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482 It was some time after this, after the long, but, in the belief of the time, justifiable delay of the winter, that the Senate at last came to a decision in this question. That Carmagnola still lingered in camp doing little or nothing added a sort of exasperation to the impatience of the city, and gave their rulers a justification for what they were about to do. The Venetian senators had no thought of leaving their general free to carry over to Philip the help of his great name in case of another war. Carmagnola's sword thrown suddenly into the balance of power which was so critical in Italy, might have swayed it in almost any conceivable direction – and this was a risk not to be lightly encountered. Had he shaken the dust from his feet at Mestre, and, instead of embarking upon the lagoon, turned his horse round upon the beach, and galloped off as he had done from Philip's castle, to some other camp – the Florentines', perhaps, or his own native Duke Amadeo of Savoy – what revolution might happen? He had done it once, but the magnificent Signoria were determined that he should not do it again. Therefore the blow must be sharp and sudden, allowing no time for thought. Thanks to that force of secrecy of which the historian brags, Carmagnola had no thought of any harm intended to him. He thought himself the master of the situation – he to whom only a year before the rulers of Venice had sent a deputation to soothe and caress their general, lest he should throw up his post. Accordingly, when he received the fatal message to return to Venice in order to give his good masters advice as to the peace, he was no more suspicious than Othello in the same circumstances might have been. He set out at once, taking with him one of his lieutenants in war, Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua, and rode along the green Lombard plains in all the brilliancy of their spring verdure, received wherever he halted with honour and welcome. When he reached the Brenta he took boat; and his voyage down the slow-flowing stream, which has been always so dear to the Venetians, was like a royal progress. The Brenta was not then, as now, a long line of villas, in which, as in Goldoni's days, there was perpetual merrymaking. But yet the noble dwellers on the banks, "according to their habit," Sabellico says, received him, as he passed, con molto festa. And so he went to his fate. At Mestre he was met by an escort of eight gentlemen from Venice – those, no doubt, to whom the historian refers as bound to him by long intimacy, who yet never breathed to him a word of warning. With this escort he crossed the lagoon, the towers and lofty roofs of Venice rising from out the rounded line of sea, his second home, the country of which he had boasted, where every man received his due.

How did they talk with him, those silken citizens who knew but would not by a look betray whither they were leading their noble friend? Would they tell him the news of the city, what was thought of the coming peace, what intrigues were afloat, where Trevisano, the unlucky admiral, had gone to hide his head in his banishment? or would the conversation flow on the last great public show, or some rare conceit in verse, or the fine fleet that followed the Bucentauro when last the Serenest Prince took the air upon the lagoon? But Carmagnola was not lettered, nor a courtier, so that such subjects would have little