ad no fears. If there had been heartburnings, they were all
forgotten; her rulers were one in determination while they calmly
weighed the balance between Church and State, and confidently awaited
the issue. The briefs had been opened and the chief Counsellor, the new
Teologo Consultore, had given an opinion which filled the Senate with
admiration.

"Two remedies might be found: one, material, by forbidding the
publication of the censures and preventing the execution of them, thus
resisting illegitimate force by force clearly legitimate, so long as it
doth not overpass the bounds of natural right of defense; and the other
moral, which consisteth in an appeal to a future council. But,"
continued this sagacious Counsellor, after a word explanatory of the
"future council," "it were better to avoid this appeal in order not to
irritate the Pope more than ever; and also because he who appealeth
admiteth that the goodness of his cause is doubtful, whereas that of the
Republic is indubitable."

Such was the opinion, brief as positive, to which the senators listened
in undisguised satisfaction on that memorable day in January, 1606; and
although those briefs, "Given in Saint Peter's, in Rome, under the Ring
of the Fisherman, on the 10th of December, 1605," darkly threatened
excommunication unless these dearly beloved sons of Venice withdrew from
the stand they had taken, yet with a Doge who "would laugh at an
excommunication," and a learned Counsellor who assured them that the
cause of the Republic was indubitable, well might the shadows lessen in
the Senate Chamber; while in calm assurance the Savii[7] prepared the
reply to these communications from his Holiness, which the Signor
Agostino Nani presently delivered in an audience at Rome.

[7] These Savii, or _wise men_, had charge of the diplomatic
despatches of the Republic.

But the task of the courtly Nani was not an enviable one, deferent as
was the form of the epistle in which these devoted sons declared that
nothing could have been further from the thoughts of Venice than to
prejudice the rights of the Church--humbly as they implored the Holy
Father to recall the many acts of loyalty by which Venice had shown her
love and reverence. Had she not been foremost in the Crusade? Was the
Church anywhere more magnificently supported in temporal weal? Earnestly
as they assured him of the harmlessness of those laws which he condemned
as hurtful to their souls, quietly announ