the authority of his step-mother, a cruel Greek princess from
Constantinople, who ruled her feeble old husband and persecuted her
spirited young step-son, the Prince Giacomo.

And so, with neither money nor friends to help him on, he had wandered
to Venice. But Venice in 1466, a rich, proud, and prosperous city, was
a very poor place for a lad who had neither friends nor money; for, of
course, the royal prince of a little island in the Mediterranean could
not so demean himself as to soil his hands with work!

So I imagine that young Prince Giacomo had any thing but a pleasant time
in Venice. On this particular Feast Day of St. Mark, I am certain that
he was having the most unpleasant of all his bitter experiences, as,
backed up against one of the columns of the Cornaro Palace, he found
himself surrounded by a crowd of thoughtless young Venetians, who were
teasing and bullying him to the full content of their brutal young
hearts.

The Italian temper is known to be both hot and hasty; but the temper of
oriental Cyprus is even more fiery, and so it was not surprising that,
in this most one-sided fray, the fun soon became fighting in earnest;
for anger begets anger.

All about the young prince was a tossing throng of restless and angry
boys, while the beleaguered lad, still standing at bay, flourished a
wicked-looking stiletto above his head and answered taunt with taunt.

At this instant the door of the Cornaro Palace opened quickly, and the
Prince Giacomo felt himself drawn bodily within; while a bright-faced
young girl with flashing eye and defiant air confronted his greatly
surprised tormentors.

"Shame, shame upon you, boys of Venice," she cried, "thus to ill-use a
stranger in your town! Is a score of such as you against one poor
lad the boasted chivalry of Venice? Eh via! the very fisher-lads of
Mendicoli could teach you better ways!"

Taken quite aback by this sudden apparition and these stinging words,
the boys dispersed with scarce an attempt to reply, and all the more
hastily because they spied, coming up the Grand Canal, the gorgeous
gondola of the Companions of the Stocking, an association of young men
under whose charge and supervision all the pageants and displays of old
Venice were given.

So the piazza was speedily cleared; and the Prince Giacomo, with many
words of thanks to his young and unknown deliverers, hurried from the
spot which had so nearly proved disastrous to him.

Changes came suddenl