d of going to meet Doria with
his fleet, had coolly sailed away to Sardinia,[12] was now returned.
Doria withdrew from the Lagune; and what was really due to the approach
of Pisani's fleet was ascribed to the formidable name of Marino
Falieri. Then the people and the seignory were seized by a kind of
frantic ecstasy that such an auspicious choice had been made; and as an
uncommon way of testifying the same, it was determined to welcome the
newly elected Doge as if he were a messenger from heaven bringing
honour, victory, and abundance of riches. Twelve nobles, each
accompanied by a numerous retinue in rich dresses, had been sent by the
Seignory to Verona, where the ambassadors of the Republic were again to
announce to Falieri, on his arrival, with all due ceremony, his
elevation to the supreme office in the state. Then fifteen richly
decorated vessels of state, equipped by the Podesta[13] of Chioggia,
and under the command of his own son Taddeo Giustiniani, took the Doge
and his attendant company on board at Chiozza; and now they moved on
like the triumphal procession of a most mighty and victorious monarch
to St. Clement's, where the Bucentaur[14] was awaiting the Doge.

At this very moment, namely, when Marino Falieri was about to set foot
on board the Bucentaur,--and that was on the evening of the 3d of
October about sunset--a poor unfortunate man lay stretched at full
length on the hard marble pavement in front of the Customhouse. A few
rags of striped linen, of a colour now no longer recognisable, the
remains of what apparently had once been a sailor's dress, such as was
worn by the very poorest of the people--porters and assistant oarsmen,
hung about his lean starved body. There was not a trace of a shirt to
be seen, except the poor fellow's own skin, which peeped through his
rags almost everywhere, and was so white and delicate that the very
noblest need not have been shy or ashamed of it Accordingly, his
leanness only served to display more fully the perfect proportions
of his well-knit frame. A careful scrutiny of the unfortunate's
light-chestnut hair, now hanging all tangled and dishevelled about his
exquisitely beautiful forehead, his blue eyes dimmed with extreme
misery, his Roman nose, his fine formed lips--he seemed to be not more
than twenty years old at the most--inevitably suggested that he was of
good birth, and had by some adverse turn of fortune been thrown amongst
the meanest classes of the people.