“It is a question of judgment,” Marcantonio echoed suavely, “upon which, it hath been told me, the Senate hath already passed a law that shall keep our Most Reverend Signor Vendramin from such a fate.”

“Ay, never again may our Patriarch leave the Republic for confirmation of the see which she alone may grant.  The law is just,” said the Senator Leonardo Donate.

“In the days when his Holiness was but an Eminence, it hath been said, he gave our ambassador a chance to prove his temper?” Morosini questioned of Donato, who had been ambassador in Rome while Paul V, who had but just ascended the throne, was still Cardinal Borghese.

“It was in the matter of the Uscocks,” Donato answered, after a moment’s hesitation, seeing that some were waiting for the story.  “And it was the second time that half-civilized tribe hath provoked disputes between two most Christian nations.  ‘If I were Pope,’ said the cardinal, ’I would excommunicate both Doge and Senate!’”

Fra Paolo scrutinized the faces of the listeners, and fixed his gaze searchingly on the speaker.  There was an uneasy movement among the company, but Leonardo Donate did not flinch.

“May they not know your answer, most noble Signor?” Morosini urged.  “For, verily, it was of a quality to illumine a page of history.”

“The words were few,” said Leonardo, with dignity. “’If I were Doge, I would trample your edict under foot.’”

There was a sudden hush, in which those who had not been listening became intensely conscious of the words just uttered by the aged and illustrious Cavaliere Leonardo Donate, for there had been of late an abiding undercurrent of suppressed excitement ready to awake at any mention of Papal supremacy.  The Republic had always jealously guarded against any transference of temporal power from prince to prelate, and many events which seemed linked in a chain that might lead to the most deplorable results had succeeded to the election of Camillo Borghese as Paul V; the desire evidently manifested by Clement during his latter days to encroach on the perquisites and possessions of the minor Italian States was crystallizing into a fixed purpose of ecclesiastical aggrandizement on the part of the new Pope.

“He was brandishing Saint Peter’s sword before he had been knighted,” remarked the Signor Antonio Querini, who was deeply interested in all disputes between Church and State.

“But not before he had received strenuous training,” responded the grave, clear voice of the friar.  “For five years he hath held office as Auditor of the Apostolical Chamber, the style of which is written thus, ’Universal Executor of censures and sentences recorded both in Rome and abroad’—­a duty which he may be said to have discharged more faithfully than any of his predecessors, as one cannot recall in any previous fifty years as many thunderbolts and monitions as were launched during those five years of his office!”