Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Then, safe in the irrevocable nature of the bond, Gheravdo sailed away to make his fortune, as do the Calabrian youths of to-day, leaving his wife behind him—and, considering the moral characteristics of her kinsfolk, he seems to have taken some considerable risks.

Before he was fairly off, Pietro Candiano informed his daughter that he had found that for which he had been searching and that he was going to marry her without any possible delay to a gentleman of the name of Vittor Belegno. Upon learning this, the girl’s heart stopped and she fell into a trance, which resembled death so closely that she was placed in a coffin and put away in the Cathedral before the evening.

Then luck stepped in, and Gheravdo, for some reason or another returned, only to hear upon arriving of her sudden death. Frenzied, he ran to the Cathedral and, with the aid of the sacristan—obtained in the usual fashion—opened the tomb and wrenched the lid from the coffin. Taking the beloved head in his hands, he smothered it with kisses, crying and sobbing over it until, to his amazement and joy, a tinge of colour appeared in the silk-white cheeks, and, under his rapturous, half-incredulous caresses, the body lost its rigidity and the blood stole back into the cold limbs, and he lifted her out, babbling his gratitude to the Almighty, and carried her away.

It is said that when her father set eyes on her his joy overcame everything else in him, and that he gave her to Gheravdo, gladly and without reserve, but upon that I, personally, have my doubts. Still it may have been, and one can only hope that it was!

CHAPTER XXI “THE WEDDING OF THE SEA”

Origin—Venice’s Growth—Treaties with the Emperor—Pietro Orseolo Annihilates the Pirates—Welcome on His Return—Story of Marco Polo—A Trader with the East—A Strange Journey—Bokhara—Capital of Kublai Khan—Impressed with Christian Ideals—Return Journey—At Home in Venice—Failure of Plans to Convert the Tartars—Again in the Far East—Lost for Twenty-five Years—Return to Venice with Vast Wealth—A Gorgeous Banquet—Marco’s Rehabilitation—Ruskin and the Church.

The origin of the ceremony known as the wedding of the sea dates from the reign of Pietro Orseolo, the son of that Pietro who left the world for the cloister, after two years of, to him, extremely unsympathetic labour. The old gentleman had prophesied the boy’s rise to his father’s plane, during one of the former’s very few visits to him, in these words: “I know that they will make you Doge, and I know that you will prosper.” The prophecy was more than fulfilled, for young Pietro proved to be a good man and a strong ruler, and he raised Venice from the position of a small state, torn to pieces by internal warfare, and constantly at the mercy of her stronger neighbours, to an eminence from which, looking back at her immediate past, and down upon the development of those same neighbours, she could call herself the “Queen of the Seas,” and that without fear that any would attempt to challenge her self-assumed title.

He began his work by trying to lay that fruitful cause of so many quarrels, the question of allegiance to the Empire of the East or to that of the West, by making treaties with both, and that done—his decks, so to speak, cleared for action—he turned his attention to the freebooters, who for a long time past had been exacting a heavy annual tribute from the weakness of the distracted State.

In the first combat that followed he defeated them handsomely, and they, in revenge, not daring to jeopardise themselves in the lagoons and canals, turned upon the coast towns of Dalmatia, sacking and looting them one after another.

These latter, in despair, appealed to Venice for help, and Pietro jumped at the chance, and gathered together a fleet as quickly as he could arm it. From the ecclesiastical authorities he received St. Mark’s banner, and set sail, as we are told, in the early spring.