After this I retired to my lodgings, and they sent for the rest of the ambassadors one after another. At my coming out of the council I met the Neapolitan ambassador in a fine new gown, and very gay; and indeed he had reason to be so, for this was a lucky turn of affairs for him. After dinner all the ambassadors of the league met together in boats upon the water (which in Venice is their chief recreation); the whole number of their boats (which are provided at the charge of the Signory, and proportioned to every man’s retinue) was about forty, every one of them adorned with the arms of their respective masters; and in this pomp they passed under my windows with their trumpets and other instruments of music. The ambassadors of Milan (at least one of them), who had kept me company for many months, would take no manner of notice of me now. For three days together I and my domestics kept within doors; though indeed I cannot say either they or I were affronted all the while. At night there were extraordinary fire-works upon the turrets, steeples, and tops of the ambassadors’ houses, multitudes of bonfires were lighted, and the cannon all round the city were fired. I was in a covered boat, rowing by the wharves to see this triumphal sight, about ten o’clock at night, especially before the ambassadors’ houses, where there was great banqueting. But this was not the day on which the league was proclaimed; for the Pope had sent to them to defer it for some days, till Palm-Sunday, at which time he had ordered that every prince in whose dominions it was published, and all the ambassadors then with him, should carry an olive-branch in their hand, in token of their alliance and peace; and that upon the same day it should be published both in Germany and Spain. At Venice they made a gallery of wood a good height above the ground (as they are wont to do at the inauguration of their Doges), which reached from the palace to the end of the piazza of St. Mark; upon which (after mass had been sung by the Pope’s nuncio, who absolved all people who were present at the solemnity) they marched in procession; the Signory and the ambassadors all very splendidly dressed, several of them in crimson velvet gowns which the Signory had presented to them, at least to the Germans; and all their retinue in new gowns, but these were a little of the shortest. After the procession was ended, a great many pageants and mysteries were exhibited to the people: first of all, Italy, and then the allied kings and princes, and the Queen of Spain. At their return, at a porphyry stone, where such things are usually done, proclamation was made, and the alliance published. There was at that time a Turkish ambassador, who looked privately through a window and saw this solemnity. He had taken leave, but was asked to stay to see this festival; and at night, by the assistance of a Greek, he paid me a visit, and stayed four hours in my chamber; and his great desire was to cultivate a friendship