columns which bore the emblems of the patron saints of Venice.

A hundred times, in crossing the Piazzetta, Marcantonio had been vaguely
aware of them as appropriate emblems of barbaric force and splendor and
allegoric Christian allegiance; but suddenly they stood to him for
historic records--the echoes of dread deeds avenged there rolled forth
from the space between the columns, and the jeweled eyes of the terrible
winged Lion flashed defiance upon any who questioned, in the remotest
way, the will or the act of the Republic. He glanced toward the elder
man, some deprecatory comment rising to his lips as he strove to
dissipate the symbolic mood which was surely possessing him, for he felt
himself uncomfortably conscious of the meaning wrought into the very
stones about him, and to-day this over-mastering assertion of
Venice--always Venice dominant--was oppressive.

But his father, apparently unaware of Marcantonio's turbulent
sensations, wore his usual reserved and dignified mien; even the motion
he had seemed to make before the columns in the Piazzetta was probably
only due to Marcantonio's imagination, and the young fellow's light
rejoinder passed unuttered, intensifying his discomfort. He realized
that he was not searching for this symbolism with a poet's appreciation,
nor as an archaeologist delighting in curios, but as a son of the
Republic--to gather her history and her purpose, to make himself one
with her, to put himself under her yoke--and in his heart he rebelled.

Yet it was he, this time, who paused, undeniably, before the great
window on the Piazzetta. The sun streamed in broad flashes of light over
the soft rose-tinted walls of the palazzo and over the splendid balcony
from which the Doge was wont to view the processions and fêtes of the
Republic; the richly sculptured decorations detached themselves at once