These were bad days for Vendramin. He moved precariously, and haunted by dangers; the danger of losing Isotta and the great fortune that went with her; the danger of losing his very life on a false charge at the hands of the inquisitors of state.

The scoundrel Melville held poised over his head a sword from which he was helpless to guard himself. The rage engendered by his bitter sense of wrong was held in check by fear alone.

Meanwhile, he did what he could for himself by displaying to Count Pizzamano more than ever his patriotic zeal, and he came to this meeting at Manin's house to give the Count's demand a passionate support.

This demand was for an offensive and defensive alliance with Austria.

Whatever the Doge had been bracing himself to hear, he had certainly been very far from expecting this. Pale and agitated, he rose to denounce the proposal as sheer madness.

Francesco Pesaro, however, that gravely courteous gentleman, who was perhaps the strongest man in Venice in those disastrous days, constrained the irresolute Doge to hear the facts.

In the Tyrol and on the Piave the Austrian troops were massing. Soon Alvinzy would oppose an army of some forty thousand men to a similar number under Bonaparte. Although the French were under the handicap of having Mantua strongly held against them, yet the scales were somewhat too evenly balanced for assurance of Austrian victory, in which today it must be admitted lay Venice's only hope of security.

Manin would have interrupted him here. But Pesaro ploughed steadily on.

He pointed out with irresistible force that for the present state of things in Italy the blame must rest upon the irresoluteness shown by Venetian statesmen. If from the outset, generously responding to the appeal for help, Venice had ranged herself on the side of the allies with the army of forty or fifty thousand men which they could have put into the field, Bonaparte's invasion of Italy would have been definitely frustrated, Savoy would never have passed into the possession of the French, and not a French soldier would ever have reached Lombardy. But with a parsimony and an egotism that were contemptible—the time for mincing terms was overpast, and he must speak frankly—Venice had excused herself on the ground that the quarrel was not her affair.

After Beaulieu's defeat, the Emperor had sent down a second army under Wurmser. The alliance with Austria which earlier would have been a matter of generosity had then become a matter of expediency. The recent events throughout the violated Venetian provinces were an eloquent proof of how wrong was their shameful aloofness. The abuses committed by the French troops were daily accumulating. The Serenissima was being treated with the contempt which her irresoluteness had earned. Plunder travestied as requisition was everywhere being suffered; arson, rape, and murder ravaged their mainland provinces, and if their governors or emissaries ventured to protest, they were insulted, maltreated, and threatened.

Were Venetians prepared to see this state of things continue until worse ensued, until their fair lands were appropriated by France, as Savoy had been appropriated, as Lombardy had been appropriated?

They knew from what Count Pizzamano had just told them that already the French were seeking pretexts for conquest, and that, today, they would actually welcome the armed neutrality which earlier might so effectively have hindered them.

Yet, even now, by the mercy of God, Venice was for the third time offered the chance which twice before she had neglected. Well might it be the last chance that would be vouchsafed her by a Providence weary of her pusillanimity. Strategically they were well placed to co-operate with Alvinzy. Whilst he made his frontal attack, they could assail the French on the flank. Could anyone doubt the issue of such overwhelming co-operation? Thus would Italy be delivered from the French; Venetian honour would be vindicated and her prestige restored.

Before the Doge, shaken and distressed, could find words, Vendramin had taken up the argument at the point where Pesaro left it. Since the last meeting of the Grand Council, troops had been recruited; ships had been fitted and conditioned; they had been working day and night at the arsenal, so that they were now in a position to put an equipped army of thirty thousand men in the field within a week, and these numbers might be increased by further levies from the Dalmatian provinces. This army, intended for the tardy defence of Venetian property, could with equal effect be rendered definitely hostile by an alliance with the Austrian forces.

When the trembling Doge cried out to know upon what grounds they could declare war on France, Pizzamano answered him sharply that grounds for hostilities, which were never difficult to create, existed in abundance in the ravages Venetian provinces had suffered. He reminded the Doge that His Serenity was the keeper of Venetian honour, and that posterity would hold him up to execration if he neglected what was perhaps the last opportunity of defending it.

At this Manin broke down before them. He sank his elbows into his knees, and took his big head in his hands. Sobs shook him whilst he inveighed against the day when the ducal dignity and the ducal corno had been thrust upon him.

'These were not honours that I desired. They were honours that I sought, as you all know, to avoid.'

'But having assumed them,' said Pizzamano gently, 'you cannot evade the responsibility they carry.'

'Do I seek to evade them? Am I an autocrat? Is there not a Grand Council, a Senate, a College, a Council of Ten, to rule the destinies of this Republic? You, who are the representatives of these bodies, know that for one voice preaching what you preach, there are three that preach neutrality as the only course of duty. You come to me as if I alone were opposing you. It is unjust. It is unconscionable.'

They reminded him that in the executive bodies there were many who wavered undecided, looking to the Doge to lead them.

'And must I assume the responsibility of leading them along a course which I am not myself satisfied is the prudent one?'

Vendramin threw in an audacious phrase.

'Prudence from being a virtue may become a crime in a situation in which energy and courage are required.'

'Is not the reverse also true? This warlike spirit with which you strive to inspire me rests, after all, upon a scrap of rumour; that the French are seeking pretexts.'

He swung to his old arguments. Why should the French seek pretexts? This was not an Italian war. It was a vast flanking movement in a great campaign, the chief theatre of which was on the Rhine. If the French had committed abuses in Venetian territory, these had not been acts of deliberate hostility, but merely the expressions of the brutality from which armies were never free; and they should perceive that if France had violated Venetian territory at all, it was under the necessity of war dictated by the fact that this violation had first been committed by the Austrians when they occupied Peschiera.

'An occupation,' said Pesaro, 'that could never have taken place if we had been in the state of armed neutrality for which you and those who share your easy views refused to perceive the necessity.'

'That was not to have been foreseen!' the Doge exclaimed.

'It must have been,' answered Pesaro. 'For I foresaw it.'

And then Catarin Corner, the inquisitor, interpolated yet another argument. He spoke with quiet incisiveness, his clear-cut, ascetic face as calm as his tone. He denounced the error of assuming friendliness on the part of the French. He pointed to the fanaticism with which the French were spreading their religion of Jacobinism. He alluded to the Cispadane Republic, established in Italy under the auspices of French Jacobinism and lately swollen by embracing Bologna and Ferrara. He dwelt upon the subterranean work of proselytizing that was going on here in Venice, and of the dangerous extent to which this was sapping the foundations of the oligarchy. From his office as one of the inquisitors he derived authority for what he said. Their spies were diligently at work, observing and at need pursuing the ubiquitous French agents, not all of whom were French. There had been, he informed them in his quiet, level voice, more secret arrests than perhaps they suspected, and, after convictions of correspondence with the French, not a few secret executions. Vendramin was conscious of a chill down his spine as he listened to this.

But although the argument was protracted for some hours, they could not tear the weak, vacillating old Doge from the errors to which he clung so obstinately.

The matter ended, as all matters ended with which he had to deal, in compromise. The Proveditor of the Lagoons should continue his activities of preparation, and further recruiting should be set on foot at once, so that they might be in a state of preparedness for whatever course the events should prove desirable. In the meanwhile he promised that he would keep in mind and further consider all that the deputation had urged, and that he would pray for guidance.

He was still considering when in the early days of November Alvinzy's army began to march. And then, suddenly, Venice rang with news of Austrian successes. Massèna had been beaten on the Brenta; Augereau, heavily defeated at Bassano, was retreating upon Verona.

Stimulated by this, Pizzamano and his resolute associates returned to the assault. This was the moment. Whilst the French were staggering, let Venice strike the blow that must put a definite end to the menace of Bonaparte. They were still urging this when, by the end of the month, the French situation had grown so desperate that every temporizer, from Lodovico Manin down to the most neutral senator, now accounted his policy justified by the events. By inaction, whilst the war rolled forward, by economy of blood and treasure, they had conserved unimpaired the strength of the Most Serene Republic.