* * * * *

Among the members of the Senate, meeting by twos and threes in the Broglio, Marcantonio’s name was often heard.  “It would be well when this marriage was over, for verily it was likely to turn the heads of Venice—­the pageant, and the beauty of the maid, and the favor of the Collegio——­”

“Nay, not that,” said an older senator, resentfully; “those are but trifles.  But the young fellow himself is the danger; too positive and outspoken, revolutionary and of overturning methods, withal persuasive——­”

“He would be a power in an ambassade,” suggested another, “for he hath a gift in diplomacy and law which, verily, did astound the old Giustinian.  The eloquence of his great-uncle Sebastiano hath fallen upon him.—­If he were not so young—!  Here in Venice he is rolling up influence, and the charm of his inamorata is also a danger; and already in the Consiglio all eyes are upon him.”

“For a secretary to an ambassade is the age not set,” answered the other warily, “and the office hath space for diplomacy, which, it were better for our privileges, were used elsewhere than in Venice.  And the honor of it would blind the eyes of his partizans—­for the boy is young.”

The winds, wandering through the Piazza, sometimes blew lightest whispers from the Broglio into the Council Chambers of the Republic; and so it was decreed that when the beautiful wedding pageant should be over, just as the whole of Venice would have laid itself at the feet of the charming bride—­would have made the young nobles of the palazzo Giustiniani the idols of the hour—­these dangers to Venice should be honorably removed by the appointment of Marcantonio Giustiniani, di Maggior Consiglio, as Secretary to the Venetian Resident in Rome, with the gracious permission of the Senate for the Lady Marina to bear him company.

“It is well,” answered Giustinian Giustiniani, as the Lady Laura made her little moan on hearing of the appointment which the Senator reported with such pride.  “Marcantonio hath the head of a diplomat and the bearing of a courtier.  It is the way of distinction for such a man.”

“That is justly spoken,” said the mother; “and nobly hath our boy fulfilled our hope.  In Venice, or elsewhere, must he ever win distinction.  But to keep them in their palazzo near us—­of this and of their happiness was I thinking—­the sight of it is so beautiful.”

The filing of the decree of the Senate had acted like a charm upon our Capo of the Ten:  the importance thus accorded to the Ca’ Giustiniani soothed every vestige of wounded pride, while the beauty and grace of his prospective daughter-in-law had filled him with a triumph which only the frigid stateliness of his habitual demeanor enabled him to conceal, so great was the revulsion from his former state of feeling.