“How many of you have come as escort?” the secretary questioned carelessly.

“Eccellenza, we are enough,” the bancalo answered fearlessly, and with a significant pause, “to prove the will of the people—­as well Nicolotti as Castellani.  And to escort our Gastaldo Grande with honor, since it hath pleased your excellencies to receive him—­as a guest—­in the Ducal Palace.”

He was the eldest of the officers of the traghetti, accustomed to respect, upheld by the united forces of the people; this man of the people and this mouthpiece of the nobles measured each other fearlessly as they looked into each other’s faces—­each coolly choosing his phrases to carry so much as the other might count wise.

“It is well,” said the secretary of the Ten, after a brief private conference with his Chiefs, “that ye are come in numbers to do him honor.  Since the Senate hath need of his brave service and hath named Piero Salin, for exigencies of the Republic, Condottiere, with honors and men of artillery to do him service.”

And so it chanced, that because of the stress of the time, Piero Salin floated off in triumph to Murano, named General of the Border Forces, with secret orders from the Ten.

XXXIII

The great bell in the tower of the arsenal told twelve of the day, and already the broader waters near the rios which led to the high machicolated walls surrounding this famous Venetian stronghold were crowded with gondolas of the people and barges from the islands filled with men, women, and children, jubilant with holiday speech and brilliant in gala colors; for this was one of those perpetually recurring festas which so endeared this City of the Sea to its pleasure-loving people.

This splendid ceremony of inspection by the Doge was a day of annual triumph, for nowhere in all the world was there such an arsenal, and nowhere such an army of workmen,—­thirty-five thousand men trained to the cunning from father to son in lifelong service,—­with sailors, sixteen thousand more, who should presently make a brave review within those battlemented walls, to tickle the fancy of the Serenissimo and his guests.  For these pageants of Venice were not guiltless of timely hints to the onlookers of the futility of opposition to a naval force so great and so admirably controlled; and well might the Republic be proud of the foundry, the docks, the galleys, which the Doge and the Signoria came each year in state to visit, with all the nobles of the Maggior Consiglio and many of the high officials.

This year it was to be a fete more magnificent than usual, for the households of the ambassadors were bidden to the banquet which was prepared in the Great Hall of the arsenal—­the attractions of which were invitingly rehearsed, as the speakers leaned across from gondola to gondola, to exchange their pleasant bits of gossip with dramatic exaggerations.  “And the gondolas of the ambassadors!  Santa Maria! the Signori, ‘i provveditori alle pompe’ have nothing to say, for there is a dispensation! the velvets and satins and golden fringes—­it will be a true glimpse of the paradiso!”