“It was a contest honorable to Venice, and one which Italy will remember,” responded a secretary of the Senate, who was a regular member of this ridotto.  “I am proud that it was my privilege to transcribe for the records of the Republic the papers relating to that Concordat which secured so great a measure of freedom for our press.”

There had been a short truce between Rome and Venice since the accession of Paul V, who had been so immediately concerned with a certain prophecy foretelling the death of a Leo and a Paul that his fears were only set at rest by a further astrological announcement, judiciously arranged in the palace of his eminence the brother of the Pope, to the effect that “the evil influences were now conquered.”  Whereupon Paul had undertaken in earnest the work which he conscientiously believed to be the highest duty of a sovereign pontiff, had recalled all nuncios not in full sympathy with his views of aggrandizement, and had replaced them with envoys whose notions of authority were echoes of his own; and, as an opening move, had made the demand, so resented by Venice, that the new Patriarch Vendramin should be sent to Rome for examination before he could be allowed to take possession of his prelacy.

“But what hath Venice to fear from a Pope who is paralyzed for the first two months of his reign by a reading of a horoscope!” exclaimed one of the company scornfully.

“Nay, then,” said Donato, who had seen much of the world; “it is a petty superstition of the age; it is not the fault of the man, who hath sterling qualities.  And by that same potency of credulity have his fears been set at rest.  It is a proof of weakness to undervalue the strength of an adversary—­for so at least he hath recently declared himself on this question of temporal power, by his petty aggressions and triumphs in Malta, Parma, Lucca, and Genoa.”

“I crave pardon of the Cavaliere Donato,” Antonio Querini responded hotly.  “May one call the action at Genoa petty?—­the compulsion of the entire vote of a free city, the placing of the election of the whole body of governing officials in the power of the Society of Jesus?”

“And it was under threat of excommunication, which made resistance a duty from the side of the government,” Giustinian Giustiniani asserted uncompromisingly.

“But impossible from the Church’s point of view.  It is the eternal question,” Leonardo Donato answered gravely.

“The solution is only possible by precisely ascertaining the limits within which each power is absolute,” the friar announced, with quiet decision.

A momentary hush fell upon the company, for the words were weighty and a surprise.

“It is well to know the qualities we have to fear,” said Andrea Morosini, “and we have listened in the Senate to letters from our ambassador at Rome which bespeak his Holiness of a presence and a dignity—­save for over-quickness of temper—­which befit a Pope; and that he hath reserved himself from promises, to the displeasure and surprise of some of those who created him.”