ogadori_ do not keep my 'Libro d'Oro';
the entrance to it is by divine right!"

He flung his brushes fiercely aside, in one of those moods that seemed
all unwarranted in comparison with the slightness of the
provocation--moods that alternated with the lovable, genial, generous
impulses of an artist soul, overwhelming in energy and great in
friendship; yet jealous, to a degree a lesser nature could scarcely
pardon, of anything that seemed to touch upon his province as an artist
and the claims of art to highest honor.

* * * * *

The day was drawing near when Marcantonio Giustiniani, the only son of
Giustinian Giustiniani, a noble of the Senate and of the Council of the
Ten, should present himself before the _Avvocato del Comun_ to claim
admission to the Great Council as a noble, born in lawful wedlock, of
noble parents, inscribed in the Golden Book.

To the young fellow himself this twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth,
when, by Venetian law, the ceremony must take place, approached with
needlessly rapid footsteps; he was not yet ready for the duties it would
bring, so much more did he incline to that measure of boyish freedom
which had thus far been his, so unwilling was he to renounce his longing
for some form of art life--the impulse to which fretted him almost
unbearably, in view of the political career which opened mercilessly
before him, threatening every dearer project.

Not that he felt himself born to be an artist--Paolo Cagliari laughed at
his studies while he encouraged his coming to the studio, telling him
that for one who had not chosen Art for his mistress the drawings were
"well enough"; and from the Veronese the words were consoling. His
mother had been afraid of this taste for art, which, for a short time,
had exercised such sway over his fancy, stimulated by his _culte_ for
the beautiful, that he had plead with her to win his father's consent
for an art life. Yet he had himself acquiesced in her quiet but
inflexible showing of the futility of attempting such an overturning of
Giustiniani traditions, though he still went with dangerous frequency to
the studio of the Veronese, to which she had procured him entrance upon
his promise that he would not seriously consider that impossible
possibility at which he had hinted. There had been mention of Pordenone
and of Aretino, with a certain cool scorn that was worse than censure,
and as convincing, there was the Titian, than