Venetian Masque

'Until you produce them, sir, and until I am satisfied that they are as you describe them, you will not wonder that I decline to act as your sponsor.' He touched a bell on the table as he spoke. 'That, I am sure, is what Mr. Pitt would expect and desire of me. I must be very sure of my ground, sir, before I can take the responsibility of answering for you to His Serenity the Doge.'

The door was opened by the usher. There was no invitation to dinner from the British Ambassador.

'I have the honour, sir, to wish you a very good day.'

If Mr. Melville departed in any perturbation, it was only to see England represented in Venice at such a time by such a man. When he came to contrast the shrewd smoothness of Lallemant—one who had won to his position by the proofs of ability he had afforded—with the stiff-necked stupidity of Sir Richard Worthington—who no doubt owed his appointment to birth and influence—he began to ask himself whether, after all, there might not be grounds for the republican doctrines which had found application in France and which everywhere in Europe were now in the air; whether the caste to which he belonged was not indeed already an effete anachronism, to be shovelled by men of sense out of the path of civilization and progress.

These misgivings, however, did not sink so far as to imperil the championship of the cause of aristocracy to which he was pledged. After all, he belonged to that caste; the recovery of his estates of Saulx depended upon the restoration of the monarchy in France, and this restoration could not take place until the anarchs were brought to their knees and broken. Personal profit apart, however, the cause was one to which by birth he owed his loyalty, and loyally he would spend himself in its service, right or wrong.

From the austere English lady, his mother, he had inherited a lofty and even troublesome sense of duty, which his education had further ingrained.

An instance of this is afforded by the order in which he handled the matters concerned with his presence in Venice. That affair of his own primarily responsible for the journey—and one which might well have justified impatience—was yet to be approached. His approach of it now may have gathered eagerness because Sir Richard Worthington's cavalier treatment of him rendered it politically as necessary as previously it had been personally desirable.

When, on the death of his father Marc-Antoine had undertaken at the call of duty to his house and caste that hazardous and all but fatal journey into France, Count Francesco Pizzamano was, and had been for two years, Venetian Minister in London. His son Domenico, an officer in the service of the Most Serene Republic, was an attachè at the Legation, and between him and Marc-Antoine a friendship had grown which had presently embraced their respective families. Gradually Marc-Antoine's interest in Domenico had become less than his interest in Domenico's sister, the Isotta Pizzamano, whom Romney painted, and whose beauty and grace are extolled in so many memoirs of the day.

The events—first Marc-Antoine's excursion into France and then the recall of Count Pizzamano—had interrupted those relations. It was his ardent desire to resume them, now that the way was clear, which had dictated his journey to Venice.

A thousand times in the last month he had in fancy embraced Domenico, gripped the hand of the Count and pressed his lips upon the fingers of the Countess, and more lingeringly upon the fingers of Isotta. Always she was last in that recurring day-dream. But at the same time infinitely more vivid than the others. Always he saw her clearly, tall and slender with a quality of queenliness, of saintliness, in which your true lover's worshipping eyes will ever array his mistress. Yet always in that fond vision she melted from her virginal austerity: the vivid, generous lips in that otherwise nunlike face smiled a welcome that was not only kindly but glad.

This dream he was speeding now to realize, in an anticipation almost shot with apprehension, as all things too eagerly anticipated ever must be.

CHAPTER VI CASA PIZZAMANO

His gondola brought him to the marble steps of the Casa Pizzamano on the Rio di San Daniele, by the Arsenal, as the summer dusk was deepening into night.

He came in a shimmer of black satin with silver lace, a silver-hilted sword worn through the pocket. A jewel glowed in the fine old Valenciennes at his throat, and paste buckles sparkled on his lacquered shoes.

He stepped into a wide hall whose walls were inlaid with marble, where the red-liveried porter was lighting the lamp set in a great gilded lantern that once had crowned the poop of a Venetian galley. By a wide marble staircase he was conducted to an anteroom on the mezzanine, whilst a lackey to whom he gave the name of Mr. Melville went in quest of Captain Domenico Pizzamano, for whom the visitor had asked.