[Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF THE DUCAL PALACE.]
Each of these gold-enameled halls is like a gorgeous vase, in which are blooming fadelessly the flowers of Venetian history. What scenes have been enacted here, when on these benches sat the Councilors of the Republic wearing their scarlet robes! Upon their votes depended life and death; and here the die was cast for peace or war. Close by the door was placed a lion's head of marble, into the mouth of which (the famous _Bocca di Lione_) secret denunciations were cast. These were examined by the Council of Ten, all of whose acts were shrouded in profoundest secrecy; and such at last was their despotic power that even the Doge himself came to be nothing but the slave and mouthpiece of that group of tyrants, and was as little safe from them as those whose sentences he automatically signed.
[Illustration: STATUE OF COLLEONI—A VENETIAN GENERAL.]
While standing here, there naturally presents itself to one's imagination a scene in the old days when, as the Doge descended from his palace, he met some lowly suppliant presenting to him an appeal for mercy. Ah, what a glorious age was that for Venice!—when her victorious flag rolled out its purple folds over the richest islands of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic; when she possessed the largest armory and the most extensive dock-yards in the world (in which ten thousand beams of oak were always ready for the construction of new ships); when she could boast of having the first bank of deposit ever founded in Europe; when (Rome excepted) she was the first to print books in Italy; and when she sold in St. Mark's Square the first newspaper ever known to the world, demanding for it a little coin called _gazetta_, which has given us the word "gazette."
[Illustration: THE GOLDEN AGE OF VENICE.]
Recalling these Venetian exploits, I stood one evening in one of the most delightful places in all Venice,—the upper balcony of the Ducal Palace. Lingering here and looking out between the sculptured columns toward the island of San Giorgio, I thought of the old times when every year, upon Ascension Day, the Doge descended from this balcony and stepped upon a barge adorned with canopies of gold and velvet, and with a deck inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Then, to the sound of martial music, that splendid vessel swept out toward the sea, propelled by eighty gilded oars; till, finally, amidst the roar of cannon and the shouts of the assembled populace, the Doge cast into the blue waves a ring of gold, exclaiming solemnly: "We wed thee, O Sea, with this ring, emblem of our rightful and perpetual dominion."