For this buried city on the coast was the ancient city of Salamis, and famed for her magnificence—the Famagosta Vecchia which had furnished many a stately column and intricately wrought carving to enrich the modern city to which Janus had transferred the capital of his kingdom. Half-buried fragments of palaces and tombs and temples reached far along the coast, giving the touch of pathos and historic interest: and about them swept the broken circles of the splendid aqueduct which, in the days long past, had gathered the waters of the mountain streams to furnish the countless fountains and cisterns of Salamis. Great palms had sprung up in the fissures of the massive, grass-grown arches, and vines trailed draperies of beauty over their decay—and so they stood, a monument to the past, challenging the dwellers of the modern city to a labor so needful for the public weal.
The port was gay with trading ships and colors of many lands; but Mutio di Costanzo studied it with frowning brows, noting only the absence of his own galleys of Cyprus, which lay, unmanned in the dock-yards by order of King Janus the Second! And before them, where he turned his gaze, still frowning, on the silver of the sea rode the galleys of the fleet of Venice—decked with the banners of San Marco and of Cyprus.
Caterina, under her canopy, with all her court about her in fullest state, had received the homage of the people, as she passed her forces in review, her cheek tingling with honest pleasure at their enthusiastic greeting. The little Prince had been beside her, crowing his delight at the music, the motion, the noise, the color, in most unkingly fashion, quite unconscious that the storied jewel of his realm—the great ruby that Peter the Valiant had received as the tribute of a conquered Eastern city, glittering in the lace of his infant-cap, by way of royal insignia—demanded a regal bearing.
The presentation to the Mocenigo of the golden shield, richly inlaid with the arms of Cyprus, had made a pretty scenic episode, quite worthy of dramatic Venice.
For Mutio di Costanzo also, and for the Bernardini, there had been demonstrations, as Dama Ecciva had foretold: but the Lady Margherita de Iblin had noticed with uneasiness, that whereas it was a time when the people, high and low, should have assembled to testify their loyalty and affection, the crowd was chiefly composed of burghers and peasants from the hamlets in city neighborhoods, and that many of the old Cyprian nobles with their tenantry were conspicuously absent. And since the death of Janus, some of those who had formerly been in attendance at court, had rarely shown themselves there.
Dama Margherita spoke of this afterwards to the Admiral, for he had asked for some private conversation with her in her boudoir, when the ceremonies should be over.
"What mean these absences?" she asked, when they had bemoaned the situation.
"Venice is feared, not loved," he answered her.
But she was unwilling to confess that she understood him, having a pride in her land and love for her Queen.
"Pardon, your Excellency," she said, "we were speaking of Cyprus."