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Updated: June 17, 2025
They thought she knew them, but she expressed no wish; she scarcely spoke; lying listless and white under the heavy canopy of the great carved bedstead, which had become the centre of every hope in those two palaces on the Canal Grande, while the absorbing life of the Ducal Palace, so little distant, was for Marcantonio as though it did not exist.
The friar's face had grown stern, but he did not resume the conversation until the elder Giustinian had strolled away with his host. Then he turned to Marcantonio, speaking earnestly. "Simplicity is no match for subtlety," he said, "and much favor hath been shown to her.
They broke down in each other's arms, clasping the sword between them. The Senator's firm step resounded on the marble floor; they had scant time to recover themselves; but his eyes fell at once upon the magnificent goblet, and there was pleasure in his stern face. "This, then, is of thy designing, Marcantonio," he exclaimed, as he stooped to examine it in its case of satin and velvet.
At sight of her Marcantonio bent his knee with the knightly homage still in vogue, and gave his hand to conduct her to her boudoir.
The noble lady Laura Giustiniani, who looked with pride upon these costly trifles of the cabinet of Marcantonio, was a Venetian in every throb of her patrician veins first a patriot and then a mother she earnestly coveted for her son that he should render vast services to the state, receive in his early years the Patriarch's blessing upon his alliance with some ancient Venetian house, and close his noble career with the Doge's coronet.
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.
Girolamo questioned, in his grave, deep voice, concealing his triumph. But Marcantonio had already answered to the timid question of Marina's eyes, with a ringing tone of assurance. "And for my father we must have courage!"
"Il Marconino! Il Marconino!" There was a brief moment of confusion from the coming and going of barges, a short delay which brimmed their excitement to the fever pitch, then the waters cleared again of their floating craft, and the Senator Marcantonio Giustiniani stepped forth on the deck to christen the gift of his child. The people looked, and would have shouted but forebore gazing awestruck.
But he forgot even his resentment against Jacopo in his anxiety as he watched Marina, asking himself if it would be possible for her to pray herself back into healthful life again, even in the dominions of the Holy Father; for he realized that nothing could help her but this one thing on which her heart was set while he was yet, if possible, more utterly without sympathy for the fear that moved her than her father or Marcantonio had been.
He quickened his pace that the moment of irresolution might be the sooner over. "Wait!" his father commanded, as Marcantonio would have entered the palace gate; "haste ill befits thy grave and dignified purpose. Before thou enterest the Consiglio I would have thee reverently mark how, at the palace gate, Justice sits enthroned on high, between the Lions of St.
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