triarch and priests who
evidenced the devotion of Venice to the Holy Mother Church,--though
every parish kept its festa, and the religion of Venice was an essential
part of the life of its people. But if the priests had no visible seat
in the splendid Council Chambers of the Republic, they boasted at Rome
that their sway over the consciences of these lordly senators was well
established by virtue of the confessional and that, in the event of
contest, there would be many votes for Rome.

The _ridotti_, the informal clubs of Venice in those days, were
important centres of influence--political, legislative, and literary;
and there was a certain palazzo Morosini, well known to many of the
senators who gathered in the Broglio, where questions of vital interest
to the thinkers and rulers of Venice were discussed with the degree of
knowledge that might have been expected from so eminent a company as
that which made the home of the distinguished senator Andrea Morosini
the scene of its ridotto, and where freedom of speech was much greater
than seemed wise in the candid sunshine of the Piazza.

Of its present numbers all, at some period of their lives, held high
office under the Republic--they were senators, secretaries of state,
ambassadors--and three among that little group of thirty lived to wear
the beretta. It represented essentially the patrician culture of Venice,
and Morosini himself was already eminent as an historian; but the chief
literary centre was still acknowledged to be that quaint house in Campo
Agostino, of Aldo Manuzio, _il vecchio_, bearing, as in his day,
shield-wise, its forbidding inscription, "Whoever you are, Aldo
requesteth you, if you want anything, to ask it in few words and depart;
unless, like Hercules, you come to lend the aid of your shoulders to the
weary Atlas. There will always be found, in that case something for you
to do, however many you may be." But in this Aldine mansion only the
most-learned men of letters gathered, and Greek was the sole language
permitted in its discussions.

One of the _habitues_ of the Aldine Club was chief among this noble
company of the Morosini. He was a grave, scholarly man who listened and
questioned much out of a seemingly inexhaustible fund of historic,
legal, and ecclesiastical knowledge--a man who had the power of
stimulating others, and whose rare word, when uttered, was of value. He
had opinions gathered at first hand from influential minds of every land