the prosperity of their duke and country."
The dark figure of the Florentine, awaiting anxiously the red-robed senator as he made his way across the Piazza, or hurrying after him through the narrow Calli, while this gay band, in all their finery, swept by, must have made an impressive comment upon the crisis in which so much was involved. While the Milanese swam in a gondola, or gazed at the marbles on the walls, or here and there an early mosaic, all blazing, like themselves, in crimson and gold, the ambassador, upon whose pleading hung the dear life of Florence, haunted the bridges and the street-corners, letting nobody pass that could help him. "How goes the cause to-day, illustrious signor?" one can hear him saying. "What hope for my country, la patria mia? Will the noble Signoria hear me speak? Will it be given me to plead my cause before their Magnificences?" Or in a bolder tone, "Our cause is yours, most noble sir, though it may not seem so now. If Philip sets his foot on the neck of Florence, which never shall be while I live, how long will it be, think you, before his trumpets sound at Mestre over the marshes, before he has stirred your Istrians to revolt?" The senators passing to and fro, perhaps in the early morning after a long night in the council-chamber, as happened sometimes, had their steps waylaid by this earnest advocate. The Venetians were more given to gaiety than their brothers from the Arno, but they were men who before everything else cared for their own constitution, their freedom, such as it was, their independence; and the stranger with his rugged Tuscan features and dark dress, and keen unharmonious accent, among all their soft Venetian talk, no doubt impressed the imagination of a susceptible race. Whereas the Milanese gallants, in their gaiety affecting to see no serious object in their mission, commended themselves only to the light-minded, not to the fathers of the city. And when Carmagnola, the great soldier known of all men he who had set Philip back upon his throne as everybody knew, and won so many battles and cities with all the romantic interest of a hero and an injured man, came across the lagoon and landed at the Piazzetta between the fated pillars, how he and his scarred and bearded men-at-arms must have looked at the gay courtiers with their jests and laughter, who on their side could scarcely fail to shrink a little when the man whose ruin they had plotted went past them to say his say before the Signoria, in a sense fatally different from theirs, as they must have known.
The speeches of these contending advocates are all given at length in the minute and graphic chronicle. The first to appear before the Doge and Senate was Lorenzo Ridolfi, the Florentine, who conjoins his earnest pleading for aid to his own state with passionate admonitions and warnings, that if Venice gives no help to avert the consequences, her fate will soon be the same. "Serene Prince and illustrious senators," he cries, "even if I were silent you would understand what I came here to seek."
"And those also would understand who have seen us leave Tuscany and come here in haste, ambassadors from a free city, to ask favour and help for the promotion of our liberties from a free people like yourselves. The object of all my speaking is this, to induce you to grant safety to my
