And would the Madre Beata—blessed guardian of this Virgin City—still smile upon them from all the separate shrines of Venice?
Should the labor and the imprecation of this simple people go on until the evening in their wonted flow, and should nothing fail them of the benedictions they had known?
It was a mystery; but threatening Rome was far and unfamiliar, and Venice they knew—present, protecting, peremptory—impossible to disobey.
Before the commands of the angry Pontiff could reach the heads of the orders in Venice, people, priests, and prelates throughout the dominions were forewarned; they must continue in every accustomed practice of their religion; they might neither receive nor publish any minatory papers—these must be instantly brought to the government, under severest penalties.
Offending prelates were brought from distant sees to meet the displeasure of the Republic; hesitating priests were silently hastened to decision by scaffolds, looming suddenly within their precincts. While leaflets—expressly prepared to disaffect the Venetians—proclaiming that no obedience was due from a people to its prince under censure; that all vows, contracts, and duties between man and man, husband and wife, children and parents were nullified for those who remained faithful to the Church in acknowledging the censure, as against those who disclaimed it—these leaflets, introduced by secret agents of the Pontiff and interdicted by the Republic, flowed in vast numbers, but silently, into the hands of the Ten, and were seen no more.
Meanwhile that terrible thing which the people had vaguely feared had not come upon them; though at first they paused, half-hearted, when they passed the house of the Tintoret, where the quaint figure of \"Ser-Robia,\" the Pasquino of Venice, had often a bit of news that the people cared to hear, grotesquely placarded over his broad mouth. He was a good friend to the people, Ser-Robia, and gave them many a pleasant bit of gossip to cheer their evening stroll; but it was wise not to laugh until one had heard the words, and there was often a priest or a scholar near to tell the meaning to those who could not spell it out for themselves. Always, in these days, there was some one who could read to the people, for this was that solemn \"protest\" of \"Leonardo Donato, by the Grace of God Doge of Venice,\" etc., wherewith the most Christian Republic defied the interdict. Here, along the Rialto, in all the public squares of Venice, on the doors of the churches,—wherever proclamation was wont to be made,—the people might pause and read this consoling word of Venice, instead, perchance, of some copy of the interdict which had been smuggled into the city and pasted, surreptitiously, over the Doge''''s \"protest,\" but which those faithful Signori di Notte —the night-watch of Venice—were sure to destroy before the morning dawned.
\"To the Most Reverend the Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops of our Venetian Dominions,\" said this \"Protest,\" \"and to the Vicars, Abbots, Priors, Rectors of Parochial Churches, and other Ecclesiastical Prelates, greeting:\" forthwith proceeding to declare that \"the Interdict which his Holiness was ''''said'''' to have published was null and void, and forbidden to be observed—not having been incurred by any fault of Venice.\"
But even those who could not read soon recognized the features of that message, which met them everywhere, hiding the scars of other messages which they must not see.
\"No, no,\" they said, with laughing thanks to some friendly interpreter who stood near; \"it is enough; va bene —we know it like our Ave Maria!\"
But sometimes a family group came back for a word, when the others had scattered.
\"Thou, Gigio, tell the good padre!\" says the bright-eyed young contadina, pulling the gray sleeve of her fisherman who stands stolidly beside her.
\" Si, si ,\" he answers indifferently, shrugging his shoulders and relapsing into silence, as he pushes his wife and mother before him for a refuge; for the men of the islands were less at home in argument with the priests than were the women of their households.
\"It is thus, your Reverence,\" the young woman explains cheerily. \"It is the grandmother who is afraid. Santa Maria! how she is afraid!\" She touches her forehead significantly.
The simple old woman, comprehending only that they speak of her, drops a courtesy, looking furtively about her with troubled eyes, and fumbling over her beads; the \"protest\" has no meaning for her, although it is written in good Venetian.
But a few words suffice for such as these who have caught only some vague hint of the Holy Father''''s displeasure, and are reassured by the open church and the promise of Mass and benediction.
It is those others who make trouble; they come, from time to time,—by twos and threes, never alone,—and read for themselves, with lowering brows, but ask no questions. And sometimes, if they watch too silently, the courteous friar who has graciously interpreted the message which is above the heads of the crowd, exchanges a glance of intelligence with some gay young signor who belongs to the great army of secret service—as revealed to the friar on guard by the password of the day; and the sullen-browed group is courteously accosted by the young noble—\"Excuse me, signori, you are strangers in Venice; a gondola is waiting to conduct you to the palace.\"
They will be tried as secret agents of the enemy. But resistance is rare, for an escort of guards pours out from the doorways and calles, if a stiletto but gleam in the sunlight; and no secret agent may cope with Venice in promptness of self-defense and ingenuity of prevention.
It is interesting in the campo in these early days, before the effect of the government''''s measures for coercing the opinions of the populace is fully declared.
\"I am a good Catholic, most reverend father; I keep the mariegole; every year I go to confession,\" protests some sturdy gondolier, who has been made anxious by his womenfolk. \"And many a fare I pay to light the traghetto of San Nicolò; with an ave for the favor of the Blessed Mother to confound the scoundrel Castellani, who threw a good Nicolotto over the Ponte Senza Parapetti, in the last fight; and it cost us oil enough to light Venice for a year—faith of San Nicolò!—to keep them from winning at our regatta— maledetti !\"
For even those gondoliers who kept the mariegole were not precisely angels, and the part of their creed which they religiously upheld was a deathless antagonism to the rival faction which won more lamps and pretty gifts for the patron madonnas of the various traghetti than any other article of their faith.
To a few, chiefly women with devout, sad faces—watchers, perchance, beside beds over which the shadow of death is creeping—the padre tells compassionately of consoling, helpful words that are preached daily in the great deserted church of I Gesuiti ; for in this parish, more than others, there are difficulties, since it had been the centre of the disaffection. But now its doors are ceaselessly open for a refuge; no service is omitted, no sacrament denied; and daily, before vespers, the people may listen to a few simple words from Fra Paolo. Thither, in these early days of the struggle, the crowd flocks, drawn partly by curiosity to hear a man of whom it is whispered that he has just been individually put under the greater excommunication by the Holy Inquisition, because of his attitude in this quarrel.
There is much talk of Fra Paolo sifting about the church and square, where the gathering of the people shows a sprinkling of red-robed senators; for the Padre Maestro Paolo, which is his title since he has been Consultore to the Republic, is a great man now, with a greatness that means something to the populace, to whom letters and sciences are nothings. But the Consultore is the friend of Venice; he is their friend—coming each day to talk to the people. \"It is not true that great trouble has come upon Venice, for Fra Paolo makes it all quite plain, and he knows everything,\" they say; \"our padre in San Marcuolo is like a bimbo to him! The Jesuit Fathers went too soon, and might have spared themselves the burning of their papers and their treasure. Santa Maria!—what is it they are saying about Fra Paolo finding the die for making money that the padri left behind? What is a ''''die,'''' Luigi? If thou hadst had the sense to bring thy boat to clear away the rubbish, instead of thinking there are only fish in the world, thou mightest have had the luck to find it; it must be better than working lace bobbins all the week for a handful of soldi that wouldn''''t buy one macaroni!\"