It was the day before the Senza, and the crowds were as great as ever, the statesmen in their long line before the Palazzo Ducale, receiving respectful kisses on their deep sleeves, making their ceremonial bows to one another.
Tonio gave little thought to the fact that he was alone and free, as this no longer had the same meaning.
The tale told to him by his father was full of shocks, and shot through with the blood of reality and immense sadness. And the story of Treschi was but a part of it.
All his young life Tonio had believed Venice to be a great power in Europe. He had been brought up with the sterling concept that the Serenissima was the oldest and strongest government in Italy. The words empire, Candia, Morea, were connected in his mind with vague and glorious battles.
But in this one long night, the Venetian State had grown old, decadent, teetering on her foundations, all but crumbling to a lustrous and glittering ruin. In 1645 Candia had been lost and the wars in which Andrea and his sons had fought had not recovered it. In 1718, Venice had been driven once and for all from the Morea.
Nothing remained of the empire, in fact, except the great city herself and her holdings on the mainland which surrounded her. Padua, Verona, small towns, the great stretch of magnificent villas along the Brenta River.
Her ambassadors no longer wielded significant power in courts abroad, and those sent to Venice came less for politics than for pleasure.
It was the vast rectangle of the piazza, thronged with the bacchanalia of carnival for three different periods during the year, that drew them. It was the spectacle of jet-black gondolas gliding through flooded streets; it was the incalculable wealth and beauty of San Marco; it was the orphan singers of the Pietà. Opera, painting, gondoliers who sang in verse, chandeliers from the glassworks of Murano.
This was Venice now; her allure, her power. In sum, it was all that Tonio had seen and loved ever since he could remember; but there was nothing more to it.
Yet this was his city, his state. His father had bequeathed it to him. His ancestors were among those dim protagonists of heroic history who had first ventured into these misty marshes. The Treschi fortune had been built on Eastern trade as had so many great Venetian fortunes.
And whether the Serenissima ruled the world or merely prevailed against it, she was Tonio’s destiny.
Her independence lay in his keeping as it lay in the keeping of all those patricians who were yet at the helm of the state. And Europe, craving this magnificent jewel of a city, must not ever be allowed to clasp her to its bosom.
“You will, with your dying breath,” Andrea had said, his voice then as disembodied and energetic as those glittering eyes, “keep our enemies beyond the gates of the Veneto.”
That was the solemn charge of the patrician in a day and age when fortunes made in Eastern trade were now dissipated in gambling, pomp, and spectacle. That was the responsibility of a Treschi.
But finally had come the moment when Andrea must unfold his own story.
“I know you have learned of your brother Carlo,” he said, divorcing himself from the greater scheme of things, the measured voice for the first time giving way to a slight quaver of emotion. “It seems that you but step out this door and the world hastens to disillusion you with that old scandal. Alessandro has told me of your brother’s friend, only one of his many confederates who yet oppose me in the Grand Council, on the floor of the Senate, wherever they wield influence. And your mother has told me of your discovery in the supper room portrait.
“No, don’t interrupt me, my son. I am not angry with you. You must be told now what others will twist and use for their own purposes. Listen and understand:
“What was left to me when I at last came home from sea, after so many defeats? Three sons dead, a wife lost after lingering and painful illness. Why did God so choose that it would be the youngest who would survive the lot, a son so rebellious and violent of temper that his greatest pleasure came from defying his father?
“You’ve seen his image, and you have seen the likeness to yourself; but there the resemblance ends, for you have the unmistakable stamp of character. But I tell you the worst