The
Procuratore kept open house both in Venice and on the Brenta, and in his
drawing-rooms the foreign traveller was welcomed as freely as in Paris
or London. Here, too, were to be met the wits, musicians and literati
whom a traditional morgue still excluded from many aristocratic houses.
Yet in spite of his hospitality (or perhaps because of it) the
Procuratore, as Odo knew, was the butt of the very poets he entertained,
and the worst satirised man in Venice. It was his misfortune to be in
love with his wife; and this state of mind (in itself sufficiently
ridiculous) and the shifts and compromises to which it reduced him, were
a source of endless amusement to the humorists. Nor were graver rumours
wanting; for it was known that the Procuratore, so proof against other
persuasions, was helpless in his wife's hands, and that honest men had
been undone and scoundrels exalted at a nod of the beautiful
Procuratessa. That lady, as famous in her way as her husband, was noted
for quite different qualities; so that, according to one satirist, her
hospitality began where his ended, and the Albergo Bra (the nickname
their palace went by) was advertised in the lampoons of the day as
furnishing both bed and board. In some respects, however, the tastes of
the noble couple agreed, both delighting in music, wit, good company,
and all the adornments of life; while, with regard to their private
conduct, it doubtless suffered by being viewed through the eyes of a
narrow and trivial nobility, apt to look with suspicion on any deviation
from the customs of their class.
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