A Golden Book of Venice

by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

[8] To light the Madonna.

With an easy conscience, also, he had helped himself to the requisite funds for their journey, amply estimated, from the treasury of the Nicolotti, which was in his keeping; and his reasoning savored of Venetian subtlety, with a hint of his toso training. Had not the Lady of the Giustiniani offered to guarantee the funds necessary for the assessments of the state, when Piero, doubtful of their resources, would have declined the position of gastaldo grande, cumbered as it was with the uncomfortable requirement that the chief should be personally responsible for all dues and taxes levied upon the traghetti? Piero was not the first gastaldo who had wished to escape an honor that weighed so heavily, and a very serious penalty was already decreed for such contempt of office by that tribunal tireless in vigilance.

So, without compunction, Piero had taken the needful, sure that when he returned Marina's husband or her father would repay it.

Could he return—after helping a patrician to escape from Venice into the heart of the country with which the Republic was at war? It looked doubtful even to Piero, with his indomitable temperament, but he wasted no sentiment upon this question; for if he might not return there were other countries in which a man could live. Or, should he be pursued and lighted upon by the far-seeing eye of the Ten, he could die but once and get into trouble no more! He crossed himself decorously as he dismissed the matter; but it was not an event that he could change by pondering.

There was another question that interested him more keenly at this moment; when Messer Girolamo should know that his daughter was not in Venice, could he fail to comprehend the hint he had given a few hours before, and would he not follow them to Rome, as Piero devoutly hoped, for he wished to leave Marina in her father's care. It was not easy to predict what Messer Girolamo might do—the case had been too doubtful for a more explicit confession, and Piero had been wise in his generation.

He turned now to Marina with the question: "If thou hadst told thy father of thy wish mayhap he might have come with thee?"

She shook her head sadly and made no answer, but after awhile she said,
"He is like the others. They cannot understand the need, for to them the
Madonna hath not revealed the desperate state of Venice."

"Yet thou knowest, Marina, that already the great cardinal—but lately come from France—hath started for Rome to make up this quarrel?"

"That is what the Senate will not understand!" she cried, with flashing eyes. "The Holy Father will have submission and penance, in place of embassies and pomp. One must go to him quite simply, from the people, saying, 'We have sinned; have mercy upon Venice!' Piero, thou knowest that awful vision of the Tintoret? It is Venice that he hath painted in her doom—the great floods bursting in upon her—all the agony and the anguish and the desolation of God's wrath! Santa Maria! I cannot bear it!" She closed her eyes, shuddering and sick with terror.

"It was the way with Jacopo," said Pietro irreverently. "He was full of freaks, and some demon hath tormented him. He was a man like others—not one for a revelation."