Not that he felt himself born to be an artist—­Paolo Cagliari laughed at his studies while he encouraged his coming to the studio, telling him that for one who had not chosen Art for his mistress the drawings were “well enough”; and from the Veronese the words were consoling.  His mother had been afraid of this taste for art, which, for a short time, had exercised such sway over his fancy, stimulated by his culte for the beautiful, that he had plead with her to win his father’s consent for an art life.  Yet he had himself acquiesced in her quiet but inflexible showing of the futility of attempting such an overturning of Giustiniani traditions, though he still went with dangerous frequency to the studio of the Veronese, to which she had procured him entrance upon his promise that he would not seriously consider that impossible possibility at which he had hinted.  There had been mention of Pordenone and of Aretino, with a certain cool scorn that was worse than censure, and as convincing, there was the Titian, than whom, in art and sumptuousness, one could not be greater; but, even for him, Cavaliere of France, there was no place in the Consiglio!

Not that Marcantonio would voluntarily have relinquished his hereditary place in the state, his possible part in its glory—­the dream which came to all young noblemen of the portrait in that splendid Sala di Consiglio of his own face grown venerable, wearing the ermine and the ducal coronet, in token of that supremacy so dear to each Venetian heart, but jealously held by every noble of the Republic within confines which lessened with each succession, until the crown was assumed in trembling and ignominious restriction—­if with external pomp and honor that might befit a king.

But he wanted time; he wanted liberty to choose his own life or enjoy his restlessness, and he realized the more keenly, from the sense of power that was so chafed in the curbing, that he was too young to be forced into such ruthless service; and he could not but acquiesce the less fervently because it was not open to him to give himself, since the claim of Venice was absolute and resistance was a crime.

But with quite other sentiments the preparations for the fete were progressing in that ancient family of Giustiniani, where the day was awaited with an impatience which increased the fervor and the pomp of preparation, but was not otherwise manifested in any sign of undignified eagerness.  No house in Venice had held this right for more generations; no house was princelier in its bearing, nor more superbly republican!  No member of that Supreme Council was more esteemed than the stern Giustinian, who had been again and again elected to the most important missions of the state; no donna nobile of all the Venetians was prouder, more highly born, more beautiful, nor more coldly gracious than the mother of Marcantonio.