ch the great Santorio had authorized.

But for whom should they send in this moment, when life and death hung
in the balance, to speak that authoritative word.

The Bishop of Aquileia, first and greatest of the Venetian bishops, had
incurred the displeasure of the Senate for refusing to perform the
duties of his office while the Republic remained under that fulminated
but unacknowledged censure, and a new prelate, of opinions approved by
the Most Serene Republic, sat in the vacated see. The Bishop of Vicenza
had likewise signified his sympathy with the Holy See; and in Brescia
their wandering prelate had scarcely yet received that strengthening
monition of the watching Senate which was to recall him from his
hiding-place and hold him steadfast in his cathedral service.

And for the Patriarch Vendramin, who had been summoned to Rome to
receive the benediction of the Supreme Pontiff, but had been forbidden
by the Senate to leave the Venetian domains, this episode, which was a
feature of the struggle known to the whole of Venice, placed him so
openly on the side of the Republic that it forbade his ministry with the
Lady Marina.

But there was one so jealously guarded from all interruption and fatigue
that strangers who came from far to see him were refused audience, by
order of the Senate, or were received for a few moments only in some
protected chamber of the Ducal Palace; for the springs of government
moved at his touch, the matters which occupied him were weighty, and for
these they would spare his strength. Yet again the Senate signified a
rare consideration for the Ca' Giustiniani by permitting the attendance
of their Teologo Consultore in the palazzo of the Lady Marina; for who
so well could minister to her diseased mind as he who had unanswerably
placed the question in its true light before all the Councils of the
Republic?

She stood with bowed head and clasped hands as he approached her, her
hair falling unbound, as in her maiden days, over the simply white robe
which she had preferred in her illness, discarding all her jewels and
all emblems of her state--pale as a vision, like a sad dream of the
beautiful Madonna del Sorriso which the Veronese had painted for that
altar of the Servi at which, each morning, Fra Paolo still dutifully
ministered.

"Peace be with thee and to thine house, my daughter," said the Padre
Maestro Paolo, spreading out his hands in priestly salutation as he
entered the oratory of th