Venetian Masque

He did not depart without some characteristic expressions of petulance, utterly beneath the dignity of a prince. His case is an illustration of how the conferring of benefits can appear to establish a liability to continue them. Instead of gratitude for the hospitality enjoyed, he displayed only resentment that it should be discontinued, and that Venice should be unwilling to defy on his behalf the guns of Bonaparte. He demanded that the name of Bourbon should be erased from the Golden Book of the Serenissima, and that a suit of armour presented to Venice by his ancestor Henri IV should be restored to him. They were childish demands, and they were so treated. Nevertheless, they served to increase the Senate's sense of shame and humiliation.

Within a week Marc-Antoine was relieved by the definite orders to present just such an ultimatum which reached Lallemant from the Directory; so that to the ambassador's impressions of Lebel's ardent Jacobinism was now added an increased respect for his acumen and foresight.

It was also of some relief to Marc-Antoine that the problem presented by the Vicomtesse was resolved for him by the events. In the first place to denounce her now must, in view of the suspicions that had attached to him in the matter of Terzi, be in the last degree imprudent; in the second place, it became desirable to leave her at liberty because her activities, being observed by him, supplied a channel of information.

As the summer advanced, the disregard of Venetian rights by both belligerents became more marked. Yet Manin curbed the impatience of public opinion with the news that a fresh Austrian army under General Wurmser was about to descend into Italy. It came at the end of July; and pouring down the slopes of Monte Baldo, inflicted a rout upon the French. There was joy in Venice, and its faith in the Empire was maintained thereafter even when by the middle of August Wurmser, defeated, was in full retreat towards the Tyrol. The procrastinators could still point to Austrian victories on the Rhine, and to the fact that Mantua still held, insisting, not without truth, that as long as Mantua held, Bonaparte was comparatively immobilized.

Thus, save for transient alarms and transient upliftings, life in hedonistic Venice flowed much as usual, and Marc-Antoine found in it little more than the part of the English idler he had assumed.

In those months his only activity on behalf of the cause he served was concerned with another denunciation. He had gleaned from Lallemant that a successor to Terzi had been found, and that soundings were once more being charted. When he inquired into the identity of this successor, Lallemant shook his head.

'Let me keep that to myself. If there should be an accident, I cannot again commit the folly of suspecting you of indiscretion.'

The accident followed. The inquisitors of state, on information supplied through Count Pizzamano by Marc-Antoine, employed the Signori di Notte, as the night-police of Venice was termed, to keep a sharp lookout for any boats that might be fishing in unlikely waters between Venice and the mainland, and to track them carefully down. After weeks of patient vigilance, the Signors of the Night were at last able to report such a boat. After operations which could have no legitimate object, this vessel was wont to repair to a house in the Giudecca. The person with whom the boatmen communicated there was a gentleman in poor circumstances named Sartoni.

This time not only was Sartoni taken by order of the inquisitors, and upon conviction suppressed as Terzi had been, but the two boatmen were also caught and sent to share his fate.

To Lallemant the distressing event supplied confirmation of the rashness of his earlier suspicions of Lebel.

CHAPTER XV THE CHOICE

Marc-Antoine beguiled his abundant enforced leisures in amusements, which even in those days were never far to seek in Venice. He was to be seen at theatres and casinos, often accompanied by Vendramin, who continued freely to borrow money from him whilst keeping him under observation.

He was being a source of definite anxiety to Vendramin, who could not rid himself of the feeling that between Marc-Antoine and Isotta some intelligence existed. Marc-Antoine was too constantly at the Casa Pizzamano for the peace of mind of Vendramin, who knew nothing of his political activities. There were water-parties to Malamocco, and occasional visits to Domenico at the Fort Sant' Andrea, in which Marc-Antoine was invariably included, whilst once in September, when some British ships of war stood off the Port of Lido, Marc-Antoine took Isotta and her mother with him to visit the captain of one of them who was a friend of his.