A Golden Book of Venice Part 22

"Isaiah denounces such legislation, 'Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees.'

"Wherefore I declare the justice of the cause of the Republic, and the nullity of any judgment that may be p.r.o.nounced against her in this matter.

"Nor shall evil befall one for a sin not committed, nor can there be disobedience to a mandate which hath been issued, without lawful authority, by him who proclaims it; and authority, transcended, is no longer lawful."

XX

When Marcantonio, finally released from his long day of service in the Senate Chamber, sought the private apartments of the Doge, where Marina with her maidens was waiting for him, he found her lying back, wan and spiritless, in one of the great gold and crimson arm-chairs of the state salon; her eyes were closed, her lips were moving in prayer, but her rosary had dropped from her weak clasp. Some of her maidens, as thus doing their lady truest service, were still kneeling with hopeless pet.i.tions to the Holy Mother to avert the doom from Venice; but one, the Lady Beata, who was tenderly devoted to her, had not ceased from efforts to rouse her with nameless little gracious cares. She was watching for Marcantonio, to whom she signed eagerly to hasten, as the guard of the Doge permitted him to pa.s.s the doorway.

"Thus hath our lady been, and naught hath moved her," she said low, and in distress, "since the Secretary of the Serenissimo, who with much futile reasoning hath sought to change her, hath taken his leave, save that ever and anon she hath opened her eyes to watch the door and bid us pray for Venice."

Her husband had reached her side and taken her listless hand before Marina had noticed his approach; but there was no smile in her eyes as she raised them to his--only a look of unutterable misery.

"Is there no hope?" she questioned. Her fingers, weakly folded about his, were burning.

He controlled himself with a great effort.

"Yes, carina, every hope. All is well; and the Serenissimo hath been most gracious. To-morrow, when thou hast had thy rest, he will send to thee the Reverend Counsellor Padre Maestro Paolo, that he may quiet all thy fears. For all is well."

She tried to draw him nearer, but her hand dropped powerless. "The vote?" she questioned, with her eager eyes; and, more falteringly, with that hoa.r.s.e, broken whisper which pierced his heart.

"It is well," he answered her tenderly. "Carinissima, all is well."

She fixed him with terror-stricken eyes, in which her soul seemed burning and her lips moved with a question he could not hear. He bent closer, touching her cheek caressingly.

"The vote?" she had asked again.

"Tell her the count," said the Lady Beata, with an imperious touch on his wrist; "it is killing her."

The Senate had adjourned in triumph; without a dissenting voice Venice had rallied to the support of her prince. Marcantonio had thought he should be proud to tell her of this unanimous action of their august body, which could not fail to restore her confidence and quiet her fears. But now he could not find the words he sought, for never had he looked into eyes so full of a comprehending woe.

"Marina," he began. "Carinissima--" helplessly repeating his powerless a.s.surance: "It is well."

Still her deep eyes seemed to question him relentlessly, though she did not speak; her gaze fascinated him, and he could not withdraw his eyes until he had read in hers the great agony he had so lightly estimated--the agony of a soul deeply religious, of unquestioning faith in the strictest doctrine and dogma of the Church of Rome; the grief of such a soul, tenderly compa.s.sionate for the suffering brought upon an innocent people by no rebellion of its own; the terror of this soul--pa.s.sionately loving--measuring the horrors of an unblessed life and death for all its dearest ones.

"All?" she had seemed to question him, leaning nearer, and Marcantonio could not answer; but he saw, from the deepening horror in her eyes, that she understood. She knew that _he_ had helped to bring the doom.

Oh, if he could but have told her that he had not voted--that he had withheld his one little vote from Venice to comfort her! If, for this once, he had failed to give what Venice expected of him, only for Marina's sake!

He bent over her pa.s.sionately, a thousand reasons rus.h.i.+ng to his rescue, clamoring to be told her. "Marina, beloved, there is nothing to fear!"

he cried desperately, eager for his own defense, resolute to make her comprehend the perfect safety of Venice, to calm the beseeching horror in her eyes; "Fra Paolo will come!"

Her gaze relaxed, her eyelids quivered and closed; she had fainted.

--Or was it death?

He folded her to his heart with a cry of desolation.

The Lady Beata hastily thrust him aside and opened the white robe at the throat, and Marcantonio started back; there were stripes of half-healed laceration on the tender flesh--some fresh, as if but just raised by the lash.

"Ay, my lord," Beata answered very low, to his quick, grieved question; "all that a daughter of the Church may do hath our lady added to her prayers for Venice. She hath been rigorous in fasting and in penance until her strength is gone; but the pain of it she feeleth not, because of the greater pain of her soul, which is lost in supplication that availeth naught."

Leonardo Donato would be very gracious to the Lady of the Giustiniani, though she had come so near to costing the city a divided vote, because he had seen the misery in her eyes with her great love for Venice, and because the Council had so declared its vote for the State that he could afford to be magnanimous. Nay, since even the Senator Marcantonio had not flinched before that wonderful agonized white face, he need not confine her, as he had intended, in a convent for decorous keeping; he was glad of the change in her favor which would prevent the harshness that might have increased her influence to the degree of danger. He sent, instead, a gracious message by his secretary--"Might the father pay a visit to his daughter of the Republic to inquire of her welfare and a.s.sure her of his favor, before she returned to her palace?"

But the message of courtesy, sent by the Doge himself, had been stayed on the threshold of his own state salon.

The Republic had, indeed, quitted herself n.o.bly in her vote; so valiant a blow had she struck for the rights of princes that this consciousness rang out in the bold tones of her announcement to the courts of Europe--"Which things we have thought best to tell you for your sole information, so that if mention be made of them to you, and not else, you may be able to answer to the purpose and to justify this our most righteous cause."

And from the moment that the Senate had been unofficially apprised by Nani that the terrible Interdict was already printed and would presently be fulminated, every possible precaution of self-defense had been put in operation throughout the dominions of Venice, with an ingenuity, a foresight, and a celerity which the watching courts of Europe not only viewed with amazement, but accepted as an evidence of the conscious power and justice of the Republic. Overtures came fast from England, from Spain, from France--every monarch wished some share in the pacification between these courts of Rome and Venice.

Meanwhile, in Venice life went on superbly. There was no question of any spiritual disfranchis.e.m.e.nt; these sons of the Church were not under interdict, having committed no sin which laid them open to that charge.

Moreover, no ban had been _published_ throughout the wide extent of their domain. Hence, for the Venetians, there was no interdict, whatever awful anathema might be affixed to those distant doors of Saint Peter's in Rome; with whatever voice of anger its terrors might be thundered at the Holy See, against rulers, people, priests, and sacraments within the doomed city--the wide waters of the lagoon laved its sh.o.r.es in benediction, like a baptismal charm upon the fair front of Venice, against which the Curse threatened impotently.

At the centre of this superb and daring court sat a friar, trained from his childhood up in the customs, traditions, and beliefs of his Church and of his order--a reverent pract.i.tioner in her fasts and sacraments, simple in his habits as a hermit-monk, faithful in his religious duties as the most punctilious priest in Rome, sure in his faith that G.o.d would uphold the right, and a.s.serting, without compromise, that right was on the side of Venice.

What a stay for rulers who fortified their every position by some appeal to precedent--who would punctiliously know the source and interpretation of every law upon which they rested!

Above all, what a stay for the simple people who, in these days of bewildering conflict, knew not what to believe!

Would Ma.s.ses go on, and the church doors be open and the sacraments continue? Might they still take their brides and baptize their little ones, and follow their dead to burial, and sign the sign of the cross, in token of the favor of heaven--as loyal sons of the Church?

And would the Madre Beata--blessed guardian of this Virgin City--still smile upon them from all the separate shrines of Venice?

Should the labor and the imprecation of this simple people go on until the evening in their wonted flow, and should nothing fail them of the benedictions they had known?

It was a mystery; but threatening Rome was far and unfamiliar, and Venice they knew--present, protecting, peremptory--impossible to disobey.

Before the commands of the angry Pontiff could reach the heads of the orders in Venice, people, priests, and prelates throughout the dominions were forewarned; they must continue in every accustomed practice of their religion; they might neither receive nor publish any minatory papers--these must be instantly brought to the government, under severest penalties.

Offending prelates were brought from distant sees to meet the displeasure of the Republic; hesitating priests were silently hastened to decision by scaffolds, looming suddenly within their precincts. While leaflets--expressly prepared to disaffect the Venetians--proclaiming that no obedience was due from a people to its prince under censure; that all vows, contracts, and duties between man and man, husband and wife, children and parents were nullified for those who remained faithful to the Church in acknowledging the censure, as against those who disclaimed it--these leaflets, introduced by secret agents of the Pontiff and interdicted by the Republic, flowed in vast numbers, but silently, into the hands of the Ten, and were seen no more.

Meanwhile that terrible thing which the people had vaguely feared had _not_ come upon them; though at first they paused, half-hearted, when they pa.s.sed the house of the Tintoret, where the quaint figure of "Ser-Robia," the Pasquino of Venice, had often a bit of news that the people cared to hear, grotesquely placarded over his broad mouth. He was a good friend to the people, Ser-Robia, and gave them many a pleasant bit of gossip to cheer their evening stroll; but it was wise not to laugh until one had heard the words, and there was often a priest or a scholar near to tell the meaning to those who could not spell it out for themselves. Always, in these days, there was some one who could read to the people, for this was that solemn "protest" of "Leonardo Donato, by the Grace of G.o.d Doge of Venice," etc., wherewith the most Christian Republic defied the interdict. Here, along the Rialto, in all the public squares of Venice, on the doors of the churches,--wherever proclamation was wont to be made,--the people might pause and read this consoling word of Venice, instead, perchance, of some copy of the interdict which had been smuggled into the city and pasted, surrept.i.tiously, over the Doge's "protest," but which those faithful _Signori di Notte_--the night-watch of Venice--were sure to destroy before the morning dawned.

"To the Most Reverend the Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops of our Venetian Dominions," said this "Protest," "and to the Vicars, Abbots, Priors, Rectors of Parochial Churches, and other Ecclesiastical Prelates, greeting:" forthwith proceeding to declare that "the Interdict which his Holiness was 'said' to have published was null and void, and forbidden to be observed--not having been incurred by any fault of Venice."

But even those who could not read soon recognized the features of that message, which met them everywhere, hiding the scars of other messages which they must not see.

"No, no," they said, with laughing thanks to some friendly interpreter who stood near; "it is enough; _va bene_--we know it like our Ave Maria!"

But sometimes a family group came back for a word, when the others had scattered.

"Thou, Gigio, tell the good padre!" says the bright-eyed young contadina, pulling the gray sleeve of her fisherman who stands stolidly beside her.

"_Si, si_," he answers indifferently, shrugging his shoulders and relapsing into silence, as he pushes his wife and mother before him for a refuge; for the men of the islands were less at home in argument with the priests than were the women of their households.