Between the first and the second courses, a majestic chamberlain shook a huge bunch of keys while he walked round the hall, and at this hint all visitors disappeared. The feast sometimes lasted several hours, after which the Doge’s squires presented each of the guests with a great basket filled with sweetmeats, fruits, comfits, and the like, and adorned with the ducal arms. Every one rose to thank the Doge for these presents, and he took advantage of the general move to go back to his private apartments. The guests accompanied him to the threshold, where his Serenity bowed to them without speaking, and every one returned his salute in silence. He disappeared within, and all went home. During this ceremony of leave-taking, the gondoliers of the guests entered the Hall of the banquet and each carried the basket received by his master [Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini i. 302._] to some lady indicated by the latter. ‘One may imagine,’ cries the good Dame Michiel, ‘what curiosity there was about the destination of the baskets, but the faithful gondoliers regarded mystery as a point of honour, though the basket was of such [Illustration: MARCO POLO’S COURT] dimensions that it was impossible to take it anywhere unobserved; happy were they who received these evidences of a regard which at once touched their feelings and flattered their legitimate pride! The greatest misfortune was to have to share the prize with another.’ The reign of Aloise Mocenigo was the one in which the question of reforms was the most fully discussed, but many of the discussions turned on theories, and though a few led to the passage of measures which somewhat affected commerce and public instruction, no real result was produced. The Republic, I repeat, was dying of old age, which is the only ill that is universally admitted to be incurable. At the death of Mocenigo, three candidates were proposed for the ducal throne, namely, Andrea Tron, Girolamo Venier, and Paolo Renier. If the people had been consulted, Venier would have been acclaimed, though I do not pretend to say that his election would have retarded the end. Nothing is easier than to speculate about what ‘the people’ might have done at any given point in history; nothing is harder than to guess what they are going to do; nothing, on the whole, is more certain than that the voice of the people never yet turned the scale at a great moment in a nation well out of its infancy. No one pretends nowadays that the French revolution was made by ‘the people.’ The many in Venice were vastly surprised to hear of Paolo Renier’s candidacy, for he had a very indifferent reputation; to be accurate, the trouble was that it was not indifferent, but bad. He was, indeed, a man of keen penetration, rarely eloquent, and a first-rate scholar. He knew Homer by heart, and he had translated Plato’s _Dialogues_, which latter piece of work might partly explain, without excusing, [Sidenote: _R. viii. 240, 241; Mutinelli, Ult._]