Certainly there was some strange,
ubiquitous power in that watchful governmental eye; and in the Broglio
it had been whispered that if the young Senator were not held constant
by multiplied honors and responsibilities the home influence might be
fateful to the house of Giustiniani--a house too princely and too
important to Venice to be suffered to tolerate any sympathy with Rome.
Giustinian the elder, being pronounced in his patriotic partizanship,
had replaced the ambassador to his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain, whose
attempts at conciliation were so ludicrously inadequate that a court of
less astute diplomacy than Venice might have been tempted to withdraw
its embassy. Spain and Venice had been stepping through a stately dance,
as it were, decorous and princely,--though scarcely misleading,--an
interminable round of bows and dignified advances leading no whither,
since for a forward step there was a corresponding backward motion to
complete the _chasse_, and all in that gracious circle which flatters
the actor and the onlooker with a pleasurable sense of progress; but the
suspense as to the issue of this minuet was all on the side of Spain,
and Venice had patience to spare for these pretty time-filling paces
which presented such semblance of careless ease to the watching
embassies.
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