cing that the Republic had
transgressed no right in making laws for her own independent civil
government,--and gracious and diplomatic as were the ways of Nani,--his
Holiness declared the letter to be "frivolous and vain," and dismissed
the ambassador with temper, assuring him that unless the Republic found
means to retract those laws "the gates of hell should not prevail" to
deter him from inflicting the utmost threatened penalty.

It was a frank contest of wills, in which each opponent conscientiously
believed himself in the right; but it was, nevertheless, not an equal
contest; for Paul, conceiving that his duty in the exalted position of
head of the Church which had been so unexpectedly thrust upon him, lay
in its mere temporal aggrandizement, while consciously turning all his
powers in that direction, misnamed the struggle a _spiritual_ one. But
Venice not only believed but confessed it to be merely a question of
civil rights of rulers, and, strong in the sense of the justice of her
cause, used every grace of trained diplomacy in asserting it--upon an
understanding of civil law which was beyond the attainment of the lawyer
Camillo Borghese, and with the aid of specialists whose knowledge of
canon law equaled that of his Holiness.

Among the important matters touched upon in those days in the Senate the
question had been broached, not without anxiety, as to whether Rome
would have recourse to force of a less spiritual nature, and a secret
commission had been appointed to examine and report from the frontiers
any accession of papal troops, while envoys were sent to Ferrara on the
same furtive errand: and the more serious Venetians were already
discussing the possibility of war as one of the aspects of this quarrel
with the Holy See.

One day, through the swift and secret mouth of the Lion, an unusual
message reached the Ten, standing strangely out amid a mass of darker
matter--denunciations, sinister information, hints of intrigues; the
reason for the choice of this mysterious messenger was stated in the
preamble: "To the end that this may, without circumlocution, immediately
reach your noble body and be acted upon in your discretion--being
secretly dismissed, if this seemeth wisest in the interests of the
State." It was a brief offer on the part of Girolamo Magagnati to equip
and maintain, at his expense, in the event of war with the Holy See, a
war-galley of the largest size, as a gift to the Republic in the name