Venetian Masque

'What?' He thought there was more than surprise in her face. 'Are you telling me that he paid you? A thousand ducats?'

'I should not have met him else. And are you telling me that you did not give him the money?'

'I certainly did not.'

They looked at each other in mutual unbelief.

CHAPTER XVIII THE BRIDGE OF SAN MOISÉ

At a stormy meeting of the Grand Council on the last Monday in October, Leonardo Vendramin signally proved once more that, although nothing in himself, and contemptible in the eyes of almost every patrician of account, yet, by a queer irony which the oligarchic system made possible, he wielded a power which might well give him control of the destinies of the State.

The proceedings were opened by Francesco Pesaro, a leading member of the Senate, who from the outset had vigorously striven for armed neutrality. He came sternly to indict the policy of drift pursued in spite of undertakings wrung from the Doge at their last assembly. He pointed to the fruits of this in the contempt with which the French armies overran the Venetian provinces, trampling with impunity on their every right. Thence he came to a passionate plea that even at this late hour they should take up arms so that they could bring to account those who presumed to violate the neutrality Venice had assumed.

He was answered with well-worn financial arguments; with the old assertion that this war was not in any sense the quarrel of Venice; and with pleas that it was better to bear with resignation the ills resulting from their provinces having become the cockpit of this campaign, rather than sow the seed of greater distress in the future by a reckless squandering of the shrunken substance of the State.

To those who urged these arguments of pusillanimity and avarice came Vendramin to answer. Pale from the blood he had lost, and refined by his pallor to an air of asceticism, his injured arm so craftily slung under his patrician toga that its condition was not to be perceived, he stood in the tribune tall and dominant before his brother-oligarchs. He began by a slow, emphatic announcement of the fatal error of assuming that the independence of Venice was not menaced. It was well within the knowledge of some, and he had reason to believe that His Serenity the Doge was amongst this number, that if the French should emerge victorious from their contest with the Empire, the independence of Venice might well be placed in jeopardy. Having dwelt at length upon the intransigence of Bonaparte, he asked them whether they could really suppose that if that man were ultimately victorious in Italy he would withhold his brigand's hands from the treasures of the Most Serene Republic.

With that, protesting that already more words had been used in that hall than the occasion justified, he demanded that the vote be taken upon the motion presented to them by the Senator Francesco Pesaro.

The barnabotti, of whom there was a full muster present, voted solidly as their leader indicated. It is possible even that Vendramin's advocacy swayed some of the more solid patricians who were hesitating, for when the votes were counted it was discovered that, in spite of a hundred abstentions, there was a majority of over one hundred in favour of the motion. By this the Senate was required to proceed with the utmost dispatch to increase the armaments so that the Serenissima should be in a position to declare that, in view of the abuses committed upon her territories and her subjects, she was constrained to pass from an unarmed to an armed neutrality, and to demand the evacuation of her provinces by the belligerent forces.

The meeting dispersed with the feeling that only at its peril could the Senate neglect to carry out a recommendation so strongly supported.

Once more Vendramin had given proof of his capacity, through his worthless barnabotti following, to sway decisions.

From this he derived a sense of consequence marred only by the memory of his defeat at the hands of Mr. Melville. Upon this, however, measures were being taken. Vendramin thanked God that he did not lack for friends, even if his associates in the Casino del Leone and other similar meeting-places were looking a little askance at him these days.

These good friends had the matter in hand.

On the Thursday of that week Marc-Antoine attended, with Sanfermo, Balbi, and another of his recent Venetian friends, a performance of Panzieri's ballet Odervik at the Fenice Theatre. The theatre was gaily filled, which was the rule at all theatres in Venice that winter; for the pleasure-loving Venetians did not suffer anxieties begotten by the political situation to deprive them of their gaieties.