Taken quite aback by this sudden apparition and these stinging words, the boys dispersed with scarce an attempt to reply, and all the more hastily because they spied, coming up the Grand Canal, the gorgeous gondola of the Companions of the Stocking, an association of young men under whose charge and supervision all the pageants and displays of old Venice were given.
So the piazza was speedily cleared; and the Prince Giacomo, with many words of thanks to his young and unknown deliverers, hurried from the spot which had so nearly proved disastrous to him.
Changes came suddenly in those unsettled times. Within two years both the Greek step-mother and the feeble old king were dead, and Prince Giacomo, after a struggle for supremacy with his half-sister Carlotta, became King of Cyprus.
Now Cyprus, though scarcely as large as the State of Connecticut, was a very desirable possession, and one that Venice greatly coveted. Some of her citizens owned land there, and among these was Marco Cornaro, father of Catarina. And so it happened that, soon after the accession of King Giacomo, Messer Andrea Cornaro, the uncle of Catarina, came to Cyprus to inspect and improve the lands belonging to his brother Marco.
Venice, in those days was so great a power that the Venetian merchants were highly esteemed in all the courts of Europe. And Uncle Andrea, who had probably loaned the new king of Cyprus a goodly store of Venetian ducats, became quite, friendly with the young monarch, and gave him much sage advice.
One day—it seemed as if purely by accident, but those old Venetians were both shrewd and far-seeing—Uncle Andrea, talking of the glories of Venice, showed to King Giacomo a picture of his niece, Catarina Cornaro, then a beautiful girl of fourteen.
King Giacomo came of a house that was quick to form friendships and antipathies, loves and hates. He “fell violently in love with the picture,”—so the story goes,—and expressed to Andrea Cornaro his desire to see and know the original.
“That face seemeth strangely familiar, Messer Cornaro,” he said.
He held the portrait in his hands, and seemed struggling with an uncertain memory. Suddenly his face lighted up, and he exclaimed joyfully:
“So; I have it! Messer Cornaro, I know your niece.”