ace should be
built for him at the public expense, and that it should be called Plaza
Doria; further, that he and his posterity should be for ever exempted from
taxation, and that a device should be engraved on a plate of copper and
attached to the walls of the palace, where it could be seen of all men,
announcing to posterity the services that this great man had rendered to
his fellow citizens, to be for ever a memorial of their gratitude.

The chronicler of these events draws a parallel between Doria and
Themistocles, who, when discontented with the Athenians, passed into Persia
and offered his services to Xerxes, to the great joy of that monarch, who
cried aloud, "I have Themistocles, I have Themistocles."

CHAPTER VII

THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE CORSAIR KING

If Charles V. made no such outward manifestation of his joy as did the
Persian monarch, he possibly was no less pleased than Xerxes; this he
showed by his acts, and the value that he attached to the services of Doria
was instanced in the directions which he gave. He ordered the Governors of
all his possessions in Italy to do nothing without first consulting the
admiral; to lend him prompt aid, whether he demanded it in his own name or
in that of the Republic of Genoa. He made him Admiralissimo of his navy,
with power to act as he liked without even consulting him, as his Emperor.
It will be seen that Charles had in him sufficient greatness to trust
whole-heartedly when he trusted at all; the faith which he reposed in the
Genoese seaman was amply justified by events, and no action of his during
the whole of his singularly dramatic reign was ever to result so entirely
to his profit. When in after-life Charles had received from the Pope the
Imperial Crown, and when, on his return, he put into Aigues-Mortes in
Doria's galley, he there met with Francis, who, in a burst to confidence,
advised the Caesar never to part with his admiral.

On that stage, which was the blue waters of the tideless sea, we shall,
from this time forward, watch the fortunes of those two great sea-captains,
Andrea Doria and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. With them the ebb and flow of
conquest and defeat alternated. Great as was the one, it cannot be said
that he was greater than the other; but when the supreme arbitrament was
within the grasp of both, as it was at the naval battle of Prevesa, neither
the Christian admiral nor the Moslem corsair would reach out his hand and
grasp the nettle of