, the most glorious King of France and Poland."
The noble lady Laura Giustiniani, who looked with pride upon these
costly trifles of the cabinet of Marcantonio, was a Venetian in every
throb of her patrician veins--first a patriot and then a mother--she
earnestly coveted for her son that he should render vast services to the
state, receive in his early years the Patriarch's blessing upon his
alliance with some ancient Venetian house, and close his noble career
with the Doge's coronet. She admitted reluctantly to herself, although
she would never have confessed it openly, that in these latter days of
the Republic the ermine was not likely to be offered to one so stern and
masterful as her husband; while she also knew, and the knowledge held
its compensation, that Giustinian Giustiniani could not be spared from
the Councils of his government. She knew her history well, and she
realized that the days of the Michieli and Orseoli were over, and that
the supreme honor was no longer for the strong but for the pliant; this
had made her the more willing that her son should partake of the facile
and gracious mood of this time of Renaissance, and had led her to shape
his education more in consonance with his natural tastes than with her
own views of fitness for a Venetian noble.
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