It seems that even the Council anticipated that he would use bad language, for the underling who took him the notice was a Comandator-Portier, and was made to wear a red cap with the arms of the Republic as a badge ‘to protect him against abuse’! In 1791, when a company formed of nobles undertook to build the Fenice Theatre, using part of the ruins of the old theatre of San Benedetto, they presented to the Doge a memorandum concerning the boxes for the Diplomatic Corps, of which I give an extract for the sake of its monumental absurdity, translating the terms quite literally:-- The reverend Company of the New Theatre is disposed to meet the public commands with submissive obedience, and will therefore at all times venerate whatsoever Your Serenity may be pleased to prescribe.... In order to continue the building begun, it is necessary to sell the new boxes which have been added to those which formed the last theatre, and the greatest profit that may be hoped for lies in those situated in the first and second rows; but, as those places are subject to the dispositions above alluded to, which take from the owners the use of their own boxes, without fixing the measure of the corresponding indemnity, the sale of those boxes would be rendered impossible in the present state of things, to the incalculable damage of the sinking company, which would thus see removed the hope of soon finishing the building begun, or else would be put to new and enormous expense which would cause to vanish those expectations of profit which the Sovereign Clemency of the Most Excellent Council of Ten had benignly permitted the Company to entertain. [Illustration: NEAR THE FENICE] The memorandum ends with the rather startling statement that the pretensions of the ambassadors, if admitted, would cause the Company to lose eleven thousand ducats. The Doge, who afterwards showed small alacrity to act when the country was in mortal danger, was apparently much moved on receiving the Company’s petition, and forthwith summoned the Senate to consider the weighty matter; it is true that if he had done anything for the petitioners without appealing to that body, he would have been naturally suspected of being a shareholder. The Senate decided that, without making any change in the method of drawing boxes, and without prejudice to the existing system in any other theatre, ambassadors should pay owners one hundred and sixty’ ducats for boxes in the first row, and that ministers should pay eighty ducats for those in the second; whereby, said the Senate, which still preserved traditions of business, the owners of the said boxes would be getting four per cent on the money they had invested. The construction of the famous Fenice lasted twenty months, and the new theatre opened with an opera by Paisiello on a libretto by Alessandro Pepoli. [Illustration: GRAND CANAL FROM THE FISH MARKET]