In the present chapter we deal with the earlier part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy in power and importance. During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly what led to the conspiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the conspirators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one of the old nobility. The story is that he wished to revenge himself for a gross insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility supported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and in the blank space was written: "This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes." The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it fail in its duty to the state. Commerce was the life of Venice; and the oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Venetian arsenal was the foster-mother of that commerce. There the money-getting ships were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of hold, galleasses with high forecastle and poop, galleys with long rows of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit the rough Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, or the safer Adriatic. Riches, a firm rule, and the security of an island home, showed visibly in Venice. Instead of fortresses with massive walls and solid towers, light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and incrusting marbles, lined the canals. All revealed tranquillity and prosperity; and the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in especial the long Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300-40), testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears altogether happy and successful as she passes from the fourteenth into the fifteenth century.