When the youth and maid were secretly agreed, the course of love generally ran smooth, and the real courtship began. Manners were simple still, dowries were small, the only conditions to be considered were those of rank and faction; and few lovers would have been bold enough to play a Romeo’s part in Venice, while the lines of caste were even then so closely drawn that still fewer would have thought of overstepping them. Therefore, if the young man was of as good a family as the young girl, and if he did not belong to some rival faction, the betrothal was announced at a great dinner, at which the families of both met in the house of the maiden’s parents. Then the youth renewed his request before them all, and the maid was brought to him dressed all in white, and he slipped upon her finger a [Illustration: ST. MARK’S] very plain gold ring, then called the ‘pegno,’ which is to say, the pledge. Sometimes the engagement was presided over by a priest, and became thereby more solemn and unbreakable. The time of betrothal was called the noviciate, as if marriage were one of the holy orders to enter which a term of trial is exacted; and while it lasted small gifts were exchanged. So, at Easter, the young man brought a special sort of cake; at Christmas, preserves of fruit; on Lady Day, a posy of rosebuds. On her side the young girl gave him a silk scarf, or something made with her own hands. It is told that the daughter of a Doge spent three years in embroidering with silk and gold a shirt which she meant to give to the unknown youth whom she expected to love some day.