In 1873 the Emperor of Austria invited the King of Italy to Vienna on the occasion of the Great Exhibition. The invitation was most courteously given and as courteously accepted; and two years later the Emperor Francis Joseph proposed to return the visit of Victor Emmanuel, and suggested Venice as the city in which they should meet. One must reflect for a moment on the meaning of such a visit to Venice. It was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniele Manin: "The day will come in which Italy, reconstituted as a nation, will be the first friend of Austria." This great patriot believed that freedom and right must triumph over despotism and wrong. But one month before the visit of the Austrian Emperor the statue of Manin had been inaugurated with splendid ceremonies, and the most heartfelt tributes to his honor paid by the Venetians whom he had served so faithfully. His remains had been brought from Paris, in 1868, and deposited in a temporary tomb in the Cathedral of San Marco, the only interment there for more than three centuries. The church of S. Paterniano was taken down, and the statue of Manin erected on the site near the red house in which he had lived; and the campo is now called by the name of the patriot instead of that of the saint. It was on the 5th of April, 1875, that a procession of gondolas, all in gala dress, passed up the Grand Canal. The most magnificent of all these hundreds of boats bore the King of Italy and his guest, the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. The whole city demonstrated its good will in every possible way; and when the two sovereigns landed at the Piazzetta, there was a great demonstration {302} of welcome. The bands played alternately the national airs of the two countries, and in every possible way the people strove to express the fact that the hostility against Austria which had so long reigned at Venice, was absolutely a thing of the past. Victor Emmanuel was so much gratified by the conduct of the Venetians on this occasion that he frequently referred to it as a proof of the nobility of a people who could so soon forget and forgive all that Venice had suffered in the long years of her bondage under the Austrian rule. From these beginnings, which we have so cursorily considered, in little more than a quarter of a century, the Italy we now know has arisen. {303} CHAPTER XVI. SAINTS AND OTHERS. In the earliest days of the Venetian Republic a church was built on the Rialto, and dedicated to Saint James; and when in 452 the decree was issued at Padua which ordered the gathering together of the straggling inhabitants who had fled from Attila and his Huns, and the formation of a town under the rule of consuls, it was to this notable warrior saint that these people looked for protection. Tradition teaches that this earliest church in Venice stood on a portion of the land now covered by the Cathedral of San Marco.