may well have felt a longing for a sight of the city from within. It is all rather like a children’s game--Orseolo’s feigned first meeting with an embassy from Otho, his inquiry as to the Emperor’s health and whereabouts, and the public dinner with the ambassadors. Venice is robbed of a pageant, and one most dear to her, the fêting of a royal guest; the guest is deprived of all festivities beyond a christening of the Doge’s daughter; yet the pleasurable excitement of John the chronicler communicates itself and disarms our criticism; and it is not till gifts have been offered and refused--“ne quis cupiditatis et non Sancti Marci tuæque dilectionis causa me hac venisse asserat”--till tears and kisses have been exchanged, and the Emperor, this time preceding his companions by a day, has set sail once more for the island of Pomposa, that we break from the spell of the chronicler and begin to cavil at the strange conditions of the visit. Modern historians have laid a probing hand on the sentimentality of John the Deacon’s tale; they do not doubt the kisses or the tears, but the unparalleled eccentricity of secrecy seems to demand an urgent motive. Why this strange coyness of the Emperor? Might he not have thought more to honour Venice and her Doge by coming with imperial pomp than by stealing in and out of the triumphant city like a thief in the night? And why did the persons concerned make public boast of the success of their freak immediately after its occurrence? For John tells us that when three days had passed, the people were assembled by the Doge at his palace to hear of his achievement, “and praised no less the faith of the Emperor than the skill of their leader.” The probable solution of the various enigmas rather rudely shatters the romance. Gfrörer lays on Orseolo the responsibility of the _incognito_, attributing it partly to a memory of the fate that overtook the Candiani’s personal relations with an imperial house, partly to his desire to treat with the Emperor unobserved. He recalls point by point the precautions taken by Orseolo to preclude Otho from contact with other Venetians, and comes to the conclusion that in those private interviews in the tower the “eternal dreamer” was feasted on the milk and honey of promises, food of which no third person could have been allowed to partake. “What lies,” he exclaims, “were invented, what assurances vouchsafed of the most unbounded devotion to imperial projects in general and the longed-for reconstitution of the Roman Empire in particular! Never was prince so shamefully abused as Otho III at Venice.” It is not necessary to abandon our belief in Otho’s personal feelings for the Doge, augmented by Orseolo’s recent campaign, to realise that there must have been another side to the picture. Gulled the royal guest in all probability was, but there is little doubt that he had an axe of his own to be ground on this visit to Venice--that the journey had for its aim something beyond