With pomp and display, as was the wont of the Great Republic,
with a city hung with emblems of mourning, and with the solemn
strains of dirge and mass filling the air, out from the great
hall of the Palazzo Cornaro, on, across the heavily draped bridge
that spanned the Grand Canal from the water-gate of the palace,
along the broad piazza crowded with a silent throng, and into the
Church of the Holy Apostles, the funeral procession slowly
passed. The service closed, and in the great Cornaro tomb in the
family chapel, at last was laid to rest the body of one who had
enjoyed much but suffered more--the sorrowful Queen of Cyprus,
the once bright and beautiful Daughter of the Republic."
Venice to-day is mouldy and wasting. The palace in which Catarina
Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last
living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan--Kings, in
their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia--is said to be
a waiter in a French cafe. So royalty withers and power fades.
There is no title to nobility save character, and no family pride
so unfading as a spotless name. But, though palace and family
have both decayed, the beautiful girl who was once the glory of
Venice and whom great artists loved to paint, sends us across the
ages, in a flash of regal splendor, a lesson of loyalty and
helpfulness.
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