“This have I done for thee!” said the master, moving away from the sketch and disclosing it to the young fellow, who gazed at it in silent amazement.  “Only the eyes have I not touched,” the Veronese explained; “for thou hast made them more soulful than even unto me they seemed, and thus have I read thy secret.”

“Maestro mio!” cried Marcantonio at length, in ecstasy; “none among us may learn the marvel of thine art!”

“I have but touched thy sketch with the power that mine art could give,” the master answered, well pleased.  “Yet it is thou who hast read the secret of the face that was not revealed to me.”

“We were speaking of the ‘Libro d’Oro,’” the young patrician interrupted eagerly.

“It may be so, I know not,” the Veronese answered indifferently, for he himself was not written in that noble chronicle.  “My art deals little with these cumbrous records of the Republic.”

“Thou art wrong to scorn them, caro maestro, for in them is chronicled the glory of Venice.”

“The saying doeth honor—­from a pupil to his master!” the artist burst forth with his quick, uncontrollable temper.  “The Tablets of Stone were reserved for the highest dignity of the Law; and in that Sala dei Capi, where at this moment sits Giustinian Giustiniani—­one of the chosen three of the Council of the Ten—­my name is written largely with mine own hand, as artists write their names, above the heads of rulers for all coming time to see!  The Avvogadori do not keep my ‘Libro d’Oro’; the entrance to it is by divine right!”

He flung his brushes fiercely aside, in one of those moods that seemed all unwarranted in comparison with the slightness of the provocation—­moods that alternated with the lovable, genial, generous impulses of an artist soul, overwhelming in energy and great in friendship; yet jealous, to a degree a lesser nature could scarcely pardon, of anything that seemed to touch upon his province as an artist and the claims of art to highest honor.

* * * * *

The day was drawing near when Marcantonio Giustiniani, the only son of Giustinian Giustiniani, a noble of the Senate and of the Council of the Ten, should present himself before the Avvocato del Comun to claim admission to the Great Council as a noble, born in lawful wedlock, of noble parents, inscribed in the Golden Book.

To the young fellow himself this twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth, when, by Venetian law, the ceremony must take place, approached with needlessly rapid footsteps; he was not yet ready for the duties it would bring, so much more did he incline to that measure of boyish freedom which had thus far been his, so unwilling was he to renounce his longing for some form of art life—­the impulse to which fretted him almost unbearably, in view of the political career which opened mercilessly before him, threatening every dearer project.