Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

But, ardently as Oneolo desired the cool shades of the cloister, he could not leave the hot sands of public life yet. There was too much to be done, and well he knew that only his possession of the high office kept it safe from the fiery, blood-spotted hands of his enemies and the State’s.

He thought over it a long time, and at last came to the conclusion—a quite unfounded one—that twelve months of hard work, of hand and brain, would suffice to put the affairs of the Republic into such shape that he might safely leave them to her to attend to. So, redoubling his efforts, he slaved on, always with the shining vision before his eyes.

I suppose, as the months went by, that the desire fed his imagination and that the possible through sheer longing became gradually probable, and, as happens with so many people, that the mind thrown forward constantly to realisation at last staid there, far ahead of accomplishment.

At the end of the year, he had barely begun the long process of putting the business of the Republic into a condition in which a successor could handle it, but when, with the autumn, the Abbot came back to Venice, Oneolo was ready to leave. So, in the dusk of the morn, a cloak thrown over his shoulders and wrapped around his face, he stepped into a boat, and the two were pulled silently and swiftly through the sleeping city to the mainland, where they got into their saddles and galloped away into the night.

He had a hard time at first, for his healthy appetite needed stronger fare than the rule of the order which he entered prescribed; but he persisted, and when, years afterwards, he passed away, his canonisation followed, so that he became, as he would have wished to become, a permanent glory to his State and an example for future ages to follow.

There is one pretty story connected with a Candiano—a flower in that waste of thorns—which I have taken from my brother’s “Salve Venetia.”

It has to do with a certain Elena of that name, who fell in love with a man who was her social inferior in every possible way. He was poor and a plebeian, either of which was to be the mud in the canal of the Princely House that held the Dukedom so many times. Elena’s father was even more prejudiced than the rest of his kin at that time, if such a thing is possible, and had been looking around him covetously, even since Elena had been a small girl, for some youth whose wealth and blood might make him a possible match for a Candiano.

In the meanwhile, as has been said, Elena had also cast about her, unconsciously as a creeper winds itself about its supports, and, having no worldly judgment to handicap her choice, selected the man who could fructify her soul, rather than one whose worldly prospects she would be expected to enrich.

Very secret she must have kept it, for, innocent though she was and untouched by the coarsening finger of the world, she knew perfectly well what would happen to young Gheravdo Guvro if word of her spiritual escapade should come to the ears of her gentle men folks, and, of all the world, only her old nurse was in the secret. The old woman was devoted to her and, being a plebeian herself, her class sympathy went out towards the young man, so that she helped the lovers to meet again and again and whenever the chance offered itself.

This sort of thing could not last for long, even with the most virtuous disposition and the best of intentions, and it was not very long before the natural consummation of the affair came, and they were secretly married.