e had
hardly come to the end when a sonorous masculine voice broke in with
Calaf's[4] solution, "_Tu quadrupede fera_," &c. Unobserved by the
friends, a man of tall and noble appearance, his grey mantle thrown
picturesquely across his shoulder, had taken up a position behind them,
and was examining the picture with sparkling eyes. They got into
conversation, and the stranger said almost in atone of solemnity, "It
is indeed a singular mystery, how a picture often arises in the mind of
an artist, the figures of which, previously indistinguishable,
incorporate mist driving about in empty space, first seem to shape
themselves into vitality in his mind, and there seem to find their
home. Suddenly the picture connects itself with the past, or even with
the future, representing something that has really happened or that
will happen. Perhaps it was not known to Kolbe himself that the persons
he was representing in this picture are none other than the Doge Marino
Falieri[5] and his lady Annunciata."

The stranger paused, but the two friends urgently entreated him to
solve for them this riddle as he had solved that of the Lion of the
Adriatic. Whereupon he replied, "If you have patience, my inquisitive
sirs, I will at once explain the picture to you by telling you
Falieri's history. But have you patience? I shall be very
circumstantial, for I cannot speak otherwise of things which stand so
life-like before my eyes that I seem to have seen them myself. And that
may very well be the case, for all historians--amongst whom I happen to
be one--are properly a kind of talking ghost of past ages."

The friends accompanied the stranger into a retired room, when, without
further preamble, he began as follows:--

It is now a long time ago, and if I mistake not, it was in the month of
August, 1354, that the valiant Genoese captain, Paganino Doria[6] by
name, utterly routed the Venetians and took their town of Parenzo. And
his well-manned galleys were now cruising backwards and forwards in the
Lagune, close in front of Venice, like ravenous beasts of prey which,
goaded by hunger, roam restlessly up and down spying out where they may
most safely pounce upon their victims; and both people and seignory
were panic-stricken with fear. All the male population, liable to
military service, and everybody who could lift an arm, flew to their
weapons or seized an oar. The harbour of Saint Nicholas was the
gathering-place for the bands. Ships and tree