'It is lonely for a man in a foreign country. We must do what we can.'

Vendramin thrust playfully at his ribs. 'A coy piece, on my life! And she looked neat. Let her be never so muffled, I have eyes, my friend, that can strip a nun.'

Marc-Antoine thought it time to turn the talk. 'You told the landlord that you were expected?'

'You'll not pretend to have forgotten it? You'll not break my heart by saying that you had forgotten it, indeed? The last thing I said to you last night, when you landed here, was that I would come and take you to Florian's this morning. And you are not yet dressed. This nègligè . . . Ah, yes, of course, the lady ...'

Marc-Antoine turned away, dissembling disgust. 'I have but to don a coat and my walking-shoes. I will be with you at once.'

He yielded without argument so as to have a moment to himself, a moment in which to master the emotions Isotta had left in him, and those produced by this most inopportune intrusion. And so, he left the salon to pass into his bedroom beyond.

Messer Vendramin, smiling and nodding at the picture his imagination conjured of the doings he had interrupted, sauntered slowly towards the balcony. Something grated under his foot. He stooped and picked up an object that in size and shape was like the half of a large pea. The sunlight struck a dull glow from it as it lay in his palm. He looked over his shoulder. The door to the bedroom was closed. He continued his walk to the balcony. There he stood contemplating the little jewel. A malicious smile took shape on his full lips, as he realized that he held a clue. It would be amusing if chance were to lead him one day to find the indiscreet owner. The smile broadened as he dropped the cabochon sapphire into his waistcoat pocket.

CHAPTER IX

HIS SERENITY

Past the majestic portal of Santa Maria della Salute and across the Basin of Saint Mark they were borne in Vendramin's gondola, with the funereal exterior trappings which the old sumptuary laws ordained, but enriched within the felza—the little cabin amidships—by delicate carvings, little painted escutcheons and wide cushions covered in leather that was wrought with scroll-work in gold and ultramarine and red. Whilst of no startling extravagance, yet for a pauper patrician it seemed to Marc-Antoine too much.

Ser Leonardo presented something of a problem to him. But, for that matter, so did all Venice as he saw it that morning. Everywhere life seemed inspired and suffused by the bright sunshine in which it was lived. In the crowds moving along the Riva dei Schiavoni, idling in the Piazzetta, or sauntering in the greater square, all was gay, careless vivacity. The mood of the Venetians, populace, burghers, and patricians, seemed as serene as the blue dome of heaven overhead, without apparent care or even thought for the mutterings of a storm that might at any moment overwhelm them.

It was little more than a week since on Ascension Thursday the Doge, aboard the great red-and-gold bucentaur of forty oars, with splendours as great as those displayed by the Serenissima at her zenith, had gone to the Port of Lido for the annual ceremony of the espousal of the sea.

Today, before the wondering eyes of Marc-Antoine, the sparkling human stream poured along the Schiavoni, past the gloomy prison and the unfortunate wretches who showed themselves grimacing behind the massive bars or thrust forth claws for alms, to be commiserated by some, but to move the derision of more. Westwards, past the Gothic marble-encrusted loveliness of the Ducal Palace, linked with the prison by that marble gem, the Bridge of Sighs, the human current flowed on, to lose its impulse in the spaces of the Piazzetta, to pause there or eddy about the Zecca and the columns of Eastern granite, one of them surmounted by Saint Theodore and the dragon, the other by the Lion and the Book, the emblems of Saint Mark.

Marc-Antoine stood on the pavement of trachyte and marble, spread like a carpet before the Byzantine glories of Saint Mark's. He caught his breath at the vision of the vast, arcaded square with that miracle of grace, the Campanile, thrusting, like a gigantic spear, its point into the blue.

This was the heart of the great city and here the pulsations of its vivid life were strongest.

By the rich bronze pedestals of the three great flagstaffs a quacksalver, in a fantastic hat with a panache that was a rainbow of dyed cocks' feathers, hoarsely called his unguents, perfumes, and cosmetics. By San Geminiano an itinerant little puppet-show was holding a crowd from which laughter intermittently exploded to startle the pigeons circling overhead.

They came to a table at Florian's on the shady side of the Piazza.

Here among the fashionable loungers of both sexes circled itinerant merchants, hawking pictures, Eastern rugs, trinkets of gold and silver, little gems of Murano glass and the like.

Of the poverty which in her decadence was consuming ever more swiftly the entrails of the State, there was no sign upon the glittering surface here displayed. The apparel of the men and women about these little tables was nowhere in Europe exceeded in extravagance, and their gay, inconsequent, leisurely air gave no hint of gloomy preoccupations.

If, thought Marc-Antoine, the Serenissima was, indeed, as some had diagnosed, upon her death-bed, she would die as she had lived, in luxury and laughter. Thus, we are told, had the Greek republics perished.

He sipped his coffee, listened indifferently to the chatter of the amiable Ser Leonardo and gave his real attention to the pattern woven before his eyes by the shifting loungers. Sauntering gallants and ladies in silks and satins, an occasional masked face amongst them; more soberly clad merchants; here the black of a cleric, there the violet of a cannon, or the coarse brown of a friar, hurrying by with his eyes upon his sandals; occasionally the scarlet toga of a senator proceeding importantly to Pregadi, or the white coat and cockaded hat of a swaggering officer; groups of kilted Albanians or Montenegrins, sashed and jacketed in red or green, soldiers these from the Serenissima's Dalmatian provinces.

From time to time Ser Leonardo would point out a person of distinction in their environment. But there was only one who arrested Marc-Antoine's rather dazed attention: a sturdy, swarthy little man of middle age, in a black wig and a rusty coat; a man with observant, questing eyes, and the hint of a sneer about his tight-lipped mouth. Not only did he sit alone, but in a loneliness made conspicuous by the empty tables immediately about him, as if he bore some disease upon him of which others avoided the infection. Upon being informed that he was Cristofero Cristofoli, a well-known agent—confidente was the term employed—of the Council of Ten, Marc-Antoine wondered what was to be discovered by a spy whom everybody knew.

A couple passed, thrusting contemptuously through the crowd, which without resentment gave way at once. The man was short and mean of appearance, very swarthy and ugly in a suit of shabby camlet that an artisan on holiday might have disdained. A fat, untidy woman of fifty hung wobbling on his arm. They were followed by two men in black, each with a golden key upon his breast to proclaim him a chamberlain, and after these rolled a gondolier in a threadbare livery.

'Who is the scarecrow?' Marc-Antoine inquired.

Ser Leonardo's ready laugh rang out. 'Most apt! A scarecrow, indeed; in fact, as well as in appearance. Well might he scare some sense into these silly, strutting crows.' He waved a long supple hand to indicate the people about them. 'He is an itinerant warning to all Italy, and most of all perhaps to Venice. Oh, yes; a scarecrow. He is the Emperor's cousin, Ercole Rinaldo D'Este, Duke of Modena, lately chased from his dominions by the Jacobins, who, uniting Modena with Reggio, have formed the Cispadane Republic. The woman is Chiara Marini, said to be his second morganatic wife. He's a precious instance of how little the Imperial ægis can now shelter a man.'

Marc-Antoine nodded without comment as tightly reticent in this as in other matters, and evasive of the persistent questions with which the Venetian still sought to probe him. He discounted the repugnance which Vendramin inspired in him, lest some of it should result from a jealous resentment which he had not been human and a lover had he not experienced.

So when they parted at last, it was without much progress made on either side in knowledge of the other, but with effusive promises from Vendramin to seek him shortly again.

Marc-Antoine hailed a gondola at the steps of the Piazzetta, and was borne away to San Daniele and Count Pizzamano.

He dined with the Count and Countess and Domenico, Isotta keeping her room on a plea of indisposition. Later in the afternoon the Count carried him off to the Casa Pesaro, where the Doge resided.

Lodovico Manin, apprised of their coming, received them in the richly hung chamber that served him for a work-room.

Marc-Antoine bowed before a man of seventy who inclined towards obesity, whose scarlet gown was caught about his loose bulging loins by a girdle set with gems of price. His head was covered by a black velvet cap worn instead of a wig. His face was large and pallid, with sagging cheeks and very dark, lack-lustre eyes under heavy tufted black brows. The aquiline nose had been thickened by age; the upper of the heavy lips protruded, adding an expression that was almost foolish to the general weariness of his unimpressive countenance.

He received his visitors with a courtesy touched, in the case of Count Pizzamano, by a hint of deference.