ants came and went
with messages from the various departments of the great body of workers
within the palace; they were too absorbed to look up as this Chief of
the Ten passed them, so oblivious were they of anything but their duty
that the stir about them left them serene and undisturbed, not even
penetrating the realm of their consciousness.

"There is no more learned nor devoted body of scribes in the world,"
said Giustinian, with pride; "they have not a thought beyond their
papers, and most wonderfully do they sift and prepare them for the
Council, working often far into the night."

"It is machinery, not life!" Marcantonio exclaimed, hastening beyond the
portal.

The great courtyard, under the wonderful blue of the sky, was aglow with
color; the palace facades, broken into irregular carvings, seemed to
hold the sunshine in their creamy surfaces; the superb wells of green
bronze, magnificently wrought and dimmed as yet by little
weather-staining, offered a treasury of luminous points. Here, in the
early morning, the women of the neighborhood gathered with their
water-jars, but now the court was filled with those who had business in
the Ducal Palace--red-robed senators and members of the Consiglio
talking in knots; a councillor in his violet gown, a group of
merchant-princes in black robes, enriched with costly furs and relieved
by massive gold chains, absorbed in discussion of some practical details
for the better ordering of the _Fondachi_, those storehouses and marts
for foreign trade peculiar to Venice; some grave attorney, more soberly
arrayed, making haste toward the gloom of the secretary's corner; a
sprinkling of friars on ecclesiastical business, of gondoliers in the
varied liveries of the senators waiting their masters' call; here and
there a figure less in keeping with the magnificence around him, too
full of his trouble to be abashed, going to ask for justice at the
Doge's feet--the heart of Venice was pulsing in the court, and under the
arches came the gleam and shimmer of the sea. Up and down the splendid
stairway that opened immediately from the Porta della Carta the
Venetians came and went--nobles old and young; the people, bringing
wrongs to be adjusted, or favors to be granted, or some secret message
for the terrible _Bocca di Leone_; the people, rich and poor, in
continuous tread upon this Giant Stairway, guarded by the gods of war
and of the sea; the winged Lion enthroned above, just over the l