r of the Senate was
imperative that all the State officials and all the embassies must do
her honor; and the time had been appointed by a King who bows to no
mortal will and brooks no delay. Across the Piazza, down through the
Palace Court-yards and through the _calle_ the people were
flocking--dark groups over which the lights of the torches flared
fitfully: the nobles were waiting in their gondolas--each at his palace
portal, to take his place--there were no sounds but the wind and the
rain--footsteps plashing over the wet pavements--a whispered order.

And now to strange, solemn music,--the sobbing of the 'cellos, the
tenderer melancholy of the flute--the long procession was moving up the
Canal Grande--the ducal barge and the gondola of the Patriarch not
keeping decorous line, for the roughness of the waters. From the portals
of the Palazzo Corner Regina a bridge of boats had been thrown across
the Canal Grande to the mouth of the Rio of San Cassan, and out of the
blackness of the great Cornaro Palace the bearers met them, bringing in
reverent state the form of the gracious Queen for whom all earthly
problems were solved--who might never again answer their devotion with
smiles or benediction.

Silently each noble stepped up from his gondola, crossing himself
devoutly and bowing his head as he joined the long, never-ending
procession: like a phantom vision it swept through the mists--each dark
figure bearing its torch--_as if it were the soul of him above his
head_, casting a ghostly reflection, in lessening rays, down through the
blackness--gliding in air across the water, over the arch of the bridge
which was all but invisible in the darkness--and down through the narrow
rio to the Church of the Sant'Apostolli--the weird harmonies of the
songs of the dead echoing faintly back through the windings of the rio,
like half-heard whispers from the spirit land.

When the solemn music of the midnight mass had been chanted over the
noble company in the Church of the Sant'Apostolli, they left her lying
in state before the altar of the Cappella Cornaro, while in the church,
outside the chapel, the Ducal guards kept watch. Very still and pale she
was in the light of the tall wax candles burning about her and the
torches flaring from the funeral pyre, and strange to look upon in the
coarse brown cape and cowl of the habit of St. Francis, with a hempen
cord for girdle. But the Lady Margherita had tenderly folded the hood
away