A curious custom was connected with such interviews. Those who had favours to ask of the Great
Council were accustomed to show their respect by taking the strip of cloth that hung down from their shoulder to the ground on the right side, and tying it or rolling it upon the arm, and this action was called ‘calar stola,’ and appears to have been the equivalent of the later custom by which the inferior takes off his hat to speak with his superior.
If any member of the Great Council had recently been bereaved of a near relation, it was upon the platform or under the loggia that he received the condolences of his peers, being himself wrapped in a black mantle with a train, of which the length diminished little by little as his time of mourning came to an end, until at last it was only a short black cloak; this in its turn was replaced by a simple leathern belt worn over the ordinary clothes instead of the usual girdle, which was made of velvet.
This meeting of the nobles in the Square was naturally the occasion for carrying on all sorts of intrigues; and in Venice, as in the early days of ancient Rome, the relations of client and patron played a large part in public affairs, and were productive of no small evil, especially in the creation of great numbers of minor offices merely for the purpose of satisfying the claims of dependents.
So the nobles loitered and talked between the Campanile and the two columns, one of red and the other of grey stone, which stand near the Grand Canal. These two columns, which had been brought
to Venice from the archipelago in 1127, under the Doge Domenico Michiel, had been set up about fifty years later by the skill of a certain Lombard named Nicola Barattiere. A chronicler tells in Venetian dialect that this engineer went to the Signoria, asked for ropes, timber, and beams, and then set to work with eight men, and no more. He drove down piles for the foundations, and having completed these in seven days he set up the columns on the eighth by means of ropes and capstans. When he was asked what reward he wished for his work, he only requested that so long as Venice should exist his descendants should be enfranchised and be free to keep gaming-tables between the two columns he had set up--contrary to the law which forbade all games of chance in Venice--and he asked for a decent lodging for himself and a small stipend. It may be noted that his name, ‘Barattiere,’ means at once a money-changer and a dishonest gambler, and it may have been given to him as a nickname after the fact. At all events, his requests were granted, and he set up gaming establishments, with tables, between the columns for his own profit. At a later time this privilege became a monopoly of other speculators, and it only ceased to exist in 1529, nearly three hundred and fifty years later, when the destruction of all gaming-tables and booths, which marred the beauty of the Square, was commanded by the government.