His history, written with great detail by his grandson Jacopo Zeno, Bishop of Feltre and Belluna, has been preserved by Muratori in the nineteenth volume of the _Scriptores_. Other histories confirm most of the facts therein related, and there is no reason to doubt the rest; yet taken altogether, as the life of a possible human being, the story must appear to most readers less probable than the wildest fictions of the elder Dumas or Victor Hugo, and there is certainly no tale in the English language, short of Malory’s _Morte d’Arthur_, at once so fascinating and so incredible. Fortunately it is supported by the evidence of contemporaries, by the acts of the Venetian government, and, lastly, as to the dangers he survived, by the testimony of those who prepared his body for burial when he died of extreme old age, and who found upon him the scars of five-and-thirty wounds, a great number of which would have been fatal to an ordinary man. Carlo Zeno was the son of Pietro Zeno and of Agnese Dandolo, and therefore came of the best blood in Venice. Pietro had been for some time governor of Padua under the Carrara, and had subsequently won the favour of Pope Clement VI. by his zeal against the Turks when in command of a Venetian squadron in the East. The Emperor Charles IV. was also well disposed towards him, and Carlo was named after that sovereign, who sent a representative to appear for him at the child’s baptism. Pietro died seven years later, leaving ten other children and a very exiguous fortune, for he had always sought glory rather than wealth, and his search had been rewarded. It was decided to make a clerk of Carlo, and to send him at once to the court of the Pope at Avignon. His Venetian schoolmaster wrote out for him a Latin eulogium of his father and taught it to him, and when the small boy was brought before the pontiff and the cardinals he knelt down and recited this production without a fault. His august hearers were moved by his beauty, his spirit, his memory, and his bodily grace, and the performance seemed to them little short of miraculous for a child of seven years. The Pope received him into his household, the future man of war was dressed like a little priest, and before his education was half finished he was designated to be a canon of the cathedral of Patras with a rich benefice. After a time he was sent back to his uncle in Venice, and his relations decided that he should be sent to the University of Padua to make his studies.