The Patriarch with his pomp, the Signoria and Senate in their robes of state, the nobles and the pageant were all forgotten.  In the sacramental lights of the ceremonial candles of the great altar, flashing back from the marvelous Pala d’Oro, she saw only Marco waiting for her—­to whom her father, beloved and trusted, was leading her with her heart’s consent.

How should she falter on the path from love to love!

XIV

But even in Venice—­the magic city—­there were days of mists, silvery and gray, when life took on the indistinctness and indecision of a dream; as there were days less lucent, when sea and sky melted in an indistinguishable line and the chameleon tints of the marshes mellowed into a monotonous gray surface—­when the wonted brilliancy of the sunset clouds, and the glittering domes and campaniles were only faint gray shadows on the gray whiteness of the waters.  And gondoliers came suddenly into vision, parting the mists with thin, black, swaying outlines, as quickly fading in the near, gray distance when they passed, while the shipping loomed like phantoms on an immediate horizon, vanishing, vision-like; and even the sounds of life came muffled over the still lagoon, like ghostly echoes from a city wrapped in dreams.

These were days of dim forebodings, too, for the anxious men of action who ruled the Republic.  In the Broglio there was more often silence than speech, as the older senators gathered in knots, with faces the more expressive because of much reticence in words; the sense of approaching contest increased their mental restlessness and made them outwardly more stern.  Each looked into another’s stormy, resolute face, so passing many a counsel whose echoes he feared to start under the rambling porticoes of the Piazza, where friars of every order mingled freely with the crowd, and idlers carried tales into dark, basement recesses, and one knew not which was friend or foe.  Meanwhile the Winged Lion, with those terrible, jeweled, glaring eyes, and the primitive patron San Teodoro—­each high on his column, in a Nirvana of quiescence—­kept solemn semblance of vigil over that dread space where sometimes a horror of which one dared not speak scattered the sunshine high in air between those silent wardens of San Marco.  Yet the horror of those figures swinging lifeless, with veiled faces, was met in silence by a people trained to suffer this secret meting out of penalty for transgressions in which justice and vengeance stood confused.

The ceaseless chains of elections had begotten bribery, corruption, and strife; the over-weening luxury had fostered unworthy ambitions—­it was a time of much lawlessness.  Under the shadow of the embassies infamous intrigues were planned by bands of idle men, who shrank from no deed of evil which held its promise of gold; the water-storey of some splendid palace might be a lurking-place for unprincipled men—­spies