Doge's words, since he could hardly take them in. Then he told his
gondoliers to row him back to his house, near S. Giorgio Maggiore, and
on the way he met the ambassador of Naples, in a fine new robe, with a
smiling face, as he well might have, "for this," adds Commines, "was
great news for him." Marino Sanuto, who narrates the incident, was much
struck by Commines' rage and dismay, and, like a true Venetian, remarks
contemptuously, "He did not know how to dissimulate his feelings, as one
should do in such a case." And, in the same spirit, he goes on to
admire the presence of mind displayed by the Milanese ambassadors, who
to all Commines' remonstrances replied courteously, that of course their
duke had nothing to do with all this. "They acted," he adds, "as the
wise act in the government of states. They persuade their enemies that
they mean to do one thing, and then they do another."

At night all Venice was illuminated, and from his covered gondola the
French ambassador saw the fireworks and the banquetings that were held
at the palaces of the other envoys. He understood what it all meant, and
trembled for his king's safety. But he lost no time, and sent warnings
both to Orleans at Asti and to Charles at Naples, of the coming storm. A
week or two later he left Venice, and went to meet Charles at Florence.
On Palm Sunday, the 10th of April, the League was solemnly proclaimed on
the Piazza of St. Mark, and all the ambassadors marched in procession
round the square, while images of united Italy, and of all the kings and
princes of the League, were carried about in triumph, and the golden
rose was given by the Pope to the Venetian ambassador in Rome. "To-day,"
said the Duke of Milan, "will see the dawn of the peace and prosperity
of Italy."

King Charles, meanwhile, unconscious of the dangers that threatened to
impede his return home, was revelling in the delights of Naples, and
holding jousts and banquets in the sunny gardens and fair palaces of
that enchanted bay. "My brother," he wrote to the Duke of Bourbon, "this
is the divinest land and the fairest city that I have ever seen. You
would never believe what beautiful gardens I have here. So delicious are
they, and so full of rare and lovely flowers and fruits, that nothing,
by my faith, is wanting, except Adam and Eve, to make this place another
Eden."

While the king and his nobles were eating off gold and silver plate and
drinking out of jewelled goblets in King