Men like Pisani have little need of acting or posing in order to increase their prestige, for it is enough that they should show themselves and brave men will follow them. The captain was taken from prison at once and, after saying a prayer in the basilica, went before the Doge. The mutual position of the two men was a strange one. Contarini must have been well aware that Pisani’s condemnation had been utterly unjust; Pisani had suffered that condemnation without complaint, and well knew that the Doge had voted for it; both were brave and patriotic men, who believed devoutly in the system by which their own aristocracy repressed among its members any attempt at individualism, spied upon itself, and treated failure as a crime. Pisani, if the situation had been reversed, would have condemned Contarini as unhesitatingly as Contarini had condemned him. It was certainly against the theory of the Republic that he should be taken out of prison before he had expiated his defeat; but it was inevitable, and he was free. Yet both men found something to say in these almost absurd circumstances, which was neither commonplace, nor undignified, nor merely complimentary. [Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 278._] ‘Your prudent and wise conduct,’ said the Doge, ‘will efface your misfortunes, and avenge not only any offence which you may have received yourself’--Pisani had been called a coward by the provveditor of the Republic--‘but also the injuries which our country has suffered at the hands of our enemies; you will therefore consider rather the favour done you now than the past disgrace in which you have been, and you will gladly seize this occasion of proving how unfounded those accusations were which were made against you, and how much you desire to earn in future the gratitude of our country.’ To this cleverly-worded and not wholly inane speech Pisani replied that he had altogether forgotten the past, and that he should find means, by the grace of God, to deserve the confidence placed in him. Before he was allowed to depart he was informed that he was not to have sole command of the Venetian troops, since Taddeo Giustiniani had been entrusted with the defence on the side towards the Lido. Pisani bent his head and answered that he had at all times obeyed the orders of the Signory. [Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 279._] But the people were less submissive to this schoolmaster justice; they would have Pisani, and no one but Pisani. Even the soldiers who came from the little island of Torcello protested. ‘Command us what you will,’ they said to him, ‘we will do whatever you order us, but it must be under your own eyes.’ So a deputation of the younger ones among them went to the ducal palace, carrying the banner of Torcello before them, and addressed the counsellors. ‘For the love of God,’ they said, ‘give us three galleys, which we will equip at our own cost, on condition that we be always, and everywhere, under the orders of Vittor Pisani.’