His successor was Aloise IV. Mocenigo, who had been Ambassador to Rome and to Paris. His election was celebrated in a manner that recalled the festivities of the sixteenth century. A secretary was sent to the Mocenigo palace to announce the news to
1763.
his family, and the Dogess took four days in which to complete her preparations, after which she came to the ducal palace accompanied by her two married nieces, her sisters, her mother, all her own female cousins, and all those of her husband; and this battalion of noble women in their gondolas was followed down the Grand Canal by an innumerable fleet of gondolas and boats. All the male relations were waiting at the landing of the Piazzetta to escort the ladies to the palace, where the Dogess, seated on a throne, received the homage of the electors and of all the nobility. She did not wear the ducal insignia on that day. In the evening there was a ball, which she opened with one of the Procurators of Saint Mark.
A series of festivities began on the following day, at which she appeared in a memorably magnificent dress: a long mantle of cloth of gold, like the Doge’s own, with wide sleeves lined with white lace, opened to show a skirt and body all of gold lace-work; a girdle of diamonds encircled her waist; her head-dress was a veil, arranged like a cap, but the two ends hung down to her shoulders, and were picked up and fastened to her back hair by two diamond clasps.
On three consecutive evenings there were balls at the palace, and at each the Dogess danced only one minuet, with a Procurator of Saint Mark,
Rom. viii. 148.
as etiquette required when there were no foreign princes in Venice.
This reminds one of old times; it is even true that in some ways the display at the ducal palace was greater than it had ever been. The banquets especially took the importance of
G. R. Michiel, i. 289.
public spectacles, and were always five in number, given at the feasts of Saint Mark, the Ascension, Saint Vitus, Saint Jerome, and Saint Stephen, after the last of which the distribution of the ‘oselle’ took place, representing the ducks of earlier days, as the reader will remember. At these great dinners there were generally a hundred guests; the Doge’s counsellors, the Heads of the Ten, the Avogadors and the heads of all the other magistracies had a right to be invited, but the rest of the guests were chosen among the functionaries at the Doge’s pleasure.