Chapter V: The Return of the "master"

The "Isola Sacra" mentioned by Paul as an inducement for Barbara to prolong her stay, was a small, uninhabited island facing Castel Nuovo at the distance of about three miles.

The island had often attracted the curiosity of Barbara, and Paul had promised that he would row her over to it whenever she felt disposed.

The day named by her for the excursion had come, and accordingly after breakfast Paul and Barbara descended to the beach, where they found Lambro getting his sailing-boat ready for their use. Jacintha followed with a luncheon-basket on her arm.

"It's no use putting up the sail," remarked the old Greek. "There's not a breath of wind stirring. You'll have to row."

Barbara sat by the tiller, where a silken cushion had been placed for her accommodation. Paul taking the oars pushed off, giving a smile to Jacintha and a nod to Lambro.

"At what hour must we expect you back?" asked Jacintha.

"Not till evening," replied Paul, who set out with the intention of spending the day upon the island, and of returning in romantic style beneath the light of the stars.

It was a morning of soft sunlight, lovely and still,--"the very bridal of the earth and sky." The heaven was one deep, living blue, and the sea so smooth that the mountain peaks, the cliffs, and the towers of the castle were reflected on the azure surface of the water as in a mirror.

"It seems," sighed Barbara to herself, "that my last day here is to be the fairest."

In happy, dreamy silence she leaned back in her seat, holding the cords of the tiller, and watching Paul as he manipulated the oars. Each sweep of his arm lifted the boat half out of the water, for he was no novice at rowing, being the captain of the Britannic Aquatic Club at Corfu.

Barbara had never known any pleasure equal to that of Paul's companionship; and now this pleasure was about to end--unless--unless. And then the questions that had robbed her of sleep during the night began again their work of torture. Why had he called her "dearest Barbara"? Was it a mere transitory outburst of affection on his part, evoked by her helpless state? Would he place her on shipboard at Zara, and, leaving her to go on her way alone, return to Corfu? The thought alarmed her; she grew faint at the idea of a future without Paul.

She contrived to mask her emotion beneath a calm exterior, and as Paul caught her smiles, he little thought how her heart was pulsating to the very tune of love. She even volunteered to take one of the oars.

"What? and but just recovered from a fever! Besides, you will blister your fingers."

But Barbara was not to be dissuaded. She took the oar, and, never having held one before, behaved like a true novice. She failed to keep time with her partner, and her oar either did not strike the water, or striking, deluged the boat with spray, till Paul began to consider whether it would not be wise to suspend the luncheon-basket from the masthead. Strange how man will tolerate in woman blundering such as he would not tolerate for a moment in his fellowman! Barbara's incompetence at the oar was delightful in Paul's eyes.

"I'd better give it up," she cried laughingly. "Our boat is performing such extraordinary gyrations that the steamer from Zara, which I can see in the distance, will be coming up to ascertain the cause."

So Paul resumed possession of the oar, and rowing onward in gallant style, reached the island, and ran the boat in upon the sands of a little bay.

Isola Sacra was not more than two miles in length, and about one in breadth; nevertheless, within its limited space there was considerable diversity. There were cliffs rising vertically from the water; there were strips of yellow sand by the sea; there were woods, and a silver-flashing stream. And most attractive sight of all, the remains of a Grecian temple crowning the summit of a small eminence, the marble columns glowing brilliantly white against a background of dark cypresses.

Towards this edifice they slowly made their way.

"To whom was this temple raised?" asked Barbara, as they stood within the ruin.

"It was the shrine of Eros."

The Temple of Love! What more appropriate place could there be for an avowal?

"The god of love," she murmured softly. "And his altar and shrine are fallen!"

"But not his worship," replied Paul. "That is eternal."

Barbara averted her eyes, and trembled with a sweet feeling.

They sat down on a fallen column beneath the shadow cast by a graceful palm. Before them lay the bay they had just crossed,--a blue semicircular mirror, the Illyrian mountains forming a picturesque background.

Paul and Barbara sat drinking in the deep beauty of the scene. In the boat their conversation had been lively and unrestrained, but now a silence lay on both.

Barbara was the first to speak.

"I think," she murmured dreamily, gazing at the sky, "that the loveliest part of heaven must be above this isle."

Paul glanced at her inquiringly, not quite comprehending her remark.

"The Arabian poets," she continued, "assert that the fairest spot on earth is situated beneath the fairest spot in heaven, the earthly, as it were, being a reflex of the heavenly."

"A pretty idea!" said Paul. "With me, however, the fairest place on earth is not a fixed, but a moveable point."

"Yes?" said Barbara inquiringly.

"To me the fairest place is wherever you happen to be. Do I make myself clear, dearest Barbara, or shall I say more?"

Barbara tried to speak, but the words would not come. There was no need for speech, however. A light that would have made the plainest features beautiful stole over her face. She placed her little hand within his, and by that act Paul knew that she was his for ever.

He drew her to his embrace, where she reclined supremely happy and yet afraid to raise her eyes to his.

"Barbara," he whispered, "you have never yet told me the story of your life. Will you not do so now?"

There was nothing Barbara would not have done to please Paul. She was silent for a few moments, as if collecting her thoughts, and then, still within the circle of his arms, she began in a voice as low and silvery as if coming from dreamland.

"If I have been truly told, I was born at Warsaw in 1826, and shall therefore be nineteen years of age next month.

"My parents I never knew; indeed I am even ignorant of their names and station in life. I had been adopted in infancy by a noble Polish lady, the Countess Lorenska,--a youthful widow, who, although kindness itself, was always mute to any remark relative to my parentage, though, as you may guess, the question as to my origin troubled me but little in those early days.

"The Countess Lorenska was very rich, her mansion at Warsaw a palace, and the ladies and gentlemen who attended her salons vied with each other in caressing and spoiling me. I had all that wealth could supply, including learned masters, under whose tuition I began that course of instruction which you have characterized as peculiar for a woman.

"My adoptive mother, herself well educated, superintended my studies, but the lesson she seemed chiefly desirous of inculcating is contained in almost the first sentence I was taught to utter,--'I will always love Poland and the Catholic Church. I will never cease to oppose Russia and the Greek Faith.' This vow was part of my prayers morning and evening, and such is the force of habit that I still continue to say it.

"As you may suppose, Polish history formed part, and a very important part, of my curriculum. My blood glowed as I listened to the story of my country's wrongs. But indeed I did not require the voice of past history to teach me patriotism. What was happening all round was sufficient. I was between five and six years of age when the uprising at Warsaw took place, and the unjust and terrible reprisals exacted by the conquering Russians have left an impression upon my mind which no length of time can ever efface.

"The war passed, and an era of tranquillity, or rather of torpor, followed.

"Among those who frequented the assemblies held by the Countess Lorenska--assemblies that partook more of a political than of a social character--was a young priest of Italian origin, named Pasqual Ravenna, who exercised considerable influence over the mind of my adoptive mother, inasmuch as he was her father-confessor.

"One night during a brilliant entertainment I stole out of the _salle de danse_ into the moonlit gardens without, in order to avoid waltzing with a silly fellow who was my special aversion. I secreted myself in a quiet arbor. On the other side of the shrubbery two persons were slowly pacing to and fro, and earnestly conversing. I recognized the voices of Countess Lorenska and Father Ravenna. I had no wish to hear what they were saying; indeed, I was too much pre-occupied with my would-be partner, whom I could see through the leaves vainly trying to find me, to pay much attention to them, but still fragments of their dialogue reached my ears.

"'She must be removed,' Ravenna was saying; 'she is too near'--I did not catch the word--'to be safe. He often visits Warsaw. If she should be seen and recognized by him, our plan would be frustrated. Besides, she is growing. We must take care that she forms no love-attachment.'

"The countess laughed.

"'How absurd! She is too young for such notions.'

"'She is only twelve, 'tis true, but she is more advanced physically and mentally than most girls of fifteen. She will be safer in a convent till--till--her restoration,' he added, as if hesitating for the choice of a word.

"'If you say so, it must be so,' said the countess with a sigh, 'though it will almost break my heart to part with her. Your instructions have been carried out to the very letter. She will always be a devout Catholic, and patriotically Polish.'

"'So far--good,' replied Ravenna.

"They both moved off at this point, and not till then did it dawn upon me that they were speaking of myself.

"Next morning I was summoned by the countess, whom I found seated with Father Ravenna.

"'Barbara,' she said, 'you are going to live in a convent for the next six years, where you will continue the studies you have begun here. Father Ravenna will conduct you to the convent. And do not forget that if I should die he will be your guardian, and you must obey his commandments, however strange they may appear.'

"I cried very much on parting from my adoptive mother.

"'Courage! It is for the good of Poland,' said the countess, as she folded me in a last embrace.

"I failed to understand how Poland could be benefited by poor simple me, still less how my six years' residence in a convent was to accomplish that end.

"Under the conduct of Ravenna I travelled southward by easy stages. I began to forget my grief in the novelty of the scenes that succeeded each other. We entered Dalmatia, the country growing in grandeur and wildness with every mile of our journey.

"At last we reached our destination,--the Convent of the Holy Sacrament, situated in an isolated valley amid the loftiest peaks of the Dinaric Alps,--and here Ravenna left me after a long conference with the abbess.

"My life in the convent was a very pleasant one. Being the youngest person in the establishment, I became a sort of pet with the nuns. Though I took part in the devotional services of the convent, I did not wear the religious habit, nor did I partake of the food of the other inmates. My fare was more delicate than theirs; I wore costly dresses; I had my own dining-chamber with a nun to wait upon me. In short, if I had been a princess they could not have paid me more deference and attention.

"My studies were mainly directed by three monks from a neighboring establishment, one of whom, so the nuns asserted, had been a leading statesman of Austria, who, for some offence, had been ordered by the Kaiser to retire to a monastery; be that as it may, his was a mind well stored with political knowledge, and Metternich himself could not have taught me more of the secrets of contemporary history.

"My second year's residence in the convent was saddened by the tidings of the Countess Lorenska's death,--to me a calamity in more ways than one, for it made Father Ravenna my guardian, and him I had always viewed with secret dislike, if not with fear.

"Now that I was growing older and more thoughtful, the question as to my parentage began to trouble me. Who was I? why kept ignorant of my origin? why put to this course of study? The abbess Teresa averred that all would ultimately be made clear by my guardian Ravenna, who would remove me from the convent as soon as I was eighteen.

"On the eve of my eighteenth birthday Ravenna appeared, no longer a simple priest. His scarlet robes and the title 'Your Eminence,' addressed to him by the abbess, showed that he had risen to the dignity of a cardinal.

"He held an interview with me in the quietude of my own apartment. He had not seen me for six years, remember, and of course during that time I had grown from girlhood into womanhood.

"I noticed that as soon as he had set eyes on me he gave a start. I am certain that he murmured 'How like'! During the whole of the interview he walked to and fro, seemingly intent on studying my face and figure, now in one light, now in another, conduct which very much embarrassed me.

"'Know, my daughter,' he began, 'that your father, supposed by you to be dead, is really living.'

"You can imagine my surprise at this statement.

"'Then why does he not acknowledge me?'

"'He has lived under the belief that you died as soon as born.'

"'He knows differently now?'

"'I have informed him of his error.'

"'And he has sent you to bring me to him?' I cried joyfully.

"'Alas! there's a difficulty at present in the way of your meeting each other. Accustomed for eighteen years to regard you as dead, he listens with scepticism to the story that you are living. Nay, more, he avers the statement to be a conspiracy on my part."

"'A conspiracy!' I repeated wonderingly.

"'He has another daughter by a second wife, your half-sister, of whom he has grown passionately fond. You, as the elder, stand in the light of her interests; whatever she thought herself entitled to now devolves upon you. For this reason he seeks to deny your relationship to him.'

"'They wrong me by such thoughts,' I cried. 'I ask not for wealth, but for affection.'

"'Tut, tut,' returned the cardinal. 'We have clear proofs of your filiation and legitimacy. We shall compel him to acknowledge you. You shall not be deprived of your rights.'

"'How came my father to think me dead?'

"'I believe I am responsible for that error,' he said, with a smile that told me some interested motive lay at the root of his deception.

"I was unable to control my indignation.

"'You!' I cried. 'A holy cardinal the author of a falsehood that has separated a father from his daughter for eighteen years, and that will perhaps keep them apart forever! I honor my father for his present distrust of you. If you lied to him in my infancy, what wonder that he should deem you to be lying now?'

"The cardinal waved his hand deprecatingly. 'The end sanctifies the means, and my end is a noble one.'

"Curiosity overcame my anger. Despite my aversion to the cardinal, I could not refrain from plying him with questions; the names of my father and my sister; their station in life; their abode, and the like.

"But Cardinal Ravenna remained inflexibly uncommunicative. It was in vain that I knelt before him, and with tears entreated that he would let me see my father and sister face to face.

"'My presence may move them,' I said.

"'Your presence, my daughter, would create confusion,' he said coldly. 'Leave to me the task of winning for you a splendid heritage. Till then you must remain in this convent.'

"And with that Ravenna took his departure.

"The new knowledge imparted by the cardinal contributed rather to embitter than to cheer my life. It was not a pleasant reflection that somewhere in the world I had both father and sister who had never seen me, and who, apparently, had no desire to see me.

"For this state of affairs the cardinal, according to his own statement, was responsible, and I hated him for it. He cared nothing for the feelings of parent and child; his only object in bringing the two together was to advance his own interests; he would exact a price both from the father and from the new daughter.

"I resolved to cast off the self-constituted guardianship of Cardinal Ravenna. I would quit the convent, and, making my way to Warsaw, endeavor to discover the friends of my girlhood.

"But when I conferred with Abbess Teresa she told me kindly, yet firmly, that this could not be; the cardinal had left strict orders that I must be detained till his return.

"From that time my freedom ceased. The walks which I had been accustomed to take outside the convent in the company of two attendant nuns were stopped. The cloister gardens were open to me; once I had deemed them spacious, now they seemed very narrow. Though treated kindly in other ways I knew myself to be a prisoner watched by innumerable eyes.

"The cardinal came not to release me. And thus eight months passed,--the most melancholy time I had ever known.

"At last the porter, Bulgar, with whom I had always been a favorite, listened to my pleading, and one dark night, by preconcerted arrangement with me, he left the convent-gate unlocked, and I stole forth.

"But my flight might soon be intercepted. A few miles to the north of the convent, on the Bosnian frontier, is a fortress garrisoned by Austrian troops. I remembered that once when a poor nun longing for her freedom again, had run away, the Abbess had obtained aid from this fortress. The commandant sent out a troop, which, scouring the country around, returned with the fugitive after a three days' search. Devoted to the cardinal's interests, Abbess Teresa would certainly make a similar requisition in my case.

"Still I had the advantage of several hours' start, and, trusting to heaven for aid, I fled onward through the darkness. Zara, sixty miles to the northwest, was the haven of my desires. For two days I journeyed on foot, sleeping the first night in the woods.

"At the end of the second day--but you know the rest.

"O Paul," she murmured, with a soft pressure of her arms, "whom have I in the world but you? And to think that I at first repulsed you when you met me that night in the wood!"

And here Barbara, having finished her story, looked up at Paul.

"Why so grave?" she asked, with a smile that masked a certain misgiving on her part.

"In the very act of asking you to be my wife, Barbara, I feel compelled to pause. Your story is so suggestive. Supposing you should prove to be a rich heiress, or a peeress, or," he continued, his mind reverting to the portrait of the lady with the diadem, "shall we ascend higher, and say a princess?--you will make a mesalliance by marrying one who has nothing but a cloak and a sword."

"Dreams, Paul, dreams."

"Nay, the interest taken in you by the cardinal proves that you are a person either of rank or wealth, or possibly both."

"I place no faith in the cardinal's story. Doubtless, there does exist somewhere a rich Polish noble, whose infant daughter was lost or stolen away eighteen or nineteen years ago, but I do not believe that I am she, though Ravenna would have me play the rôle of the missing heiress. But even if I were an empress--"

Here Barbara paused in her utterance.

"Yes; if you were an empress--?"

"Cannot you guess the rest?"

"You would be my wife. Is that so, Barbara?"

"Yes, Paul," she replied, simply. "None but you."

Paul raised her beautiful face upward to his own, and looked down into the light of her dark eyes.

"Barbara, I have loved you from the first moment of seeing you."

Barbara could not truthfully say that her love had begun so early. The knowledge of it had come upon her perhaps a month ago.

"I wish I had known it. A month ago!" he added ruefully. "Just think of the kisses I have missed!"

"Nothing prevents you, Paul, from repairing lost opportunities."

Who could have resisted the witchery of those lips raised so temptingly at that moment? Not Paul, certainly.

* * * * *

The dusk of twilight was stealing over the island. The stars were beginning to glimmer through the violet air above.

"It is time to return," said Paul, leading Barbara towards the boat.

"The mantilla!" she exclaimed, suddenly stopping short in her walk. "I left it in the ruins. I must go back for it, since it is Jacintha's. And my diamond brooch is fastened to it."

"You are tired, Barbara. Remain here. I will fetch it."

"Do not be long."

"Can you not bear a parting of five minutes?" he asked with a smile.

"One minute is too long, Paul."

Seating Barbara upon a fragment of rock, Paul hastened over the grassy upland in the direction of the classic ruin, which was distant about a quarter of a mile from the shore.

At the edge of a small wood that intervened between himself and the temple, he paused for a moment to listen to Barbara, who was singing in a sweet plaintive voice the hymn to the Virgin accustomed to be sung in her convent at vesper hour.

"Fading, still fading, the last beam is shining.
Ave Maria! day is declining:
Safety and innocence fly with the light:
Temptation and danger walk forth with the night:
From the fall of the shade till the matin shall chime
Shield us from peril, and save us from crime.
_Ave Maria, audi nos!_"

She formed a pretty picture as she sat there alone by the dusky-blue sea in the faint starlight, her dainty white-robed figure clearly outlined against the black rock.

"I'm the luckiest mortal living," muttered Paul. "By heaven! won't the fellows be dumb with surprise and envy when I mount the jetty-stairs at Corfu with Barbara upon my arm! And as for uncle, always an admirer of the ladies, he'll fairly worship her."

He pictured Colonel Graysteel's look of admiration, and caught his whispered aside: "By Jove, Paul, where did you find this lovely vestal? Lucky dog! no wonder you have stayed away so long!"

Barbara had followed Paul with her eyes, and now, on seeing him pause, she waved her hand prettily, while he, like a gallant lover, waved his in turn. Then, eager to despatch his quest and to return to her, he plunged into the wood, and Barbara was lost to view.

On reaching the temple, Paul quickly found the mantilla, but the brooch which should have been attached to it was missing. As the ornament was a valuable one he did not like to return without it, and he therefore began a search in the fading light.

Having spent ten minutes without success, he resolved to quit the task lest Barbara, sitting by the lonely shore, should become nervous at his long delay.

As he rose to his feet he looked upward, and found that the stars were invisible. A white mist like a ghost was floating over the isle.

Snatching up the mantilla, he dashed down through the woodland, and, but for the murmur of the sea, which served to direct his course, he would most certainly have missed his way.

As he drew near to the beach he called upon Barbara by name, but received no answer. This was puzzling, inasmuch as he was near the place where he had left her. Near? He was at the exact spot. There was the crag upon which she had been seated a few minutes previously, but of Barbara herself not a trace was visible.

Vainly did his eyes seek to pierce the veil of mist that hung around; every object more than a few feet distant was hidden from view.

The melancholy lapping of the waves over the sand was the only sound that broke the stillness.

Where was Barbara? Ah! alarmed perhaps by the mist and by his long absence, she had left the shore to seek him, and had missed her way to the ruin. He would go back at once and find her.

He had just turned to retrace his steps, when suddenly from out the mist that overhung the sea there came a strange voice,--

"_All ready? Give way, then. To Castel Nuovo!_"

The words were immediately followed by the dip and roll of oars,--sounds that sent a thrill of horror through Paul's heart. In one swift moment he realized what was happening.

The Austrian gendarmerie sent by the convent authorities had come at last! Come? ay, and were going with their purpose accomplished!

Barbara, silent, perhaps because in a swoon, was in the hands of enemies who were carrying her off, and though her captors were but a few yards distant, he was unable to render her any aid. The suddenness, the stillness, the mysteriousness of it all was more appalling than the act of abduction itself.

Half-an-hour had not yet elapsed since Barbara had pressed her glowing lips to his. And now--and now--was ever lover's dream cut short so awfully and abruptly as this?

"Barbara! Barbara!" he cried in agony. "If you are there, speak."

Was he mistaken, or did he really hear his own name pronounced by a voice faintly sounding, as if the speaker's head were muffled within the folds of a cloak?

Following his first impulse, he dashed into the sea towards the point whence came the sound of the oars. Like a madman he leaped and plunged forward through mist and water with the desire of arresting the progress of the receding boat. Vain hope! He did not even obtain a glimpse of the boat, much less come up with it.

Not till the water surged breast-high around him did he pause, and then he stood mechanically listening to the sound of the oar-sweep as it died away in the distance.

Recovering from his stupor he waded back to land, and sought the place where he had left his own boat.

It was gone!

It had either been taken in tow by Barbara's captors, or cast adrift in order to prevent him from giving trouble by following them.

The island had become his prison, inasmuch as he had no way of crossing to the mainland except by swimming, and though he might not have shrunk from a three-mile course in smooth water, the same distance across a sea-channel traversed by currents and covered by a thick fog was a very different matter.

Though every moment of detention diminished his hope of effecting Barbara's rescue, yet here he was, absolutely helpless, dependent for his release upon the chance passing of some fishing-boat.

He did not doubt--he could not doubt--that the abduction of Barbara was the work of Cardinal Ravenna, who had probably been apprised by Abbess Teresa of the flight of his youthful _protégé_. It was not likely that he would restore her to the Convent of the Holy Sacrament; some more secure establishment would be chosen, and, when Barbara was once immured by the authority of a powerful ecclesiastic, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to reach her. The only consoling feature in this dark affair was that the success of the cardinal's scheme, whatever its character, hung upon Barbara's life; so far she was safe, but the thought of the sufferings to which she might be subjected, in order to extort submission, drove Paul's mind to the verge of frenzy.

At midnight the mist began to lift almost as suddenly as it had come on. The whole blue arch of heaven became revealed. The moon was now at its full, and the cold, pallid light shone over the island with its dark woods, and its ivory-white temple on the hill-top, the fallen shrine of love.

Paul mounted this hill and glanced over the sea in all directions; but his hope of seeing some barque in the vicinity of the isle was immediately extinguished. Not a sail was visible.

He had brought to the island a pair of field-glasses, and these he now directed over the channel that separated him from the Dalmatian mainland. The light was insufficient for the taking of distant observations; nevertheless, he came to the conclusion that a tiny light visible at a certain point on the coast marked the position of Castel Nuovo; and, aware that Barbara's captors must long ere this have reached their destination, this light became an object of deep interest. Without any reason whatever to guide him, he took up the belief that it marked the room in which she was detained for the night, and impressed by this fancy, he kept his eyes fixed upon it as wistfully as if it were the face of Barbara herself.

Suddenly the light vanished.

A very simple occurrence, and yet Paul had no sooner noted it than there came over him a trembling and a horror as great as if the extinction of that light had likewise involved the extinction of Barbara.

His mind was either playing him strange tricks, or else his hearing had become more than ordinarily acute. Sounds on the opposite coast seemed close at hand,--sounds of an eerie character.

The deep silence of the night was first broken by the fitful ringing of church bells; immediately afterwards came a series of reverberations which Paul could compare only with the rattling echoes produced by the discharge of artillery among lofty hills; and next there floated over the sea a prolonged cry like the wild shriek of some captured town.

Then all was still again.

What had happened along that moonlit coast?

* * * * *

Night waned. Morning dawned with all the fair golden glory of that southern clime.

On the shore of Isola Sacra stood a man, his gaze fixed eastward as it had been fixed ever since the growing light had enabled him to perceive distant objects with any degree of distinctness.

The British regiment at Corfu would have failed to recognize their captain in this man with his wild air, blood-shot eyes, and haggard face staring continually over the sea.

For the twentieth time his shaking hands raised the field-glasses.

Whenever he turned the binoculars to that point of coast where Castel Nuovo should have been, he found that Castel Nuovo was not there. Focus the glasses as he would, he could not detect a trace of the edifice. The blue sea seemed to be rolling over the site!

In like manner other landmarks along the coast had disappeared, notably a white lighthouse a few miles to the north of Castel Nuovo. The mountains, too, seemed to present an outline differing from that of the previous day.

Then the truth in all its ghastliness broke upon Paul, and, strong man though he was, he dropped upon the sands as one dead.

The explanation was simple and terrible.

During the night an earthquake had devastated the coast of Dalmatia; towns had been laid in ruins; scores of people had perished; and, among a crowd of minor catastrophes enumerated by the "Zara Times" of that week, was the complete submergence of a picturesque edifice, erected in the fourteenth century by the Doge Marino Faliero, and known by the name of Castel Nuovo!

THE STORY