Was Venice insatiable in requirement?
"It is enough," Caterina pleaded impotently. "Venice cannot ask more!"
"Nay, it is little," the Cornaro answered, "and only that which shall
bring thee further honor. The Provveditori will charge themselves with
the details of the Royal progress--as the Signoria hath directed."
"Let me but sign the parchment, as it may please them," she urged, "for
the last time with the Royal Seal of Cyprus--but spare me more! I would
fain withdraw into the Holy House of St. Francis and be at rest."
But this might by no means be permitted; and the Ambassador of the
Republic was ready with his threadbare argument of ingratitude, with
much other reasoning of which he was scarcely less proud.
"One giveth not a regal gift with the downcast air of compulsion--else
were it base in him who receiveth. Bethink thee ever of thine honor and
of that of Venice," he admonished his sister many times during the weeks
of preparation that followed upon the Queen's decision; whatever the
detail under consideration--and few escaped his vigilance--he was
inflexible, and her opposition could not go beyond his announcement:
"_It is the will of Venice._"
Where were the nobles of this country tossed hither and thither like a
shuttle-cock at the will of the strongest, that they would not arm for
resistance--nay--wrapped themselves in sullen silence in the seclusion
of their estates, or gathered in great companies to plunge into the
forests and forget their vexations in the comradery and excitement of
the chase, while for Caterina the slow days passed in agonized entreaty
that some miracle might yet chance to save the realm for Cyprus?
Sometimes a wild hope came to her that this extremity might stimulate
them to an uprising to save the integrity of their land: but a few words
with those of the Council most devoted to Cyprus convinced her that the
hope was futile. The days of national ambition were over for this people
of many races: their luxuries sufficed for their content and lulled them
into a lethargy which had so deadened their perceptions that the gradual
encroachments of Venetian power could reach this climax without arousing
them to action.
Even the burghers who had so valiantly defended their Queen in earlier
days looked on in mournful inertia while preparations for the royal
progress went forward, knowing that if Venice thus joyfully accepted the
'resignation' of their Queen--for thus had the act been freely
translated to the Cyprian people--they were themselves powerless; and
the day of farewell dawned at last, when the royal cortege passed out
from the palace-gates to the grand Piazza of Nikosia, where the formal
act of renunciation was to be made.
It was a long and ceremonious procession--the high officials of the
realm were there in splendid vestments, with many Venetian functionaries
in crimson dignity among them--with a numerous escort of guards in full
armor--with companies of cavalry and men-at-arms, while, in their midst
the Queen, in regal velvet and pearls, rode surrounded by the knights
and ladies of her court. But the color of her robe was black, as were
also the garments of her maids of honor--of satin, soft and lustrous,
reflecting the lights from their jewels as they gleamed in the
sunshine,--yet, to the Embassy of Venice the sombre choice was
displeasing, as an unpermissible expression of the Queen's sentiments.
"Hath Venice also concerned herself with sumptuary laws for the ladies
of my household?" Caterina asked with ineffable disdain, when
remonstrance had been made. And they, having gained so much, feared to
press her further.
After the solemn mass in the Duomo, the magnificent chords of a jubilant
Te-Deum filled the Piazza with harmonies--it was the music of a Triumph
indeed:--the soldiers, the knights, the high functionaries of State, the
priests and chanting choirs were all there; but the central figure under
the golden baldachino, upheld by the barons of the realm and surrounded
with royal honors, was not the Conqueror--but the victim--the prey--the
sacrifice. It was rather they--the leaders of this pageant, in their
crimson robes of office with the shadow of the banner of San Marco above
them, who rode proudly, sure of the honors and emoluments that awaited
them when Venice should echo to them the Roman cry of victory--"_Io
Triumphe!_"
And now the Queen pronounced the speech that Venice had decreed,
wherein she claimed the love that her simple people had lavished upon
her--
"_For Venice--to whom we have freely yielded our right._"
The words were strange upon her lips, and she spoke them stonily, as if
she knew not that they had a meaning; and thus tortured from her, it may
well be questioned whether the Recording Angel ever noted them in his
book--yet they were her answer to the _popolo_ who thronged about her
with tears and blessings, as she journeyed from city to city to repeat
the mournful ceremony of farewell; and the people heard them with sobs
and groans.
In every city, as one for whom life had died and speech had lost its
soul--she uttered these words which Venice had decreed; in every city
she looked on mutely from under her royal canopy--she who was so
powerless--while the flag of the island of Cyprus was supplanted by the
banner of San Marco, and the sculptured marble tablet with the winged
lions guarding its triumphant inscription, was placed as a record of a
kingdom too weak to rule.
FRAN. DE PRIULI VENETAE CLASS.
IMPER. DIVI MARCI VESS.
CYPRI FELICITER ERECTUM EST.
NO. MCCCCLXXXVIII. 28 FEBRU.
How dreary the passage across those wide waters to the shores of the
smiling Adriatic for the desolate woman who had left them in the first
flush of her youth, with hopes as brilliant as the skies of Venice, and
with a promise as fair--to return to them lonely, despoiled,
heart-broken, craving rest! The gray light of the storm-clouds by the
banks of the Lido and the moan of the rising winds which threatened to
engulf the Bucentoro and the fleet of attendant barges coming in state
to meet the deposed Queen, were typical of the change.
Not caring for the splendor of her equipage, though the Doge himself was
her escort--not deceived by the pageant of welcome that Venice offered,
Caterina--very beautiful and pale and still, with the sense of the
motive power broken within her--passed up the long length of the Canal
Grande by the side of the Serenissimo, receiving the glad homage of the
people of Venice.
"Caterina Veneta! Caterina Regina!"
Venice was outdoing herself in triumph, showering regal honors upon her:
the bells of all the Campanili were ringing a jubilee: music greeted her
from the shores as they glided by--the portals wreathed with festal
garlands, the beautiful city a glory of light and color; for the storm
of the evening had passed and the morning had dawned in sunshine, and
along the Riva the people were thronging to welcome her--the Queen who
had bestowed the gift of her kingdom upon Venice!
Yet how had the Republic kept faith with Cyprus? Step by step, through
the years, drawing the velvet clasp closer--closer--until there was
scarce life left--smiling the while: gathering in the revenues of the
rich land amply, with no care to spend them on the welfare of the
island, or for its increase: slowly, strenuously, with deft insinuations
of filial duty, striving to dominate the young Queen's moral judgments
and press the claims which were of Venice's own creation--jealously
watching lest she become too popular, and hampering her action through
the very officers sent in guise of help--lest through freedom she should
in truth grow strong to rule: Year by year--stealthily--smiling under a
cloak of splendor which the Cyprians loved, Venice had grasped at
power--a little more, and a little more--until resistance was
impossible.
Was it meet to receive her thus? Could she find smiles for the people
to-day with the memories of her bridal pageant greeting her at every
turn--a woman despoiled of hope--a widowed wife--a childless mother--a
queen without kingdom or power?
Before the Palazzo Corner Regina, the long procession came to pause, and
with the ceremonies that were meet, Zorzi Cornaro, brother to Caterina,
knelt down bareheaded before the Doge and was knighted for his prowess
in persuasion--since without his eloquence it might well have been that
the Queen of Cyprus would not have given that complete and absolute
surrender which was so graciously announced to all the allies of Venice
as "_of the full and free determination_ of our most serene and most
beloved daughter, Caterina Cornaro."
For the grace of Venice--when her smiling mood was on her, as for the
fear of her life-crushing frown, men did her bidding without question,
and never _dared_ to fail.
But Venice still claimed a final act of gift and of submission, where
the Venetian people might be her witnesses: and when the domes of San
Marco flashed in the sunset light, the procession entered in solemn
state--the Senate and Signoria and all the Ducal Court, in full
attendance--and once more Caterina knelt before the altar and repeated
her hard lesson, taught by that imperious ruler who knew how to hold the
sea "in true and perpetual dominion," and who would not suffer 'his
beloved daughter' to fail in one jot or tittle of her act of
renunciation.
The homecoming of the Daughter of Venice was over.
* * * * *
Then, at last, came rest, and the sylvan-shades of Asolo--vine-crowned
among the hills, with the sea spreading far below--blue, shimmering,
laughing--as if she laved but shores of content, under happy skies.
Whatever of good there remained for Caterina to do in this petty domain
which the munificence of the Signoria had bestowed in exchange for
Cyprus, she did with a gracious and queenly hand, so that her realm was
wider than her territory, for she had won the love of the people
wherever she had passed, and in the years of her tried and chequered
life, no evil was ever spoken of her. Yet often the gentle Queen slipped
away from the modest festivities she had devised for the pleasure of her
slender mimic court--the music tourneys--the recitations--the fanciful
quibbles in words--which could have had for her great weariness of empty
hands but a pale moonlight charm--to the lovely gardens of her hillside
castle, to woo sad memories--and sweet as sad--of the far-off terraces
of Potamia which Janus had prepared for his girl-bride.
Then once again Venice decreed a pageant for the gentle Lady of Asolo.
It was night, and the skies had clothed themselves in gloom; out on the
lagoon the lights in the shipping scarce pierced the mists, and the rain
fell in flurries, drifting in gusts under the arcades of the Ducal
Palace, and lifting the cloaks of the Senators and Councillors who
sought shelter there while the procession was forming. But none turned
back for the wildness of the night, for the order 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 from the beautiful face and head, and in the pale patrician hands a
rose lay lightly clasped, and a wealth of floral tributes heaped her
bier--which was crowned with the royal crown of Cyprus.
Now that the gentle Sovereign had put aside forever her robes of royalty
and donned for her last vestment the symbol of service and humility, how
should Venice fear the unconfessed rivalry of her rare spirit,--a mere
woman--conquered by the power of the State and stricken by death?
Now that the slight hands, folded nerveless over the quiet breast, might
never more thrill to her emotions of large motherliness, and scatter
gladness with gracious flutterings, in swift response to a too-adoring
populace--now that the sleeping eyes might never again unclose to smile
her loving soul out to her people--the Signoria could be magnanimous in
homage: and through the days that the proud city mourned for her, the
sable hatchments on church and palace bore the arms of Venice and of
Cyprus.
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| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the |
| original document have been preserved. |
| |
| Typographical errors corrected in the text: |
| |
| Page 21 spozalizio changed to sposalizio |
| Page 26 tumuluously changed to tumultuously |
| Page 168 Prooveditore changed to Provveditore |
| Page 169 bailo changed to bailo |
| Page 178 unusued changed to unused |
| Page 180 Conaro changed to Cornaro |
| Page 180 Conaro's changed to Cornaro's |
| Page 199 Benardini changed to Bernardini |
| Page 205 dillettissimo changed to dilettissimo |
| Page 234 Revenendissimo changed to Reverendissimo |
| Page 306 dias changed to dais |
| Page 311 dias changed to dais |
| Page 343 Republica changed to Repubblica |
| Page 356 Bucintoro changed to Bucentoro |
| |
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