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Venice at the zenith of her might and wealth, with Cyprus lately added to her wide possessions, holding the gateway, and therefore a monopoly of the commerce, between east and west, was ruled at this time by Agostino Barbarigo, a doge who under an elegant, gay, almost flippant exterior, masked a shrewdness seldom equalled by any holder of his office and a hard patriotism that would count no sacrifice—at least no sacrifice of others—too great to ensure that the Most Serene Republic should lose no fraction of her enviable power. With this aim he enjoined great diligence of observation and report in the agents he maintained at every Court of Europe.

From Spain Messer Mocenigo sent news that brought his Serenity some disquiet, presenting him with the recurrence of a problem which once already he had solved. It was in his thoughts, although as yet he gave it no expression, as he sat with his brother-in-law Silvestro Sarasin, the senior of the dread Council of Three, the Inquisitors of State.

They occupied the gilded room of the ducal palace which Barbarigo made peculiarly his own, a room which he had hired Carpaccio to embellish for him with subjects calculated to please his fastidious, sensuous eyes.

It was the contemplation of the latest acquisition from that magic brush, a bathing Dian, that struck from Sarasin a characteristic spark of humour. He was a fellow of gross shape, short and corpulent, yellow as a Turk, with a double chin that was like the dewlap of an ox.

“If your allegorical bride were more of this fashion I could find it in my heart to envy you the dogeship. Madam Leda, I suppose.” He sighed. “One understands that a god should condescend to be a swan.”

“Not Leda. No. Diana. In lusting after her you risk the fate of Actaeon, if not at her hands at least at those of my sister.”

“You overrate the family authority.” Sarasin was scornful. “Virginia is a prudent wife. She has no sight for things which it might trouble her to see.”

“Poor soul! You doom her, then, to a perpetual blindness.”

“Devil take your Serenity, and your opinion of me,” said Sarasin, but without resentment.

They were men of an age, in the early fifties; but whilst Sarasin’s corpulence betrayed every year of it, the Doge, light-haired, tall and slimly elegant in a houppelande of sky-blue satin, still conveyed an illusion of youth. He had risen, and stood with his thumbs hooked into the golden cord that girdled him, his fair, narrow face sardonically smiling.

“What opinion do your lewd ways encourage? They tell me that you are not above being seen at this new theatre Ruzzante has set up on Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Is that becoming in an Inquisitor of State?”

Sarasin’s prominent blue eyes goggled at his brother-in-law.

“They tell you? Who are they? Your spies, I suppose. None else would recognize me. I may not be above going there, but I am above being seen there. I go cloaked and masked. And I’m not to be reproved for it; for I count it within the functions of my office.”

The claim was reasonable enough. This theatre which Angelo Ruzzante had opened, and which was attracting crowds of pleasure-seekers, was in the nature of an innovation. It was known as the Hall of the Horse—la Sala del Cavallo—presumably because situated in the little square where Colleoni rode in Verrocchio’s lately unveiled equestrian statue, a bronze colossus of terrifying beauty.

“You can be diligent, I know, when duty jumps with inclination,” the Doge mocked him. “What do you find there?”

“Nothing for official disapproval. They mime and play some comedies no more lascivious than I have seen performed at the Patriarch’s Palace. There is a funambulist who terrifies you by his antics on a rope, an eastern juggler, a fire-eater, and a girl like a houri in a Muslim’s dream of Paradise.”

“My poor deluded sister! And what does she do, this houri out of Paradise?”

“She dances a saraband, an outlandish Saracen dance, to the accompaniment of queer clacking things like chestnuts, appropriately called castanets. Moorish, as the dance, I believe they are. Also she sings to the guitar; like a nightingale, alluring as one of the sirens that troubled Ulysses.”

Barbarigo laughed. “A houri, a nightingale, a siren! Whence is this prodigy?”

“From Spain, they tell me. Her songs are Spanish: Andalusian, with odd cadences that quicken a man’s blood.”

The Doge’s flippancy vanished. “From Spain? Ha! It happens to be of Spain I had to talk to you.” He sauntered, straight and elegant, to the window and back, drew a chair to the side of his walnut writing-table, adorned with heads of imps and cherubs that were gems of wood-carving, and paused. “I have news from Spain that I find disquieting.”

Sarasin sat up. “Concerned with Naples?”

“No, no. There’s nothing there to give us thought. This is a menace vague as yet, but the more dangerous because impalpable, a thing with which, if it were to come, there would be no grappling. It arose once before; two years ago, in Portugal. I was able then to stifle it. It was not easy and it was costly. This time it may prove impossible.”

“A menace, do you say?”

Barbarigo sat down, and crossed his shapely legs, which seemed to have been kneaded into their dark blue creaseless hose from which the skirts of the houppelande had fallen away. He leaned forward, an elbow on his knee.

“There is adrift in the world a rascal Ligurian adventurer—and God knows no good ever came out of Liguria—who claims to hold the key to a sea-route to the Indies by the west.”

Sarasin displayed contemptuous relief. “A madman.” He sat back again, breathing scorn. “A fable.”

But Barbarigo added, slowly so as to be the more impressive: “That key was supplied to him by Toscanelli of Florence.”

“Toscanelli!” The Inquisitor was startled. “Bah! Did Toscanelli die a dotard, then?”

“Oh, no. There has been no subtler mathematician in the world. In this matter he took for his starting-point the discoveries of our own Marco Polo, and thence, by application of his mathematical knowledge and skill, he drew up a chart. This, supported by a letter setting forth the arguments, he sent to our Ligurian—a rogue named Colombo, Cristofero Colombo, then in Portugal.”

“How do you know this? And why should Toscanelli deal with rogues?”

“This Colombo is a sometime navigator who was living then by making charts, a matter in which I understand that he is highly skilled. My information is that he had dreamed of such a thing being possible and had applied to Toscanelli for an opinion. It was a dream that happened to coincide with certain conclusions Toscanelli had drawn from his researches. The Florentine supplied the opinion and a chart, with the rash enthusiasm and vanity of a man of science who can perceive only the beauty of his own discoveries, recking nothing of the mischief they may work in practice.

“With that chart Colombo sought King John in Portugal. The name and authority of Toscanelli won him attention where otherwise he would never have been suffered to cross the royal threshold. King John, a patron of discoverers, since he has grown rich by them, sent him before a commission of men whose competence he trusted. Fortunately, like all commissions, this one proceeded leisurely; and so my agents, who had informed me of all this, were able to go to work as I commanded. We bought two of the commissioners. The third, a Jew, we were unable to corrupt. Maybe this Colombo is, himself, a Jew. I do not know. Anyway, his only supporter was outvoted, and the chart and letter were consigned to the dust and neglect of things forgotten.

“But lately from Spain comes word to me that this adventurer, having hispanicized his name and calling himself Colon, is at work again, this time at the Court of the Spanish Sovereigns. So far he has made little progress because the Moorish war absorbs attention. But once Granada falls the rogue may have a hearing. There are strong influences at work for him, and Spain may well covet some of the power and wealth that discovery has brought to Portugal.”

There the Doge ceased, leaving Sarasin puzzled by the earnestness he had used. “But what then?” he asked. “What is it to us that Spain should profit in that way?”

“You have not understood, or else you have forgotten that I began by saying that this discovery is of a sea-route to the Indies by the west. If that were realized what would become of our Venetian opulence, built up and maintained by the monopoly of the eastern trade which passes through our marts?”

At last Sarasin understood. “God save us!” He sat up, pulling at his fat nether lip.

Barbarigo uncrossed his legs, and rose. “You perceive the problem. What is the solution? Bribes may not suffice this time. Queen Isabel is shrewd, and Ferdinand grasping. They may judge the matter for themselves, or appoint men I cannot reach.”

Sarasin’s eyes narrowed. “The solution is simple. Men are mortal. God be thanked. You can reach this man Colombo.” His tone left little doubt of his meaning. “Expediency justifies these things.”

But the Doge shook his fair head. “It is not so simple. If it were I should not be exercised. The man is nothing. It is the chart and the letter that matter. Unless we possess those they remain the real menace whether in the hands of Colombo or another. Until we possess them Venice will never be secure from it. In Portugal I first tried the direct method. But my agents blundered. Colombo was set upon one night in Lisbon. He’s a stout man of his hands, and whilst he was defending himself others came to his assistance. Forewarned by that, he deposited the documents in the chancellery. There I supposed them to lie buried after the commission had rejected his proposal. Somehow he has regained possession of them. But we can be certain that he’ll not again expose himself to being robbed of them by violence.”

Sarasin considered. “It’s a matter for the Grand Council,” he opined at last.

“If I am powerless, so is the Grand Council; so are the Ten.”

“Why so? The Republic might buy him. He will have his price.”

“That, too, has been tried. He mocked the man who tried it. ‘Where is the gold that can compass it?’ he asked. ‘If you held an empire in your grasp would you accept less than an empire in exchange?’ Thus the needy rascal in his confident insolence.”

Sarasin’s fertility of mind was not yet exhausted. “Then outbid Spain for him. Hire him to make the voyage for Venice.”

“How should that profit us? Once he had opened the trail, all the world might follow it.”

“Would there not be compensation in the lands he might discover, in this empire of which he talks?”

“I could not trust to that. What we hold is certain, and it’s a substance we’ll not relinquish for a shadow.”

“Why, then, I am baffled.”

“As I am at the moment. But a way there must be to thwart this down-at-heel, or else my next espousal of the sea will be a mockery. Give thought to it, as I am doing. And meanwhile—Chut!” He set a long forefinger to his lips. “No word of this to any man.”