Venice, in those days was so great a power that the Venetian merchants were highly esteemed in all the courts of Europe. And Uncle Andrea, who had probably loaned the new king of Cyprus a goodly store of Venetian ducats, became quite, friendly with the young monarch, and gave him much sage advice.
One day--it seemed as if purely by accident, but those old Venetians were both shrewd and far-seeing--Uncle Andrea, talking of the glories of Venice, showed to King Giacomo a picture of his niece, Catarina Cornaro, then a beautiful girl of fourteen.
King Giacomo came of a house that was quick to form friendships and antipathies, loves and hates. He "fell violently in love with the picture,"--so the story goes,--and expressed to Andrea Cornaro his desire to see and know the original.
"That face seemeth strangely familiar, Messer Cornaro," he said.
He held the portrait in his hands, and seemed struggling with an uncertain memory. Suddenly his face lighted up, and he exclaimed joyfully:
"So; I have it! Messer Cornaro, I know your niece.""You know her, sire?" echoed the surprised Uncle Andrea.
"Ay, that indeed I do," said the king. "This is the same fair and brave young maiden who delivered me from a rascal rout of boys on the Grand Canal at Venice, on St. Mark's Day, scarce two years ago." And King Giacomo smiled and bowed at the picture as if it were the living Catarina instead of her simple portrait.
Here now was news for Uncle Andrea. And you may be sure he was too good a Venetian and too loyal a Cornaro not to turn it to the best advantage. So he stimulated the young king's evident inclination as cunningly as he was able. His niece Catarina, he assured the king, was as good as she was beautiful, and as clever as she was both.
"But then," he declared, "Venice hath many fair daughters, sire, whom the king's choice would honor, and Catarina is but a young maid yet. Would it not be wiser, when you choose a queen, to select some older donzella for your bride? Though it will, I can aver, be hard to choose fairer."It is just such half-way opposition that renders nature like that of this young monarch all the more determined. No! King Giacomo would have Catarina, and Catarina only, for his bride and queen.
Messer Cornaro must secure her for him.
But shrewd Uncle Andrea still feared the jealousy of his fellow-Venetians. Why should the house of Cornaro, they would demand, be so openly preferred? And so, at his suggestion, an ambassador was despatched to Venice soliciting an alliance with the Great Republic, and asking from the senate the hand of some high-born maid of Venice in marriage for his highness, the King of Cyprus. But you may be very sure that the ambassador had special and secret instructions alike from King Giacomo and from Uncle Andrea just how and whom to choose.
The ambassador came to Venice, and soon the senate issued its commands that upon a certain day the noblest and fairest of the daughters of Venice --one from each of the patrician families--should appear in the great Council Hall of the Ducal Palace in order that the ambassador of the King of Cyprus might select a fitting bride for his royal master. It reads quite like one of the old fairy stories, does it not? Only in this case the dragon who was to take away the fairest maiden as his tribute was no monster, but the brave young king of a lovely island realm.
The Palace of the Doges--the Palazzo Ducale of old Venice--is familiar to all who have ever seen a picture of the Square of St.
Mark's, the best known spot in that famous City of the Sea. It is the low, rectangular, richly decorated building with its long row of columns and arcades that stand out so prominently in photograph and engraving. It has seen many a splendid pageant, but it never witnessed a fairer sight than when on a certain bright day of the year 1468 seventy-two of the daughters of Venice, gorgeous in the rich costumes of that most lavish city of a lavish age, gathered in the great Consiglio, or Council Hall.
Up the Scala d'Oro, or Golden Staircase, built only for the use of the nobles, they came, escorted by the ducal guards, gleaming in their richest uniforms. The great Council Hall was one mass of color; the splendid dresses of the ladies, the scarlet robes of the senators and high officials of the Republic, the imposing vestments of the old doge, Cristofero Moro, as he sat in state upon his massive throne, and the bewildering array of the seventy-two candidates for a king's choice. Seventy-two, I say, but in all that company of puffed and powdered, coifed and combed young ladies, standing tall and uncomfortable on their ridiculously high-heeled shoes, one alone was simply dressed and apparently unaffected by the gorgeousness of her companions, the seventy-second and youngest of them all.
She was a girl of fourteen. Face and form were equally beautiful, and a mass of "dark gold hair" crowned her "queenly head." While the other girls appeared nervous or anxious, she seemed unconcerned, and her face wore even a peculiar little smile, as if she were contrasting the poor badgered young prince of St.
Mark's Day with the present King of Cyprus hunting for a bride.
"Eh via!" she said to herself, " 't is almost as if it were a revenge upon us for our former churlishness, that he thus now puts us to shame."The ambassador of Cyprus, swarthy of face and stately in bearing, entered the great hall. With him came his attendant retinue of Cypriote nobles. Kneeling before the doge, the ambassador presented the petition of his master, the King of Cyprus, seeking alliance and friendship with Venice.
"And the better to secure this and the more firmly to cement it, Eccellenza," said the ambassador, "my lord and master the king doth crave from your puissant state the hand, of some high-born damsel of the Republic as that of his loving and acknowledged queen."The old doge waved his hand toward the fair and anxious seventy-two.
