The Senate, to testify its honor, grief, and sympathy for the beloved Counsellor, had instantly adjourned, and its members repaired in great numbers to the convent to make personal inquiries, returning to a new session prolonged through the night; for Fra Paolo, who had fainted from loss of blood on his pallet in the Servite cell, had recovered consciousness and hovered between life and death—­his humble bed attended by the most famous physicians and surgeons whom the Republic could summon to her aid.  The secretaries, meanwhile, were busy in preparing resolutions of affection by which to honor him in the sight of the Venetian people; letters of announcement to foreign courts, as if he had been of the blood royal; proclamations of reward for the persons of the criminals, alive or dead, which, before the day had dawned, the Signori della Notte had affixed to the doors of San Marco, along the Rialto, on the breast of Ser Robia, that all might read.  And for means of bringing the offenders to justice they plotted and schemed as none but Venetians could do.

It was three days since the storm, and the gastaldo had not yet been released, he also was simply detained, without ignominy or discomfort in rooms set apart for prisoners of State before they had been brought to trial; for the events of these days had been too absorbing to permit of an examination of his case.  And now, in the gray dawn which broke upon that night of anxiety and excitement, alternating between hope and fear as frequent messengers, each guarded by a detachment of palace guards, appeared with fresh news from the convent, the weary senators strolled up and down in the great chambers opening on the sea facade of the Ducal Palace discussing the event in a more desultory way—­its meaning, its dangers, the achievements of the great man who might, even now, be receiving the viaticum in the convent of the Servi.

He was first named with terms of endearment strange upon the lips of that stately assembly—­“Il caro Padre,” “Teologo amato di Venezia”—­yet the guards had failed to seize those villains who lay in wait at the Ponte della Pugna!  The bridges and traghetti must be closely watched.—­Ah—­the gastaldo grande!

“Hath one yet been named Condottiere for this frontier service?” questioned one of the older senators, among a group of the more important men who had detached themselves from the others and strolled out into the great loggia on the sea facade for a reviving breath of the morning air.  “For such an employ there is none like Piero Salin for daring and intrigue; and the assassins may linger long in hiding on the route to Rome.”

And so they first remembered Piero in these crowded days and discussed his fault with a degree of leniency that would have been foreign to the traditions of Venice had he not been needed for important secret service.

Meanwhile, Fra Paolo was still the theme among the senators at large in the Council Chamber.  “Il miracolo del suo secolo,” they called him, as they rehearsed the opinions of the learned men of their age in every field of science.