At the age of twenty she was married to Marcantonio Michiel, and a few months later she accompanied him to Rome, where her father, Andrea Renier, was ambassador. She made a profound impression on Roman society, and soon went by the name of ‘Venerina Veneziana,’ the little Venetian Venus. In Rome she met the genial poet Monti, then very young, and recommended to the Venetian ambassador by Cardinal Braschi. To fill her idle hours, the industrious little lady studied engraving on wood. Not long after her return from Rome her paternal uncle was elected Doge. He was not a very estimable personage, and as he had married a dancer whom the people refused to accept as the Dogess, his niece Giustina did the honours of the ducal palace when occasion required. In her early youth she began several literary works, among which a rather inaccurate translation of some of Shakespeare’s plays has come down to us. She was a literary personage, however, when still young, and the drawing-rooms of the Palazzo Michiel were frequented by all that was most distinguished in Venice, as well as by the best of the foreign element. Giustina, like all women who succeed in gathering intellectual people about them, encouraged the discussion of all sorts of subjects from the broadest point of view. At that time she was slightly inclined towards the new order of ideas, and boasted of being somewhat democratic; but if this was true, it did not prevent her from sincerely lamenting the fall of the Republic a few years later. On the twelfth of May 1797, after the fatal session which ended the history of Venice, a few nobles gathered at her house to mourn over the sudden end. While they sat together, heavy-hearted and conversing in broken sentences, they heard the rabble in the street below, howling at those whom it called the assassins of Saint Mark. The little group upstairs understood the danger, and after a moment’s silence Giustina called upon them to save the city at least, if they could no longer save the Republic. Her cousin Bernardino Renier was there, and was temporarily charged with seeing to the safety of the city. The only means he could think of for preventing pillage was violence, and he swept the streets with artillery. For a while Giustina cherished the vain hope that Bonaparte would help Venice to rise from her ashes. That fact explains why she was willing to receive in her house the handsome, fair-haired Marina Benzon, who danced round the tree of liberty in the Square of Saint Mark’s with the ‘Carmagnola’ on her head, on the day that saw the Venetian flag replaced by the Phrygian cap of liberty. It explains, too, why Giustina was in [Sidenote: _1809._] the square ten years later, when Napoleon came to Venice a second time. It was a singular meeting enough.