Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

The son of that Doge who rowed after the corsairs and helped to recover the brides, wrote a fiery and bloody chapter in the history of Venice—and died in the writing. He began early in life to plot against his father, who, feeling the weight of age and responsibility pressing hard upon him, allowed his son to sit beside him and help him in the business of ruling the State.

No sooner did the former feel the sceptre in his hands than he began to plot against the parent who had permitted him to handle it, until he was caught in the act, and only rescued from the mob who sought to kill him in the nick of time. His father then sent him into exile.

Human nature is a bundle of contradictions bound together with cords of training and pushed along by an intermittent moral energy, which we call conscience. An individual under given circumstances will attempt, at least, to guide his actions by some sort of reasoning; but place that individual in a crowd that is fired with excitement, in the same circumstances, and five times out of seven that individual will cease to reason at all. He will be caught up in the whirlwind of the mob’s emotions and do things that will make him blush ever after to think about.

Which, perhaps, accounts for the fact that, though Pietro Orosino ravaged the coast line and plundered the Venetians for years, yet in the end they presented him with the throne, and deposed his old father who had ruled them wisely and well during those years, to do so.

Then Pietro, having at last got his opportunity, proceeded to show the world what kind of a man he was. Feeling the need of the Emperor’s friendship, he drove the unfortunate woman who had married him into a convent and sent her son into a monastery, after which he married the sister of the Marquis of Tuscany (who must have been a person of singularly plastic morals), and being now a connection by marriage with the Emperor he proceeded to further fortify his position by establishing his kinsfolk in half a dozen other States, where they became people of the first rank and of considerable power and influence.

Now Pietro’s wife was a German Princess (even in those far-off times most of the disposable royalties seem to have been Germans) and he placed German troops in the fortresses of Ferrara, which she had brought to him. Then, as a final buttress to his strength, he organised a small army of professional soldiers as a bodyguard. As soon as he had accomplished that, he began a systematic cutting of all the ties that bound him to his duty towards the Venetians and attempted to dismiss his counsellors.

That was as far as he was allowed to go. The first families—who had ambitions of their own—quietly armed the people, and presently Venice became one huge conspiracy, and one night, at a given signal, the palace was surrounded and every avenue of escape cut off. Then Pietro, sitting in the upper part of the Palace, heard the roar of the mob, rising and falling and rising again like the bellowing of a pack of wolves, and knew that his fate had leapt upon him out of the silent night, as fate has a habit of doing.

His terrified men informed him that every exit was blocked and, having given him the information, separated and scurried away into corners and hiding-places like rats, all save a faithful few, who stood by him; and with them and his wife and child he ran for a private passage which connected the Palace with St. Mark’s, hoping to take sanctuary there. But the conspirators knew of the passage, too, and there they were waiting for him, when he stumbled through the dark, and there they killed him and his child and every man that was with him; but they let the woman go—fortunately as it proved for them—for Pietro’s wife was kin to the Emperor.

In view of the fact that the story of Venice is so stormy a one, it is interesting to note that all the early ideals of the Venetians ran in the direction of peace and mutual equality, and so determined were they that discord should not be permitted to raise its head that they made their very dress conform to their desires and adopted a long, loose dress, which would be most inconvenient for hot-blooded people who might be apt to quarrel upon small pretexts.

They left these ideals behind them, however, as the State grew and flourished. It is not in the Latin temperament to tread too narrow a road, so far as the passions are concerned, and, even to-day in the south, if one man has the misfortune to slay another one, he has always two pleas to make, either of which will, as a rule, find a sympathetic hearing in court. “La passione” is the first—and any moderately good reason for rage is generally all that is asked for, by way of explanation. “Scirocco” is the second, and that covers everything from a broken dish to a slit gullet. No one is supposed to be quite in his or her right mind while the close, hot, dry African wind is blowing.