west, Marina, that already the great cardinal--but lately
come from France--hath started for Rome to make up this quarrel?"

"That is what the Senate will not understand!" she cried, with flashing
eyes. "The Holy Father will have submission and penance, in place of
embassies and pomp. One must go to him quite simply, from the people,
saying, 'We have sinned; have mercy upon Venice!' Piero, thou knowest
that awful vision of the Tintoret? It is Venice that he hath painted in
her doom--the great floods bursting in upon her--all the agony and the
anguish and the desolation of God's wrath! Santa Maria! I cannot bear
it!" She closed her eyes, shuddering and sick with terror.

"It was the way with Jacopo," said Pietro irreverently. "He was full of
freaks, and some demon hath tormented him. He was a man like others--not
one for a revelation."

"Hush, Piero!" she implored; "it breaks my heart! This also may be
counted against Venice, for it is the Holy Madonna who hath granted me
the vision."

If Piero was silent he was only restrained by deference to Marina from
invoking the aid of every saint in the calendar, in copious malediction,
on this miserable Jacopo who had so increased the trouble in Marina's
eyes--since women had such foolish faith in pictures.

"Jacopo Robusti, posing for a seer, and foretelling the end of the
world, like a prophet or a saint! _Goffone_!"[9] Piero was paddling
furiously. "Jacopo, of the Fondamenta del Mori--not better than
others--with that boastful sentence blazoned on his door!--'The coloring
of Titian, with the drawing of Angelo!'"

[9] Great fool!

But he forgot even his resentment against Jacopo in his anxiety as he
watched Marina, asking himself if it would be possible for her to pray
herself back into healthful life again, even in the dominions of the
Holy Father; for he realized that nothing could help her but this one
thing on which her heart was set--while he was yet, if possible, more
utterly without sympathy for the fear that moved her than her father or
Marcantonio had been. But if the one woman in Venice had but one desire,
however desperate and incomprehensible,--"_Basta_! It is enough," said
Piero to himself,--she should not die with it unfulfilled, if he could
compass it.

Yet, at the thought of death his heart sank. "It was the Madonna which
thou beheldest in thy vision--not the cross?" he asked her quickly,
making the fateful sign as he spoke, to avert this dread presag