detected the slight pause which preceded the
last two words. "Wherefore 'in Venice'?" he questioned, with some heat.
"It is a question not of locality, but of justice and judgment."

"It is a question of judgment," Marcantonio echoed suavely, "upon which,
it hath been told me, the Senate hath already passed a law that shall
keep our Most Reverend Signor Vendramin from such a fate."

"Ay, never again may our Patriarch leave the Republic for confirmation
of the see which she alone may grant. The law is just," said the Senator
Leonardo Donate.

"In the days when his Holiness was but an Eminence, it hath been said,
he gave our ambassador a chance to prove his temper?" Morosini
questioned of Donato, who had been ambassador in Rome while Paul V, who
had but just ascended the throne, was still Cardinal Borghese.

"It was in the matter of the Uscocks," Donato answered, after a moment's
hesitation, seeing that some were waiting for the story. "And it was the
second time that half-civilized tribe hath provoked disputes between two
most Christian nations. 'If I were Pope,' said the cardinal, 'I would
excommunicate both Doge and Senate!'"

Fra Paolo scrutinized the faces of the listeners, and fixed his gaze
searchingly on the speaker. There was an uneasy movement among the
company, but Leonardo Donate did not flinch.

"May they not know your answer, most noble Signor?" Morosini urged.
"For, verily, it was of a quality to illumine a page of history."

"The words were few," said Leonardo, with dignity. "'_If I were Doge, I
would trample your edict under foot_.'"

There was a sudden hush, in which those who had not been listening
became intensely conscious of the words just uttered by the aged and
illustrious Cavaliere Leonardo Donate, for there had been of late an
abiding undercurrent of suppressed excitement ready to awake at any
mention of Papal supremacy. The Republic had always jealously guarded
against any transference of temporal power from prince to prelate, and
many events which seemed linked in a chain that might lead to the most
deplorable results had succeeded to the election of Camillo Borghese as
Paul V; the desire evidently manifested by Clement during his latter
days to encroach on the perquisites and possessions of the minor Italian
States was crystallizing into a fixed purpose of ecclesiastical
aggrandizement on the part of the new Pope.

"He was brandishing Saint Peter's sword before he had been knighted,"