Note 76 — CARLO GOZZI. (continued 5)

Paolo Renier was one of the most striking figures in the last years of the Republic. A man of brilliant and versatile abilities, widely read and profoundly instructed by experience of the world, he possessed eloquence so weighty and persuasive that one speech from his lips had power to sway conflicting parties in the State and bring their heated leaders to his lure. (See Romanin, vol. viii. chap. vii., for an extraordinary instance of his oratory.) Yet Renier's character does not inspire respect. Before he became Doge, he had pursued a tortuous course in politics, and had only escaped serious entanglements by his extraordinary intellectual finesse. He married a woman off the stage, who impaired his social credit; and when he appeared as candidate for the ducal cap, he lavished bribes with cynical shamelessness. Gratarol has penned two pungent pages upon Renier's character, which are worth attention. "Talent and art," he says, "both fail me in describing this man of hundred colours. An intellect of the highest, a heart of the proudest, a face of the most deceptive; such are his component parts. A more fraudulently plausible orator, a more turbulent politician, I have never known. Whether fortune or some charm defends him, he always escapes unhurt from the mortal perils into which he wilfully plunges."—Op. cit., p. 77.