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With all this appearance of levity, however, there is an unremitted attention to the affairs of state; nor is any senator seen to come late or negligently to council next day, however he may have amused himself all night. The sight of the Bucentoro prepared for Gala, and the glories of Venice upon Ascention-day, must now put an end to other observations.
Have I your permission to occupy it, and leave this stifling atmosphere of love?" "Go, go," answered Strozzi, impatiently. "Thanks!" was Lucretia's heartfelt reply; and, opening the curtains, she beckoned to her gondoliers, and stepped gracefully from the bucentoro to her own dainty bark.
The captain of the ship told me that, if I was obliged to take my meals alone, I was not likely to fare very well, and he advised me to obtain an introduction to the nobleman, who would not fail to invite me to share his table. His name was Antonio Dolfin, and he had been nicknamed Bucentoro, in consequence of his air of grandeur and the elegance of his toilet.
As the galleys passed beyond the Lido into the wider water and the Daughter of Venice stood in her royal wedding-robes beside the Doge, under the golden canopy of the Bucentoro, a rosy light flashing from the circlet of rubies which, like the espousal ring of the Serenissimo, had been consecrated with solemn mass and benediction by the Patriarch of Venice, did the words of the ancient rite occur to some among that throng of nobles, perchance, as an omen?
Before the world she would give the lie to that simulated bridal, and fly to him who was, by all the laws of God, her true and only spouse. Thus thought Laura, while far away from the crowds that from gondola to gondola were greeting one another, the bucentoro pursued its solitary way over the water.
He seems to me to be too bashful to manage an intrigue with skill." So the elector gave orders to follow the gondola of the Prince of Savoy; and now his gondoliers, too, were rowing for their lives, while many a bright eye was turned admiringly upon his tall, graceful form. Laura was not the only person that was looking out from the curtained bucentoro.
I am an old man, Signore, and there are few pools or banks between Fusina and Giorgio, that my lines of my nets have not fathomed or covered. The spot to which the Bucentoro is wont to steer in these ceremonies is well known to me, and I had a care to cover the bottom round about with all my nets in the hope of drawing up the ring.
My papers, covered with a thick layer of dust, testified well enough that no strange hand had ever meddled with them. Two days after my arrival, as I was getting ready to accompany the Bucentoro, on which the Doge was going, as usual, to wed the Adriatic, the widow of so many husbands, and yet as young as on the first day of her creation, a gondolier brought me a letter.
Still weak and exhausted, I gladly assented to his proposal, and we left the Bucentoro escorted by a thousand vessels, and saluted by the thunders of innumerable cannon, proceeding to the open sea to celebrate the high espousals. My companion left me at the portal of my father's palace.
"Oh, emperor's daughter, emperor's daughter!" said she, "your husband is falling into my toils. They say you are handsome, but your elector's eyes tell me that I am handsomer than you!" And so she beguiled her solitude, while in the bucentoro Laura still lay in her swoon, and Strozzi gazed enamoured upon her beauty.
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