FIVE days afterward the great bells that hung in the campanile of San Marco rang out their deafening peal over the hundred isles of Venice. The fair city had once more a sovereign. A new Doge, Pascale Malipieri, had been duly elected in the room of the deposed and outraged Foscari.
So Venice made holiday, as she loved to do upon every lawful occasion. The wealth of her sea-washed palaces had generated luxury, and luxury, in its turn, was generating idleness and extravagance.
The water streets were gay with gondolas, richly ornamented and draped with the brightest of colors; the footways were thronged with citizens, whose stalwart forms and handsome bronzed faces were well shown off by holiday costumes of blue, white, and scarlet. But the crowd was densest in the Piazza―that glorious square, “beautiful for situation,” over which San Marco, with his stately campanile, keeps majestic watch throughout the centuries. Beneath its shadow walked the merchant-princes, taking their pleasure in their grave, decorous fashion, and discussing―it must be added with some reserve―the event of the day. Cloaks of silk or velvet, blue, violet, or scarlet (though the color of their own cloudless sky predominated), lent variety to the scene. Nor were their ladies absent. Suitably attended, they moved amongst the gay throng, looking taller than their husbands―for the preposterous fashion of high pattens resembling stilts was then beginning to prevail―and attired in silken robes profusely adorned with gold and jewelry.
Some of the young academicians mingled with the crowd. They were dressed quite splendidly enough, though they had not yet assumed the long cloak that answered to the Roman toga virilis. As was usual now, the banker’s son and the young Greek noble were found together. To Theodore, who had never made a friend before, the sense of companionship was delightful from its freshness, and the flood of Raymond’s innocent hero-worship was still at full springtide.
“Look,” said Theodore, as a pigeon fluttered over their heads and sought its resting place in the eaves of the cathedral. “The pigeons of San Marco are the only inhabitants of Venice unmoved by the event of today. They at least live in peace, and are not the fools to set up a ruler one day and pull him down the next.”
“I like to watch them,” said Raymond, who had followed the graceful motions of the bird with brightening eyes. “I always bring a cake for them when I go to San Marco.”
“What use? The State feeds them.”
“What use? Just to see them eat. But look, Theodore; look at that lady the tall one yonder, in the violet robe. How beautiful! what a face! what hair! The gold on her girdle is pale beside it.”
One of their schoolfellows, a young noble, overheard the words, and laid his hand on Raymond’s shoulder, repeating in a mocking tone, “What a face! what hair! Is that all you know, my innocent little Grecian? That is the wife of Signor Marco Tiepoli, of the Council of Ten; and I have seen the fair lady, every day for a month, sitting in her balcony, in a broad-brimmed hat without a crown, drying that dyed hair of hers in the sunshine.”
Raymond laughed. “Like you, Francesco Buri. You can never let a man admire anything in peace. Theodore, what are you staring at?”
“That little girl―young lady. I think she is frightened by the crowd.”
In Venice young, or at least unmarried ladies, were not wont to show themselves in public. They seldom went abroad, except to attend mass, and then they were closely veiled and carefully guarded. So the very presence in the crowded Piazza of a solitary young girl, still almost a child, and though simply dressed, evidently a lady, was a thing to occasion surprise and comment. The girl’s slight figure was enveloped in a fazzuolo, or long and ample gauze veil, beneath which she wore a plain brown dress. She stopped and looked around her hurriedly, as if undecided what to do next; evidently she was losing her presence of mind. It seemed as though she wished to cross the square; once or twice indeed she made faint attempts to do so, but abandoned them quickly, feeling the undertaking too formidable. Theodore saw that the rosy lips beneath the veil were beginning to quiver, and that a mist of coming tears was stealing over the soft dark eyes.
He stepped to her side. “Can we be of service to you, signorina?” he asked, in tones all the more reassuring because they were quiet and commonplace, and his manner was free from the fulsome gallantry then so usual.
“Oh, signor,” said the child―for she was little more― “what shall I do? I cannot get home; and my grandfather is so ill.” “Whither do you want to go?”
“To San Lazzaro. We lodge beside the church.”
“I will take you there, signorina. Allow me to carry this for you,” and he took from her trembling hand the flask of rare vine which she had just purchased in one of the celebrated shops on the piazza. As she surrendered it she dropped a purse, very small and very light. Raymond, who of course had followed his friend, picked it up and handed it to her. “Best take a gondola,” said Theodore to him. “Can you get one?”
Raymond shook his head. “We must walk,” he said. “Come; I know the nearest way.”
The guard formed Theodore on the young lady’s right hand and Raymond on her left. At first few words were exchanged, and perhaps, had Theodore been there alone, the silence might have lasted the whole way. But Raymond had no idea of foregoing the pleasure of hearing what such pretty lips could say. He drew from her that they were strangers in Venice, and that her grandfather was an exile.
“From Florence, I suppose?” he hazarded rather imprudently; and he took the answering murmur―whatever it was ―for an assent, though the more keenly observant Theodore thought otherwise.
She was very anxious, she admitted her grandfather was ill and unhappy, feeling hardly safe, even here; and an old servant was her only other friend and protector. “He was very sick today,” she said. “Nothing does him so much good as this wine of Cyprus. Toinetta was busy and could not go out, so I went for it. I did not know the town would be so full.”
This set both the cavaliers thinking. Raymond thought that he too was an exile―that the young lady was very beautiful―that he would get his mother to visit her. Theodore thought that they must be very poor, that Cyprus wine was costly, and that if it came anonymously from time to time as a present to her grandfather, she need never know who sent it. But, on this account, the more reserved he was now the better. So he held his peace, and yet, somewhat inconsistently, felt annoyed at Raymond’s volubility. For the Greek boy and the Florentine girl (as she was supposed to be) harmonized quickly, and exchanged innocent confidences in the soft, musical, liquid tones of the tongue of Italy―not the Italian in which Florentino fishwives scolded and Venetian gondoliers swore and quarreled, but such Italian as Petrarch whispered to Laura by the fountain of Vaucluse. When the narrow footways would not allow three to walk abreast, it was always Theodore who dropped behind.
At length they reached the gloomy building indicated by the young girl as her place of abode. It looked dark and forbidding, the doors and windows being closely shut and barred. But she rang a bell, and an unseen hand quickly opened the street-door. The wide staircase, common to all the house, was bare and dirty, and two or three rough-looking men, of the sailor or gondolier class, were standing in the hall, talking in loud, coarse tones, perhaps quarreling. It did not seem well to our young cavaliers to abandon their charge until they brought her to the private door of her grandfather’s “house,” or suite of rooms. Here an old woman answered her low knock. “Holy Madonna!” she cried when she opened the door; “is it you at last? A fine fright you have given us! My poor master―”
The girl interrupted her with a hurried inquiry for her grandfather’s health.
“He slept until half an hour ago, then he awoke and asked for you. Hush! there he calls again.”
“I am coming, dear grandfather, I am here,” said the young girl, with a heightened color. She was hastening in, but recollected herself in time to turn and say to her two protectors, with the first touch of shyness she had shown as yet, “Signori, I thank you very much for taking care of me.”
It was Raymond, the younger of the two, who had the quickness to answer, “May we ask you in return, signorina, to make us your debtors by permitting us to kiss your hand?” A request the little lady graciously granted; but as she was evidently in haste to go to her grandfather, no more words passed between them.
As they retraced their steps down the gloomy staircase, Raymond, who walked first, saw some bright object glittering on the ground. He picked it up, and it proved to be the broken half of a bracelet of silver filigree—a slight thing and of little value which he had noticed on the wrist of their new acquaintance. He made no remark, but hid it, well pleased, inside his doublet. Theodore saw what he did, and smiled; but Raymond never saw that Theodore himself had already secured the corresponding half.
It was not until they had emerged from the narrow streets near San Lazzaro into the quarter of the city called the Rialto that either of them spoke. Then Raymond suddenly exclaimed―
“Theodore, I have seen her before!”
“Where? In a church?”
“No; in a dream. Walking in a beautiful garden with a rose in her hand.”
Theodore laughed. His smile was very pleasant; but his laugh had a mocking ring that was not agreeable. However it was rarely heard.
“Wise men dream as well as fools,” he said. “But they are fools who tell their dreams.”
“Was Joseph a fool?” Raymond might have asked, but the story unfortunately was not familiar to him. He was far better versed in the legends of Greece and Rome than in the contents of the Sacred Scriptures. He said however, “That dream must have come to me through the gate of ivory.”
“Well, if it did, I suppose you are awake now, and able to see that the crowds have doubled since the morning. How excited the people look! See that fellow standing up in the gondola, and haranguing the group on the traghetto, who are almost pushing each other down in their eagerness to press forward and hear him. Let us come too, and hear what he has got to say.”
But at that moment Francesco Buri hailed them from another gondola, and invited them on board.
Receiving a gesture of assent and thanks, he bade his rowers put in for them; and scarcely had they seated themselves in the cabin when he said― “Have you heard the news? The Doge is dead.”
“What? The Doge elect?”
“The Foscari. There is one sad heart the less in Venice tonight, that is all.”
It was true. The great bell of San Marco, which was rung to announce the appointment of a new Doge, tolled at the same time the knell of the deposed Foscari. He heard it as he knelt in prayer before the crucifix, and at the sound his grief-worn heart gave way at last. Thus the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary was at rest. The aged passed away from a world in which the days of his pilgrimage had indeed been evil, at the same moment that the strong man was rejoicing in the fruition of his most ambitious hopes, and the young were dreaming, hall unconsciously, their first bright dream of golden hours to come.
Well for Foscari if the angel of death found him, in very truth, beneath the Cross ―not alone with bended knee before a graven crucifix, but with broken heart lifted up to One who was able to heal and cave, because for him―and for us too―He Himself had gone down to the depths of agony, and tasted all the bitterness of human sorrow, pain, and wrong.