freely with the
crowd, and idlers carried tales into dark, basement recesses, and one
knew not which was friend or foe. Meanwhile the Winged Lion, with those
terrible, jeweled, glaring eyes, and the primitive patron San
Teodoro--each high on his column, in a Nirvana of quiescence--kept
solemn semblance of vigil over that dread space where sometimes a horror
of which one dared not speak scattered the sunshine high in air between
those silent wardens of San Marco. Yet the horror of those figures
swinging lifeless, with veiled faces, was met in silence by a people
trained to suffer this secret meting out of penalty for transgressions
in which justice and vengeance stood confused.

The ceaseless chains of elections had begotten bribery, corruption, and
strife; the over-weening luxury had fostered unworthy ambitions--it was
a time of much lawlessness. Under the shadow of the embassies infamous
intrigues were planned by bands of idle men, who shrank from no deed of
evil which held its promise of gold; the water-storey of some splendid
palace might be a lurking-place for unprincipled men--spies and
informers by profession--who wore the liveries of noble families whose
secrets they would unhesitatingly consign to that merciless _Bocca del
Leone_, for favor or vengeance of those they secretly served. For
underneath the glitter and the pomp of these latter days of Venice--its
presage of decay--a turbulent mass of malcontents, foreigners
disappointed in intrigue, Venetians shut out from power, grasped and
plotted for its semblance,--sold murder for gold, treason for
gold,--escaping justice by the wiles they so deftly unveiled, or by the
importance of the deposition it was in their power to make. Secret,
swift, relentless, absolute--Venice had work for men who did not court
the sunlight; and such a nucleus drew to its dark centre intriguers from
other courts, and gathered in and strengthened the worthless within its
own borders, until the evil was growing heavy to deal with.

Causes of discontent between Church and State were alarmingly on the
increase; and while in no other dominion, save that of Rome alone, were
ecclesiastical possessions so rich, or their establishments more
splendid than at Venice, nowhere were the lines of power so jealously
defined and guarded as in the government of this Republic from which
ecclesiastics were rigorously excluded,--although no least ceremonial
was held complete without the presence of the Pa