Venetian Masque

Marc-Antoine first beheld that loveliest and strangest of the cities of the world in all the golden glory of a May morning. He came by boat from Mestre, where he had lain the night, and from afar as they approached the Canareggio it seemed to him that there floated before his gaze not indeed a city, but some vast fantastic jewel, compounded of marble and gold, of coral, porphyry and ivory, set in a vaster jewel of sapphire lagoon and sky. His black gondola swung from the Canareggio into the Grand Canal and glided between splendours of palaces blending the arts of East and West in a voluptuous beauty startling to his Northern eyes. He leaned forward under the canopy to feast his wonder on the Romanesque marvel of the Ca' d' Oro and the great arch of the Rialto Bridge with its burden of shops all glitter and movement of colour and of life.

The gondola gliding like a black swan through the water-traffic, threaded its way across the canal, past the Erberia, where all was noise and bustle of men and women about the piled stalls of fruit and flowers and about an unloading barge. It slipped into the quieter, narrow waters of the Rio delle Beccherie, to bring up at last at the water-lapped steps of the Osteria delle Spade, the Inn of the Swords, as the crossed blades of its sign announced.

Marc-Antoine landed and consigned his person and luggage into the care of the rubicund little landlord Battista, who welcomed him volubly in the Venetian dialect, which to Marc-Antoine sounded like a mixture of bad French and bad Italian.

He was lodged on the piano nobile in an ample salon, sparsely furnished and cool with a stone floor and clumsily frescoed ceiling where cupids of unparallelled obesity rioted in an incredibly gaudy vegetable kingdom. A bedroom with a vast canopied bed, and a powder-cupboard adjoining, completed his lodging.

He installed himself, unpacked, and sent for a hairdresser.

He had travelled straight from Turin, and he had accomplished the journey in two days. In this he had been extremely fortunate, for the movements of the battered Austrian troops about the country east of the Mincio might easily have hindered and delayed him. As it was he had missed them, although the ugly signs of their passage were not wanting. He had reached Mestre unchallenged, and now in the ease and peace and dignity of Venice it seemed difficult to believe that the hideous stress of war could be anywhere within a thousand miles of them. Gay laughter-laden voices floated up to his windows from the canal below, and more than once whilst his hair was being dressed there came, to the accompaniment of the swish of oars and the gurgle of water under an iron-headed prow, snatches of song as if to stress how carefree were the people of the Lagoons.

The assumption, upon which he had decided, of the rôle of the dead Lebel, imposed upon him the necessity of journeying at once to Milan where Bonaparte had made his triumphal entry and had just established his headquarters. But he had shirked a course that was fraught with so much risk, and had contented himself with writing to the French commander. Thus he created with Barras the impression of having represented the wishes of the Directory to Bonaparte, and he could leave Barras to suppose that this had been done orally.

It would be some three hours after his arrival, when having made a careful toilet and with his glossy black hair carefully dressed and tied, but free from powder, he went below, and called for a gondola to carry him to the French Legation.

Reclining in the shade of the felza he was borne westwards up the Grand Canal, where with the approach of noon the water-traffic was becoming brisk, and then, by a network of lesser channels that lay in shadow between tall dark palaces, to the Fondamenta of the Madonna dell' Orto in the north. Alighting on the quay, he came by a narrow alley into the Corte del Cavallo, a little square scarcely larger than a courtyard. On the corner stood the residence of the ambassador of France, the Palazzo della Vecchia, a roomy but comparatively modest house for a city of such splendours.

The Citizen-Ambassador Lallemant was at work in the spacious room on the first floor which he made his office. He was interrupted by Jacob, the middle-aged, rustily clad, alert Semitic secretary, who could never forget that during the interregnum three years ago he had been for a season chargè d'affaires.

Jacob brought the ambassador a folded note, which he said had been given to him by the door-keeper Philippe.

Lallemant looked up from his papers. He was a man in middle life of a comfortable habit of body and a full, kindly, rather pallid face that like a pear was wider at the base than at the summit. The lethargy of his double chin was belied by the keen shrewdness of full dark eyes, set prominently on his face.

He unfolded the note and read: 'Camille Lebel, representative on mission, requests audience.'

He frowned in silence for a moment. Then he shrugged. 'Bring this man in.'