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palace, there were but few people about.

Francis Hammond was a lad between fifteen and sixteen years old. His
father was a merchant of London. He was a man of great enterprise and
energy, and had four years before determined to leave his junior
partner in charge of the business in London, and to come out himself
for a time to Venice, so as to buy the Eastern stuffs in which he dealt
at the headquarters of the trade, instead of paying such prices as the
agents of the Venetian traders might demand in London.

He had succeeded beyond his expectations. In Venice there were
constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the
spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of
some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the
towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged
when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some
of his cargoes were lost on the homeward voyage, captured either by the
Genoese or the Moorish pirates; but even allowing for this, the profits
of the trade were excellent.

The English merchant occupied a good position in Venice. The promptness
of his payments, and the integrity of his dealings, made him generally
respected; and the fact that he was engaged in trade was no drawback to
his social position, in a city in which, of all others, trade was
considered honourable, and where members of even the most aristocratic
families were, with scarcely an exception, engaged in commerce. There
were many foreign merchants settled in Venice, for from the first the
republic had encouraged strangers to take up their residence there, and
had granted them several privileges and advantages.

Between Venice and England there had always been good feeling. Although
jealous of foreigners, England had granted the Venetians liberty to
trade in London, Southampton, and some other towns as far back as the
year 1304; and their relations had always been cordial, as there were
no grounds for jealousy or rivalry between the two peoples; whereas the
interference of France, Germany, Austria, and Hungary in the affairs of
Italy, had frequently caused uneasiness to Venice, and had on several
occasions embroiled her with one or other of the three last named
powers. France had as yet taken a very minor part in the continual wars
which were waged between the rival cities of Italy, and during the
Crusades there had been a close allianc