g of the document was completed,
they observed the usual forms of courtesy with which the audience of so
princely an envoy is closed when his mission is accomplished.

If Paul V had surrendered with reluctance his hope of a sumptuous
ceremony in San Pietro, where delegates of penitent Venetians should
kneel in public and confess and be graciously absolved--if the Cardinal
di Gioiosa had indulged flattering visions of a procession of priests
and people to the patriarchal church in the Piazza, with paeans of
joy-bells and shouts of gladness that Venice was again free to resume
her worship, and that her penitent people were pardoned sons of the
Church--he was doomed to disappointment. The cardinals of Spain and
France, attended only by their households, celebrated Mass in the ducal
chapel of San Marco; and the people came and went--as they did before
and after, through that day and all the days since the interdict had
been pronounced, in this and all the churches of Venice--and scarcely
knew that their doom was lifted, as they had hardly realized that the
curse had ever penetrated from those distant doors of San Pietro to the
sanctuary of San Marco!

But the world knew and never forgot how that stately court of Venice had
met the thunder of the Vatican and lessened its power forever.

The cause had been won in moderation and dignity upon a basis of civil
justice that was none the less accredited because the Teologo Consultore
who sat in chancelor's robes behind the throne was a zealous advocate of
the primitive principles of Christianity, and defended, without fear of
obloquy or death, the right of the individual conscience to interpret
for itself the laws of right,--as founded upon the words of
Christ,--because the extraordinary keenness, fineness, and breadth of
his masterly mind enabled him to conceive with unusual definiteness the
limits of civil and spiritual authority, and to ascribe the overgrowth
of error upon the Church he loved to the misconception and weakness of
human nature. He did not place Venice, the superb,--with her pride and
pomp and power and intellectual astuteness, with her faults and
worldliness and her magnificent statesmanship,--against the _spiritual_
kingdom of Christ's Church on earth and declare for Venice _against_ the
Church.

But he weighed in the clear poise of his brain the Book of the Divine
Law--which none knew better than he--with the laws of the princes of
this world--which also fe