The lad was indeed a prince, the representative of a lordly house
that for more than five hundred years had been strong and
powerful, first as barons of France, and later as rulers of the
Crusaders' kingdom of Jerusalem and the barbaric but wealthy
island of Cyprus. But poor Giacomo, or James, of Lusignan, royal
prince though he was, had been banished from his father's court
in Cyprus. He had dared rebel against the authority of his
step-mother, a cruel Greek princess from Constantinople, who
ruled her feeble old husband and persecuted her spirited young
step-son, the Prince Giacomo.
And so, with neither money nor friends to help him on, he had
wandered to Venice. But Venice in 1466, a rich, proud, and
prosperous city, was a very poor place for a lad who had neither
friends nor money; for, of course, the royal prince of a little
island in the Mediterranean could not so demean himself as to
soil his hands with work!
So I imagine that young Prince Giacomo had any thing but a
pleasant time in Venice. On this particular Feast Day of St.
Mark, I am certain that he was having the most unpleasant of all
his bitter experiences, as, backed up against one of the columns
of the Cornaro Palace, he found himself surrounded by a crowd of
thoughtless young Venetians, who were teasing and bullying him to
the full content of their brutal young hearts.
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