The banquet and the music must have occupied several hours; yet we are amazed to learn that so short a time sufficed for putting together a whole galley, of which Henry had seen the pieces, all taken apart, just before sitting down to table. When he left the ducal palace, he saw to his stupefaction the vessel launched into the canal on rollers, and towed away towards the Lido. Not surfeited by the official amusements offered him by the Republic, the King diverted himself on his own account and went about the city in disguise, [Sidenote: _Mut. Annali._] like Otho of old. The government had directed the jewellers and merchants to have in readiness their finest wares in order that when the King sent for them, he might buy objects worthy of the reputation of the Venetian shops; and the shopkeepers inquired with feverish anxiety when they were to go to the Palazzo Foscari. But Henry preferred to go out shopping himself. One morning the jeweller at the Sign of the Old Woman on the Rialto Bridge was visited by a noble stranger, who inquired the price of a marvellously chiselled golden sceptre: apparently the Venetian jewellers kept sceptres in stock in case a king should look in. The price of this one was twenty-six thousand ducats, or between eighteen and nineteen thousand pounds, which seems dear, even for a sceptre. But the noble stranger was not at all surprised, thought the matter over for a few seconds, nodded quietly, and ordered the thing to be sent to the Foscari palace, to [Illustration: CAMPO BEHIND S. GIACOMO IN ORIO] the inexpressible joy of the jeweller, who knew the address well enough. At that time there dwelt in Venice a branch of the famous Fugger family of Augsburg, the richest bankers of the sixteenth century. They owned all [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._] the district of the city round the church of San Giacomo, and had even protected themselves by a sort of wall. There they had built a bank, a hospital, and houses for their numberless retainers, and they lived in a kind of unacknowledged principality of their own which was respected both by the State and the people. The family had the most magnificent traditions of hospitality. When the Emperor Charles V. passed through Augsburg in the earlier part of the same century, he lodged in the Fuggers’ house, and as it was winter, his hosts caused his fires to be made only of aromatic wood imported as a perfume from Ceylon. Henry III. visited the Fuggers in Venice, and they were neither surprised by his unannounced visit nor unprepared to receive a royal guest. While in Venice the King spent much of his time with Veronica Franco, the celebrated poetess and courtesan. She, on her side, fell deeply in [Sidenote: _Tassini._]