When one reviews a life like that of Marino Sanudo, and is impressed with the fact that he lived and breathed in exactly the atmosphere that suited him,--that from his earliest years he was inexpressibly busy in doing just that for which he was best fitted by nature, that which of all the world he would have chosen,--it naturally seems that he must have been a very happy man. But he had his trials,--some of them very heavy to him. Again and again he is excluded from public office. At first he congratulates himself on having more time, but later it becomes evident that he feels his unpopularity keenly, as one may see when he says:-- "In the past year [1522] I have been dismissed from the Giunta [Zonta], of which two years ago I was made a member; but while I sat in that Senate I always in my speeches did my best for my country, with full honor from the senators for my opinions and judgment, even when against those of my colleagues. And this is the thing that has injured me; for had I been mute, applauding individuals as is the present fashion, letting things pass that are against the interest of my dearest country, acting contrary to the law, as those who have the {324} guidance of the city permit to be done, even had I not been made Avvogadore, I should have been otherwise treated.... I confess that this repulse has caused me no small grief, and has been the occasion of my illness; and if again I was rejected in the ballot for the past year, it was little wonder seeing that many thought me dead, or so infirm that I was no longer good for anything, not having stirred from my house for many months before. But the Divine bounty has still preserved me, and, as I have said, enabled me to complete the diary for this year; for however suffering I was I never failed to record the news of every day which was brought to me by my friends, so that another volume is finished." But the signal grief of his life must have come from the appointment of the young and inexperienced Navagero as the historian of the Republic. He speaks of this Messer Andrea Navagero, who was paid for writing history, with gentle contempt; but the speedy death of Andrea, and the fact that he left nothing behind to be placed in comparison with the work of Sanudo, disposes of this matter with comparatively few words. But when Pietro Bembo was appointed to succeed Navagero, what must have been Sanudo's indignation,--a man who had lived out of Venice, who did not even remove to that city to write its history, who had done nothing to prove his fitness for the office, and who hesitated not to ask Sanudo to lend him the precious diaries from which to extract materials for his own writing!