, and still
full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a
beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not
agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a
Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and
to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories, but
there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state.

The story goes that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate
gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been
turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of
behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an
insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to
fury. According to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought before the
Forty,[56] confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of
passion; and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love"
which had been the cause of his original misdemeanor--a reason seldom
taken into account by the tribunals of the state--he was condemned to
prison for two months, and afterward to be banished for a year from
Venice.

The Doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it,
indeed, as a further insult.

Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of
offence, and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to show that though
_Alcuni zovanelli fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia_ are supposed to have
affronted the Doge, no such story finds a place in any of them. But the
old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly
sensible in his new position that he was _senza parentado_, with few
relations, and flouted by the _giovinastri_, the dissolute young
gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the
support of fathers and uncles.

That he found himself, at the same time, shelved in his new rank,
powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had
been a potent signior--mastered in every action by the secret tribunal,
and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little
consequence--is evident. And a man so well acquainted, and so long, with
all the proceedings of the state, who had seen consummated the shutting
out of the people, and since had watched through election after election
a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the