nuns of the Matrice grouped about him, chanting as they approached some ancient wedding canticles of benediction. The bissoni parted and came no further, having brought their maiden from Murano with every sign of love and honor; the barges of the people fell back behind them, and through their ranks the bridal gondolas followed the bark of the priest of San Donato to the steps of the Piazzetta, where the train of the Giustiniani, in a magnificence that was well-nigh royal, had just disembarked, and Marcantonio stood bareheaded among the n.o.bles to receive his bride.

But it was only for a moment of recognition in the sight of the thronging people, for messengers were arriving with greetings from the Doge, which this bride, whom the Senate had taken from the people to bestow upon a n.o.ble, must receive from the lips of the Prince himself before the wedding ceremony should take place; so the train of Giustiniani, with all the n.o.bles of Venice--who, from immemorial custom, had come together to witness and rejoice over this great event in the life of one of their number--entered San Marco by the great doors of the Piazza; while the bride, obeying the gracious summons of the Doge, pa.s.sed through the gate of the Ducal Palace on the seaside, into the great court where the Signoria were descending the Giant's Stairway on their pa.s.sage to the ducal chapel.

The ceremony of presentation to the Serenissimo was quickly over, and the bride and her maidens, with Girolamo Magagnati, in sign of the Prince's favor, followed the Doge and suite into the golden looms and shifting twilights of this place of symbolism and wonder, where the vast throng waited in a solemn hush.

The gloom was broken by countless tongues of flame from lamps of silver and alabaster burning in the farther chapels, while wandering lights streaming through the openings of the dome filled it with wonderful waves of color--only half-revealing the treasures of ivory and jewels and precious marbles and mosaics, wrought with texts and symbols, but wholly making felt the mystery and beauty. The vague perfume of those faint mists of floating incense, crossing and recrossing the scattered rays of sunshine, mingled with the fragrance of the orange blossoms from which the light tread of the bride-maidens seemed to crush a breath of benediction.

Coming out of the sunlight into this still, beautiful, holy place--the chant sweet and sacred accompanying her steps, with the Cross repeated again and again in the heights of the domes, with the dear familiar form of the Mother Mary on every side lifting adoring eyes to the crowning figure of the Christ, while the saints who graciously leaned to her from their golden backgrounds in the great vaulted s.p.a.ces above recalled the legends inseparably linked with their intimate friendly faces and brought back the atmosphere of her own Matrice--her mother church--this maiden of Murano felt suddenly at home.

The Patriarch with his pomp, the Signoria and Senate in their robes of state, the n.o.bles and the pageant were all forgotten. In the sacramental lights of the ceremonial candles of the great altar, flashing back from the marvelous _Pala d'Oro_, she saw only Marco waiting for her--to whom her father, beloved and trusted, was leading her with her heart's consent.

How should she falter on the path from love to love!

XIV

But even in Venice--the magic city--there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface--when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of the waters. And gondoliers came suddenly into vision, parting the mists with thin, black, swaying outlines, as quickly fading in the near, gray distance when they pa.s.sed, while the shipping loomed like phantoms on an immediate horizon, vanishing, vision-like; and even the sounds of life came m.u.f.fled over the still lagoon, like ghostly echoes from a city wrapped in dreams.

These were days of dim forebodings, too, for the anxious men of action who ruled the Republic. In the Broglio there was more often silence than speech, as the older senators gathered in knots, with faces the more expressive because of much reticence in words; the sense of approaching contest increased their mental restlessness and made them outwardly more stern. Each looked into another's stormy, resolute face, so pa.s.sing many a counsel whose echoes he feared to start under the rambling porticoes of the Piazza, where friars of every order mingled freely with the crowd, and idlers carried tales into dark, bas.e.m.e.nt recesses, and one knew not which was friend or foe. Meanwhile the Winged Lion, with those terrible, jeweled, glaring eyes, and the primitive patron San Teodoro--each high on his column, in a Nirvana of quiescence--kept solemn semblance of vigil over that dread s.p.a.ce where sometimes a horror of which one dared not speak scattered the sunshine high in air between those silent wardens of San Marco. Yet the horror of those figures swinging lifeless, with veiled faces, was met in silence by a people trained to suffer this secret meting out of penalty for transgressions in which justice and vengeance stood confused.

The ceaseless chains of elections had begotten bribery, corruption, and strife; the over-weening luxury had fostered unworthy ambitions--it was a time of much lawlessness. Under the shadow of the emba.s.sies infamous intrigues were planned by bands of idle men, who shrank from no deed of evil which held its promise of gold; the water-storey of some splendid palace might be a lurking-place for unprincipled men--spies and informers by profession--who wore the liveries of n.o.ble families whose secrets they would unhesitatingly consign to that merciless _Bocca del Leone_, for favor or vengeance of those they secretly served. For underneath the glitter and the pomp of these latter days of Venice--its presage of decay--a turbulent ma.s.s of malcontents, foreigners disappointed in intrigue, Venetians shut out from power, grasped and plotted for its semblance,--sold murder for gold, treason for gold,--escaping justice by the wiles they so deftly unveiled, or by the importance of the deposition it was in their power to make. Secret, swift, relentless, absolute--Venice had work for men who did not court the sunlight; and such a nucleus drew to its dark centre intriguers from other courts, and gathered in and strengthened the worthless within its own borders, until the evil was growing heavy to deal with.

Causes of discontent between Church and State were alarmingly on the increase; and while in no other dominion, save that of Rome alone, were ecclesiastical possessions so rich, or their establishments more splendid than at Venice, nowhere were the lines of power so jealously defined and guarded as in the government of this Republic from which ecclesiastics were rigorously excluded,--although no least ceremonial was held complete without the presence of the Patriarch and priests who evidenced the devotion of Venice to the Holy Mother Church,--though every parish kept its festa, and the religion of Venice was an essential part of the life of its people. But if the priests had no visible seat in the splendid Council Chambers of the Republic, they boasted at Rome that their sway over the consciences of these lordly senators was well established by virtue of the confessional and that, in the event of contest, there would be many votes for Rome.

The _ridotti_, the informal clubs of Venice in those days, were important centres of influence--political, legislative, and literary; and there was a certain palazzo Morosini, well known to many of the senators who gathered in the Broglio, where questions of vital interest to the thinkers and rulers of Venice were discussed with the degree of knowledge that might have been expected from so eminent a company as that which made the home of the distinguished senator Andrea Morosini the scene of its ridotto, and where freedom of speech was much greater than seemed wise in the candid sunshine of the Piazza.

Of its present numbers all, at some period of their lives, held high office under the Republic--they were senators, secretaries of state, amba.s.sadors--and three among that little group of thirty lived to wear the beretta. It represented essentially the patrician culture of Venice, and Morosini himself was already eminent as an historian; but the chief literary centre was still acknowledged to be that quaint house in Campo Agostino, of Aldo Manuzio, _il vecchio_, bearing, as in his day, shield-wise, its forbidding inscription, "Whoever you are, Aldo requesteth you, if you want anything, to ask it in few words and depart; unless, like Hercules, you come to lend the aid of your shoulders to the weary Atlas. There will always be found, in that case something for you to do, however many you may be." But in this Aldine mansion only the most-learned men of letters gathered, and Greek was the sole language permitted in its discussions.

One of the _habitues_ of the Aldine Club was chief among this n.o.ble company of the Morosini. He was a grave, scholarly man who listened and questioned much out of a seemingly inexhaustible fund of historic, legal, and ecclesiastical knowledge--a man who had the power of stimulating others, and whose rare word, when uttered, was of value. He had opinions gathered at first hand from influential minds of every land and creed to contribute to the talk when it flowed in narrowing channels; and he himself came thither for refreshment from abstruse studies, out of a quiet cell in the convent of the Servi, while seemingly unaware that many a stranger begged for an invitation to the palazzo Morosini in the hope of an introduction to this "miracle of Venice."

Perhaps this grave friar, apparently so careless of his distinction, was the unsuspected intellectual thread which bound, as it were, together the various influential circles of Venice; for in every centre, plebeian or patrician, where there was anything new to be mooted or anything of value to be discussed, he was a visitor so welcome and so frequent that he might well have exerted a steady, unifying influence upon Venetian thought.

At the sign of the "Nave d'oro," in the Merceria, where the vast commercial interests of Venice were the absorbing theme, and strangers from every clime and merchants just returned from distant ports were eager now, as in the days when Marco Polo had so valiantly entertained the goodly company, to rehea.r.s.e the tale of their adventures--it was neither merchant nor n.o.ble who stood forth on the bizarre background of brilliant baubles and gold-woven tissues as the centre of this ridotto, but a friar, learned in languages and sciences, of whom it was pleasantly affirmed that "he was the only man in Venice who could discuss any subject in any tongue!"

As this friar, unattended and on foot, turned out of the narrow calle from San Samuele into the Campo San Stefano, the Giustiniani, father and son, were just landing from their gondolas in the midst of a gay retinue, on the steps of the palazzo Morosini; other gondolas of other n.o.bles were floating in full moonlight before the quay; and to Fra Paolo, who did not share the Venetian love of color and of art, the elaborately frescoed facade of an opposite palace--an extravagant freak of the Veronese's which the Venetians were already beginning to cherish as the work of their great artist who would paint no more--seemed an impertinence unworthy of that dazzling illumination.

Marcantonio Giustiniani had but lately returned from Rome, where, during his residence as Secretary to the Venetian Amba.s.sador, the affair of the Venetian Patriarch Zani, which had roused such indignation in Venice, had taken place. The matter was still of interest in official quarters, because the death of Zani had caused a new vacancy, to which Venice, according to her ancient right, had appointed the successor; and this new Patriarch Vendramin should never go, as Zani had done at the request of the Holy Father, to receive his benediction and be met with that perfidious announcement that he had "examined and approved the Venetian candidate," whom he now confirmed as Patriarch to the Most Serene Republic!

At the thought of the manner in which they had been entrapped and outwitted--denuded, as it were, before the Roman Court of some semblance of their ancient privilege of appointing their own Patriarch--there was fresh indignation among these proud patricians. The secretary Marcantonio Giustiniani had been present at the audience granted by Clement to the Venetian Patriarch. "He would know if it had been possible--even with the most favorable intentions toward Rome,"--they were crowding round him and questioning with jealous eagerness,--"even with the feeling which loyal sons should possess for their Mother Church--to interpret that rude cross-questioning of his Holiness, so unexpected and unexampled and contradicting his own explicit promise--otherwise than as an examination--_an examination which prejudiced the ancient right of Venice_?"

A scarcely perceptible smile flitted over the young secretary's handsome face--they were so venerable and eager, so careful of shadows of form!--and in a sudden side-light a hint of a question obtruded itself on his consciousness, as to whether there could be a slightly farcical aspect to such an episode between two most Catholic and Christian governments? He saw them both fired with feelings of very human strength, both dealing only with shadows of reality--the Sovereign Pontiff grasping at a semblance of power in insisting that this candidate, named by Venice to a see within her gift, to which he, the Pope, would dare present no other, was invested by _his_ examination and approval; and the Republic, receiving back its own appointee, confirmed with the papal benediction, jealously aroused to unappeasable indignation by the empty form of questioning which had preceded this singular ceremony.

But the dignified company were pressing the young secretary for his answer, and one of them anxiously repeated the keynote, "_An examination which prejudiced the ancient right of Venice_?"

"Courtesy and wisdom would render any other opinion inadmissible,"

Marcantonio replied,--"in Venice."

The elder Giustinian had detected the slight pause which preceded the last two words. "Wherefore 'in Venice'?" he questioned, with some heat.

"It is a question not of locality, but of justice and judgment."

"It is a question of judgment," Marcantonio echoed suavely, "upon which, it hath been told me, the Senate hath already pa.s.sed a law that shall keep our Most Reverend Signor Vendramin from such a fate."

"Ay, never again may our Patriarch leave the Republic for confirmation of the see which she alone may grant. The law is just," said the Senator Leonardo Donate.

"In the days when his Holiness was but an Eminence, it hath been said, he gave our amba.s.sador a chance to prove his temper?" Morosini questioned of Donato, who had been amba.s.sador in Rome while Paul V, who had but just ascended the throne, was still Cardinal Borghese.

"It was in the matter of the Usc.o.c.ks," Donato answered, after a moment's hesitation, seeing that some were waiting for the story. "And it was the second time that half-civilized tribe hath provoked disputes between two most Christian nations. 'If I were Pope,' said the cardinal, 'I would excommunicate both Doge and Senate!'"

Fra Paolo scrutinized the faces of the listeners, and fixed his gaze searchingly on the speaker. There was an uneasy movement among the company, but Leonardo Donate did not flinch.

"May they not know your answer, most n.o.ble Signor?" Morosini urged.

"For, verily, it was of a quality to illumine a page of history."

"The words were few," said Leonardo, with dignity. "'_If I were Doge, I would trample your edict under foot_.'"

There was a sudden hush, in which those who had not been listening became intensely conscious of the words just uttered by the aged and ill.u.s.trious Cavaliere Leonardo Donate, for there had been of late an abiding undercurrent of suppressed excitement ready to awake at any mention of Papal supremacy. The Republic had always jealously guarded against any transference of temporal power from prince to prelate, and many events which seemed linked in a chain that might lead to the most deplorable results had succeeded to the election of Camillo Borghese as Paul V; the desire evidently manifested by Clement during his latter days to encroach on the perquisites and possessions of the minor Italian States was crystallizing into a fixed purpose of ecclesiastical aggrandizement on the part of the new Pope.

"He was brandishing Saint Peter's sword before he had been knighted,"

remarked the Signor Antonio Querini, who was deeply interested in all disputes between Church and State.

"But not before he had received strenuous training," responded the grave, clear voice of the friar. "For five years he hath held office as Auditor of the Apostolical Chamber, the style of which is written thus, _'Universal Executor of censures and sentences recorded both in Rome and abroad'_--a duty which he may be said to have discharged more faithfully than any of his predecessors, as one cannot recall in any previous fifty years as many thunderbolts and monitions as were launched during those five years of his office!"

Some romance could but attach to the unswerving judicial att.i.tude of a friar who had friends in high favor at the Court of Rome--who had known a Bellarmino and a Navarro, and yet pursued, unchanging, the calm tenor of his critical way. It was rumored that Sixtus V had been known to leave his coach to converse with him, and would have given him, at his mere request, a cardinal's hat; that Urban VII, as cardinal and pope, had been his devoted friend; that Cardinal Borromeo--the saintly San Carlo--had wished to attach him to his cathedral; and many were the instances reported when marks of special appreciation had been granted him from Rome, in lieu of denunciations which those jealous of his rapid advance had sought to bring upon him. Even the late Pope Clement had expressed admiration for his learning, while it was, nevertheless, well known that Fra Paolo's counsels to the Senate, in certain troubles arising out of Clement's att.i.tude at Ferrara, had brought him the refusal of the bishoprics of Candia and Caorle; but, whatever the occasion, he was invariably discreet and fearless.

However pungent the tone, the words of this man could no more be attributed to personal bitterness than they might be influenced by personal interest; and although the opinion which they indicated was a surprise to some of the company, instinctively they felt the situation to be graver than they had feared, and the evening's talk drifted as wholly into the current of Church and State as if this ridotto were a commission appointed by the Ten to prepare resolutions upon the situation. And the list of grievances now reviewed, which had occupied the Senate during the closing years of Clement's reign, was, in truth, long. Vast differences of opinion concerning the Turks and the piratical tribes who infested the sh.o.r.es of Italy and the uses their villainy might be made to serve; troubles at Ferrara, teasing and undignified, temporarily brought to a close by the sending of the galleys of the Republic to prevent the seizure of their fishing-boats by agents of his Holiness; questions of boundaries and taxes; attempts to divert the trade of Venice, to arrest improvements redounding not only to the advantage of the Republic but to that of the neighboring country; to forbid, under pain of excommunication, all commerce with countries tainted with heresy. These were matters meet for discussion by temporal sovereigns touching the balance of power--so viewed and strenuously resisted by the clear-headed Venetians, with much deference of form, whenever practicable--as became loyal sons of the Church; but occasionally, when nothing might be expected from temporizing, with a quiet disregard which proved their consciousness of strength.

From time to time, as the informal summary progressed, there was an outburst of indignation.

"Could an aggression be more palpable than that _Index Expurgatorius_ demanded by Rome in 1596, when the ruling doctrine of exclusion involved no question of morality or irreligion, but solely concerned books upholding rights of consciences and rulers!"

"It was a contest honorable to Venice, and one which Italy will remember," responded a secretary of the Senate, who was a regular member of this ridotto. "I am proud that it was my privilege to transcribe for the records of the Republic the papers relating to that Concordat which secured so great a measure of freedom for our press."

There had been a short truce between Rome and Venice since the accession of Paul V, who had been so immediately concerned with a certain prophecy foretelling the death of a Leo and a Paul that his fears were only set at rest by a further astrological announcement, judiciously arranged in the palace of his eminence the brother of the Pope, to the effect that "the evil influences were now conquered." Whereupon Paul had undertaken in earnest the work which he conscientiously believed to be the highest duty of a sovereign pontiff, had recalled all nuncios not in full sympathy with his views of aggrandizement, and had replaced them with envoys whose notions of authority were echoes of his own; and, as an opening move, had made the demand, so resented by Venice, that the new Patriarch Vendramin should be sent to Rome for examination before he could be allowed to take possession of his prelacy.

"But what hath Venice to fear from a Pope who is paralyzed for the first two months of his reign by a reading of a horoscope!" exclaimed one of the company scornfully.