The royal vessel, instead of proceeding straight to Venice, went round by the Lido to the landing of Saint Nicholas, where the State architect Palladio had erected a triumphal arch which Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese had covered with ten beautiful paintings. Here the King was invited to leave his galley in order to go on board the Bucentaur. Tintoretto was in the crowd, looking out for a chance of sketching the King, precisely as a modern reporter hangs about the docks and railway stations to get a snapshot at royalty. Tintoretto did not disdain the methods of a later time either; he succeeded in exchanging his threadbare cloak for the livery of one of the Doge’s squires or footmen, by which trick he managed to get on board the Bucentaur. Once there he made a sketch in pastels of the King which pleased the royal treasurer, De Bellegarde, and the latter persuaded his master to sit to the artist for a full-length portrait, which was presented to the Doge on the King’s departure, in recollection of the visit.
During the following days nothing was omitted which might amuse the Sovereign or tend to strengthen the pleasant impression he had already received. Every sort of Venetian game was played, and all the traditional contests of strength and skill between Niccolotti and Castellani were revived, and with such earnestness on both sides as to lead to a fresh outbreak of their hereditary hate. Two hundred men fought with sticks at the Ponte del Carmine, as savagely as if the safety and honour of their wives and children depended on the result. At the most critical moment the fisherman Luca, the famous chief of the Niccolotti, fell into the canal, his followers were momentarily thrown into disorder by the accident, and the Castellani won the day.
Afterwards a banquet was given to the King, of which the remembrance remains alive amongst the people to our own time. The gondoliers and fishermen of to-day describe the feast, its magnificence, the beauty of the patrician ladies, the splendour of the service, as if they were speaking of something that happened yesterday instead of more than ten generations ago.
The tables were set in the hall of the Great Council for three thousand persons. The King sat in the middle of the hall under a golden canopy. We are told that the bill of fare set forth twelve hundred different dishes, and that all the company ate off solid silver plates, of which there were enough for all without having recourse to the reserve which had been set up for show on a huge sideboard at the end of the hall. After the feast, the King assisted at the performance of the first opera ever given in Italy, composed by the once famous master Zarlino da Chioggia.
The banquet and the music must have occupied several hours; yet we are amazed to learn that so short a time sufficed for putting together a whole galley, of which Henry had seen the pieces, all taken apart, just before sitting down to table. When he left the ducal palace, he saw to his stupefaction the vessel launched into the canal on rollers, and towed away towards the Lido.
Not surfeited by the official amusements offered him by the Republic, the King diverted himself on his own account and went about the city in disguise,
Mut. Annali.
like Otho of old. The government had directed the jewellers and merchants to have in readiness their finest wares in order that when the King sent for them, he might buy objects worthy of the reputation of the Venetian shops; and the shopkeepers inquired with feverish anxiety when they were to go to the Palazzo Foscari.
But Henry preferred to go out shopping himself. One morning the jeweller at the Sign of the Old Woman on the Rialto Bridge was visited by a noble stranger, who inquired the price of a marvellously chiselled golden sceptre: apparently the Venetian jewellers kept sceptres in stock in case a king should look in. The price of this one was twenty-six thousand ducats, or between eighteen and nineteen thousand pounds, which seems dear, even for a sceptre. But the noble stranger was not at all surprised, thought the matter over for a few seconds, nodded quietly, and ordered the thing to be sent to the Foscari palace, to
