VIII
While the little Zuane was failing, Marcantonio, seeing Marina but seldom, solaced himself in preparing a royal gift to offer to his mother on the occasion of his own birthday fête. The idea had come to him that night after the Veronese had touched his own faulty sketch into such rounded life; besides, he had thought but one beautiful thought since he had, as it were, been unconsciously brought to confession by that scene in the studio. And Paolo Cagliari had been most kind in accepting his commission with an enthusiasm which promised wonderful results. Great as was his fame in those days,—and the Veronese never lived beyond his fame,—still, as in his earlier years, he was eager for any new method of proving the genius in which his own faith was as unbounded as his capacity to achieve was vigorous and tireless. And the young noble''''s unique fancy for a superb goblet of crystal da Beroviero , with a miniature of Marina of Murano enlaced in exquisite gold borders and set round with costly pearls—a trifle fit to offer to a princess—not only pleased the artist''''s well-known taste for luxury, but seemed to him an object worthy of his skill. In the kindness of his heart he would make the lovely face so winning that the great lady should yield to the prayer that had prompted the gift.
Among all the elaborate gift-pieces that had come from the workshops of Murano, but one had as yet approached this, and it had been sent with the homage of the Senate, by a retiring ambassador of \"His Most Christian Majesty,\" to the Queen of France, and it bore, from Titian''''s hand, the portrait of her royal husband. This goblet, then, must surpass that one in magnificence, for it was the Veronese''''s opportunity; and in his soul, genial as it was, some sense of rivalry, born of Titian''''s assumption of the highest place in Venetian art, would last forever, in spite of the great master''''s manifest affection. The suggestion of the pearls—an added touch—was indeed due to Paolo Cagliari''''s over-weening sumptuousness, and the eager young lover was scarcely more anxious for the completion of this gem, upon which his hope depended, than was the great artist who already had all Venice at his feet.
\"I shall need no sitting,\" the Veronese had said, when they were planning for the work. \"My picture is nearly completed, and it will suffice. Nay, ask her not, my Marco; she is a devote—she will not understand.\"
Marcantonio flushed like a boy. He knew it would be difficult to obtain her consent, and for that very reason he must win it, for he was a true knight.
\"How shall I win my lady''''s favor,\" he cried hotly, \"if I peril it by lack of chivalry! There is no prouder maiden among the donne nobile on the Canal Grande.\"
\" Altro! Altro !\" said the master quietly. \"She also shall look down from the balconies in the palazzo Giustiniani.\"
But when the young patrician told her glowingly of his wish to give his mother, on his great day, the most beautiful gift in all the world, it was hard to make her yield.
\"It is not fitting,\" she answered quite simply.
\"Yes, yes, Marina—since I love thee!\"
\"Ah, no; it is only sad.\" Her eyes filled with tears and she moved away, so that he could not touch her hand.
\"Trust me, Marina! The Veronese knows the world, and he says it is well. It is this that shall win the consent of my mother, and she will conquer my father. And in the Gran'''' Consiglio——\"
He turned his eyes suddenly away from Marina lest she should trace the faintest flicker of a doubt within them, as the vision rose before him of that imperious body, so relentless in its decrees, so tenacious in its traditions, so positive in its autocracy; but the threatened invincibility of this force only nerved him to a resistance as invincible, and he turned back to her with a flashing face, almost before she had noticed the interruption.
\"There also—in the Consiglio—it shall be arranged, and all will be well.\"
And where two were ready for the end that should be gained the pleading was not over-long, though the thought was very strange for this simple maiden of Murano; so the precious painting was finished and in the hands of the decorators. And meanwhile, during those days when Marina had been watching the flickering of the little Zuane''''s pale flame of life and there had been no spare moments for Marcantonio, he had tried to absorb himself, as far as possible, in the preparation of this gift—since she would not let him go to her—and he had come to regard it as the symbol of success; for failure was never for an instant contemplated in his vision of the future. There were pearls to be selected, one by one, in visits innumerable to the Fondaco dei Turchi, where the finest of such treasures were not secured at a first asking, and in these his mother was a connoisseur; but there were many more anxious visits to Murano, to be assured that no step in the fashioning of his gift was endangering its perfection.
But even for the most impatient, time may not tarry indefinitely, and the lagging moments had at last brought round that festa of San Marco which meant so much for Venice, with its splendid pageants for the Church, its festivities for the people, its fluttering of doves in the Piazza, and of timid, eager maiden hearts, waiting in a sort of shy assurance for that earliest Venetian love-token, the boccolo —the rosebud which breathed the secret of many a young Venetian lover to his inamorata under those April skies, on the festa of this patron saint of Venice.
And the next morning the stately lady of the Giustiniani stood quite alone on the balcony of the great palace at the bend of the Canal Grande, leaning upon her gold-embroidered cushions to watch the gondola that was just landing at the step of the Piazzetta; the restless movements of her tapering jeweled fingers were the only sign of an emotion she rarely betrayed, though doubtless, under the faultless dignity of her bearing, there were often currents of feeling and thwartings hard to be endured.