Yet her position was brilliant, and her strength was not fictitious. The terms of the treaty concluded with Michael Paleologos were such as might well flatter even the pride and vanity of a Venetian, and the Doge continued to call himself Lord and Master of a quarter and a half-quarter of the Roman Empire, while the permanent ambassador of Venice at Constantinople continued to be treated by the Paleologi as an ally and a friend. Before leaving the thirteenth century I shall say a few words about the early laws and those who made them, as an appropriate introduction to the story of the great conspirators who attempted to grasp the supreme power in spite of them. From what has gone before, it must be clear that the Venetian Republic, as it was when it first took its place among the European powers, was the result of circumstances rather than of the growth of a race; and it is much easier to trace a result to its cause than a growth to its primitive type. Having got so far, the student will naturally be curious as to the internal mechanism of a government which began so early, lasted so long, and worked, on the whole, with such wonderful precision and certainty. [Illustration: CAMPIELLO S. GIOVANNI] It will not be necessary to recapitulate the attempts and experiments of the first fugitives after they reached the islands. I need only recall to my reader the ‘University of the Tribunes,’ by which the different tribes were represented and were respectively governed, the first doges, the short return to the system of tribunes, and the second and final establishment of a doge as head of the Republic. At this point in history two main facts stand out at once: on the one hand, the unlimited power of the doges, whose authority was not restrained by any positive law, still less by any body of men in the shape of senate or council, whose chief aim was generally to make their dignity hereditary, and who were to all intents and purposes the absolute masters of their country’s destiny while they lived; on the other hand, we find an assembly of the clergy and people, generally very far from exacting as to the doge’s conduct, but ready and able to wrest the sovereignty from him if he pushed his absolutism too far for their taste. In those days a great simplicity prevailed. The chosen chief used his position unhesitatingly for his own advantage; the clergy were simple-minded; the people were very busy with their own affairs.