If Paul V had surrendered with reluctance his hope of a sumptuous ceremony in San Pietro, where delegates of penitent Venetians should kneel in public and confess and be graciously absolved—­if the Cardinal di Gioiosa had indulged flattering visions of a procession of priests and people to the patriarchal church in the Piazza, with paeans of joy-bells and shouts of gladness that Venice was again free to resume her worship, and that her penitent people were pardoned sons of the Church—­he was doomed to disappointment.  The cardinals of Spain and France, attended only by their households, celebrated Mass in the ducal chapel of San Marco; and the people came and went—­as they did before and after, through that day and all the days since the interdict had been pronounced, in this and all the churches of Venice—­and scarcely knew that their doom was lifted, as they had hardly realized that the curse had ever penetrated from those distant doors of San Pietro to the sanctuary of San Marco!

But the world knew and never forgot how that stately court of Venice had met the thunder of the Vatican and lessened its power forever.

The cause had been won in moderation and dignity upon a basis of civil justice that was none the less accredited because the Teologo Consultore who sat in chancelor’s robes behind the throne was a zealous advocate of the primitive principles of Christianity, and defended, without fear of obloquy or death, the right of the individual conscience to interpret for itself the laws of right,—­as founded upon the words of Christ,—­because the extraordinary keenness, fineness, and breadth of his masterly mind enabled him to conceive with unusual definiteness the limits of civil and spiritual authority, and to ascribe the overgrowth of error upon the Church he loved to the misconception and weakness of human nature.  He did not place Venice, the superb,—­with her pride and pomp and power and intellectual astuteness, with her faults and worldliness and her magnificent statesmanship,—­against the spiritual kingdom of Christ’s Church on earth and declare for Venice against the Church.

But he weighed in the clear poise of his brain the Book of the Divine Law—­which none knew better than he—­with the laws of the princes of this world—­which also few knew better—­and declared that One, lowly and great, had defined the limits of the Church’s jurisdiction when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

But in Rome the reasoning was not so simple, and threats of vengeance pursued this “terrible friar,” whose bold judgments had ruled the councils of rebellious Venice.

But though peace was declared with Rome the labors of the Senate were scarcely lessened; there were still adjustments to be made which were not whispered abroad—­there were embassies to be dissolved and appointed, gifts to be voted, honors to be heaped upon the head of the man whose counsels had led to such results, and in whose person the Senate now united the three offices of the Counsellors to the Doge, making Fra Paolo sole Teologo Consultore.