Venetian Masque

'Arm!' The Doge looked at him in horror. 'Arm? And the cost of arming? Have you counted that?' He seemed at last to have come fully to life. Perhaps the richest man in the Republic, indeed owing his election to his very wealth, he was notoriously a miser.

'The cost of arming?' he stormed on. 'Virgin Mother! How is it to be defrayed?'

Marc-Antoine supplied the answer. 'However defrayed, the cost should prove less than the levy a victorious Bonaparte will exact.'

'Bonaparte! Bonaparte! You talk as if Bonaparte were already here.'

'He is almost at the gate, Highness.'

'And since you know the true French intentions,' growled the Count, 'you cannot suppose that he will stand hat in hand on the doorstep.'

His Serenity almost raged. 'Is there not the Empire? If Beaulieu's army were smashed to atoms, the resources of the Emperor would scarcely be broached. Austria has lost Belgium already. Do you suppose she will let her Italian provinces go the same way?'

'Her loss of Belgium,' said Marc-Antoine, with an exasperating calm, 'was in spite of her resources.'

Impatient, yielding to his fierce patriotism, the Count again cut in.

'And, anyway, are we come so low that we must look to another to fight our battles, whilst we stand idly by? That is an attitude, sir, for women; not for men.'

'It is not yet our battle. It is Austria's.'

This was mere obstinacy, and the Count's impatience flared in his tone. 'But we are to profit by the spending of Austrian blood and treasure, and contribute nothing of our own. Is that the argument? Will the Council tolerate it?'

The Doge turned away in distress and anger. Bowed and trembling, he shambled from them, towards the window.

Marc-Antoine addressed the broad, receding back. 'By Your Serenity's leave, what is of more immediate importance than these abstract considerations is that, whilst you wait for the Empire to develop her resources, Venice may be under the conqueror's heel. Can she, having done nothing for Austria, having done nothing even for herself, look then to Austria to come to her deliverance?'

It was a long moment before Manin turned, and he had come slowly back to them before he spoke. By then he had recovered his lugubrious self-control.

'Sirs, I am obliged to you. Amongst us here we can do no more. This matter is one for the Council. I shall lose no time in convening it.' He drew a hand wearily across a brow that was damp. 'And now, if you will give me leave ...' His glance embraced them both. 'I am shaken, deeply shaken by all this, as you may conceive.'

Back in their gondola, the Count was grimly bitter. 'I told you it was an evil day for Venice when she elected a Friulian to Doge. You have seen him. He will pray; he will have masses said; he will burn candles rather than levy men and arm them. Always will he put his trust in alien help: in Austria's or in Heaven's. But we have still some Venetians left, like Francesco Pesaro, who from the outset have demanded that we arm. And the barnabotti shall stiffen them. This is a matter for Vendramin. The time for action has arrived.'

On the whole Marc-Antoine could give himself peace. He might, had he so chosen, account his mission accomplished. But he did not yet choose so to account it. Therefore, the next day saw him waiting once more upon Lallemant.

He had been busy, he announced. In his pretended character of Mr. Melville he had seen the British Ambassador, who mistrusted him and therefore would do nothing to assist him.

'That man,' said Lallemant, 'would mistrust his own mother.'

They laughed together, and Marc-Antoine proceeded. He had found, however, in the Senator Count Pizzamano, a member of the Council of Ten, one who believed in him well enough to sponsor him to the Doge. He had seen Manin. Such a man need give them no anxieties.

The ambassador, whilst amazed at the audacity of this Lebel, cordially agreed with him. He was contemptuous of the Venetian Government and Venetian patricians. They lived upon an illusion of greatness from the past, and refused to read the present. Venetian industries were languishing, her trade, crushed by taxation, was moribund. Consequently her finances were desperate.

'As in the case of all nations sweeping to the last stage of decay, she multiplies public offices and takes upon herself the burden of maintaining more and more of her pauper subjects. It is as if a man, finding himself impoverished, hopes to combat it by undertaking to support his needy relatives.'

This brought him naturally to speak of the barnabotti, and of Vendramin, whom he described as a man of great influence in that regiment of paupers.

'That one, at least,' said Marc-Antoine, 'displays no sign of pauperdom.'

Lallemant's broad face broke into creases of amusement. 'Why, no. We see to that.'

Marc-Antoine breathed more quickly. 'He is in your pay?'