and creed to contribute to the talk when it flowed in narrowing
channels; and he himself came thither for refreshment from abstruse
studies, out of a quiet cell in the convent of the Servi, while
seemingly unaware that many a stranger begged for an invitation to the
palazzo Morosini in the hope of an introduction to this "miracle of
Venice."

Perhaps this grave friar, apparently so careless of his distinction, was
the unsuspected intellectual thread which bound, as it were, together
the various influential circles of Venice; for in every centre, plebeian
or patrician, where there was anything new to be mooted or anything of
value to be discussed, he was a visitor so welcome and so frequent that
he might well have exerted a steady, unifying influence upon Venetian
thought.

At the sign of the "Nave d'oro," in the Merceria, where the vast
commercial interests of Venice were the absorbing theme, and strangers
from every clime and merchants just returned from distant ports were
eager now, as in the days when Marco Polo had so valiantly entertained
the goodly company, to rehearse the tale of their adventures--it was
neither merchant nor noble who stood forth on the bizarre background of
brilliant baubles and gold-woven tissues as the centre of this ridotto,
but a friar, learned in languages and sciences, of whom it was
pleasantly affirmed that "he was the only man in Venice who could
discuss any subject in any tongue!"

As this friar, unattended and on foot, turned out of the narrow calle
from San Samuele into the Campo San Stefano, the Giustiniani, father and
son, were just landing from their gondolas in the midst of a gay
retinue, on the steps of the palazzo Morosini; other gondolas of other
nobles were floating in full moonlight before the quay; and to Fra
Paolo, who did not share the Venetian love of color and of art, the
elaborately frescoed facade of an opposite palace--an extravagant freak
of the Veronese's which the Venetians were already beginning to cherish
as the work of their great artist who would paint no more--seemed an
impertinence unworthy of that dazzling illumination.

Marcantonio Giustiniani had but lately returned from Rome, where, during
his residence as Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador, the affair of the
Venetian Patriarch Zani, which had roused such indignation in Venice,
had taken place. The matter was still of interest in official quarters,
because the death of Zani had caused a new vacanc